nursing. tax & 'deserving'

so much fun. Well bits of it are. My kind of nursing involves loads of garlic and potions and lotions and sleep and vitamin c.

loads and loads of vitamin c. Finding sneaky ways to get it in the small kids.

But now Favourite Handyman is crook, as is usual for this time of year. He gets crooker than the kids (they don't smoke tobacco) but also he is more open to trying funny tasting things to help.

Tonight I stumbled upon the idea of an onion poultice to burn out a lung infection. He has been saved from that for the moment because I wasn't satisfied I knew enough about it after my googling and also because I would have to sleep with onions as well if I put it on him. And they might fall out of the poultice wrap and land on me.

Who needs slimey cold onions all through the bedding?

So for the moment, it is winter flu remedy (somewhere in my archives is the recipe - acv, cayenne, garlic, honey), more vitamin c, carrot, ginger, celery, apple juices made with the flash new juicer I bought last time we had bad health, and lemon drinks.

I'm using my whizzy stick to make vege potions to strengthen us all. Tonight's pasta sauce was anchovies, onions, garlic, silverbeet, red pepper and yellow pepper sauteed in olive oil and then whizzed up so you can't tell which bits are which.

I'm also playing round with Sally Fallon again, a recurring minor obsession. Even though I find parts of her book ridiculous and flakey, something also draws me back to it again and again. Banana bread is finishing in the oven as I type. I started soaking the flour in kefir last night. This mixture was much easier to work with than the attempt at making soaked scones (or muffins maybe) last year.

Stock time. I came home from the butcher's today with my usual bag of beef bones and also some shin on the bone, which I've never cooked before and which looks like high goodness food to me. There is a flash sounding recipe for it available called osso bucco which I want to try in the slow cooker.

Taxation. Civilised society. The deserving. I've been thinking about tax for a while, particularly since a friend emailed me and asked why I was in favour of higher taxation for higher income earners and also since I read a Guardian article about education in Texas, where they are rewriting history and specifically teaching that economic prosperity requires minimal government intrusion and taxes. If you have a close look at the new(ish) New Zealand curriculum, you will find instructions for unthinking free market adherence in there as well.

This quote got me thinking, and reeling:

The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of
calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.

What this brings me back to are notions about deservingness. I think that presumptions about 'deserving' underpin social and economic policy in both large and small forms. I don't have a theoretical background in any of this, but we all pay taxes and since Rachael's question, I've been thinking also about how we all need to think about and know why we support the tax system we either vote for, or want in our heads and dreams.

I will try and come back to this soon.

Comments

Johanna Knox said…
Hi Sandra - very interested in your thoughts on the NZ curriculum in this regard, if you get a chance to write more about it.
lusach said…
Sandra, thought I'd put this link about onion poultices here too. She makes mention of the onions in the bed dilemma. I'd love to hear if you experiment with this (haven't tried myself yet either)

http://www.henriettesherbal.com/blog/herbal-foods.html

I also have a love/hate thing with NT and Fallon *laugh*. I'm making cornbread alot at the moment and have been thinking I need to try soaking the cornmeal first.

And I was interested as well about the curriculum changes, I didn't know that.
Sandra said…
Hi Johanna! Have a look at the very bottom of this page:
http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-documents/The-New-Zealand-Curriculum/Learning-areas/Social-sciences/Social-sciences-curriculum-achievement-objectives
It is a gentler, more interventionist wording than the Texas project, but I take exception to it all the same. The eighth point under level five social studies (year 10 or the old fourth form) should also be up for challenge and wider interpretation in my view. The business sector in NZ had a lot of input into this curriculum. If you've trawled through the values section before, you'll notice that what looks quite lovely at first, is also a highly individualist (as opposed to collective) approach.

Lusach,thank you also for your comment. The banana bread was a very odd texture and although I wuite like the kefir tang, I can't see the kids buying it when they know very well I can make an Edmonds book recipe up which they will love instead. Off to look at your link on onion poultices. Thanks.

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