When kids make up words

I saw a Facebook post today by Smaggle about a small boy who created 'bin-oco-lookers', that reminded me of one of the things my children - as many do - did that has lasted into current time. They both made up words, and the best of them - and sadly, while there were many more, I never wrote them down, so they've been lost - are part of the family vocab to this day.

How to, as parents and the adults mostly around them, conduct ourselves with small children is something that is still debated as far as the baby talk vs no baby talk argument goes. Both the boys were bright and advanced with language, and had impressive vocabularies as small children. As a young man, No.2 was a formidable Scrabble opponent too! They were both read to from the beginning, and I wasn't one for baby talk, so conversations - from birth - were regular ones. No.1 had a tendency to contract words, while No.2 tended more to enlarge them. But it was the variant creations that we loved, and to this day, there are a few gems that we all still use.

Stagon wayshun - station wagon. Pretty self explanatory, really.
Windscreamers - windscreen wipers. A personal favourite.
Ambience - ambulance. He could say it, but liked his version better!
Hoppycopter - helicopter. Particularly brilliant, I think!
Vegables - vegetables.
Fi-shen truck - fire engine.

They both delighted in nonsense poetry like Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. No.1, who'd been bilingual as a tiny child (I was learning Italian at the same time he was learning to talk, so the end result was that he switched between languages fairly randomly!) loved mixing up Italian and English words. It was quite deliberate, as he knew the difference...but the confounded expressions on people's faces were clearly irresistible!

We used to play a game with a dictionary - which you can buy now as the board game, Balderdash - taking turns to pick out a word and have everyone else make up definitions for it. It's a game that can be played with a mixed age group, which was useful with two six and a half years apart. 

Now and again, we'd hit some sanctimonious type who couldn't help themselves, and HAD to correct. As I said to both of them - as my mother had said to me - language is a living thing. It changes via usage, and experimenting with it didn't make what they were doing wrong. Obviously, there's a time and a place for mucking around with it, but the joy they had with their invented words and the reactions of family was worth more than treading on them and forcing corrections that weren't really all that important, given the context. 

After all, Dr Zeuss made a career of nonsense words, did he not?!

Lockout laws - an antidote to Australia's culture of drinking and violence?

Sydney's current lockout laws - which specifically target the King's Cross area and the CBD (apart from the Sky City Casino and Barangaroo precincts) - are under fire, primarily from clubs and other entertainment venues, due to lost revenue. They were brought into place after a series of incidents of alcohol fueled violence resulted in the deaths of young men from so called 'coward punches'. 

Since those laws came into being, violence in the Cross and the CBD is down. However, as posts on social media and articles in local press indicate, some of the violence has moved to areas where there are no lockout laws - specifically, the inner west suburb of Newtown - prompting the question as to the usefulness of the laws in the first place. If all imposing earlier closing hours does is move people onto another area where there aren't early closings, do the lockout laws work?

Sydney nurse, Paul Harwood, who works in intensive care at St Vincent's Hospital, Darlinghurst (near the Cross), and whose wife is an ER nurse, posted THIS VIDEO on Facebook this week. In it, he makes it very clear that in the time since the lockout laws were enacted, the number of cases he's nursed that are a result of alcohol fueled violence have lessened dramatically, and the degree of violent incidents in the ER have also lessened. Professor Gordian Fulde, Senior Australian of the Year for 2016, is a staunch supporter for the lockout laws. As head of St Vincent's ER, he described, in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, his department before the lockout laws as a "war zone" and the decrease in severe head injuries since then as "spectacular and terrific". 

Whether or not the lockout laws are directly responsible for the drop in violence or not - and there are reports that argue otherwise - the fact remains that, as a society, Australia has a serious problem with both alcohol and violence. I wrote recently about the ongoing incidents perpetrated by NRL players during their off times - usually at parties, or out and about at clubs or pubs. These incidents are an ongoing problem, prompting discussions in the press about the underlying drinking culture in football. 

I watched, with no small degree of alarm, as the stepson made his way through high school and a growing social life that was centred on parties organised and advertised via social media. There was a lot of press coverage at the time about teen parties getting out of control and being raided by gatecrashers. He was at parties where this happened. There was also a lot of alcohol at the parties - and a tacit sense that that was both expected and acceptable. At the time, nearly all the legitimate (invited) party goers were well under the legal drinking age. 

