It's Bad News Week/Month/Year

 

Yes, I'm Curious Pam. I'm curious about the world and lots of things in it. Particularly when I was teaching, I tried to stay abreast of the news because my students would often ask me questions about current events and I wanted to be informed about them.

 

Now, I'm Irritated Pam. I no longer watch the television news because it's too depressing. Yes, occasionally there might be a 'soft' good news story, usually involving an animal, just before the weather. Once a week, The Project runs a segment of good news stories, and ABC News has a 'good news' section also. But people around the world are doing life affirming, brilliant things; we just don't get to hear about them, because apparently most of the news networks seem to think that we want to be fed a diet of disaster, violence, tragedy and crime. The same can be said for the tabloid newspapers.

 

I'm not asking for unicorns and rainbows every day. I have friends who are journalists (and some former students, too) and I know that they work damn hard to do their absolute best to deliver news that is ethical, informed and balanced. It seems that someone higher up the chain makes editorial decisions that result in the fodder that is delivered to us daily.

 

I checked the ABC news headlines as I was waiting for the ads to finish at the movies today, and this is what I saw:



 

Apparently the only tragedy among these stories is a yacht having to retire from the Sydney to Hobart race. Yes, tragedy is in inverted commas, presumably because it's a quotation from someone associated with Wild Oats XI. (By the time I got home and checked the story, it had been updated and 'tragedy' was no longer in the story. Perhaps someone saw sense?) But this was a hydraulic problem which affected the keel and presumably the steering of the yacht (I am an old sailor from way back, but that's another story.) A tweet from Wild Oats XI was quick to point out that the 'crew on board are safe', and fair enough. Many of us remember the real tragedy of the 1998 race when six lives were lost in an enormous storm that engulfed the race.

Please don't think I'm picking on the sailors who are much braver than me and take on this race. It's just that I couldn't help but think that missing people, dying people, people blinded by a shooting, and drowning people (can you see a trend here?) are probably more 'tragic' than the yacht story. Couldn't the headline have been different? Couldn't there have been more stories like the one about George Michael?

Perhaps I'm getting cranky in my old age. I've certainly had an opportunity to reassess my world view since my surgery. There are good things happening in the world, and the ABC does report them. To finish, here's a good news story worth sharing:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-30/campbell-project-365-sees-teddy-bears-made-for-charity/7458530

Rant over. For now.

Music, Alzheimer's and Glen Campbell

Glenn Campbell on his Farewell Tour in 2012
 

Glen Campbell walks onto the stage to a standing ovation and greets his audience. He launches into the first song of the set. He is 76 years old and has Alzheimer's Disease.

I've just finished watching I'll Be Me on Netflix. It's a documentary that he and his family authorised in order to raise awareness about this awful disease. It is heartbreaking, inspiring and at the same time it raises questions about the mysteries of that amazing organ, the human brain.

For my younger readers, Glen Campbell has sold 45 million records over 50 years. While country music isn't my favourite genre, some of his songs are just so much a part of the soundtrack of my life that I love to hear them. "Galveston" and "Wichita Lineman", and the later "Rhinestone Cowboy" just make me sing along- loudly. I have downloaded them onto my iPhone. So, I was interested to watch this documentary.

 

What I kept wondering was: how is it that he can't remember the names of his wife and children, yet he still sings just as well as he used to (with the aid of a teleprompter for the lyrics). And how the hell can he play those amazing guitar riffs. In what part of his brain is that music tucked away?

Glen and his daughter Ashley play Duelling Banjos

 

My Dad passed away from Alzheimer's Disease just over a year ago, so I have seen first hand how this form of dementia ravages even the most brilliant of brains, yet it leaves little pockets that sometimes empty themselves at the most unexpected moments. One day I was taking Dad on our regular Saturday drive, in the hope that it would stimulate his brain and some conversation. As we drove along Gold Creek Road at Brookfield, he started to sing. I didn't recognize the song, and the words were unintelligible, but there was a melody and rhythm that made it clear that this was a song that he remembered. I was flabbergasted.

 

A couple of weeks later, Mum and I visited Dad on the day that there was a concert for the residents at the nursing home. A small, neatly dressed man was brought in and came over to where Dad's recliner chair was parked. He spoke to me but I couldn't understand what he was saying, until his carer asked if we could move Dad's chair a little so the man could get to the piano. I obliged, and the man sat on the piano stool, placed his hands on the keys, and launched into the most amazing classical piece, played from memory. When he was finished, we all applauded, and he was led back to the secure dementia wing. He had been a concert pianist in Europe.

