Was it a Dream

  

Was it a dream? Don’t think so – it was more real than real. In the early dawn hours I was “asleep” but aware – in the half waking state.. From nowhere within the dream I was having – Don was there. A gentle but solid touch nose to nose. Then one kiss – not sexual but sensual – a life-time love kiss –  Then again nose to nose and another just the same. I could feel warmth, and skin and was hyper aware. I lent in again nose to nose – the touch and then expecting lips that weren’t there I fell back into reality with a grief that knows no bounds but as well I felt as if I had been honoured and gifted.

 

 Like the dream I had one night a few years ago when I was in that same hyper aware state and I heard him call my name twice. I turned around physically and could see no one but had no doubts that something wonderful had happened.

I don’t go looking because I believe we must leave things as they are – but sometimes there is so much love that I believe in the middle of grief that will not ease – we are given a touch, a sound, a light inside our hearts –

That's what I think happened early this morning.

And now its a grey autumn afternoon – my favourite time of year. Its not all that cool yet, but I feel as if something has awakened in me as it usually does at this time of the year. I feel that emotionally I have been asleep for a very long time – as if I have been wasting my life – a life I am lucky to have shouldn’t be wasted.

Sometimes in very human moments I wonder what Don would think of me as I grow older – as I develop more flaws and bad habits? Of late at times for the first time in our lives together I have been questioning my own worth – but Autumn has rolled around again and once again time for some honest thinking and to be a bit kinder to myself. I think I got a little push this morning and glad so. Unsure if any one else has felt a loved one very close in what is more than a dream – I think Foxymoron has with her little baby Sarah – I did after Dad was killed and then Mum – What happened this morning felt holy – in a way – as if there are angels or something loving out there that allows us to have these wonderful and rare moments.

It has left me very emotional - feeling that slam of reality that you think is gone as you puddle along in your daily life - then it hits you hard enough to just about knock you flat for a while. You go through it and go on with life - I think it actually keeps you sane as hard as it seems on these sorts of days. Works for me.

Any one who has felt close grief knows this for a fact but sometimes I wish I didn't know.


My niece said at the eulogy when her father Bruce was killed "There will be no more new memories" and I felt so sad for her knowing what it is like to lose your Dad young...I just thought when I went hunting for photos - "There will be no more new photos" Lucky I have so many. But for my niece - maybe there will be new memories rare as they are - I have dreamt of my dad and it was as if he was in the room with me. He was killed when I was 15 but in the dream I was trying to get him to stay with me till the kids came home because I wanted him to meet them, and he said, "I already know them." In a dream I have driven our old green van up to her standing on the footpath and offered her a life, when she answered 'Its okay, I don't need a lift any more" and others.


Some would say its what we want to hear - and use psychology/ science to explain life the universe and everything away.  I think I have a bit too much of the Aussie/Celt in me to settle for something as clinical and stale as that. There definitely is something and it is a force for good - call it what you will - 

 At a creative writing group I belong to back in port Macquarie - we were asked to write on any subject one time - I just re found this - I just decided to write about Australia.


"Australia is my land. My land . My home. My place, with its big brassy blue summer skies and its scraggy bush. The only home I have known. How grateful I am to my brave ancestors who were forced by the “Famine” and poverty to risk their children on the many months voyage. 


Into what? A place as alien and unknown to them as would Mars be to us. But make it home they did. This strange land where creatures hopped instead of running and suckled young on teats hidden inside their pouches all the while gestating the next generation. This strange land where the seasons were all reversed with long hot droughts broken only by years of flooding became home. They adapted to its vagaries although many didn’t and wet mad, went back to the famine or just gave up. Australia is the largest island continent on earth with its hundreds of tribes. Tribes many as different to the other as are the Greeks to the Swedish; the Germans to the Egyptians. Breathtaking differences as marked as those tribes tall and thin in the North West to the shorter thickset people of the east coast, to the lost Tasmanian people who were different again and onto the lost tribes of the Gympie, reported by farmers in the 1880’s to have been small and fine like pygmies and who spoke like the bushmen of the Kalahari. These were exterminated by the taller tribes around them; tribes who were then almost destroyed by the new white tribes. Then the unknown tribes as featured in a book called Lost tribes of the Kimberley” (Ian Wilson), who’s art the local aborigines in the late 1800’s said was not theirs but from even earlier people, unknown to them. From out of Asia, from Southern India, from Indonesia, from Polynesia and from Africa over the thousands of years came wave after wave of the tribes that make up Australia, each wave pushing the other one down and eastward; each invasion as savage as the ones before and then settling into the rhythm this land by its spirit settles on those who are here long enough. 

