The power of prayer

Yesterday I remembered it was the third Saturday of the month and therefore Yungaburra market day.  I felt I was falling into life here, knowing the market days; Malanda markets is the second Saturday and Atherton the first.

     Yungaburra hosts the Tablelands' largest monthly markets.  It was good fortune as it afforded me the last opportunity to buy small gifts for the big day.  Actually, it was my only opportunity since I'd planned to boycott presents being repulsed by the commercial nature of Christmas ... but I relented under pressure from Kibby and Seffy and complaints they will be the only children not to have presents.   

     As I jumped in the shower, eating peanut butter toast, I shouted out to Seffy.

     ‘Pray for a park so we don’t have to walk far.’

     On the drive there I reminded Seffy to say a prayer for a park.

     When we rounded the bend I saw there were many parking spots.  In fact, I had the pick of all the shady parks.  The power of prayer!

     Not only were there so many parking spaces, there was also a vast expanse of grass where the 250 stalls should have been.  As we drove past the servo, I didn’t miss the sign.  

     I haven't yet worked out the lie of the mainland and the pressing need to check dates and times of events that cannot be reached on foot! 

Santa Claus and the magic zero

I just read on The Drum that earlier this week, Kitty Flanagan, a guest on The Project (had to Google that one) disclosed to viewers Santa ‘doesn’t even exist.’  Parents took to Twitter and Facebook to condemn the program for spoiling their children’s Christmas joy.  There was even an article in The Age titled ‘How The Project ruined Christmas for many families.’

     Here are some tweets.  Naturally, the critical Facebook posts have been removed from The Project's profile.

Mardi Radford @MardiradfordB

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@theprojecttv you're a disgrace. Now I can't watch my fav news program without fear of what might be said while my kids are in the room!

11:55 PM - 9 Dec 2014

Sara Victoria @thegreenroomAP

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@theprojecttv have only just got my kids to sleep.Tears,heartbreak & questions re Santa tonight.Appalled and very angry - can't fix this one

10:19 PM - 9 Dec 2014

  

Here’s how The Project repaired the damage on Facebook.

The Project

December 10 · Edited

Dear Mums and Dads,
Last night’s comments by Kitty were completely unplanned and we unreservedly apologise for upsetting our family viewers.
Last night was Kitty’s final performance for the year on The Project but neither she nor our show would intentionally offend kids like this just before Christmas.

Tonight we will be crossing to Santa in the North Pole so he can clear up any confusion for our younger viewers.

Best regards,
The Project

     First I wondered why children would be watching such a program and secondly, why parents don’t complain as fiercely about coarse language, moderate violence and sexual references endemic in PG films and programs, for example Home and Away.  

     Finally, I decided those parents were stupid if they couldn’t calm their distressed child by simply saying, ‘Honey, that women gets paid to tell jokes.  Don’t listen to her twaddle.’ 

     Then I remembered I had already spoiled this Christmas for a class of eleven year-olds. And like The Project, I was quick to make amends the following day.

     Not long ago I was teaching two-digit multiplication and not sure what students knew and could do, I went back to the beginning.  They all understood the first step, multiplying the one (place value) in a two-digit sum, for example, 26 x 15, they successfully multiplied 26 by 5. 

     ‘What do I do now?’

     ‘Add the magic zero,’ most of them said.

     ‘The what?’  I've long believed the magic zero in maths is worse than the Santa conspiracy.

     ‘The magic zero!’ Students jumped from their seats.  ‘The magic zero!’

     Of course, I asked about this magic zero and they stared at me.  

     Eventually, one studious girl gathered enough courage to say, ‘you put the magic zero in the ones column.’

     ‘But why?’ I asked and was met with blank faces, even that of the studious girl.

     I explained the next step is multiplying by a number with a place value of 10 and the multiple  indeed has this fabulous, but not-so-magic 0 on the end of it.  I got them to answer sums I scribbled on the white board.

     ‘See, there’s nothing magic going on,’ I said.

     ‘But we’ve been taught it’s a magic zero.’

     ‘Ah, I said.  It’s a bit like,’ and I paused, calculating the average age of the students, 11 and certain no one at 11 could possibly believe in Santa I continued.  ‘It’s a bit like Santa.  He’s magic when you’re young, but when you grow up you learn Santa is not real.  The magic zero seems amazing and magic until you work out multiplying a whole number by 10 means the last digit must be a zero. It’s simple.’

     It was simple. No one accused me of heresy and most students successfully completed a series of two-digit algorithms.   

     It was one of my most successful maths lessons.  It really was simple until ….

     Until … the next day in the same class I received a phone call from the deputy principal, DP.

     ‘I’ve just had a call from an angry parent claiming you told her daughter yesterday Santa wasn’t real.’

     ‘Yes, of course and I told the class the magic zero wasn’t real.’  I explained what had happened.

     The DP, who I think is wonderful and understood my predicament (she also condemned the magic zero), related the parent’s concern. The daughter had come home in tears because Mrs Titasey said Santa wasn’t real (the not-so-magic zero disclosure wasn’t a problem, thankfully).

     ‘A parent needs to break the news about Santa,’ said the DP.

     Of course, I had to reverse the damage.  I found the child, outlined my comments were not true and Santa was is, in fact, very real and apologised profusely.

     The poor love, bit on her lower lip and gazed at me with saucer shaped eyes.  Eventually she nodded with relief and ran out to little lunch.

     I was stressed. I had probably caused serious psychological damage to the rest of the class for years to come.  I’d had my first parent complaint.  My teaching career was over thanks to a fictitious fat man in a red and white suit who lives in the North Pole!  Outside I found a teacher I had relieved for and confessed my crime.

     ‘Have I really screwed up?’

     ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she laughed.  ‘Mind, you, you won’t get more teaching work here.’  She saw my panic.  ‘I’m only joking. Seriously don’t worry about it.’  She doubled over laughing. ‘It’s just that it’s so funny.’

     In the staffroom, the DP and principal had a great giggle about what I’d be getting from Santa at Christmas and for a few days, I was the butt of very funny Santa jokes.

     In eighteen months of teaching, I can honestly say that the one thing I taught that was absorbed and demonstrated accurately was my disclosure about Santa.  Nothing else has been so readily understood.

     So why don’t kids lap up all the good stuff they hear in class or see on screens?

     Buggered if I know, but I have been on tenterhooks every time I’ve entered a classroom.  Correcting the spoiler won't always work so well and I don’t have the resources to arrange a video link with Santa in the North Pole like The Project.  Who cares, really?  I need to find a job working with adults.  

After the BuyBack expedition!

The day after the BuyBack expedition. Thanks, Pippa Jane.
My Brilliant Career, my most-treasured find - a classic pre-loved by Belinda Macklin, Amanda Krieg, Chris Lansan and someone Feeney (the part of the cover bearing Miss or Master Feeney's christian name had been chewed to oblivion). Parts of the text had been underlined, circled and anotated, my most favourite kind of book.

The close-up.

Two days after the BuyBack expedition.
The Gisele Bundchen envrionmentally friendly flip-flop, destined to become landfill. Its mate was so badly mauled it needed to be swept up.

Five days after the BuyBack expedition.

No more trips to the BuyBack for the Titaseys!

Other folks' trash is one family's treasure!

It's Saturday morning.  Welcome to the Tableland Regional Council Waste Management Facility.

Uncle Steve is introducing the Titasey family to the delights of the Endeavour Foundation BuyBack.  Ever wondered where children's plastic vehicles end up?

The final resting place of colourful plaster gnomes and other garden statues.

We'd never been to a Recycle Market and I didn't want to miss recording this special event.  

Books and toys galore.

Sutchy won't need to take other people's bags now and Uncle Steve's crook neck will heal with this ergonomic chair.

I have always wondered why Morning Glory grows near rubbish dumps.

Some of our treasures.  Note the bamboo shoe shelf and brand new Gisele Bundchen Ipanema flipflops.  They are made from a low-carbon-footprint material, apparently.  I can't wait to get into some of those books, especially My Brilliant Career.

Before the BuyBack shoe shelf.

After the BuyBack shoe shelf.

A great morning and we can't wait to go back.  I am wondering how I can construct my own brilliant career as a reviewer of pre-loved books!

Stop whinging and get on with it!

There’s a saying, Evil exists when good men do nothing.  The evil of gender inequality was fought by women of the sixties and seventies during the second wave of feminism.  I have always considered myself a feminist because I believe women should enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men.  However Julie Bishop’s claim recently she is not a feminist and telling women to ‘stop whingeing, get on with it and prove them wrong’ confused me and brought back some unsavoury memories.

     I began my articles in 1990 and was surprised the legal profession was more male oriented than I had anticipated despite many female professionals.  The discrimination presented as an entrenched practice, but maybe it was just a small group of cocky males in one firm, desperate to stroke their egos. I recall bloke-only drinks and male staff being given premium desks and offices over female staff of the same experience.  I left them to it and got on with working.