I'm no prude. I drank underage - most of us did. At home, for special occasions, we were allowed wine - one glass, and watered down - at a celebratory meal, in much the same way as is common in many European cultures. Parties with school friends could sometimes feature illicit supplies of beer - but not very much, because no one had the funds to spend on it, and the consequences if we'd been caught by our parents would have been pretty severe. By the time my eldest reached teen party age, it was becoming a bit more of an issue, but I kept on top of it and denied permission to attend parties that weren't supervised. Once, and only once, I got the call to go and get him from a party where the drinking had got out of hand. He was a pretty cheap drunk, and hadn't had all that much, but he was well away, talking non-stop, and reeking of beer. The sore head and marked lack of sympathy from me the next day left him a bit to think about! He was a bit of a control freak though - still is - and tended, even when he was of age, to not drink to excess in public situations, where he could lose control, and more importantly, be seen to lose control. There were odd times when he'd gather at home or with mates at one of their homes, and get quietly blotto...which he always seemed to regret afterwards. 

In the case of the stepson though, it started earlier and much harder, with vague talks of 'gatherings' that turned out to be in the scrub bordering suburban beaches with significant quantities of illicit alcohol - and rarely beer. They started with cruisers, and moved on fairly quickly to bottles of spirits, which I found particularly worrisome. 

There were a number of parties where the police had to be called - usually because of havoc wrought by gatecrashers - and not a few brawls. And there was a hospital visit after he consumed a huge amount of vodka far too quickly to be safe. Fortunately, his mates saw sense and called an ambulance. 

The thing is, this isn't uncommon with his age group. We've had numerous conversations with him about the nature of these parties, especially since, after the event, he all to often said how boring they were, and really not any fun. That makes sense, if all they consisted of was a lot of people drinking too much and fighting...that's not fun at all. 

Currently, in the eastern suburbs, there is a gang - one of many - circulating, doing the rounds of pubs in the area, looking for trouble. He knows many of them - some of them were at his school a few years behind him. Their aim appears just to be to head to a pub, do some drinking, and then provoke a fight - and this is happening over and over again. However, it appears that the norm for many of our young people is that drinking is appropriate, and excessive drinking is entree into the 'cool club'. Queensland teen Joshua Blake wrote this article about his experience of the drinking culture of his peers, including the pressure to drink in order to fit in. They're starting early, drinking harder, and by the time they're of age to drink publicly, they're well entrenched in a culture of heavy drinking.

A lot of the social media commentary around the lockout laws is from people speaking out against the troublemakers, saying that not everyone is like that, and asking why laws have to be in place that limit the options for going out for others who aren't violent. It's a good question, but at the same time, I query the need to be out drinking at 3, 4 or 5 in the morning... Is it really necessary, in order to have a good time? Others, responding to this, have volunteered the eminently sensible (well, I think so) suggestion to head home and continue any partying there once the venues close. And seriously, is there anything wrong with that? It eliminates the walk of shame at dawn, heading home in bedraggled evening wear, for starters, not to mention ensuring that everyone is safely in a home environment where they can crash and burn without serious repercussions. 

I am in favour of the lockout laws. I have no issue at all with people heading out to clubs and bars and having a good time out with friends. I do have an issue with those public spaces turning into venues for violence and bloodshed - which is an increased risk, the longer they are open and the more intoxicated people can get in a public space that continues to serve them, regardless of how drunk they might already be. Add recreational drugs to that mix and it's a recipe for mayhem. I don't think it's necessary to be out all night in order to have had a good time, and nor do I think that dropping the amount we drink per session is going to seriously lessen the fun that can be had. Alcohol relaxes people's inhibitions, and allows latent characteristics to come to the fore, and if those latent characteristics are violent, it's a problem. 

While there may be other, more creative solutions, as touted by local politicians and police personnel - explored in this article in today's Sydney Morning Herald - the lockout laws, according to those at the coalface, have already had a significant effect. That they may need to be extended to other areas to enlarge that effect is a simple indication of the depth of the issue, and an indicator that there is more work to be done. Some of the solutions used overseas may be useful to implement at some point, but they won't deal with the underlying issues of alcohol abuse and violence in Australian culture. As Joshua Blake wrote in his article,

However, significant improvements can be made if Australia changes its drinking culture ... To make this change, Australians need to drop this sense that heavy drinking is a part of our identity. Admittedly Australia is not the only country with heavy drinking inherent in its national identity, but by that count, we are not the only country with a problem and one evil does not beget another.
Fixing the problem is not easy. The first step, however, is to admit there is a problem.

We DO have a problem - as a culture. And it's past time to admit it. 

Domestic violence in Australia - how do we change the thinking?

Australia has a problem with violence against women. It's a BIG problem. Social media organisation, Destroy The Joint, started a project called Counting Dead Women in 2012 - tallying the number of women who died violently at the hands of men. Last year, that number reached 79. 79 dead women - more than one a week. Dead at the hands of a man, and all too often that man was someone they knew - a partner, an ex-partner, a family member. Since the beginning of this year, four women have been killed - the fourth was added to the tally this morning, and this artwork is new. 

Photo: Destroy the Joint

Domestic violence is a huge issue in this country. It doesn't only affect women - there are children being hurt and killed, and men too. But, overwhelmingly, it is women who are the largest group of victims of violence, and most often it is perpetrated by men. 

This is an issue that affects people at every level of society. Domestic violence makes no distinction between the well off and those who are struggling financially. It crosses cultural boundaries. It is in our cities and in our country towns. Old and young women, and those in between have all been victims. Single women and those in relationships are potentially both at risk. 

Common to all is the fear, the sense of powerlessness, the isolation, the feeling that there is no one they can talk to and nowhere safe to go. The most dangerous time for many women is after they leave and abusive relationship - and yet there is still a widely held attitude that condemns women for staying in those very relationships. "WHY didn't she leave?" is a question that is either asked or inferred in nearly every conversation that is had around an incident of domestic violence. 

Women who stand up and speak out against the violence often become targets too.  Writer Clementine Ford has spoken out vocally after fielding incomprehensible levels of attacks on social media after naming and shaming an internet troll who leveled abuse at her - one of many, and the one who was the straw that broke the camel's back. In her article from December 2015, she says that she did it because too many women are scared to stand up to the trolls, are frightened by the threats, and she was sick of women having to take responsibility for the actions of those male abusers. Unsurprisingly, given the subject matter, there was another backlash on social media and she had yet more abuse levelled at her. But there was also support - lots of support, such as this article by Koraly Dimitriadis, who wrote it to thank Ford for her stand, and went on to voice the fears that so many women - those in the public eye and those not - feel when they try to stand up for themselves against abuse.

Part of the problem is a deeply embedded cultural attitude of male empowerment and entitlement. Regardless of the fact that we live in the first country to give women the vote, and has legislated to ensure that there are no barriers to opportunities based on gender, there is still a prevailing attitude that a woman who is raped somehow 'asked for it', and that it's a woman's fault for being in the wrong place at the wrong time - not the perpetrator's fault for committing the act of violence in the first place. 

Just last month, former MP Mark Latham, in a program on commercial radio, gave his opinion of the anti domestic violence campaign, refuting the seriousness of the issue, saying:

Blokes have lost their self-esteem, they're welfare dependent, they've got other troubles, drugs, alcohol in their life. It's that loss of self-esteem where I think they use the domestic violence as a coping mechanism to get over all the other crap they've got in their lives. So demonising men and making them feel worse about themselves is not going to solve the problem.

"They use domestic violence as a coping mechanism to get over all the other crap they've got in their lives." A coping mechanism. Taking the next logical step, I wonder what kind of lengths, based on Latham's twisted reasoning, it would be OK for a woman who's been beaten up by her partner might then be allowed to retaliate - in order to be able to cope with the 'crap' of being beaten in the first place? Because THAT'S how utterly wrong, not to mention frightening, his view of the situation appears. Unfortunately, the culture of victim blaming adds another layer to the issue, and it is all too common to see men and women looking to put the victims at fault rather than the perpetrators.

In Latham's view, as stated in her response in the Sydney Morning Herald, Kasey Edwards writes:

... Latham's comments reveal a lot more than his ignorance. His attempt to minimise the horror and prevalence of domestic violence gives us a chilling insight into the mindset that justifies domestic violence in the first place. Domestic violence is a consequence of men's feelings of entitlement; the belief that they have a right to power and control at any cost, even if it costs the lives of women and children.

Latham is far from alone in this attitude. In a horrifying development, the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story yesterday about a global meetup of followers of the Return of Kings website, with meetings planned in Australia in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The man behind Return of Kings, Daryush Valizadeh, espouses what he calls neomasculinity - if you click on the link you will see his definition. He blogs about what he sees as the breakdown of society, caused by feminism, and bemoans the loss of traditional gender roles and male power. Having gained a large online following, the idea of the meetups - at secret locations and times - is to allow those followers living in the same places to create communities of support for each other with like-minded men. That there are four meetups planned for Australian locations indicates that there are enough followers who think like Valizadeh, and feel that it is entirely valid.

Chillingly, one of his mandates, published recently online, is a call to legalise rape on private property - stating on his blog:

Without daddy government to protect her, a girl would absolutely not enter a private room with a man she doesn't know or trust unless she is absolutely sure she is ready to sleep with him.

The full blog post can be read HERE.

Valizadeh has announced on his site that he plans to come to Australia for the meetups on 6 February. In 2014, his associate, Julien Blanc, was deported in the wake of running seminars that taught men how to manipulate women into having sex. Then Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, said to Sky News at the time, "This guy wasn't pushing forward political ideas, he was putting a view that was derogatory to women and that's just something that our values abhor in this country." A petition has been started since news of the 6 February meetups asking that the Department of Immigration deny entry to Valizadeh on the same grounds. You can sign the petition by following THIS LINK.