Then the invasions from England, just by ‘days-luck’, (ahead of the French much to La Perousse’s disappointment) came under the cruel orders of English law - hard hearted judges, parliamentarians, bureaucrats and soldiers bringing in the slave ships of convicts; the dispossessed and the starving – indentured servants as were my ancestors, an invasion more cruel than those previous as the new tribes had guns and technology unknown to the people who were in the road. But the land is settling its spirit on the invaded and invaders as O’Brien’s, Murphy’s Smith’s, Pearson’s, Bonner’s and O’Shane’s have as much Irish, Scots, Welsh and English ancestry as they do the blood of the invaded.


 I listen to Noel Pearson talk, read his words and I see the unique spirit of Australia in him. His call for the cringe to be over, for half his people – his aboriginal part to stand tall and not settle for the handouts of political correctness which have shackled the people more than any gun or government reservation ever did. This thinking will in my mind lead to true healing – to standing tall. 


Australia can be felt for me as a haze which descends like a warm mantle over my shoulders. I am Australian. I have no other home, no other loyalty. My child-feet dug in the dry soil, stumbled over the cool evening grass, looked up at the black velvet sky to stars unique only to my homeland. Australia is unique. Not better nor worse – just different. I could no more imagine living under a small sky space, narrow rooms and streets or mountains blocking out the light as “home” than no doubt my ancestors could when they first walked down the gangway and felt Australia under their feet.

We are a country where the mixing of the tribes can be achieved in the fullness of time, as the edges are melted from the narrow, the wounded, the vicious, the hungry, the prejudiced and the hate filled – all in the fullness of time and nothing mankind can do in all our arrogance will change the power of that unique spirit. This can’t be forced by law nor pressure but will flow as easily and slowly as the rivers over the great divide flow, as the seasons of extremes meld one into another. Australia if listened to and felt has this "laid back" effect if we only listen and feel."

Lovely to have both my girls together.

Alison and Melissa and me at Point Cook

Chris, Melissa and Alison

Melissa and Chris drove down from Sydney and spent last week here. It was just so lovely to have my little family together. We are not the sort of family where generations have stayed living in one area, as with my four sisters and myself, so with Melissa and Alison we all spread our wings young (17) . I hear people talking about being too busy because they have grandchildren around, or parents around and from my perspective find it hard to believe - if only! We don't seem to make old bones in our family so there has never been any "older" generation either mothers or fathers. So when we get together is is very precious. The house seemed very empty when they left - but I admit when they sms's me that they were home after the 10 hour drive - I was really relieved. I try not to worry because that doesn't change things, but I hate it when my kids are out on the highway and yet I know accidents often happen just driving about in your normal day or close to home as with dad.


I do my best to keep these sorts of fears quiet because they are young and its not fair to load up the young ones with our fears which hopefully may never come to be. But its a golden rule you let people know where you are and when you have arrived. A courtesy.
When we get together its magic. It always was and I guess we were afraid once Don was gone that we may have lost that spark - 

Melissa giving Tiger what for and Tiger loved it

Melissa and Chris

Alison and Melissa beat me yet again - this time it was knowing brand names of clothes and shoes etc - 

Alison and Andrew

Melissa and Chris hadn't seen my house and both of them said it had a wonderful feel - and it has - its very peaceful - they actually said the street was so quiet that they might use it to make a Zombie film about when there were no human beings left on earth - and I had to agree - sometimes it is too quiet and empty, but yet you know there are people so close by. Something hard for me to get used to.