     However, I wasn't comfortable with boss regularly whistling to get my attention and that of the other female staff members.  It was the same single sharp whistle one uses to call a dog to its master.  Ironically, an Articled Clerk is articled to his or her Master!. 

     Countless times I was working at my desk and I was jerked to attention by the whistle then, ‘Oi, Catherine, get in here.’

     He didn’t whistle for male solicitors or clerks.  He called out for them by name in a respectful tone. 

     Nor did he yell at the male clerks and solicitors with enough force to turn his face radish-red.  He spoke to them in a calm or terse voice, depending on the circumstances.

     We females banded together to support each other, a sort of sisterhood.  There was only one rule; DON”T CRY IN FRONT OF THE BOSS. 

     We suffered the screaming, the flying spittle, the gouged comments on our draft letters and court documents - BULLCRAP! - with subservient politeness, and if necessary, explained his misunderstanding in which case he’d mutter, ‘Okay then’ and shove the document to us indicating we should leave.  And if we were feeling emotional and verbally assaulted, we hurried to the toilets in such fashion that members of the sisterhood followed.  Only when we stood at the sink on the other side of two doors did we allow ourselves to weep.

     ‘He’s such an arsehole.’

     ‘He got it wrong.’

     ‘He just jumped to another fucking conclusion without reading the whole document.’

     ‘There, there,’ our sisters cooed, ‘it’s all right.’

     At no point did any of us (and those before us) think to challenge the man and demand equal respect, that was, he speak in a calm and rational voice.

     One day, a female staff member burst into tears when he was berating her loud enough for the entire floor to hear.  She rushed, hysterical from his office to the toilets and as the terms of the sisterhood decreed, we followed her.

     Instead of listening to her sob out her humiliation, we stood over her in disbelief.

     ‘You’re not supposed to cry.’

     ‘For God’s sake, couldn’t you hold it in?’

     Afterwards I was disgusted with myself for promoting repulsive behaviour.

     I wearied of my boss's manner and of the roving hands of a male colleague (I was told, ‘oh, he just does that to some of the new female clerks’).  Eventually I'd had enough. I had cried torrents in the privacy of the toilets and my home, never once breaching the oath of the sisterhood.  I had got on with my job, but it was humiliating and dispiriting.  I hated my work environment and the law and I saw no capacity for change.  There was one solution.

     I went to a male solicitor, kind and wise and announced I was resigning.  When he asked why, I said what I’d said before to this effect; I was sick of the discrimination, others could tolerate things if they chose, but I wasn’t interested and if discrimination was condoned in the legal profession, well, there wasn’t hope for the rest of the working world.  Of course I never mentioned the man who had groped me because I wasn't a victim.  Ms Bishop also advised women, 'Please do not let it get to you and do not become a victim because it is only a downward spiral once you have cast yourself as a victim.' 

     I expected the man to say, ‘Good on you!’  However, he leaned back in his chair and said, ‘As a woman, anything you do, you have to do it twice as well as a man.’

     I remembered studying Animal Farm in year 12 (still one of my favourite books). Napoleon the pig and comrades rewrite the seven commandments to their benefit, ‘All animals are equal except some animals are more equal than others.’

     Of course! Men were more equal.  We were half as equal and so had to try twice as hard.  It had mathematical certainty.  I got it.  Then I got on with it, I didn’t whinge and I proved them wrong.  At my farewell, one of the men said, ‘At first we thought you were a bit of a wild child, but you turned out to be a good kid.’

     I reckon I did Julie Bishop proud.  I just got on with my job, but I also perpetuated gender discrimination the women of the sixties and seventies had fought so hard to abolish.  I was a good man who did nothing.  

That dress

I found the most beautiful dress at the Atherton Salvation Army store, a discreet, Jersey  frock in jade green.  It was four dollars.  I saw it on the rack and I thought, That dress was made for me.  I’ve always preferred singlets and shorts, but now I am a mainlander, I am trying to pick up my appearance act.

      At 46, I am conscious of the need to dress more sensitively than 20 years ago.  There are wrinkles and dimples and an unavoidable softness to my body that I want to conceal.

     That dress crossed all the middle-aged hurdles; Knee length, low waist, loose skirt, a cross-over and fitting top, but not tight and cap sleeves.

     What better dress to wear when heading to the big smoke,Cairns!  I let my long hair out and dabbed on a bit of lipstick.