In September 2015, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull allocated $100M funding directly to the cause of violence against women, and the development of new strategies country-wide to begin addressing the problem. It's a start. If the money is properly directed to practical, grass-roots strategies that help women and children escape untenable situations, and find new and safe places to live and rebuild their lives, that will be a wonderful thing. But there also needs to be education from the ground up to create a shift in the way we even think about violence against women. That's not a quick fix. That will take generations of men coming to the table and helping to change attitudes as well. This is a national issue and if affects men, women and children everywhere, so everyone has to be part of fixing it.  

In the meantime, events like the planned meetup of neanderthals who think it's right and proper for men to have full dominance over women, resorting to rape and beatings if required, have no place here. People like Valizadeh have no place in this country either, if we're going to back the Prime Minister's program. Please sign the petition to have his entry to the country blocked. Please feel free to share this post to help create more awareness of just how much work there is still to do before we achieve real, long term changes, and women don't always have to be looking over their shoulders.

My Kitchen Rules 2016

One thing I don't enjoy about summer television - apart from missing out on the series I manage to get addicted to through the year that aren't on - is the overload of advertising for upcoming shows for the new year. And, we've reached the cliffhanger point now - based on a surfeit of ads - My Kitchen Rules 2016 starts tomorrow night. TOMORROW NIGHT, PEOPLE!!!!!

We won't be watching it this year. 

We did end up watching last year and got hooked, despite the increasingly irritating bad behaviour of many of the contestants. The two women from Mount Isa, who won the hearts of most viewers, created a significant balance. Likewise, the two guys who won the series were just nice guys.

MKR 2015 semi final. Photo, The Sydney Morning Herald

However, based on two ads in particular for the upcoming series, it appears that the producers have gone all out to find the most feral individuals possible, and they're past what either Dragon Dad or I want to watch. Click on the links and have a look - they won't take long:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyjkpqvV-MU 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSWT_kvfA9E 

The young woman in the first ad, one of a pair of young lawyers is unnecessarily arrogant, and dangerously so - most of what she's seen to say in the ad is said before she and her cooking partner have hosted their initial dinner party. I'd have thought that was just plain foolish, to be honest, and she's just so rude! The second ad is intended to introduce the pair of guys - the miners - but the focus ends up being on another young woman from a different team who is beyond rude. There's another ad that shows her taking a shot at judge Manu Feidel's weight - I couldn't find that online. Also, the list of things she either doesn't like or refuses to eat - because she eats super healthy (no carbs, no oils, not much of anything really...) - is enormous. What the hell is she doing on a cooking show? 

Oh yes, silly me. While, apparently, MKR IS a cooking show, and it's all about the food, the reality (it being reality TV) is that it's become, with each season, more and more about the behaviour of the contestants - and from this year's ads, it would appear that they've been chosen specifically because they're rude and arrogant and can be guaranteed to make a spectical of themselves on TV.

Dragon Dad keeps asking - out loud - when we see the ads why anyone would do that to themselves. Ultimately, the damage isn't being done to the show or the victims of their bad behaviour - it's what whowever many million viewers end up thinking of them by the end that's the issue. While it might not matter in the scheme of things what most people think of us individually, there will be times that the negative impact would have to be important - say at work, or a job interview even... I do remember the girl who was chosen by Australia's first Bachelor, Anna Heinrich - a lawyer - saying in an interview that I read some time after the end of the series, that people no longer took her seriously as a lawyer...funny that...

The thing is, the bad behaviour isn't even necessary - it really isn't. I also watched Masterchef last year - the whole series, for the first time in years. I got a bit over cooking shows, actually, competition shows in general and took a break from all of them. The contrast between Masterchef and MKR last year couldn't have been more marked. In MKR there was the Melbourne socialite pair, Ash and Camilla, and a couple from Perth, Kat and Andre. Kat, in particular, produced some notable tantrums that had Dragon Dad firmly of the opinion that she was a complete psycho, and rattling on with various lines about the horrors of living with her if that's what she was really like. Ash and Camilla certainly had their moments too, and were unapologetic at what they viewed as their apparent rightful place in society compared to some of the others. 

Changing over to Masterchef, and allowing for the stresses of some of the heats there, and inevitable tears - which drive Dragon Dad absolutely bonkers, but then, he's never been in a professional kitchen (I spent years in them) and the pressure cooker environment can bring trained chefs to tears on a really bad day, so meh, a few tears... What there ISN'T on Masterchef, is the bitching, the tantrums, contestants flinging themselves on the floor when something doesn't work, or the attacks on other contestants. How much of that is governed by the fact that the contestants themselves have a vote on MKR while Masterchef is all based on the judge's (professionals) opinions, I have no idea, but the 'strategic' - read sabotage - vote was definitely in evidence on last year's MKR. And on Masterchef, it was ALL about the food - because, hello, it's a COOKING show. Sure, we got to know the contestants, but the guts of each episode is FOOD.