Getting more settled

Getting more settled now. Last Sunday it was an amazingly beautiful day. The sun was out and a cool breeze was blowing - so I headed for the Point Cook Coastal Park. Found a good log to sit on took a big book to read - which I didn't because the bay was just so beautiful.  Its strange to be looking out at a bay that faces south when for 58 years the ocean has always been on my east - its rather disorientating  - I think it amuses the kids to see me confidently point in one direction and declare that its "North" when it is some other total direction. May have to get myself a compass. I am pretty good with sunrise and sunset as one would expect but when out of sight an bushed.

My spot down at the Coastal Park Point Cook

I am aware that when my ancestors came here in 1841 and 1855 (mainly) it was into Port Phillip Bay they came and what on earth took them up to the Upper Hunter area of NSW has me beat - you would think that after travelling in the hold of overcrowded ships for months on end they would have been happy to plant their feet down as soon as they could. I am assuming they might have sailed up to Sydney from here - but I know one branch found their way up gradually after spending some time in Corowa. I was thinking about this and trying to imagine their feelings - this area at least would have been closer to what they were used to looking than say Brisbane or further north or west - that's if they arrived in winter. I know my mother's father's people buried a daughter at sea on the trip and when I look at the photo of that mother 9taken in old age) I feel a connection - I used to think how brave they all must have been but am revising my concept of bravery. i think we can all be just as brave if we have no choice - and they had no choice. it was stay in Ireland and all starve or leave and at least have some hope. When faced with these choices we would either take the road of hope or just let go of life. Once the "choice" was taken then the only choices were that we forge through and do the best we can to stay sane, to stay civilised and to hold together  - or again to let go. Both choices as brave as the other. One has to hope never to be put in situations like this... but no doubt most of us will be called upon in our lives to make what appears to others as "brave" decisions. This is not to say that they weren't brave - but that we also have that ability in us if called upon.


Its getting colder much more quickly that I am used to and realise I may need some warmer footwear - as well may need to revive coats i have bough over the decades which are unworn because it was just never really cold enough to wear them even in winters on the NSW Mid North Coast.


I am getting used to not having my beautiful tank water to drink, cook and shower in. For a few months my hair went crazy and my youngest agreed with this. I looked like a wild woman from Borneo. I has to spend money and get decent hair products but realise we wouldn't need all this garbage if we used tank water to wash hair because the change was so dramatic - noticed more because my hair is long. I bought a water filter which takes out 99% of everything including fluoride which is notoriously hard to remove. you can boil away Chlorine but if you do this it actually concentrates the Fluorides. We don't even use fluoridated toothpastes - there is already too much of it in the atmosphere and it is not a nutrient - as they still use it as a rat poison - years ago it was proudly emblazoned on the packets and which i have seen - years ago fluoridated toothpaste was marked as an S4 poison in the US not any more - http://www.google.com.au/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&rlz=1C1SKPL_enAU418AU421&biw=1280&bih=647&tbm=isch&tbnid=L8_T4p9vWQ47TM:&imgrefurl=http://www.uaff.us/understanding_fluoride.htm&docid=ZF37hPI14LCMXM&imgurl=http://www.uaff.us/fluoride2.jpg&w=400&h=258&ei=IVhuT-LGBdCwiQfTppXvBQ&zoom=1
Only added this to prove the point - its up to individuals to accept or not - I choose not to. As soon as I can I will be getting a water tank - my advice to anyone who is in doubt is to just type in "Fluoride" and "side effects" and then make up your own mind as is our right in s free country. Something the health Authorities have kept from us as they only ever present the viewpoint of the Pharmaceutical and Chemical industries in this area. 


Enough about that. The last photo I sent to my Port Macquarie friends because how odd it is to take what is obviously a rural coastal scene in the foreground is contrasted by the high rise so close in the background...this is so incongruous.


I am liking living here - am finding it hard to deal with having to keep my voice down when i talk to myself because the houses are so close. I am missing the amazing sunsets that were just outside my front door and which spun gold across the paddocks from the horizon to me... a friend suggested I put  cameras on my aerial and point  them to the east and west - hook in into my Tele and there they would be sunrise and sunset- the bastard was joking! I am getting closer to getting stuff started such as picking up the Tafe course started last year (and finished) I need to refresh this and this starts in July - after a few weeks I should then be able hopefully pick up some work - am following up on improving some health issues which are long overdue.


