Letters from Wetville

Crumbly earth and a soothed soul. The children played around the shelter cloth counting the minutes until he went to a party and she went to collect Daddy, while I weeded. Later on as they went to bed, I went outside again and weeded, crumbled earth and sowed seeds. In one section I sowed alyssum, rocket, lettuce, carrots (this time? eighth time lucky?), beetroot and welsh bunching onions. In another, the raised bed which is also the chook graveyard, I scattered lots of herbs seeds and then turned the soil with my hands. In this plot went chervil, coriander, wildflower blend, calendula, motherwort, rocket (I love rocket and can never have too much of it) and astragalus. I am still mulling over the contested meanings of the term 'left'. And the contested actions and inactions relating to leftedness. But my soul is at greater peace because the four of us are back home together again and I have seeds in my garden and dirt (almost but not entirely scrubbed out) under my fing...

Tonight I weeded a section of garden, about a metre square, and sowed seeds of argentata beet (from Kings seeds, an Italian heirloom variety which is totally worth the effort of obtaining and growing from seed for its flavour), chicory, pak choi and rocket. The garden before I started was testimony to the folly of not mulching over summer. Thick with weeds, the soil was low on worms compared to much of my garden. It was nice and dark and mostly crumbly though, in contrast with the areas which had potatoes and are now bare, exposed earth. My favourite 'weed' was borage, which has self-seeded very vigorously. I did find some self-seeded thyme which pleased me. I'm pleased with my gardening tonight. I worked in the old chook run, an area which was grass before we laid the poultry palace over top of it. At ten square metres, it was the largest garden I had ever had the pleasure of working with. As I look across tall weeds and at healthy looking beetroot, roses, sunflower...

The generation before me said "I am woman, hear me roar". I've been reflecting today on Zizek as explained by John Bernstein on the Liberation Blog . Specifically this part: Žižek’s critique of liberal multiculturalist presents a serious challenge to those of us who want to act to change things. He presents a powerful argument that to politically act within the parameters acceptable to the liberal establishment, ‘…inevitably ends in a cul-de-sac of debilitating impossibility: "what can one do against global capital?" (Žižek, 2001).’ Therefore, Žižek’s importance lays in his questioning of the dominant liberal hegemony. His argument is that before we act, we need to begin thinking again: One is therefore tempted to turn round Marx's eleventh thesis. The first task today is precisely not to succumb to the temptation to act, to directly intervene and change things…Rather, the task is to question the hegemonic ideological coordinates, or, as Brecht put it in h...

I've linked to this post on a so-called nuanced class analysis on the Liberation blog before. Yesterday I had another look and John Bernstein has replied to the comments, including mine. I am furious. Let's have a look at his comments. Collectivism: Sandra negatively associates collectivism and freely provided social services with state institutionalisation. Such a view very much fits in with the dominant ideologies of our times. So, the common-sense view of today is that ‘collectivism’ is a dirty word. This anti-collectivist discourse became mainstream when neo-liberal governments swept to power in the West during the 1980s. New Right governments, such as the fourth Labour regime in NZ, were able to convincingly portray the state as inefficient, wasteful, as well as draconian, and to label ‘collectivism’ as being an anathema to all those who uphold freedom and choice. How incredibly convenient. Yes he is right that Roger Douglas et. al. made collectivism a dirty word in th...

My mother is a whizz baker. As we grew older and she returned to the paid workforce, she refused to lower her standards. Sometimes I would scramble out of bed just before seven on a weekday morning to find Mum had been up since 5am and baking for most of that time. Not for us (that was the weekend or I did it), but for a fundraiser (school, brownies, cubs, Catholic Womens League, others I have forgotten) or if someone had died. Tonight we learned that Favourite Handyman's Nana died in her sleep this morning. We've found flights for him to go to Auckland and let work know he will be away for the rest of the week. Now that he has gone off to sort out his work this evening and the children are asleep, I wonder what I can send. It doesn't take long to know - these things are enculturated into my bones. I'm not sure if enculturated is in the dictionary, but I know what it means. Off to open my long acquaintance Edmonds and turn the oven on.

I'd been playing round with Nina-the-kitchen-queen's muesli slice last year, with some failures due to, for example, leaving out the flour. Today I am most pleased with my latest tinkering. Laksme-our-angel-therapist suggested we soak our oats in prune juice. She had a convincing rationale which was so convincing that I forgot what it was. So today I soaked 3 cups of big fat oats in a few sloshes (perhaps 1/4 cup?) of prune juice, later remembered to add a handful of dried cranberries and sunflower seeds and left it there while I did other stuff. I melted 120g of butter and put about 300g of condensed milk in the mix, together with 1/2 C of sugar, 1/2 C yoghurt and 1/2 C of flour. I put some dark chocolate and some brazil and cashew nuts into my whizzy machine and pulverised them and added it to the mix. Stirred it around and out it into a greased pyrex dish (20 x 28cm) and into the 180 degree Celsius oven for 40 minutes. It is fantastic. I also made pork spare ribs for the fir...

Winter 2010 knitting project: pattern wool: Today in the Methodist Mission shop: one square tablecloth in appealing colours and pattern. It had some marks on it and also it stunk. I think it had been stored in a room where people smoked cigarettes. I took it home for the princely sum of $1, soaked it in bleach, washed and dried it, ironed it... ... and made a handkerchief hemline-style skirt. I could pretend that this is ordinary Friday night activity for me or I could acknowledge that we are out of alcohol in the house and I didn't want to do paid work, housework or community work. I already owned a lovely handkerchief skirt (is that the correct term for jagged hem?) which I had ripped beyond repair. I used the stretchy band of that one for my new skirt - I have a top long enough to cover the brown band and the rough stitching of tonight's experiment. I do like things that can be finished quickly. Looks like I have a skirt for St Patrick's Day. And tomorrow night...