Posts by Hebe
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
To me, the cry of “we wrap our kids in cotton wool” is up there with zeitgeist cliches like “political correctness gone mad” and “boys are hurt by the feminised teaching environment”.
As the mother of two boys and stepmother of one, and feminist from day one (brought up by a ground-breaking careerist mother in the 1960s), I totally disagree. Feminism to me was and is about the freedom for everyone to be themselves, celebrate their own strengths, and choose their path in life. I loathe its capture by narrow interest groups intent on bending people to their own narrow sisterhood views -- which to me are as bad as the old male monopolies of society and its institutions.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
To me, the cry of “we wrap our kids in cotton wool” is up there with zeitgeist cliches like “political correctness gone mad” and “boys are hurt by the feminised teaching environment”.
As the mother of two boys and stepmother of one, and feminist from day one (brought up by a ground-breaking careerist mother in the 1960s), I totally disagree. Feminism to me was and is about the freedom for everyone to be themselves, celebrate their own strengths, and choose their path in life. I loathe its capture by narrow interest groups intent on bending people to their own narrow sisterhood views -- which to me are as bad as the old male monopolies of society and its institutions.
"Wrapping our kids in cottonwool" is another talkback-grade cliche that disregards children's needs to be fed, loved and nurtured in a way that allows them to grow and learn healthily and become independent beings not passive couch-sitting sheeple ready to staff the modern version of factories. -
Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
Lack of free play isn’t just a question of supervision, it’s also something schools and parents (more so overseas) do to cram in as much formal teaching as possible into children – music lessons and extra tuition and so forth is part of the middle-class scramble.
Yup. In this house we call it competitive parenting. I won’t do it.
As for girls v boys and freedom: no difference at all for me and my brother and my best (male) friend.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
In Christchurch a few years back the council holiday programmes had to cut out most of the free play in the schedule because many of the kids couldn't cope with having unstructured time. They did not know what to do with themselves. That is very, very sad and worrying for our society.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to B Jones,
We still have a high rate of childhood injury by international comparison.
With London, New York, Tokyo? Where my friends' kids were unable to go out without an adult until they were 10 or 12 and as a result spent most of their lives doing inside things. I'm not arguing with playgound safety: it's that playgrounds in themselves are sanitised, controlled environments where children are confined by adults' (lack of) imagination.
My twins had not many toys, but we lived a block from the beach and though they didn't go down there unsupervised, I could be 50 metres away keeping an overall eye out while they found things to do without an adult's interference. At home they spent hours and hours in the muddy pond: we dug the top 40cm of dirt away to reveal pure sand in a 3m X 8m area of the garden, dipped down so they were out of the worst of the wind when small, gave them a few things like an old colander and small spades, a hose and let them go. That lasted from 2 until 10 years as the most-used play space. They got filthy, they made up stories, they invited their friends in; they made their own world with their own rules, and it's one of the fondly remembered parts of childhood for both.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Polly Fila, don’t she have an MBA? Must be an expert.
While I'm spleening: designer high-vis vests and hard hats. Pink if you please. Fug off.
And the Deputy Mayor who stormed around town in a 4WD ute on the ratepayer with "Operation Suburb" and her name in large letters all over it. What was Operation Suburb? Sounds like something brainstormed in the council comms unit while implementing the new paradigm of a stakeholder engagement program (morning tea before writing a press release). Back to work before I get negative rather than being able to find it amusing.... -
Google sez the Indian word for swastika was swastika, Still sounds Germanic to me.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Chris Waugh,
The cathedral ones were; don't know about the chimney. Is swastika the right word given that we're talking about the ancient symbol? The appropriation of the symbol and forever linking it to the German word in the West continues that negative association.
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Southerly: My Life As a Palm Tree, in reply to Steve Barnes,
OSH, HR: a plague on their houses! How long will this managerialism last? We in Christchurch are especially cursed as planeloads of New Zealand’s finest box-tickers have invaded post-earthquakes “to help with the rebuild” and “think outside the Square” (which isn’t hard because the Square ain’t square any more). I have an affection for those lawless days of two years ago when a local guy rigged up piping from his well to the front gate, put up an old school table and we all queued to get clean drinking water (or any water). Dunnies were dug, food was shared. Good God , I’m sounding like a WW2 survivor, time to go.
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Because it's the music thread: sent on Facebook from a friend in Australia: