Photos… what do you do with them again?

It’s been so long since I updated my gallery, I can hardly remember what to do. But luckily it’s pretty straightforward and you should be able to find some photos from our time at Molloy Island there now.

Tonight My brother, Mum and Dad came over for dinner. M is heading over to Italy early and so it was a chance to catch up before he goes. The silly boy is having pizza with his mates tomorrow night - why would you have pizza before going to Italy - surely you should at least have Thai??!

I suspect Dippity will make history

Yes she is EIGHT! And had a delightful day. Thanks to everyone who made her feel special today, she has gone to bed feeling much loved.

And speaking of my favourite saying, I wrote today to Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who first wrote the line “Well behaved women seldom make history”, and asked her the circumstances of her most famous line. I reprint her reply below with the news that she is currently writing a book - due to be published in 2006/7 - of the same title. She writes: “Here are a few sentences from the introduction that will explain. . .

“I owe this curious fame to a single line from a scholarly article I published in 1976. In the opening paragraph, I wrote, “Well-behaved womenseldom make history.” That sentence, ripped from its context and slightly altered, escaped into the big wide world in 1995 when journalist Kay Mills used it as an epigraph in From Pocahontas to Power Suits, a popular history of American women. Apparently quoting from memory, Mills changed the word seldom to rarely.

“Her misquote didn’t change the point. According to my dictionary, seldom and rarely mean the same thing: “Well-behaved women infrequently, or on few occasions make history.” The popularity of my slogan may be one of those occasions. My original article was a study of the well-behaved women celebrated in Puritan funeral sermons.

“In 1996, a young women named Jill Portugal found Mills’s version of my sentence in her roommate’s copy of the New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women. She wrote me from Oregon asking permission to print it on tee-shirts. I was amused by her request, and since I had a daughter the same age who was living in Oregon and trying to start a little business, I told her to go ahead. What harm could it do? The success of her enterprise surprised both of us. A plain white tee-shirt with the words “Well-behaved women rarely make history” printed in black Roman type became the best-selling item in her line. Portugal calls her company “one angry girl designs”. Committed to “taking over the world one tee-shirt at a time,” she fights sexual harassment, rape, pornography, and what she calls “Fascist Beauty Standards.”

Her success inspired imitators. My runaway sentence now keeps company with anarchists, hedonists, would-be witches, political activists of many descriptions, and quite a few well-behaved women. It has been featured in CosmoGirl, the Christian Science Monitor, and Creative Keepsake Scrapbooking Magazine. According to news reports, it was a favorite of the pioneering computer scientist Anita Borg. The comic Sweet Potato Queenshave adopted it as an “official maxim”, selling their own pink and green version of the tee-shirt alongside one that reads, “Never Wear Panties to a Party”.”

I actually get a lot of fan mail. I am amazed, amused, and puzzled about this whole thing. Hence the book, which will be a brief, but I hope unusual, introduction to women’s history. I can’t resist this “teaching moment”. If you want to look at the original article, here is the cite: “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735,” American Quarterly 28 (1976): 20-40

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Phillips Professor of Early American History
Harvard University

Inquest Day 3

I would like to start today’s report by saying that in all this talk of take off speeds and weights and runway distance and part composition, and with rows of suits and competing interests and shifting blame that we are talking about the death of my very dear friend. Of a real person. Which is why I’m posting this photo of Harry and the fabulous Janet.

Today the final passenger of the aircraft, Ozan spoke via telephone in the US. I wasn’t there for his testimony but read the transcript later. He describes how Harry fell against him on impact and that he couldn’t rouse him.

Then the court went out to Jandakot.

Back at Number 10 in the afternoon we listened to the pilot’s statements and cross by the counsel for the coroner. The pilot has a smoker’s voice, not deep but gravelly, like a rumble. He looks old in the witness box and it is hard not to feel some sympathy for him.

He was the last person alive today to see our Harry. Listening to him describe how he left the plane and left Harry was very hard to hear. But I wanted to hear it. I wanted to know every detail of his last minutes. And it WAS shocking. We hadn’t heard or read his testimony before. I cannot tell you how devastating it was.

This is such an exercise in not judging. I sit there and struggle not to judge. I wasn’t there. I don’t know how I would have reacted. I can rationally understand their panic. But deep down, there is a part of me, an irrational part of me perhaps, a part of me I’m not sure I want to own, who wishes they had been more noble and not left my friend behind.