Its so good to be closer to family and I love this. When I am close to our youngest I find myself really missing our eldest - would be wonderful to have them all close but they have both been left home now longer than they were living at home as our children. I am used to it just as my own mum had to get used to it - am lucky that I am such good friends with the girls - they are just about the sanest people I know and they keep me in line!!! (they try to)

Seaweed and seabirds

Homestead House shore and Melbourne Highrise

Don't often go in for soppy stuff - but its Saint Partick's day and here is an Irish Blessing for you - its music by the blind harpist Turlough O'Carolyn and its an Old Irish Blessing - if you like the music look up O'Carolyn's music it is something else.
For something a bit more earthy - And then there's the Dropkick Murphys - you got to love them


Couldn't get this to embed but the link is worth it who else likes the Dropkick murphys???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bn8YQXk3b90&feature=related 

Please take the time to read this article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthne
ws/9113394/Killing-babies-no-different-from-abortion-experts-say.html#.T1EHczZFYUw.facebook

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

A group of ethicists has argued that killing young babies is no different from abortion Photo: Alamy

By Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent

1:38PM GMT 29 Feb 2012

2280 Comments

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article's authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’.

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“We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”

As such they argued it was “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”.

The authors therefore concluded that “what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled”.

They also argued that parents should be able to have the baby killed if it turned out to be disabled without their knowing before birth, for example citing that “only the 64 per cent of Down’s syndrome cases” in Europe are diagnosed by prenatal testing.

Once such children were born there was “no choice for the parents but to keep the child”, they wrote.

“To bring up such children might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care.”

However, they did not argue that some baby killings were more justifiable than others – their fundamental point was that, morally, there was no difference to abortion as already practised.

They preferred to use the phrase “after-birth abortion” rather than “infanticide” to “emphasise that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus”.

Both Minerva and Giubilini know Prof Savulescu through Oxford. Minerva was a research associate at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics until last June, when she moved to the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Melbourne University.

Giubilini, a former visiting student at Cambridge University, gave a talk in January at the Oxford Martin School – where Prof Savulescu is also a director – titled 'What is the problem with euthanasia?'

He too has gone on to Melbourne, although to the city’s Monash University. Prof Savulescu worked at both univerisities before moving to Oxford in 2002.

Defending the decision to publish in a British Medical Journal blog, Prof Savulescu, said that arguments in favour of killing newborns were “largely not new”.

What Minerva and Giubilini did was apply these arguments “in consideration of maternal and family interests”.

While accepting that many people would disagree with their arguments, he wrote: “The goal of the Journal of Medical Ethics is not to present the Truth or promote some one moral view. It is to present well reasoned argument based on widely accepted premises.”

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, he added: “This “debate” has been an example of “witch ethics” - a group of people know who the witch is and seek to burn her. It is one of the most dangerous human tendencies we have. It leads to lynching and genocide. Rather than argue and engage, there is a drive is to silence and, in the extreme, kill, based on their own moral certainty. That is not the sort of society we should live in.”

He said the journal would consider publishing an article positing that, if there was no moral difference between abortion and killing newborns, then abortion too should be illegal.

Dr Trevor Stammers, director of medical ethics at St Mary's University College, said: "If a mother does smother her child with a blanket, we say 'it's doesn't matter, she can get another one,' is that what we want to happen?

"What these young colleagues are spelling out is what we would be the inevitable end point of a road that ethical philosophers in the States and Australia have all been treading for a long time and there is certainly nothing new."

Referring to the term "after-birth abortion", Dr Stammers added: "This is just verbal manipulation that is not philosophy. I might refer to abortion henceforth as antenatal infanticide.