So, here's the thing - we're not watching MKR this year because, apart from the irritation factor, by watching we become complicit in this bad behaviour being OK. More than that, it's creating a twisted form of celebrity. HOW is that OK? Kids watch these shows - I'd say that kids are, these days, an enormous percentage of the audience for all of these shows - and the results of the singing competitions usually bears that thought out... So, our children are watching these exhibitions of quite appalling behaviour, that because it's out there on TV, is somehow OK? Really? 

The Block is another example - and I've only ever watched two complete series of that, the first one and the year before last, I think. That show has been characterised by awful behaviour from the get go. In one episode last year that I did see a bit of, the woman from the Adelaide couple staged a massive tantrum and walked off the program.

Obviously, what we see is engineered by the editors of the programs. The cameras are running full time through any given period and what we see is a much edited finished product. However, all the contestants know that, and while it's inevitable to see magazine and newspaper articles after episodes blaming the editing for the bad impressions created, the bad behaviour HAPPENED. It's on film. We might not be seeing the entire context, but we're certainly seeing the tantrums, the name calling, etc - so it happened. 

WHY would anyone in their right mind put themselves in that situation? Clearly the producers of these shows aren't giving it a thought within any sort of moral context, for them it's ALL about the ratings - a nice big fat meltdown means RATINGS...and in the weeks where there's a really big one, we know it's going to happen because that's the entire focus of the ads. 

The Stepson was addicted to all these shows - they may still be his chosen viewing. He thought the tantrums were hilarious. I've known him since he was 13, and he was a quite young 13, and he thought that stuff was funny. He still thinks they are, although that's tempered by comments about 'psycho woman' (Kat) as well. But, he tosses it off - although we have had a few conversations about it and when pressed, he's quite clear that he thinks it's all pretty stupid.  

While I know that by not watching MKR this year, and only depriving Channel Seven of two potential viewers for their rating stats, is highly unlikely to make any impression at all on the people who create the show, I would urge people to stop and think about what we're fostering by continuing to watch most of these shows. If I watch any reality TV this year, it'll be Masterchef, because that show is creating amazing opportunities for people who really care about food and going onto careers in the industry - last year's winner, Billie McKay, is at The Fat Duck - Heston Blumenthal's restaurant in the UK as a result. That, I admire, although it's never a pathway I'd choose to take. The people who land on MKR, a lot of them, well, I really don't know. If they're aiming at creating notoriety for themselves, many of them certainly are, but thankfully, in most cases we never see them again - Kat does apear to have vanished off the face of the TV planet, and long may she stay vanished. I sincerely hope that the nasty individuals in the ads for this year's show go off early in the piece so that the ad time on Channel Seven isn't dominated by more displays like the ones that have already been screened.

The NRL and the age of entitlement

Mitchell Pearce. Photo: The Roar

I've written about entitlement issues before, mostly in regard to teenagers. You can read that HERE. However, it's not just the kids who can sometimes be called on an exaggerated sense of entitlement by any means. In the wake of the Mitchell Pearce debacle, social media has exploded with commentary - as was to be expected in an age of smart phones and a media network always hungry for a sensational image or video. For me, Clementine Ford's piece in Daily Life really summed it up. 

Rather than a general rant about yet another NRL player doing something vile while 'off duty' (so to speak), Ford takes a hard look at the culture of the NRL, and the overriding sense that comes from constant stories like that of Pearce, that the players themselves, and the organisation don't appear to hold themselves to generally appropriate standards. Not only is an incident like Pearce's recent efforts not really news any more, given that just about any time players from the NRL are out to play and there's alcohol involved we can almost count on hearing - or seeing - about assaults, inappropriate sexual behaviour, violence and other socially unacceptable carrying on. We can also be reasonably sure, based on a string of like incidents, that the culprits are unlikely to suffer too much as a consequence, unlike their victims. As Ford says in her article, while there may well be civil charges and fines, the NRL doesn't appear to see that their players' behaviour is at issue - since it is rare that they, as an organisation take steps to bring any consequences to bear.

There is some talk that in Pearce's case, he may be stood down from The Rooster's captaincy. However, if we look at the fate of other players who've crossed the line, we've good reason to expect that if, as a result of his behaviour, he does lose his place at Easts, it's quite likely he'll turn up sometime down the track playing for another club. 