 

I couldn't help thinking about these incidents as I watched the documentary, and the decline of Glen Campbell. One of the lovely aspects of the concert footage was the presence of three of his children performing on stage with him, gently prompting him, improvising and loving him. When he forgot the words, the audience sang them and he picked up and continued. After 120 performances, it became clear to the family that it was time to stop.

Glen and his sons perform together in 2012

I will leave it to you to Google Glen's status today. He leaves a legacy of music that has become a part of the American, if not the world's, song book. He lobbied Congress to raise awareness about Alzheimer's, and every performance of his farewell tour did likewise. But it still leaves the question: how does the brain retain music, yet lose just about everything else? Perhaps one day we will have an answer. Perhaps one day, Alzheimer's Disease will be something that we only read about in text books.

Jodie Picoult and an ugly Australian

I've been in hospital recently, and because it was difficult for me to focus my eyes for a while, I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. I hadn't read a Jodie Picoult novel for a while, so I chose Small Great Things as one of the audiobooks. The title is a nod to a quote from Martin Luther King.

In the author's afterword she said how she had wanted to write a novel about race for some time, but had felt inadequate to the task. Ultimately she completed the research that was needed and the result is this fantastic book. It revolves around an African American labour and delivery nurse called Ruth Jefferson, and is set in the recent past. The white supremacist parents of a newborn child refuse to have to Ruth touch their child, in spite of the fact that she is a nurse with twenty years' experience and a nursing degree from Yale. I won't spoil the plot line for you by saying any more!

You don't need to be Einstein to work out that along with race, prejudice is a key theme of the novel. We would like to think that 'that sort of thing' doesn't happen, but it does, and it happens in our own backyard.

In a bitter irony, I witnessed it myself when I was a patient in the ICU following my surgery. Many of the nurses were Asian, some from the Philippines, and I especially remember a beautiful Buddhist RN called Jackie who was the gentlest of souls and who had a knack for getting me to stop crying and focus on putting my energy into relaxing and getting better. Bless you, Jackie.

Flowers for Remembrance



Red poppy in Chantemerle, Haute Alpes, France



If you have read my very first post, you will know that red poppies are my favourite flower. When I was little, I would draw pages of them. I can't remember why I was so drawn to them then, but the love of red poppies remains. Of course, as I grew older I learned that they are the flower of remembrance for those who were lost in war.

Poppies commemorating the Centenary of the
Battle of the Somme, Westminster Abbey

However, I only recently found out that this is not a universal custom. During the ceremonies in France for the commemoration of the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme, guests wore both the red poppy and the cornflower, which is the flower of remembrance for France. I think cornflowers are pretty close to poppies on my list of favourite flowers, and I have been able to grow them in both Canberra and Brisbane. Here is a final photo that I took, along with the others on this page, on our recent trip. Red poppies and cornflowers- lest we forget.

The Herb Garden at Atholl Palace Hotel,
Pitlochry, Scotland

Are you a super recogniser or are you face blind? Here's how you can find out.



I've long suspected my daughter has the superpower of facial recognition; it started when she was very young. I remember her seeing an actor on TV when she was about 5, telling me that she'd seen him on stage in Beauty and the Beast in Sydney some months earlier, and then proving her point by finding the actor's photo in the program which was filed away on her bookshelf. Perhaps she has a future at New Scotland Yard...

Modern Manners: An open letter to Loud Man at the gym

 

Dear Loud Man at the gym,

I don't know your name, surprisingly, so I will refer to you as LM, if you don't mind.

Let me begin by congratulating you on how regularly you exercise. You are always at the gym when I am, and I suspect that you are there on the days when I am not. I know you are a creature of habit, because of the way you park your car, and the bag you always carry, but then, most of us gym goers are probably like that.

However, I am fast approaching information overload due to your loud conversations with

1.    people you know at the gym
2.    people you don't know at the gym

Too Much Information

Grass stains, cockatoos, silky oaks and flying foxes

Regular readers might remember my post about spring arriving in Brisbane. The golden pendas have now finished flowering, and the silky oaks are in bloom. They are a type of Grevillea and as you can see in the photo above, they grow very tall.

More about that in a later post...

From my view on the treadmill yesterday, I saw that the change of season has brought another regular arrival at this time of year: cricket matches. The boys in their white polo shirts, long white pants and broad brimmed hats are back on the oval opposite the gym.

We read to know that we are not alone: especially important for teenagers

I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard this quote. I was driving home from work listening to ABC radio and pulled the car over to write it down before I forgot it.