     ‘What do you think?’ I asked Tony as I twirled for him.

     ‘S’all right,’ he muttered with a lingering grimace and turned back to the breakfast dish washing.

     ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

     He repeated ‘s’all right’ and actually thought I would let the matter rest.

     ‘Please explain,’ I said unable to avoid my voice whining.

     ‘Well,’ he paused as if trying to work out how long and painful his death was going to be,’ ‘it makes you look old.’

     I decided to let the matter rest and drove to Cairns  with Seffy for Pippa Jane to be desexed. TK and girlfriend Brittney followed in her car. Brittney is 19, from Melbourne and has that capital city chic; bit of makeup, attention to hair, clothes that need ironing and shoes that aren't slip-on. Today she wore a tight sleeveless striped number that was short, as in very short.  She looked stunning.

     When I got to Bubu’s house, she was making coffee. We all piled in, desperate for a feed and coffee.

     ‘Where did you get that dress?’ said Bubu, not with a lingering grimace, but a full-on one.

     ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

     ‘Dad reckons she looks old,’ said TK eagerly awaiting a McKenna ‘discussion,' the kind with raised voices.

     ‘You do.  It’s awful,’ said Bubu.  ‘It’s what a young girl would wear.’

     ‘Mum,’ I said, that whine creeping in again, ‘young girls don’t wear this stuff.  They wear that.’  I pointed to Brittney.’

     Mum carried her coffee to the lounge and sat down. ‘Save it for wearing at home. That’s what I do with my most unflattering dresses.’  

     Before I could hiss something acerbic and throw in a justified criticism of her stupid dogs, Bubu turned to TK.   'And make sure you burn that dress.'

Never give up

I spend a disproportionate part of my day keeping in touch with friends by email.

     Why?  I have spent the last 20 years on an island accessible only by air.  I've not been able to afford the fares to see them so email has become an important part of my life.  It's a cheap and timely way of maintaining contact with old friends (pre-TI life) and then my departed TI friends.  Even though I am on the mainland now, I’ve kept up the practice.

     Facebook has been an option, but there’s something about the public nature of the pages and profile, the layout and the limited space for text that unsettles me.

     I love written words and I love the personal nature of individual emails.

     When My Island Homicide was short-listed in the Courier Mail People’s Choice Awards, my first thought was, ‘Shit, I should have got Facebook years ago.’

     If I had been a Facebooker, I’d have a trillion friends and been able to reach them all in an instant.

     So I hacked Tony’s rarely used Facebook profile/account/page (?) and after three days, worked out how to upload a photo and the link to the voting page for the awards.  I reached a few of his and my friends.

     Then another hurdle emerged.  I realised I have some serious competition; real writers.  They are the other short-listed authors whose works (plural) have been read by thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people. I shared my dismay with a friend who berated me for the use of the term, ‘real writers’.

     “And stop comparing yourself to ‘real writers.’ You are just as real as they are.”

     I didn’t feel as real.

     Below her signature panel was a William Blake poem, Eternity.

  He who binds to himself a joy

  Doth the winged life destroy,

  But he who kisses joy as it flies,

  Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

     I shot back a reply:

  To writing’s joy I hath bound
  No harder pursuit to be found.
  Bugger the kissing of things a’flying
  I must write or I’ll die trying.

     I’ll die trying.  I remembered a poster affixed to the window of a Mossman fish and chip shop in 1993.  

     Not giving up meant attempting to reach, without Facebook or any social media app/device/program (?), people who might vote for my book. 

     And I’d have to do it by individual email.  Perish the thought of group emails.  They are impersonal and rude unless advising the change of venue for a sausage sizzle or the date for a book club meeting.  Or an emergency.  I’d feel dreadful contacting someone after years with a request to vote for my book and no other news.  

     Nope! I don’t do group emails.

     Then I realised I have something my competitors don’t have.  

     I have time.
     I don’t have a real writing job or a regular job for that matter. 
     I have time; time to email friends and interesting people and kindred spirits Tony and I had met over the years.  I'd been in email contact with them for a while until, with the increasing chaos of my life and probably their's, the emails dried up.

     What a delight these last few days have been.  Re-establishing contact with wonderful people who have touched our lives.  I shared not just news of the Courier Mail awards, but Titasey titbits from the past few years.

     And the best part has been receiving their news. 

     I have spent a disproportionate part of these days emailing old friends and reading emails from them.
     I don't have the professional or social contacts to win these awards, but I’ve had a bloody good time trying!