Posts by Deborah
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But look out before that for a Christmas Great Blend!
Tentative date? Y'know, for those of us who are making travel plans...
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I would love to come home. You can measure the depth of my desire to come home by the fact that I would even settle for Palmerston North (yes, I have lived there, twice, so I know what I am saying). We are slowly settling here, making friends (a difficult task for introverts), learning the city and the climate, enjoying what Adelaide has to offer. But I miss my family and friends, and I miss the landscapes of home. What I also miss is the determination in New Zealand to get things right. There's a real "can do" attitude in Australia, which is deeply refreshing. However I feel as though New Zealand has a real commitment to social justice, however poorly put into practice, and a commitment to justice for Maori, and a commitment to making the country a better place for everyone. It's not as gung-ho as the Australian approach, but I think it's more reasoned, and more based in a sense that if we try, we actually can build a good place to live.
Also, I miss kumara. And tui. And kereru.
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I would here point out that the Holocaust didn't cause WW2.
Well, yes. When we tried to explain World War II to our girls, we started with the Treaty of Versailles. We segued from there to the Holocaust, trying to explain the horror, and the extent to which many nations were complicit in it, even if the greatest responsibility for it could be sheeted home to Hitler and his cohorts.
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People only learn about the past as it is mediated through films; the realities of the War and the Holocaust are unknown to them.
By coincidence, one of our eight year olds asked about the cause of World War I and the cause of World War II over dinner last night. So we ended up talking our girls through the basics of the Holocaust.
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I see a group of Aboriginal people reasonably often, living in the parklands in Adelaide. I've also worked with a couple of Aboriginal women, and seen some of the efforts that are being made in South Australia to work with Aboriginal communities to make things better. Our Premier is Mike Rann, who grew up in New Zealand. I've started to wonder whether that's significant.
Nevertheless, for the most part, one of the richest nations in the world prefers to turn its back on its indigenous people. It's shameful. And it's one of the issues that will influence me when it comes to voting in the state and federal elections next year.
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Nah... it's not really a problem, Paul. These days I'm a long way down on google, so I'm not all that discoverable, or memorable, evidently.
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Deborah [ ] often blogs about moments of enculturation.
Aaaaggghhhh! Paul!! You outed me!!! So far I've kept my family name off blogs about the place.
Oh well.... anyone who was curious and had two spare braincells and a modicum of google-fu could have worked it out anyway. So I'm not actually too concerned, and I had been contemplating going all-out anyway.
Not a moment of enculturation, but just to prove that they really are weird in Sydney, take a look at this picture of the dust storm: zombies-zombies
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It's the tui for me; they used to hang around our house in Wellington, and I miss their songs and croaks and gurgles so much.
And congratulations! The married / civil unioned state is a fine thing.
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So I stay away for a few days because I've got masses of essays to mark, and I come back and find we're now getting 50 comments per page .... things are changing around here.
edited to say...
AND THERE'S AN EDIT BUTTON!