Like many, I thought that C.S. Lewis was responsible for it. It was a line spoken by Anthony Hopkins, playing C.S. Lewis, in the beautiful movie, Shadowlands, which tells the story of Lewis's meeting and marrying Joy Gresham in his late middle age. It is one of the most moving films I've ever seen, and I recently tracked it down on DVD. The film is based on the book, Lentenlands, which I also own. But that's by the by.

In fact, screenwriter for Shadowlands, William Nicholson, is responsible for it. That was a surprise, but really, it's irrelevant. It's the sentiment that's important: We read to know that we are not alone. Books allow us to connect with other worlds, and characters, and writers, and experiences.

How often have you read a book and realised that you are not the only person on the planet who has felt a certain way, or had a particular experience?

I think that this is where good quality Young Adult Fiction is particularly important. How reassuring it is for teenagers to read about a character's experience and think, 'So it's not just me.'

There are so many great Australian YA writers and I have had the privilege of getting to know two: Rebecca Sparrow and James Moloney, both Brisbane writers who have spoken regularly at my school and who write fantastic novels. Rebecca's non-fiction books for teenagers are also brilliant. They truly embody the spirit of 'we read to know that we are not alone'. I can't recommend them highly enough if you have a teenage girl. And if you have a teenage boy, fear not- one is on its way.

I'd love to hear about any books which have been important to you, or recommendations you have, especially for teenage readers. Please share!

Remembering Dad

This handsome young man is my Dad, probably in the late 1940s. I love this photo because it reminds me of the tall, strong man that he was in his prime. When we were little, my sisters and I would climb onto his broad, deeply tanned shoulders and dive into the water at Rainbow Bay. He loved to sing, especially show tunes, and would walk in to wake me up singing 'Oh what a beautiful morning', while I stuck my head under the pillow. He had a dry, ironic sense of humour. When I showed him the wildly up-to-the-minute knitted bikini I'd bought when I was about sixteen, he said, 'And did they give you a match box to store it in?' The poor man: three teenage daughters!

Tiny symbols of young lives lost in the Holocaust

Bialik College student Mia Rom


 

'It is important for a collective memory to be passed on to the new generation.' Dalia Gurfinkel

1.5 million buttons. One for every child killed in the Holocaust.
 
It's hard to imagine 1.5 million of anything, but the students at Bialik College in Melbourne are gathering this many buttons to create a permanent memorial to the children killed in the Holocaust. They are asking for help in their project- do you have some buttons you could send to them?*

An unforgettable visit: Anne Frank House

In July I achieved a life's wish and visited Anne Frank House and the Secret Annexe in Amsterdam. I first read Anne's diary in 1971 when it was a set English text, and I've been fascinated by her story ever since. When I read her diary, I was the same age as Anne when she began writing. Anne's life seemed so far removed from the comfortable middle class life my classmates and I lived in Brisbane. And of course, the diary ended suddenly, when Anne and her family were discovered and sent to the concentration camps.

In Amsterdam I discovered that Anne and her family boarded the train to Auschwitz at the same station we had arrived at. Amsterdam today is a frantic place, full of insane bicycle riders, 'coffee shops' that don't actually sell coffee, and a red light district where women offer themselves from behind windows that look out onto the street. It was hard to reconcile all of this with the Nazi occupation.

A tribute to teachers, wherever you are

I haven't been able to teach for over a year due to ill health, and I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect on my life as a teacher. So here are a few thoughts as a tribute to my colleagues, past and present, and to all teachers wherever you may be. The following blog post was prompted by this poster:

 

The 'unique emotional labour' that this image mentions is impossible to quantify, or to describe to others (unless they are your spouse/partner/children/family, who get it- oh, do they get it). Not only do you think about your students last thing at night and first thing in the morning, but you often dream about them. You worry about them, especially those who are flying under the radar, or who are sick, or in the midst of a family breakdown.

 

You never miss an opportunity to build your teaching resources- this means that you are constantly rummaging through the recycling bin to find the newspaper article that you meant to cut out before the paper was chucked.

Your parents even cut items out of foreign newspapers for you when they travel, because it might come in handy. You go to a movie and think, I wonder when this comes out on video- it would be great  for my [substitute the subject name] class. You find yourself deconstructing said movie while you are sitting there with your husband watching it, enjoying the movie together.