Martin Walker posted this about this article on his facebook page “They say of both the foetus and new born that "'neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life.’" My blood ran cold when I read the words 'a moral right to life'. I wonder when they will start testing for this amongst adults? Obviously there are some clear cases in which it would be useful to use such a criteria — some politicians would clearly fail the test as would some medical ethics researchers, newspaper owners and their offsprings and a large number of pharmaceutical company directors and executives — although in such severe and obvious cases it might be better to have stopped their parents from procreating in the first place.” This is so sickening. My husband was a Quadriplegic (25 years after work accident) until he was killed by gross medical (research??) negligence in 2007. He was so much against Euthanasia being legislated because having a good grasp of how officialdom just can help but "fix" what's not broken - he said that there would come a time when relatives were pressured to have those badly injured "put down" - about what happened to him, sadly. I cannot believe that many human beings can hold so much evil inside all the whole appearing like "normal" people. 

What a hard life my cats have.
I took this the other day as my daughter was talking to her sister on the phone -

This is Tiger a no good layabout who stalks the other cat and hides outside the laundry door and jumps on her so that Cuss the other cat - is becoming very nervous about using the kitty litter or eating/ drinking

This is cuss (rhymes with Puss) with her one white whiska...a quiet cat you seldom notice till in total frustration at being attacked by the much larger Tiger she lashes out and there is a hissing and spittng fight in almost ever room of the house - to see them sitting this close is something - but think its because they are currying favour with Alison who seems oblivious

Don't seem to have many stories to tell of things that have happened - still love my new place but i so much miss the outlook - its hard not to see anything but the fences  - must find somewhere where I can just look and enjoy - hope I never have to go to prison I think I would not do very well being confined - I find suburbia extremely confining... but am looking past that - needs must

This is really disturbing and concerns us all
From http://preventdisease.com/news/12/030512_Australian-Government-Moves-To-Quickly-Pass-Laws-To-Sterilize-Electroshock-And-Restrain-Children-Without-Parental-Consent.shtml?utm_source=030512&utm_campaign=030512&utm_medium=email

March 5, 2012

Australian Government Moves To Quickly Pass Laws To Sterilize, Electroshock, And Restrain Children Without Parental Consent

Another draft mental health bill, this time in Australia is mirroring global efforts in what is now an international and deliberate surge by government officials to remove parental consent. If passed, the shocking new law will allow children who are considered sufficiently mature, to be subjected to horrifying procedures including sterilization and electroshock.

An important message by the Director of Applied Scholastics in Western Australia based in Perth, Alison Tarrant was sent to the public on behalf ofThe Athena School. "Some very disturbing information has come across our path in relation to a Draft Mental Health Bill which concerns our precious children and our rights as parents," said Tarrant in a statement in the February 29, 2012 letter.

Tarrant initially thought the information lacked authenticity and was later astonished when she found out the document was legitimate. "When I read it I was quite shocked and thought someone was playing a joke on me but then I went onto the main websitehttp://www.mentalhealth.wa.gov.au which is the Government Department of the Mental Health Commission and looked at the actual Draft Bill," she added.

PreventDisease.com recently reported that vaccinating without parental knowledge will soon become the norm across the world. There is now a confirmed global initiative to remove any consent parents have to safeguard their children's health while simultaneously removing any chance of informed consent by those who are considered of "mature" age regardless of their status as a child or teenager. These proposed bills are poised to become law and their frequency is increasing especially in the U.S, U.K, Canada, Australia. 

Some of the more disturbing clauses draft mental health bill include:

• CHILDREN OF ANY AGE TO CONSENT TO STERILISATION: If a psychiatrist decides that a child (under 18 years) has sufficient maturity, he or she will be able to consent to sterilisation. Parental consent will not be needed. Only after the sterilisation procedure has been performed does it have to be reported and then only to the Chief Psychiatrist. [Pages: 135 & 136 of the Draft Mental Health Bill 2011]
  

• 12 YEAR OLDS WILL BE ABLE TO CONSENT TO PSYCHOSURGERY: Banned in N.S.W. and the N.T., psychosurgery irreversibly damages the brain by surgery, burning or inserting electrodes. This draft bill proposes to allow a 12 year old child, if considered to be sufficiently mature by a psychiatrist, to be able to consent to psychosurgery. Once the child has consented it goes before the Mental Health Tribunal (MHT) for approval. Parental consent is also not needed for the MHT to approve the psychosurgery. [Pages: 108, 109, 110, 197,198, 199, 213]
  

