Saturday 26 November 2011

Love Miles

Recently, when my parents came to town for a visit, I heard David Holmgren talk to my mother about love miles: the distance family members travel to see one another. With peaking oil, he said, and the rise in cost of fuel, it will get harder and harder for family members to just jump on a plane for a visit.


To help reduce their love miles, my folks are selling their house and are moving to this neck of the woods to be near my sister Kate and I and our families.

If you're in the market for a self-sufficient house in Tasmania that sits on a beautiful 200 acre block, check out their blog for more details.

Friday 25 November 2011

Closing Down the Wilderness

I have been going in to Z's school once a week to help the older students set up a blog. One of the students wanted to take a photo of his classmates in the giant tree that they look out onto through their classroom window.

Just before recess their teacher said yes they could all go outside, but they were only allowed to climb the bottom two limbs.

How has it come to this: that needs of litigators are defining our school curricula not the needs of children? It reminded me of this excerpt from Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs:

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children's imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go. Should I send my children out to play?

There is a small grocery store around the corner, not over two hundred yards from our front door. Can I let her ride there alone to experience the singular pleasure of buying herself an ice cream on a hot summer day and eating it on the sidewalk, alone with her thoughts? Soon after she learned to ride, we went out together after dinner, she on her bike, with me following along at a safe distance behind. What struck me at once on that lovely summer evening, as we wandered the streets of our lovely residential neighborhood at that after-dinner hour that had once represented the peak moment, the magic hour of my own childhood, was that we didn't encounter a single other child.

Even if I do send them out, will there be anyone to play with?

Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted–not taught–to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?

Thursday 10 November 2011

Pink Blossom

I went to the toilet then I wiped. There was blood. Ordinarily, and once a month, not such bloggable news. But on this afternoon it was, as I was 11 weeks pregnant.

It wasn't until I became a stepmother that I discovered how adept a woman can become at holding her tongue. And it wasn't until I had a miscarriage that I realised how much goes on in women's lives that doesn't get talked about openly.

What are we hiding? What are we afraid will happen if we assert a new kind of openness?

It's funny that what prompted me to blog about it is what one man said and what another man sang. Maybe funny's the wrong word.

PJ wrote a poem about losing our baby and our dear friend Anthony Petrucci put it to music.

Here it is: the sadness and the wonder of it all.