One Library to Rule Them All

The title makes it sound like Dr Who meets Lord of the Rings. The idea of one library isn't quite that dramatic.

The libraries in South Australia are in the process of joining together in a one library system. So far, I have only benefited from the move. I put a hold on a book I wanted several months ago and, when it came, it was the property of a library in a different part of the city. Similarly, a member of my writers' group saw a book he wanted at one of our meetings in a library to which he didn't belong. No problem; his card was good there anyway.

Last week I had a meeting with a friend I'm doing some work for. We went to my local library in order to use their wifi which is free to members. It's not just free for members of that library; any library card holder can use it. My friend belongs to another library but that membership allowed him use of the wifi. My work of editing articles on my friend's website just got a whole lot more portable. Maybe as the work increases I'll invest in a dongle but it's not necessary at the moment.

Generally speaking, I tend to find that centralisation can equal rationalisation and/or a cutting back on services. In the case of the one library system, however, I'm all for it. My local suburban library is a hive of busy-ness most of the time. Why wouldn't it be? It has computers, wifi, a toy library, pre-school activities, work tables, puzzles, magazines, newspapers, CDs, DVDs and, of course, books. And whilst it's great to be able to reserve a book from any library, it's equally good to just browse shelves with no specific book in mind until the perfect one leaps out in front of you. It's the best of both worlds for me. The only thing missing is a good cup of coffee to sip on while working or reading there. Other libraries now have cafes near or even inside the building. To be fair, it's really only a short stroll across a car park to the nearest cafe, however.

My writers' group meets at a different branch of the same library. It's the main branch and, when we're there on a Sunday afternoon, it's always crowded.

That all being the case, I think it's unlikely the one library system will jeopardise local branches. Besides, we'll need to collect our reserved books from somewhere, won't we?

Cheers.

Neglecting Near, Nurturing Far

Mother cut her activist teeth in the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Deep South in the 1960s. She met all kinds of people and learnt many valuable lessons. It was from those experiences that she developed an intense dislike for activists who treat individuals badly. She firmly believed that it was the height of hypocrisy to march for better rights and conditions for people and then treat a checkout operator with disdain and condescension or cheat on your spouse or beat your kids, whatever. I’ve certainly met some of those people and I share Mother’s dislike. Yesterday, however, I was one of those people. It’s all very well to sit at the computer and write what I hope are eloquent blogs or shop with the Ethical Consumer Guide in my hand but I left my grumpy footprints across Teenage Son’s psyche yesterday. Compassion did not begin at home.

On my behalf, it was always going to be a tough day. I had a lot to do, was suffering from hormonal grumpiness and hormonal insomnia which was exacerbating the grumpiness and Teenage Son was having braces put on. I try to look after myself to avoid such situations but hormonal insomnia only lasts a week or so and there’s not much I can do about it. Unfortunately, I’m like a cantankerous toddler when I’m overtired.

Teenage Daughter couldn’t wait to have braces to close a gap between her front teeth. We always told Teenage Son he wouldn’t need them since he had straight teeth. Famous last words. A quirk of nature meant that one of his adult canine teeth ended up sitting crooked in the gum and wouldn’t come down. All because of that, he’s had to have the baby canine removed, his gum opened and a chain attached to the adult tooth. Now braces are holding the other teeth in place and encouraging the adult canine to grow and to do so straight.

Teenage Son is a very good trumpet player; more than that, he’s a passionate trumpet player and it defines who he is. When we arrived home yesterday, Teenage Son was understandably on a downer. His mouth was aching and his tone on the trumpet was not up to its usual standard. As a lay person, I thought it still sounded very good but he’s a perfectionist and was well aware of the difference. He and I were alone in the house together so I was the person he took his anger and frustration out on.

I’ve become fairly adept at shielding myself from teenage angst and not personalising it. Not so yesterday. First, there was the low-level complaining. I tried soothing and placating. That made things worse so I tried just listening but was then told I was ignoring him. My back began to get up. Eventually, I shouted. I can’t even remember what the trigger was or what I said. What I can remember, however, is his face as I did so and the way I felt inside, even as I did it.

Almost as soon as I’d finished I apologised. Of all the times to yell, it had to be when he needed to be strongly nurtured. I think mothers often feel too much guilt but I’m wearing and claiming every ounce of guilt I feel on this one. We were fine later - he even teased me about it in front of his sister – but I think neither of us will forget it in a hurry.

Today was a nurturing day for both of us. Teenage Son stayed home from school, the pain rendering him unable to eat or concentrate, even with analgesics. I only did the red star things on my to-do list, spending time instead with Teenage Daughter who had a late start at uni and Teenage Son when he eventually emerged from the fog of sleep. I tempted him with porridge and milkshakes which he devoured and we just sat and chatted or watched his favourite show together.

I still feel ragged, having not slept well again last night but the low-key day helped a lot. I don’t feel as if I’m going to burst into tears or yell at the slightest provocation anymore. One blogger I follow wrote some time ago that sometimes we need to think of ourselves as toddlers and nurture ourselves accordingly. Ie. “Rachel gets grumpy when she’s overtired.” Maybe I should have made yesterday one of those days when I only do red star things. I didn’t know until I snapped at my son, however, how fragile I was feeling. Maybe I need to be proactive when I’m overtired and assume I need nurturing.