• 12 YEAR OLDS WILL BE ABLE TO CONSENT TO ELECTROSHOCK (ECT): Electroshock is hundreds of volts of electricity to the head.  Any child aged 12 and over, whom a child and adolescent psychiatrist decides is "mature" enough, will be able to consent to electroshock.  Also, once consent is given, there is no requirement for parents or anyone, including the MHT, to approve the electroshock. Electroshock should be banned. Its use on the elderly, pregnant women and children is especially destructive. [Pages: 100, 101, 103, 104, 194, 105]
  

• RESTRAINT AND SECLUSION OF CHILDREN: Children can be restrained in a psychiatric institution, with the use of mechanical restraint (manacles, belts, straps etc.) and bodily force. Chemical restraint - the use of psychiatric drugs to subdue and control the person - is not covered in the draft bill, so there are no legal safeguards to prevent its application. Death can result from all forms of restraint. [Pages: 122, 121, 113, 246]
  

• INVOLUNTARY COMMITMENT OF CHILDREN: A psychiatrist can involuntarily detain any child for up to 14 days if "suspected" of mental illness. Parents will not be able to discharge their child during this period and take them home. The psychiatrist can then make a "continuation order" to continue the detainment for up to 3 months and thereafter for each subsequent 3 month period. During detainment, the child could be drugged, restrained, secluded, given electroshock if over 12 and could be put into a ward with adults. Parental consent is not required to continue the detainment or for any treatment, including the child being placed on a legal order to continue to receive drugs at home. The MHT hold hearings on the detainment of a child, but there is no guarantee the child will be able to go home. In 2010/11 there were 1,248 hearings for all ages and only 58 people had their status changed from involuntary to voluntary. [Pages: 21, 22, 35, 19, 107, 36, 53, 54, 183 -185, 190, 191, 213, 214,18, 46, 47, 48, 65, 66, 70, 73, 75-77]
  

• WHO WILL BE ABLE TO DETAIN A CHILD IS NOT FULLY KNOWN: An "authorised mental health practitioner" can also detain a child or adult in the draft bill. Exactly who an authorised mental health practitioner is, is not defined by the draft bill. The Chief Psychiatrist can literally give anyone or any profession the power to detain someone just because he considers they are qualified and by publishing the decision in the Gazette. This clause must be removed from the Draft Mental Health Bill 2011. Only a judge or magistrate should have the power to order someone be detained, and only with full legal representation for the person facing depravation of liberty [Pages: 246, 247, 21, 22]
  

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DRAFT BILL?: The Western Australia Mental Health Commission (MHC) were responsible for writing the Draft Mental Health Bill 2011, with Mental Health Commissioner and clinical psychologist, Mr Eddie Bartnik overseeing the process.

Tarrant suggests everybody write a letter saying exactly what you think of this absurd legislation. Write expressing your objections to the Mental Health Commission and to your state legislator.

Email: on contactus@mentalhealth.wa.gov.au  or

Mail: GPO Box X2299 Perth Business Centre, W.A. 6847  

Send a copy of your objections to the Mental Health Minister, Health Minister and your local Member of Parliament. 

Find their addresses at:www.parliament.wa.gov.au/parliament/memblist.nsf/WAllMembers

Please don't let your citizenship stop you from speaking out against these human rights violations. This destructive movement against humanity is global and it's a pressing concern of grand proportions. If we don't speak out now, the health and safety of future generations are in serious jeopardy.

Vaccinating Without Parental Knowledge Soon To Become The Norm Across The World

ASH WEDNESDAY!
I was reminded of something a bit naughty I did when about 10 in order to get out of going to Ash Wednesday Mass at 7am in the morning before school. Just reading "http://byrtlesgirl.blogspot.com.au Mom's blog reminded me...

On a freezing wintry day in 1963

We were pretty unsophisticated in the early 1960's... and before TV the outside world consisted of radio maybe  and just the people you came across which was not too varied in our small country town of Aberdeen NSW. My sisters and I went to a very Catholic school and the only teachers were the NUNS. They wielded ultimate power in such lengths that in my childhood I was never scared of Mum or Dad - they were a benign power comparatively. Some of the nuns I came across were fair but i was unlucky enough to strike some rare samples who it was better to try not to cross - I posted a story about them here back in 2007 http://stirrers-dream.blogspot.com.au/2007/01/nuns-i-survived.html - its long but if you weren't here then it might give you a laugh or four.