Yesterday Harry’s mum said to me: “It doesn’t matter, I don’t care what they find, what they say - nothing will bring my Harry back.” Those words haunt me today.

Two more things from today: How I wish they would say his last name correctly. There is NO SECOND ‘R’ in his surname!

And one more thing: Apparently Ozan was asked if he had brought any manuals onto the flight with him, and Mike turned round and said : “We didn’t need manuals, we had Harry.”

I’m going south this weekend. If things were different I may have been going down with Harry and his family too. I wish they were different.

Inquest Day 2

Today was very different at Courtroom 10. It was the start of the personal testimony from the two wives of the men who had died and the fellows who survived the crash.

Listening to J talk about Harry was lovely - I was transported back to that big loud, sometimes clumsy, lovable Greek guy that I knew - with a razor sharp intellect and a generous heart. It was hard to accept again that he was no longer a part of our lives.

As well we got to hear about Steve and I was left with the wistful wish that I had met him.

The guy from Harry’s company was hopeless I’m sorry to say. It was as if they had looked at who was available from the company to speak and then chosen the least able. He might be a nice guy, I don’t know him but he was ill prepared and ill chosen for his task. You could not believe that the company had done even the most basic research. If they had, they certainly had not passed the results on to their spokesman. I think a few of us were frustrated and disappointed with his testimony and disappointed that they appeared to treat the court and their fallen comrades with such contempt.

Then we heard from two of the guys who were in the plane when it went down. They described the panic to get out of the plane after the flight went down. The darkness in the cabin. The smoke. They said they didn’t see anyone (certainly not Harry) as they exited the plane. It is hard to believe they didn’t see him but who knows what it must have been like. They were lucky to survive. It is just heartbreaking for us that Harry didn’t.

Tomorrow we hear from the third passenger to survive and the pilot. I don’t envy him.

Inquest Day One

The overall impression one is left with after sitting in the Coroner’s Court today is that the only people this is for are the lawyers. There is no attempt by the Coronor Mr Hope to project his voice above a mumble and for us sitting behind three rows of lawyers and their assistants there is no hope of hearing what is going on. They know there are family members with hearing difficulties on top of that in the gallery. J is sat right up the front where she can hear and where the counsel can see her. She who has been so affected by the crash.

Grey pinstripe is the fashionable suit material for lawyers this year by the way.

When proceedings started this morning the courtroom was packed. Standing room only. With the media bunched near the door on spare chairs. The Coroner mumbled something and made all the counsel stand up and explain why they felt they needed to be there. He then suggested that they wouldn’t all need to be there all the time. Hmmm. Noone made any move to leave.

Then the Coroner’s man got up and went through his opening statement and about two hours later we heard the first witness - the police investigator. Two things stay in my memory from his testimony. The fact that he pronounced debris as day-briss and he called CALM - Conversation and Land Management. We could have used some conversation management when the questions started. The guy from the airport went on forever.

We heard the recording from the Air Traffic Control - the silences more eloquent than the voices bristling with three letter acronyms. We saw vision from Channel 9 - no sound - not very clear. And we saw film taken by the police at the scene including Harry’s covered body. It was in black and white and had the sounds of the cameraman walking through the bush -you know that crackling sound - and camera shutters going off. You could see the flashes from the camera. The courtroom was silent apart from Harry’s mum softly weeping behind me. It was surreal and I couldn’t connect in my mind the footage with the vibrant memories I have of my friend.

Afterwards - and it seemed to finish abruptly at about 2.30pm - we stood around outside while J had a meeting with her lawyer. The media quite sweetly asked if we would be leaving through the front entrance and kept coming up while we were waiting. Eventually J came out and we formed a group and walked out together through the front doors and out.

All this grief. All this money spent on lawyers, reporting, investigating. All this. For a $1000 part.

Jobs you may not have known existed

I may appear to be a bit of a sad geek but I have to share with you some recent excitement in my life. As you may know I play dungeons and dragons and when we play we use little figurines to represent our characters. They come in a silver metal like the picture to the right. But many players like to paint their figurines to give them a little more… personality.

I came across a website called Tiny Souls (thanks Sean) and enquired about getting my little figurine painted. It turned out that Zordana or Irene lives in Perth - hooray! So after an email conversation where we discussed hair colour and general personality I packed my little Azimuth - a lawful good cleric for those in the know - in a padded envelope off to Irene and waited. (For those of your familiar with Reaper minis, the model in question is Danra, a human druid - ah well)

In what seemed no time at all Irene had painted my little cleric but not only that had added grass and flowers! We went out to visit her and pick up my Azimuth. It was a chance to see how she worked.