 

I've often said that being a teacher is a bit like being a celebrity- you can't go anywhere without being recognized. This includes being in a foreign country. At school, a conversation might go like this: Student: "I saw you at [insert café name] on the weekend and you were eating!" Teacher: "Then you saw me in my natural habitat." It's a bit like being in a David Attenborough documentary.

You must therefore be very well behaved when in public, because if you're not, everyone will know on Monday. A friend and colleague stopped to help an injured cyclist on her way to work early one morning. As she was waiting for the ambulance to arrive a carload of students went past, on their way to early morning sport training. Her feelings of being a good citizen were shattered by morning tea when word was out that "Ms B hit a cyclist with her car on the way to school!"
 

Your students will make you laugh, and they will make you cry, sometimes out of frustration, but sometimes because you just haven't got enough time to cover everything you want to in the time you're given. You cry when you discover that one of your students has just been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and you weep when you attend the funeral of a precious girl who looked the wrong way on a one way street and didn't see the car that hit her. You will cry when they are all grown up and graduating from high school, and when you read the card or note that is the last piece of writing that they will write for you.

This student was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour at the end of Yr 10;
against the odds she is now a first year medical student, having completed a Science degree

You will laugh at them when they turn up in class on dress up day, dressed as Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men, complete with enormous plastic terracotta pots suspended from their shoulders. (Try sitting down in one of them!)

 

You will watch your colleagues and wonder at their resilience: the teacher who suffers a sudden and devastating loss of a brother, but who, in the midst of her suffering and time off to plan his funeral, quietly comes to school just to teach her Year 12 class, and then goes home. Or the teacher who falls and hits her head at school, goes to the hospital to have it X rayed and is diagnosed with a broken nose, but returns to school and finishes the day. Or my beautiful friend, who would attend her chemotherapy sessions each Monday, and then teach the rest of the week, in spite of feeling horribly ill. Her students formed a guard of honour at her funeral. God bless you, Erin.

 

I could go on. All over the world there are teachers like these, quietly getting on with their job. They will spend their nights, weekends and holidays preparing lessons for their classes, or marking their students' work. They will meet with their colleagues to share their worries about particular students and to come up with strategies to help support them. They will rage at the politicians who blithely scrap the 'old' curriculum (while it is still in the process of being rolled out), introduced by the previous government, and bring in a 'new' one. But they will suck it up and get on with it, because they are teachers, and their students come first.

 

To all teachers everywhere: you are my heroes, as well as my colleagues and friends. You are building the next generation and it is impossible to put a price on that. Be kind to yourselves. Go gently.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Butterflies must be shot at to survive

The St Francis Satyr Butterfly

Yes, you read the title correctly. I didn't believe it at first either, but I was listening to ABC radio in the car and they were playing an item from National Public Radio in the US.

'Military bases turn out to be a haven for endangered species. A decision long ago by the military that working with conservationists was a better strategy than fighting them is one of the reasons why...In fact, bases have the highest density of threatened and endangered plants and animals of any federal lands, even more than national parks like Yellowstone. '

A painting I can't forget

Children of the Sea by Jozef Israels 1872

I had the good fortune to visit the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam recently, and I haven't been able to get this painting out of my head. When I first stood in front of it, I thought it looked like an idyllic day at the sea. But then I read the information about the painting, and understood what it represents.

These are the children of a fisherman, and if you look closely you will see that their clothes are tattered and their only toy is a boat, which symbolizes the difficult life at sea which is likely to be the future for the boys in the family. The eldest child, carrying the youngest, is intended to represent the boy who will carry the weight of his family on his shoulders as he grows up.

I love the way art and literature use symbolism, and I'm so glad that I read about the painting so that I could better understand it. Do you have a favourite painting? I'd love to know about it.

 

 

 

 

The actual view from the treadmill

The view from my treadmill

I couldn't do my homework because...

In this digital age, 'the dog ate my homework' is no longer a reason for coming to class unprepared. The best excuse I've had for not doing homework is 'I was sick and sitting in bed doing my homework and when I got out of bed my netbook fell into my foot spa and now it won't work.' What a surprise. Teachers out there, what's the best excuse you've had for homework not being done?

Friends for life

In 2012, we ticked one of the boxes on my husband, Barry's, bucket list. We watched a stage of the Tour de France. Or rather, we watched a fraction of a stage.

Barry had it all planned. We would park on the Col du Granier, at the peak of the climb, and we would get to see the riders go past slowly. We decided to do a reconnaissance on the day before. The only problem was, everyone else had the same idea and was already in place- lots of white vans with satellite dishes on top to receive the broadcast, and their owners reclining in their folding chairs on the verge of the road.