What about teenagers? If my son had been a toddler I would have given him paracetamol immediately, fed him a soft lunch and tucked him in for a nap. The fact that he slept thirteen hours last night speaks volumes about his own tiredness. He’s not a toddler and he’s at an age where he is determined to assert his independence. Furthermore, I don’t have a monopoly on hormonal grumpiness; he’s fourteen years old. All I could see yesterday, however, was one angry kid pushing my buttons.

Today, Teenage Son fluctuated between cheerfulness and anger. The difference was that I was able to deflect and nurture, almost wiping away the grumpy footprints from yesterday. Now I feel like I can campaign on behalf of others again.

Cheers.

Shopping (Almost) Locally

It's good to shop locally, right? It's good for the environment and local business. It's even better if you're not just shopping locally geographically but buying local products.

My nearest shopping centre is great. There are two supermarkets, a butcher, baker, candlestick maker and even a library. Okay, I jest about the candlestick maker and have left others out for poetic license! Many of the businesses are independent, too. I live in a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant area in the heart of the mortgage belt so it's a pretty boring and homogenous shopping centre. What it lacks in diversity and "flavour", however, it makes up for with a sense of friendliness and community spirit. I rarely go there without running into at least one of my friends.

Over the past several months, however, Foodland seems to have decreased the number of brands it's carrying. The larger ones seem to be squeezing out the smaller ones and, while the shelves are as full as ever, it's more and more of the same. Furthermore, it's only carrying a fraction of some of the products that some companies make.

In the recent school holidays I ventured slightly further afield. Tucked away in an unassuming block of shops in the heart of industrial Lonsdale, is a treasure trove of a shop called Suntralis. They sell nuts, dried fruit, dry beans, grains, flours, cereals, snacks and sweets in bulk. Teenage Son loves going there so he was the reason for the trip. We had a great time filling bags with products we can't get hold of at our local Foodland. There was an added bonus in that we can reuse all the bags until they fall apart.

Maybe it was because of our trips to Suntralis, I don't really know but today I decided to shop elsewhere. I went to Pasadena Foodland. I read somewhere that "it's more than a supermarket, it's an experience". I've been there before and I'd have to second that opinion. It's a foodie heaven, filled to brimming with diverse brands and products. Interestingly, I went to my local shopping centre first for something and saw no one I knew. I had barely stepped off the travelator at Pasadena when I ran into one of the children's bosses. (Teenage Son is also working at the restaurant where Teenage Daughter works.)

I walked through the aisles finding everything I wanted and more, entranced by the fact that I passed a couple of women chatting in Greek, one of the checkout operators was African and I kept crossing paths with a young woman in hijab. I'm a sucker for cultural and culinary diversity.

The shopping centre also has a bakery, butcher, fishmonger, Target, news-agency and chemist, among other things. It's not local; it is, however, the closest best shopping centre to meet my needs. Furthermore, the Foodland actively promotes local producers. I'm having to go less local to buy more local.

People Power

Two events have occurred recently that have got me thinking about people power.

A few weeks ago, local food company, Spring Gully Foods, announced that it had had to hire an administrator. I knew nothing of the company because I thought all it made were pickled onions and gherkins, neither of which I like. I certainly didn't know it was a local - and I mean local to my state - or that it was a family run business.

After hearing the news I went to their website to see if it made any products I might like; I really wanted to help. Me and everyone else in South Australia, it seems. A couple of days later I "liked" Spring Gully on Facebook so I could follow its story. After visiting its website I knew I would like to try some of its products. Me and everyone else in South Australia, it seems. I went to a bigger, independent supermarket and found that many of the Spring Gully products were sold out. I managed to get hold of a jar of sweet chilli chutney and one of jam. The chutney is really good but I haven't opened the jam yet.

Over the course of the next few days, many of my local Facebook friends were posting updates about Spring Gully foods; which supermarkets had which products and which were sold out. Spring Gully is still in trouble; there was a meeting with the creditors last week. It is in less trouble, however, than it was before and its administrator said that he had never seen such a turn-around before. I've got my fingers crossed for the company and I think the people of this state have its back.

How's that for people power???

So, what about this for a thought? What if the same passion were shown by the public by boycotting the clothing companies that use the kinds of sweatshops like the one in Bangladesh that collapsed? I can tell you right now that the cute $6 t-shirts on sale at Big W at the moment are made in Bangladesh. Maybe even at the same factory. Do you want one of those on your back? Do you want one of those on your conscience?

I use my Ethical Consumer Guide every time I go to the supermarket. Sadly, however, it only gives grocery items. You can bet your bottom dollar that if such a guide exists for other products - particularly clothing - I will find it and use it. I don't want to be complicit in future deaths and my silence and my buying of any of those products is complicity.