Irene has just received a collection of paints from the UK with which to paint the miniatures. She uses a number 5/0 - 20/0 brushes - very small! The secret apparently is in the thinning of the paints. Find out more as she describes how she painted Azimuth on her own webpage.

This picture is just so you can see how small the figurines actually are! Irene paints commissions and also for competitions. You can also find her figurines on Ebay. She paints figurines as a fulltime job.

Bloody impressive eh? Of course now I’m a bit nervous to use her during the game…

Last night went to see The Sea Inside (Mar Adentro) which depicts the true story of Ramon Sanpedro who fought for his right to die with dignity. He had lived with his quadraplegia for 29 years since diving into a shallow sea. I totally recommend seeing it. The cinematography is exquisite and the acting sublime. Yes it is a harrowing topic but I was glued to the screen - it is above all about love. It’s on limited release and well deserves it’s best foreign film Oscar.

Can you write?

Have you heard about the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. All you need to do is write a 600 word story. Let me tell you - that is not a long story - and send it off. It sounds like fun and I would so love to be able to say that I knew a person who won - or was a finalist. Go on - you can do it!

I have. Yes I’m actually in charge of a similar thing for the Regional Production Fund so I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see if I could do what I am exhorting others to do for this project. It didn’t take me long to write 700 words so some editing was required.

Anyway perhaps if you’re brave enough to enter we could put a few of them online here…I’ll show you mine if you show me yours!

The funeral was yesterday.

It was a very personal lovely tribute and celebration of my friend’s wife. And I think he should be proud of his words especially. Afterward there was a wake at the sister’s house which was lovely too. Lots of people came back to the house.

Isn’t it strange when you go to somewhere like a funeral and you end up meeting people you haven’t seen for ages and had no idea they knew the person you knew. Yesterday I met up with Rebecca - who used to work with Rory - she came to our wedding and we had lost touch with her over the years. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Then there was this fellow with red hair who I know from somewhere - but where? - and a lady who had been at the pastel course I had done with Janet earlier in the year… And of course the uni dnd crowd…

Strange isn’t it? Death bringing lives together again.

Charles and Camilla

I don’t know about you but I think it’s great that Charles is finally marrying Camilla. He should have done it when he was 20 or whenever it was he fell in love with her but even so - I’m glad they are tying the knot.

I think it’s romantic. It’s like reading a Jeffrey Archer or maybe even Barbara Cartland novel (wasn’t she Princess Di’s relation?? or am I making that up). After years of being in love. Him being forced into marriage with a woman he had nothing in common with, his wife going off the rails and taking the public with her. Her tragic death. His mistress’s image in the media. And now finally their marriage - and a pope dies to even try and derail that! If you read this in a novel you would call the plot far fetched - if you were being kind.

So good on ya Charles. A more constant lover most of us would only dream of. Just because you don’t have movie star good looks doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy love. And good on you Camilla. I hope you both have a long and happy marriage and Charles, that you get to become king… if that’s what you want.

My boy

Just returned from this morning’s ANZAC day ceremony at the school where my son had a speaking role. He had to introduce a poem called Sir which was read out by a fellow classmate. Hugo had been practicing for the past few days and had learned his piece by heart. Rory and I had coached him to speak out, only using the words on the card as prompts.

He did brilliantly. Only looked at the words once or twice and only to get his place. He spoke out loudly and clearly - into the microphone - and didn’t stumble. He was in fact the only person we could hear - and that includes the Principal. We were so proud of him.

The service was lovely too. I’m impressed by the quality and solemnity of the service which included some moving songs, poetry, history, wreaths and a flag raising ceremony.

On the way out I read some of the pieces the kids had written about ANZAC day. Some of them were beautiful. One was very funny. I’m going to sneak into the school and write the words down so I can share them with you… come back soon!

Goodbyes and Goodness

I’m being a bit better on the diet front. Well apart from the chocolate. I’ve been eating fish and salad for dinner. Salad rolls for lunch. Muesli for breakfast. Apples for snacks. Apart from the chocolate. I did have a glass of wine yesterday evening but I had two AFDs before that.

Sophie has suggested a hypnotherapist and as always when I am feeling appallingly fat, I received another Weightwatchers flyer in the post.

The problem is not enough exercise… and overeating.

But all of this pales into insignificance.

A friend of mine lost his wife yesterday. This isn’t supposed to happen. We’re still young.

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