Our hearts sank, Barry's particularly. In an attempt to retrieve the situation, I suggested that we drive on and check out other parts of the route, and we struck gold at St Pierre d'Entremont.

Editing History

 "Facebook reverses move to censor 'napalm girl' photo"

In an article I read on the ABC News website today, it reported that Facebook has finally seen sense, and after community pressure has reinstated the original iconic photo (top) which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Several weeks ago, Facebook deleted the photo because of 'decency rules'. In effect, they were 'editing history' in their attempts to apply their 'standards regarding inappropriate posts'. This is something I used to talk about a lot with my history students- can you trust the source?

Beautiful glass art

A Creative Commons image from Pixabay 
 https://pixabay.com/en/chihuly-glass-colorful-293063/

How gorgeous is this glass art? I just stumbled across it while I was doing a picture search. And the best part is, the creator has made it freely available. Thank you, whoever you are.

Spring in Brisbane: Rainbow Lorikeets and Sulphur Crested Cockatoos

A Rainbow Lorikeet in a Golden Penda tree

I've discovered that I have some readers in the Northern Hemisphere, so while the weather in your part of the world is getting colder, here in Australia it's spring, and the birds are going nuts!

A little back story: the gym that I belong to was badly flooded in the January  2011 floods. Fortunately, they were fully insured, but they decided to build another storey for all of the cardio-equipment- treadmills, rowing machines and step machines- because they are so hard to move in an emergency. The down side for me is the steps up to the cardio-room- this is the hardest part of the workout for me, due to my dodgy heart. However, the upside is that the treadmills all face out onto the gardens of the gym, and the playing fields of a school. There is also a creek running past the gym (and which was responsible for the flooding.) So, there is usually something to see on both weekdays and weekends from my elevated position, hence the tag for this post: The View from a Treadmill.

A belated thank you

I walked into my gym recently and saw an elderly man with a familiar face. I checked with Ryan, the staff member behind the counter. 'Is that Dr Stewart*?' 'Oh, you mean John? Yes, John Stewart. He's here with his wife. He had a stroke a while back and is working on his rehab.'

Many years ago I enrolled as an internal student at UQ to finish my Arts degree, after juggling studying from home with a toddler. I had given PE teaching away and had moved into my second subject area, English, and wanted to build up my knowledge base. I enrolled in an American Literature subject, and Dr Stewart was the lecturer, as well as turning out to be my tutor.

What an experience.

Word Ninja!

I’ve been fascinated by words for as long as I can remember. I guess it’s no surprise that I turned out to be an English teacher. I can clearly remember the day when I was in kindy and I made a connection between the letter ‘J’ on a playing card, and the word ‘Jack’. Another early memory is announcing to my then-school-headmaster grandfather, ‘Papa, I know two car keys. One is the word for the key to the car, and the other is ‘khaki’!’ (The boys at my primary school wore khaki uniforms.) Some people would call me a ‘word nerd’, but I have told my students that I am a ‘word ninja’! It doesn’t rhyme like the previous label, but I like the sense of movement, and the kids think it’s cooler. I was once told by a boy I taught, ‘Miss, you’re a geek but you’re all right’. High praise from a teenager!

My favourite word at the moment is ‘serendipity’.

The agony of naming my blog

I agonized over the title of my blog. In the back of my mind was the name Mum gave me in my teenage years: Grasshopper Brain. I was just interested in lots of things, all at the same time. Perhaps I was an early multitasker! Perhaps it's because I'm a Gemini. A friend recently called me a polymath, which sounded more complimentary than Grasshopper Brain.

Then I thought about Poppy Dreams. Red poppies are my favourite flowers and I take the chance to photograph them whenever I can. I rejected it when I realised it had connotations of illicit substances- not my thing.

Near Le Monetier les Bains, Haute Alpes, France

 

Perhaps Heart Lines, or Heart Felt. They sounded a bit self indulgent. I didn't want my blog to be all about my heart, which is pretty dodgy and keeping me off work and giving me the time to blog. You might hear about this from time to time, but there are much more interesting people, books and things to write about!   So, I settled on Curious Pam. I'm interested in lots of things. For example, I can't stand the taste of Scotch Whiskey but I loved going through a whiskey distillery in Scotland and learning all about the process. I love underground tours in foreign cities and have even done the Sewer Tour of Paris (had to hold the nose for that one). I like being the listener and learner instead of the 'sage on the stage' which teaching requires.   Welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy the journey with me.