Whether they like it or not, these men are public figures, and are - supposedly - role models. Our kids, if they're into League, look up to them. They represent a dream many football mad kids have that one day, they too may be up there playing professionally. Mrs Woog wrote today about having to tell one of her sons what Pearce had done - Pearce being one of his favourite players. HOW do you tell a young boy about that? How to you frame the story of a drunken binge where a man out of control harasses a woman in her own home for sex, repeatedly, and when rebuffed he mimes a sexual act with the woman's dog, urinates all over her furniture and refuses to leave when asked? How do you explain a world that, as the story breaks, features people blaming the woman in question - brushing away what the man did because 'that's just men'?

Dragon Dad and I were talking about it yesterday, and he said to me, "When I have a few drinks (which, by the way isn't all that often, really) I don't force myself on a woman, and then consider playing that I'm having sex with a dog - let alone wee all over the furniture! Why don't I do that? Because it's nowhere in my head as something that's OK to do!" 

As he went on to say - and it was a mighty fine rant, too - alcohol usually brings out what is latent in people. Give Dragon Dad a couple of beers, and he'll be a happy, giggly and entertaining mess - he really can't drink. Give my late father a few, and he'd turn angry and violent. My ex husband would become sullen and aggro. Of the three, Dragon Dad's reaction to booze is closest to what you see in him sober. The other two had a veneer over the nasty stuff that fell off when under the influence. So it begs the question, given the history of bad behaviour (to put it nicely) of NRL players when drunk, who those men really are, and why it is that they're so revered...

Because they can run fast and kick a ball? Because the big ones can charge and send bodies flying all over the field? Because they earn such ridiculous amounts of money just playing footy?

None of those things makes those men special, smart, or even successful, really. It just means they've been VERY VERY lucky. The percentage of men who get to play at that elite level, of the thousands who want to, is tiny. Obviously, that creates all sorts of pressures for them - but that's no excuse for foul behaviour off the field. Yet, it continues to happen. When are the NRL executives, coaches and managers going to step up and own that there is a serious problem in the culture of League football today? It's not OK to continue to mitigate the possible damage done to the image of the clubs and pass if off as 'men behaving badly', as if that's to be expected and somehow understood. I'm sure as hell the woman in the Pearce story is still struggling to understand how things got so out of control at her house...

David Bowie, Alan Rickman and Glenn Frey - should we have known they were sick?

In less than two weeks, the world has lost three much loved and greatly influential performers. David Bowie, icon of the unique; Alan Rickman, suave bad guy with the honeyed voice to die for; and Glenn Frey, guitarist and co-founder of rock band The Eagles. 

These men were all 'icons' in their way. Bowie, chameleon extraordinaire, and the master of reinvention before that was even a thing, made it possible for generations of fans to accept the 'different' in themselves. His landmark ventures in music carved out a unique pathway through the work of more mainstream music makers. Rickman, classically trained and a force to be reckoned with on stage, by all accounts, will always be loved/hated as Professor Snape in the Harry Potter movie franchise, but there were so many other roles he played where he made a huge impact, and gathered fans. Frey was the co-founder of one of the iconic bands of my childhood and adolescence, and many others of my generation. I know all the words to Hotel California - who doesn't? There is still a timelessness to their music - much of which he wrote or co-wrote - that speaks of serious talent and knowledge of music that we see so rarely these days in the contemporary music scene. 

Much of the shock appears to have been due to two main factors: none of them were very old - late 60s, and all of them were ill and had chosen to keep that information private. In today's terms, the late sixties are no longer seen as the venerable age they once were. The bibilical 'three score years and ten' (70) that we have traditionally been allotted is certainly a landmark age, but the average life expectancy in Australia is currently around 82. Our sense of what is really 'old' has changed, and while we know and accept that illness and accidents all too frequently take people much younger, we are able to reconcile ourselves to the death of someone in their 80s - they had a 'good run', after all. 

That they were all three ill, and decided to keep that information within their families is absolutely fine, as far as I'm concerned. Yes, it adds to the shock for fans, but that's their decision. There's an agenda out there, particularly in chronic illness circles, so I'm certainly seeing a degree of backlash as far as Frey is concerned, that people in public positions should be open about illness, so that awareness can be created about the diseases, which will benefit those of us with similar illness who don't have a public face. I have a real issue with the assumption that because someone is a public figure, they have an obligation to also be advocates for their disease. Certainly, there have been famous people who have been open - Jane McGrath, among others, did that for breast cancer in Australia. Due to her profile, and that of her husband who has continued the work, the foundation formed in her name has been instrumental in placing a large number of specialised cancer nurses in medical centres to benefit other women suffering the disease. That's all to the good - BUT, it was a personal choice made by McGrath. It remains, and should remain, an entirely personal decision as to whether or not anyone - public figure or otherwise - creates a public profile based on their disease and educates and/or advocates for it. Should some individuals chose not to should not mean that they be castigated - during or after their lives.
 

