Window Shopping

Dropped in to this place today, to browse amongst the stationery. I could have spent a great deal more time there - I love stationery, for some unknown reason. There were beautiful journals, ornate cards, and interesting pens (the $2800 fountain pen was a little too gaudy for me, even if I were foolish enough to spend a Mac's worth of money on a writing implement!)

It struck me how many stationery items I have bought and not used. There were beautiful note sets, but I have unused sets in my drawer. Lovely fountain pens, but I have an unused Waterman and ink pot gathering dust. Personalised wax seals, but my own seal hasn't seen the light of day since before I was married! It seems that it might be time for me to resurrect the art of the written letter, so I can use what I own rather than acquire more dust-gatherers - beautiful though they be...

Worry

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ...Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"




Just reminding myself.

Nostalgia of Place

As I get older, certain geographical locations take on special meaning for me. In my twenties, I was reasonably restless, moving home frequently, and not being too settled in any one place. Now, those brief locations hold a sentimental value to me, some even more than the places where I grew up. Funny, really, that places we visit can sometimes hold more significance than the places we live.

The photo above was taken of one of my favourite visiting places: the jetty at Coffs Harbour. Though the town has grown almost into a city now, Coffs is still one of my favourite places to be. Sure, it has nice beaches, a sunny climate, and lovely places to visit, but the draw for me has been the sentimental things, like the fact that my grandparents used to live there. As children, we would regularly travel to visit them at Easter and/or Christmas time, and stay there with my parents. My special memories of the times there include:

• My grandmother's French cooking
• At least one compulsory lunch of prawns and bread rolls, which was almost invariably held on the outside deck under the faded green umbrella
  
• Walking down to the beach with my grandfather (reading Pamela Allen's Grandpa and Thomas brought me to tears for this very reason)
• Finding sea anemones in the rock pools at Korora Bay
• Watching my grandmother paint with oil colours
  
• The carpeted stairs in their split-level home which we used to slide down like a slippery slide
• The smell of the Imperial Leather soap they used in the bathroom (strange what appeals to you as a child, isn't it?)
  
• Sloopy, the old siamese cat with the funny miaow that sounded like a middle aged smoker
  
• The funny "touch bush" as we used to call it, which sat in the garden along the entry path. It had a defense mechanism where the leaves would close up when you touched them. It was a family tradition that when we arrived my brother and I would race to close up every single leaf on the bush if we could.
• The sound of the wattle birds calling to each other from the grevillea bushes
• The faint hush of the waves flowing up the hill from the ocean.

There is much more. Every time we visit the town I remember things like this. It seems so much stronger now that both of my grandparents have passed away, and I feel myself trying to pass the traditions on to my children so that the magic of these memories can keep going on.


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Friday Funnies - Dad Jokes Ahoy!

This one's an oldie that's been circulating the net for ages, but since I'm in a bit of a "Dad joke" mood today, I thought I'd publish this one. It's been described as "the most accurate pie graph in the world"...




I know. Groan...



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The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same

A Facebook friend passed this picture along to me today, and I thought it was an absolute gem:

If you read the blurb, it gives you "scientific" reasons why giving sugary soft drinks to babies provides "a lifetime of guaranteed happiness".

Advertising hasn't changed all that much, has it? We're still getting pseudo-scientific advice as to why the latest product will make our lives better.


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Brainlessness, Exhibit 382A

When you are returning mail sent to the wrong address, it helps if you write:

NOT AT THIS ADDRESS
RETURN TO SENDER
(or something similar)

Otherwise, as recently demonstrated in my household, the mail will happily arrive back in your letterbox a few days after sending.




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Emerging/Emergent discourse

"Emerging church" has been a buzzphrase in the church for some time now. If you're interested, there's an interview between Mark Driscoll and Hank Hanegraff (The Bible Answer Man) on the topic. He gives a brief outline of the varying types of postmodern church around today, and why some postmodern "gurus" may need to be treated with caution...



Mind you, all "gurus" need to be tested against what the bible says, don't they?




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Paralympic fun

My son became slightly addicted to the Olympic games, to the point that there were real tears when he learned they wouldn't be around for another four years. So it is great that there is another event to help broaden his global horizons (we are living in a small town that is decidedly un-multicultural).