It was never my intention to use this blog for anything other than to tell my family's story and share our experiences. I never wanted to try to get anyone else to do what we do. Now, however, I ask each and every one of you to think about the clothes on your back and where they come from. You don't know? That's the problem and that's why companies get away with human rights violations. None of us know and we need to find out. Some of the companies using the Bangladeshi factory have been named and shamed so, please boycott their products.

Fellow blogger, Katy Wolk-Stanley made a similar heartfelt plea, along with other information. I would urge you to read that post to learn more about the situation and what you can do.

Cheers.

The Media: Director or Reflector of Public Opinion

Like a great number of people in the First World I sat glued to my television screen in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings.

As I sat watching the same footage repeatedly shown, I noticed a worm move under the pictures which read that bombs had detonated in Iraq. I furthered realised that many more people were killed and injured there than in Boston.

It occurred to me that we're used to bombs going off over in the Middle East but when it happens in a First World country we sit up and take notice. At least I hope that's the reason because I would hate to think that we believe that First World lives are worth more than Third World ones simply because of an accident of birth.

I decided that the media was at fault for showing so much footage from Boston and none from Iraq. I immediately knew that the media would counter that argument with the justification that it was just meeting the public demand.

That begs the question: is the media the director or reflector of public opinion? Does it shape the way we think and feel about issues by what it shows or does it show what we want to see?

Either answer makes me feel somewhat hopeless. If the media shape the way we think and feel about things then we are living in the very society George Orwell wrote about in his futuristic novel 1984 and can no longer think for ourselves. Scary stuff.

If, on the other hand, the media really is just showing what we want to see, what kind of a society have we become when we place a higher value on someone's life just because of who they are and where they live?

Footprints is about trying to live as ethically as possible. To sit and blindly accept the images being shown without questioning the fairness of the coverage would go against the way we try to live. To blindly accept what we - as a society - have become or, at least, what the media think we've become would also go against it.

Fortunately, in the same week, I've witnessed a magnificent and heartening example of consumer power at its best. That, however, is for another post.

Cheers.

You're Going to Get a Fat Ass

Mother was a tall, thin woman, except for her bootyliciousness. Apart from the lack of booty I'm built like Mother. She used to look at me and say with deadly sweetness in her melodic southern U.S.A. accent, "Wait till you're forty, you're going to get a fat ass."

In nine months and four days I'm going to be out of my forties and, so far, my ass has decreased rather than increased. It's become a pancake and redistributed itself onto saddle-bags and a muffin top instead. I know that, at this point, my friends reading this are guffawing into their coffees, wondering where these saddle-bags and muffin top are.

I'm not saying I'm fat - far from it. It's just that I've reached an age where the body distributes things differently. It's not a problem for me because I know that I exercise and eat very well and Husband still finds me attractive. Consequently, I have no desire to try to fight middle-age.

Recent photos have revealed to me, however, that perhaps it's time to stop wearing tight t-shirts. Sadly, that's pretty much all I had...until today. I drove to a local shopping centre to use their branch of my credit union and walked the short distance to a Salvos shop. Fellow blogger, The Book Addict, commented about "incidental exercise" yesterday on my post. I got some of that and bought three new (to me) tops. They're looser than I've been wearing without the need for a Demis Roussos kaftan.

Later I drove to Marion to run more errands. I parked near the entrance in the underground carpark to be in the shade. After finishing there I did more incidental exercise, walking across the rather large carpark to the library. While I was over there I visited Gallery M where I found a wonderful Bat Mitzvah present for a young friend. Then I walked back to the car feeling self-righteous about how I had done my bit to save the environment and gotten some exercise in the process.

Cheers.

Those Sneaky Snacks

I did my weekly shopping, as per usual, at the end of last week. I feel pretty good about the origin and ownership of most of the grocery items I purchase. As I’ve written on numerous occasions, for me, ethicality trumps eco-friendly when they come into conflict. Many of the not so benevolent multi-national companies have jumped on-board the eco-friendly product bandwagon while still doing untold harm to the environment and/or their workers.

There was something that bugged me when I shopped last week, however. I’ve slowly let more processed foods creep into my trolley. Because the ones I buy are reasonably healthy and ethical I’ve let it happen. I don’t really think it’s okay, though. The more I buy that’s processed the more packaging I’m throwing into the rubbish. Even if the packaging is recyclable there is fossil fuel energy used in the process.

I don’t even know why I’ve been doing it. We always have snack appropriate food in the house anyway. It may not involve instant gratification but is that a bad thing? So what if you have to wash a piece of fruit before eating it or cut some cheese to put on crackers? Is it really too much work to make a cheese and tomato toasty? It’s quick and easy to grab a handful of almonds or walnuts, which we usually have in the house. I know a good many of them are also packaged but, to me, they’re necessary food items. I’ve been buying rice snacks and banana chips. Goodness knows, we’ve got fresh bananas!

In the ideal world where I’m drowning in free time I’d have far fewer items and do much more cooking. I’d bake my own bread, crackers, wraps and rolls. I’d do my own pasta and muesli. I’d spend hours reducing kilos of tomatoes into passatta. For now, however, they’re some of my staples. That’s enough. No need for processed snacks.

Cheers.