Posts by Hebe
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Notes & Queries: Nightingales/Bombs/Beethoven, in reply to Chris Waugh,
That was big! My earthquake experience has been different: mostly not online because my net connection was down for weeks or days. The months (years!) afterwards have proven the net to be invaluable for the family in many ways: from being able via the cloud to work and learn from home, researching, networking, sharing and connecting. Even down to being able to have fresh sources of reading material when there was no library open in this part of town or bookshops open nearby.
And email: we still have no decent Post Office nearby. -
Writing about these link experiences is in its infancy. We need words to describe and shape them. We need concepts on which to base the aesthetics. We need ways to describe the discoveries. We need critics of link-series and commentators who can reveal the nuggets at the heart of the process. We need new ways to formulate the activity and to judge it.
We do. Thank you for putting into words what I have been mulling formlessly for some while. I am still at the relatively new and internet-user stage of finding delight and other intense experiences online. The latest, being somewhat of digression, was logging on to Facebook last weekend to find a friend who had just been at Nairobi Westgate mall and left a couple of minutes before the shoot-out (having been chatting to a friend by the cafe at the entrance and decided not to have coffee because it was too busy). She was at home, in shock, her husband in another country until the next day, and hearing the gunfire from her house while wondering how her friends were. Friends from all over the world helped support her through it on-line until she had physical back-up. I still cannot get my head around it.
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Hard News: A Public Address public appeal, in reply to Islander,
Generous and excellent of you Islander.
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Well done Jimmy. And well done Jimmy's parents: having differently abled offspring and committing to them reaching their potential is heroic.
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Speaker: The act of not eating doesn't…, in reply to Lilith __,
Exactly. It gets very wearing, so I guess that's why people who work in the area have to look for the positives else they burn out. That can seem like rose-tinted glasses to everyone else, but it is not necessarily an inability to see the problems.
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Speaker: The act of not eating doesn't…, in reply to Michael Savidge,
You’re not making a great case for tolerance here! PAS is all about disagreeing in a non-disagreeable way. I understand where you are coming from, but like you say, you are new in the area. Reading your post, I felt lectured and hectored, not persuaded.
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Speaker: The act of not eating doesn't…, in reply to Lilith __,
But is charity work therefore immune from criticism?
I'm not saying that. At all. Criticism and debate is essential, and any decent aid organisation will be constantly self-evaluating rather than self-congratulating.
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Speaker: The act of not eating doesn't…, in reply to andin,
It shouldnt be an industry it should be what we do as a matter of course.
Isn't though. In my naivety, I have been appalled to find out that.
Your reflexive reaction was mine too until I was able to see first-hand accounts of what a few bucks in our terms meant to the people. I' m not saying the systems that create those privations is anything but wrong.
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Good piece Amberleigh. I too have seen in friends the awfulness of eating disorders, and I know about Live Below the Line because my partner until a couple of months back worked with one of the agencies promoting the campaign.
I am against food restriction campaigns that heavily promote the participation of children and teens through schools. In my view, that's just not appropriate: the message that not eating is a noble thing is not one that children should be taught. My kids came under 40-Hour Famine peer pressure at one stage and we also found an alternative, while ensuring the boys understood well why such appeals are made. Adults are a different matter: surely it is their freedom to choose to take part or not? I choose not to.
But the loathing directed against god botherers raising money for aid projects is painful to read. I have heard of many, many people whose lives, individually have been turned around or even saved by small-scale fund-raisings: getting clean water for a village, buying sewing machines so people can create their own cottage industry, the Fred Hollows Foundation's work saving sight.
Aid is undoubtedly a global industry, and the giver should examine the agency collecting the funds and find out what proportion of the spend goes to the cause, and what proportion goes to admin, big salaries for executives- and advertising budgets. The dollars raised sent to a multi-national charity will have very different results than those sent to a small NZ agency that operates programmes overseas. Most agencies are only too aware of the systemic causes of the needs; some work to address that too.
Isn't doing something, no matter how small, worth it when a life is saved or a kid gets to eat that day?
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Hard News: A Public Address public appeal, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
How come we’re all so brilliant and all so broke? I have a couple of Toy Love singles I could chuck on your pile for Russell’s pie. Are they worth anything? I believe Mr Jackson's basement is bulging too. (Oh dear, he seems to have left the room with his vinyl face on).
Russell, it will be small but heartfelt.