There are a few things that have popped up with the paralympics, however - apart from the obvious gripe that every time we've switched on, the only sport we've seen is basketball.

It has been a good education for him to see the games. Apart from continuing to learn of different nations, he's learned more about the human condition. He's learned now about blindness, spinal injury, cerebral palsy, and birth "abnormalities", and how people are able to be active and contribute even after serious injury. I'm a little apprehensive as to how he will blurt out his observations in public, however. Previous experience has taught me that he will probably say something loudly and excitedly in the wrong place and time.

Why do I worry about this? Well, a few months ago we had a Sunday School lesson that involved a bit of language learning - how you say hello, goodbye, and thank you in a number of different languages. So Eldest's favourite question when we looked at the world map was, "How do you say hello in this place, Mummy?"

That was fine. But a week later, we travelled down to Sydney for a dose of Yum Cha (we're kind of Yum Cha junkies now that we can't have it any time we like...). It was in a rather multicultural neighbourhood, with signs written in Chinese, Korean, Italian and so forth. As a new reader, he was curious to know what all the signs said, and why he couldn't make out the letters. But the culmination of his grand day was when we walked past a cafe to hear him ask in a very loud voice:

"How do you say hello in this place, Mummy?"

We could hear laughter in the cafe seats as we hurried away, trying to explain.

Do you?

Fewer Christians are reading their bibles, it seems.

The latest National Church Life Survey has focused on the bible reading patterns of various denominations in the church. The percentage of people who read their bibles daily or a few times a week are:

Pentecostals 72%
Baptists 62%
Anglicans 46%
Lutherans 41%
Uniting 43%

I don't quite know what happened to the Presbyterians, there!

Congratulations to the top 2. It's always a good thing to know what the bible actually says, rather than just what other people say about it!

Education

The closer my son edges towards starting school, the more the topic of education becomes a bugbear for me. What should it achieve? What do we risk with our choices of education? Where should the children be educated?

In many ways, our family's finances and geographical location dictate that public school is our only truly viable option. So the public/private question is not in view at the moment. The problem I have is one of trust. I love my children dearly, and do not wish to entrust them to a person or institution that will see them worse off rather than better.

I read with interest this article today, part of a speech given by the Head of The Kings School, Tim Hawkes. In a nutshell, he provided a list of 10 key skills that school curriculums are sadly missing. It is a very interesting read. The 10 skills he listed were:

1. Community - how to live in a real community, where you can't delete people who flame you
2. Communication - how to communicate effectively with other people
3. Know yourself - to make a decision about what you stand for, what you believe
4. Intimacy - In Hawkes' words: "It is not just smut and titillation that students want, for they can get these quite easily these days. What they want is something more elusive, something rare, and that is wholesome advice on how to be a man, how to be a woman."
5. Emotional Control - how to avoid killing someone when they get your back up
6. Finance - how to avoid living beyond your means
   
7. Practical things - like how to keep a house clean (I'm still refusing to be a good student on that one!)
8. Manners (isn't that a dirty word, these days?)
9. Responsibility. I love Hawkes' characterisation of "screenagers" - who spend their lives watching rather than living and taking responsibility. I don't know that it's limited to people under the age of 18, though...
10. Resilience - I think this is important, particularly as I see my toddler son become so easily discouraged by the smallest of obstacles. He needs to learn that life will not always be easy or trouble-free. He needs to learn how not to crumple in a heap when things don't go as planned.
    

While I didn't agree with everything he said, it was a good reminder to me that our family has an important job of preparing our kids for life in the real world. No matter which school we choose, we do not give up our job as parents. We still have an educational role to provide.

My temptation as a parent is to substitute presents for presence. I can be trapped by the notion that my children will be better off if I shower them with nice things, like the ridiculous $260 DKNY baby jeans I saw advertised on TV the other evening. But as the list shows, most of these skills are ones that I can help to encourage in my kids. The only way to do that is to spend real time with them.

Friday Funnies - late as usual

This may help explain the tardiness of this installment:

Thought for the Day

Whoever thought it was a great idea to install full-length mirrored built-in wardrobes did not have small children.



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