I am beyond angry to see the level of hysteria and panic in the groups I belong to on Facebook over the claim by Glenn Frey's manager that it was the drugs he took for RA and Ulcerative Colitis that killed him. One - to my mind - highly ill-advised, irresponsible and disrespectful comment has sparked a rash of posts and threads with people worrying about what this means for them, wanting to know which meds he was talking about (having said what he did, he followed up by saying he'd been legally advised to not divulge the particular drugs), and the inevitable comments from the woo merchants alluding to Big Pharma and the poisons that they call drugs that we should all, apparently, avoid.

The official statement from the Eagles website, from his family and friends, is that he died from complications of RA, UC and pneumonia. THAT is what should be respected. I don't think, also, that writing posts and comments berating him posthumously for not having been more public about having RA is useful either. This phenomena seems to me to be more rife in chronic illness circles than other diseases - somehow, if a person has cancer, there is a different level of respect granted them for their fight, and space to do that without the requirement that they do anything beyond manage their lives with the disease. I haven't seen similar comments being made about either David Bowie or Alan Rickman, neither of whom made their fights with cancer public knowledge. 

That the family did make public Frey's fifteen year struggle with RA and UC public with the announcement of his death is, I believe, useful in itself, because it does raise public awareness of the seriousness of diseases like RA. All too often, those of us living with the disease struggle to be taken seriously, by doctors and non-medical people alike. Unfortunately, his manager's comment about the drugs has taken away from that, by introducing a level of conspiracy theory that not only raises great fear and unease among other people with RA, but it downplays the intrinsic seriousness of the disease itself. 

For myself, it is a sobering reminder that my disease is serious, that I have to maintain focus on ensuring that I continue to have a good medical team around me, and that I keep educating myself about advances in research and emerging treatments so I always give myself the best shot of keeping it controlled. What I see online suggests to me that, unfortunately, too many people don't do that. They're so fast to grab onto sensational moments like that comment about Frey's drugs, without realising that the combination of diseases Frey had, in addition to surgery for the UC, and the complication of pneumonia appear to have been a perfect storm of pathologies that brought about his death. We DON'T KNOW any more than the family have chosen to make public, and we can't assume anything. Everyone with this disease presents differently, and everyone responds differently to accepted medical protocols. Instead of ricocheting wildly into the realms of supposition and panic, we should instead be reminding ourselves that Frey was ill with a serious disease, and all too tragically, he died. As did Bowie and Rickman from their respective cancers.   

The world has lost three remarkable men who contributed enormously in their respective fields, and we will be poorer for losing them. That is enough. Zichrono livracha, and may their memories always be a blessing.

How to be happy

What is happy? What makes you happy? What are the things you chase in an effort to be happy? How high on your list of priorities is being happy? And, ARE you happy?

I'm noticing lots of blog posts about wrapping up 2015 and looking ahead to 2016. A lot of them focus on looking ahead and making sure 2016 is better than 2015. A lot of them talk about being happy, striving to be more happy. 

So, I started thinking about happy too. 

The things that make me happy are pretty simple really. A nice meal with someone I care about. Cooling rain after a stinking hot day. A call from one of my children. Finding a book I've been searching for for months (that was yesterday afternoon!). Having things to look forward to - my goddaughter will be here in January and emailed me asking to meet up for lunch. That's not a definitive list, it's just what popped into my head as I typed. If I try to make it longer, my head will empty out and I'll have nothing to type because it won't DO lists! The really important thing about that list is how random it is, and how 'small' each thing actually is, how fleeting. Also, apart from the book, how there's not much to do with actual 'things'. 

The flip side of this is the number of support groups I belong to for chronic illnesses, and the number of people I know who are really sick. Being happy is a topic that comes up in many different guises, mostly in the framework of NOT being happy, due to pain, many losses, issues with doctors/drugs/family/friends, any number of other things. Alongside that are my own sadnesses - illness, the loss of my beloved friend from ovarian cancer, news from No.1 that his youngest half brother is battling Hodgkins Lymphoma for the second time at 15, endless delays with Dragon Dad's business that see us still in Sydney a year after he said we need to be in Melbourne, and so on... And yet, despite my illness, I have achieved a number of important (for me) milestones and goals, I was able to spend time with Lizzie before she died that was very special and that will always be a lovely memory, No.1's reports of his brother's progress are peppered with his awe about how the boy is managing that for himself that has been a huge lesson for No.1 about real priorities, and the extra year here has enabled - among other things - me to have priceless time with a cousin that I'd not have had. 