Veronica  (Confirmation day) at rear,
June on right and myself -
who would but those awful hats for us?

Because it was a small town and the Catholic boarding school (for primary school boys) was a big establishment in the town the nuns seemed to know and see all - which is true and not a fancy. As town kids we were able to attend this excellent (for education) if savage school. Nothing much touched me emotionally that way in those days and still - I always recovered quickly from any canings or other and never really ever took it personally - you just got on with it and unless it was really bad never told anybody. I got the cane often under one nun particularly and it got so that ti didn't hurt...I just toughed it out and once over I went on out into the playground and was pretty happy most of the time. 


In that town in those days some week day mornings as well as on Sundays there would be an early morning mass. If it was a holy day such as Ash Wednesday the town kids as well as the boarders were not only expected to go to mass it was considered a MORTAL sin if you didn't. That is at age 9 or so you could go straight to HELL if you missed Mass - or so we were told.


Some part of me, my gut instinct saw through this bullshit and I knew that any God who loved me and knew me wouldn't be so silly... Ash Wednesday, 7am... Mass time. I just didn't want to go. off June and Veronica trotted..."I'll come a bit later" we lived close. (I hid out in the yard somewhere) Towards 8am I started to realise it might not have been a wise move as the Nuns always seemed to know exactly who wasn't there out of the two hundred or so kids...Its got me beat but they were always spot on...so I started to  - too late - re think my absence. as well all the people who went to Mass on Ash Wednesday had a black cross on their foreheads done in ash by the priest. Well - I could fix that I thought and went down to where Mum tipped out the ashes. Down I squatted - dipped my fingie in the blackness and collected a good amount...skulked up to the house and snuck into the bathroom just as my sisters were coming home. I drew on my forehead a big black cross, bigger and blacker than ever - they would see how Holy i was and know I had indeed been to Mass. My sisters were asking where I had been and that part was easy - "down the back and i ran home before you" - they were doubtful but you just didn't dob to the nuns because the outcome was too awful to contemplate.


Off to school... the first nun i came across was one of the kinder ones and when sh commented on not seeing me at Mass I said without blinking an eyelid, "I was there down the back. See I have the cross." I remember her looking at me in a strange way and commenting "Oh but what a big black cross you do have Therese" Thinking I had fooled her I went on my merry way... I know I got into some trouble over it later  - mainly being questioned intensively - but it can't have been too bad because deep down my survival instinct let me know not to change my story, insist I had been there and they really couldn't prove it anyway. I remember when I came home from school still proudly wearing my Ash Wednesday cross Mum looked at me strangely and said "Maybe you might need to wash that off by now" Off to the mirror and there it was - what had seemed such a good imitation of the priest's delicate and gentle efforts was there bigger because of smudging and all over my forehead...I think I got away with that one - and somehow I know God has a good sense of the ridiculous - he made us humans after all.

In our old backyard so many years ago

Anne, Mum, Veronica and I 1971 in our backyard in Aberdeen NSW

1971 to be precise. I may have posted this a few years ago - its hard to remember - have been posting since 2005. I just came across this today. Our mum is 2nd from right. She is only 44. its two years after our Dad was killed and she was going through really hard times emotionally and financially. She was always happy towards us but I now know what her alone times were like. There was no help in those days for grief and struggle like hers. Anne the youngest is to her left. Veronica on her left and I am on the right. I was 17 and had just left home. I even remember clearly the pattern and colours on the little quilt we were sitting upon. There was nothing my sisters and I thought we didn't know in our late teens...but what a lot we had to learn only to find myself now 14 years older than my mum was in this photo... we are so very lucky to have the few black and white photos we have ...I rather doubt memories would be so very clear without them. Mum was always the Mother but as well as that she was a best friend and the link still remains all these long years since her death in 1993. Just a memory is all.