For me, happiness is not just a feeling. It's a 'doing'. Happiness isn't something that just happens, it's something we make. All year, I've watched the gratitude thing happening on Facebook - people posting a number of things for which they're grateful daily for a week and tagging friends to challenge them to do likewise. I resisted picking up those challenges, because I usually resist being part of the herd, but I watched with interest. The big flurry of gratitude posts has faded away, but there are a few individuals who clearly decided that it was a good habit to make and continue posting daily. Clearly, they've found that habit, in itself, created a different attitude with which to approach life. 

The reality is, if someone is determined to be miserable, there's not much anyone else can do to help them. We've probably all had that experience of trying to cheer up a friend who's having an awful time over something. And, being miserable isn't bad. It's absolutely natural in the face of sad or nasty things happening, and needs to be acknowledged as valid. However, I question a determined effort to NOT try to move out of it - particularly if that comes with building complaints about how no one understands, and how increasingly lonely the person is getting. That old saying, 'Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.' comes to mind here... It's very difficult to be with someone who is always unhappy, always complaining, always asking for support and help, but refuses to make any effort of their own to change their situation. 

 

Dragon Dad does this stuff. He smiles at everyone he encounters, and mostly, people smile back. He chats with the checkout staff at supermarkets and asks how their day is going, and usually, by the time our groceries are all bagged and we're paying, we get sent off with a 'Have a nice day!' that's NOT like the routine script they get trained to deliver to customers. He managed to get himself moved to an earlier flight home one time by being friendly and nice to the airline staff - the guy before him had been aggro and demanding and didn't get the flight... Basically, Dragon Dad approaches life positively, and a lot of positive stuff comes right back to him. Consequently, while there are inevitable challenges he has to face, he's a pretty happy guy most of the time. He's made a habit of doing that, and it's paying off.

When friends ask me how I am, and what's happening with treatment, and so on, I find that they are often more unhappy on my behalf than I am myself these days. Don't get me wrong - I'm NOT happy to be sick. No one in their right mind would be! BUT, I'm alive and breathing, and there are many other things in my life to think about apart from being sick, so I make the choice, as much as possible, to do that rather than dwell on the illness and what that means for me every day. There's a blogger I've been following who has terminal bowel cancer, and has four little girls - the eldest has just finished primary school. While there are definitely posts she writes about her darker times, her blog is mostly a shining story of someone who is fiercely living each and every moment she has, and focusing completely on that. As things stand, she's just passed the time span she was originally given to live - and with fabulous humour, posts photos of herself as the 'undead' that are so triumphant I have to smile when I see them. There's a lesson there - a BIG one. My disease is highly unlikely to kill me. Hers is ultimately unlikely to let her live - but is that what she focuses on? Hell no! Her energy goes into every moment she can have with her husband and little girls, and she celebrates that, and there are, as a consequence, oodles of dizzyingly happy posts to read on her blog! 

Every single thing we encounter in life can make us happy or unhappy - it's a matter of how we respond. How we choose to respond. We can let ourselves get beaten around by circumstances that are less than ideal, wallow in the misery of being neglected or hurt by people we thought were our friends, bemoan our lot constantly - and we will be very unhappy most of the time. Alternatively, we can choose to tackle life quite differently and look at the other side. The frustrations of delays that have held up Dragon Dad's business and our move have been very real. The lost time can never be regained, and that sucks. On the other hand, he's had much more down time for us to spend together and for him to get stuck back into his cycling (and now he's decided to compete in the World Masters Games in 2017...oy!!). We've had more time to spend with family and build relationships there. We were able to get our second kitten from the same breeder as the first one. We've also been able to do the sorts of things that one never does in the place where we live - and make sure that we create some excellent memories to take with us. I got to meet a friend I had met on line in person, because our cities are just close enough for that to happen if we plan well. At times it's all been very frustrating, but on the whole, it hasn't been a terrible year. 

I'm going to finish with another meme that someone posted in one of the support groups I belong to - I think it's a great idea, especially if the notion of making your own happiness is a foreign concept. Is it a little bit twee and geeky? Maybe. But, I figure, if it makes a difference to how any of us feel and helps build a different attitude to living, then that doesn't matter at all. 

The good things don't have to be spectacular - while we'd like to win the $50M in Powerball, the odds against that happening are enormous, so it seems to me to be a bit of a waste of energy to focus on that particular hope! However, if you manage to time your next grocery shop (as I managed to the other week) so that you get one of those times that nearly all the things you usually buy are on special, well, that's something to be really quite tickled about I think! And if you manage to achieve something that you didn't think you could, even if it was a struggle to get there - well, go you!! Add that in too and the hell with the struggle - you did it, and that's what really matters. You made it happen. And I really believe you can make happiness being a normal thing in your life happen too, if you really set your mind to it.