The garden, despite the frost a few days ago, it doing rather well. The frost killed off the top leaves on a lot of my plants, but the plants haven’t died, thank God and they’re flowering now.
I’m crossing my fingers that everything goes well from here.
For more Sunday Selections, go and see Frogpondsrock
I originally wrote this in August 2009, after Nathan and I witnessed the middle of a flock of birds falling out of the sky. In light of recent events with birds dropping dead in Arkansas, Louisiana and now Sweden, I thought I’d repost it.
***
A few days ago, our local newspaper ran a story on sparrows being found dead throughout Hobart, or disappearing entirely.
Nathan and I read it and remarked that there were entirely too many sparrows about in our parts and good riddance. We were talking about it again today as we were driving. We pointed out the huge flocks of sparrows (and starlings) sitting on the fences and power lines.
Then we saw the weirdest thing ever.
A group of sparrows flew towards the road. There were probably 50-60 birds? As they flew in a group, they banked over the Highway to turn around …
… and the middle just fell out of the group. Mid flight, twenty birds dropped to the ground dead. Nathan and I were stunned. It wasn’t the kind of thing we were expecting to see at all.
As we drove through the dead birds littering the Highway, I peered out of the window expecting to see one or two shaking out their feathers and hopping away, stunned, but not dead.
No.
They were dead.
Twenty or so birds, just fell out of the sky with no warning. All at once.
30 metres up the road, another six or seven birds were dead in a group on the road.
It was honestly the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.
Ever.
***
Afterwards, the deaths were deemed to be caused by Salmonella poisoning, but I’m not convinced. Surely if it were Salmonella poisoning, they would have died on the ground, not on the wing and all at once?
Poor retail millionaires. It’s our fault they aren’t making as much money anymore. Instead of a 45ft yacht, they had to buy the 30ft one. Such a sacrifice they’ve been making and now, they’re banding together to let us know how angry they are about their profit margins.
The loudest of these millionaires is one Gerry Harvey, founder of Harvey Norman, who by all accounts, is having to cut down on his caviar fund, all because I bought my kids toys online this Christmas.
“You’ve got every second person in the country importing things from overseas, evading duty, not paying sales tax,” he said. ”You’ve got an awful lot of retailers that are going to be going broke after Christmas.’‘ [source]
He’s been all over my TV and the newspapers, complaining about online shopping. The way he speaks, you’d think that online shopping was the devil incarnate.
Can we all hear the sad music playing?
I shop online, for a variety of reasons.
I have two small children, with sensory issues, among other things. I also have incredibly bendy joints, that dislocate regularly. Getting into a shopping centre isn’t easy for me.
I tried to shop in store before Christmas and it didn’t end all that well. I tried to browse the books, as quickly as I could, knowing that I had my partner and the kids (4 and almost 2) in tow. 30 seconds into browsing, my son bolted. I chased him and brought him back to the books, wherein he promptly melted down. Screaming at my feet, I couldn’t look at books anymore. Amy was getting overwhelmed with her brother screaming and started to whine.
I picked Isaac up and slung him under my arm, dislocating a few ribs in the process. My partner grabbed Amy. We looked at each other and left, fast. We’d been in the shop for 5 minutes and bought nothing.
I ended up buying all the kids presents online, slowly. My son has a birthday in a fortnight, his presents should be arriving in the mail this week.
We live an hour from the major city, so shopping isn’t something that we can do on a whim. It takes time and preparation. It’s much easier for me to just sit down with a cup of tea after the kids are in bed and order online what we need, as the actual logistics of remembering to buy new fitted sheets for the beds (because Amy cut holes in our other ones with scissors) or getting to the DVD section, it’s a bit beyond what I find easy.
At the end of the day though, it’s all about price. We survive on a shoestring budget and shopping online saves money. With cheaper products, even with shipping included, it works out better for us. We don’t have to waste petrol on a trip to town, I don’t get exhausted and dislocate things and the kids don’t spend the next few hours screaming. Instead, I wait for the postman each morning, when my parcels are delivered direct to my door. Win win.
Gerry Harvey expected the Internet and online shopping to be a passing fad, that he refused to participate in. This is what he had to say just two years ago:
“I’ve got an online part of my business, but I definitely would not put more into it. That’d be a recipe for a disaster.”
“Online people do not make any money,” Harvey also told SmartCompany. “The whole world was conned with online retailing. People say I’m a dinosaur, and I’ve had people coming to me with sites and saying, ‘Oh, look at this, they have 10,000 or 20,000 hits!’ – but it’s a con, a complete con.” [source]
Poor Gerry Harvey. If we’re not careful, next time we see him he’ll be sitting on a street corner, begging for money so he can buy some smoked salmon, and it will be all our fault.
Because of online shopping, dollars have been taken away from a very rich man.
Shame on us for wanting better deals and spending our dollars carefully.
Shame on us.
Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last couple of weeks, then you would have seen the AFL St Kilda scandal playing out on mainstream media and social media across the board. A football player was photographed naked, posed with a team mate holding a condom to his penis and eventually, it showed up on facebook, helped along by a 17 year old girl.
The “St Kilda Schoolgirl” as she’s been dubbed on media outlets, has been crucified by the mainstream media and hung out to dry by the AFL. According to information coming out, she met the St Kilda players when they held a football clinic at her school. She was 16. A few weeks later, she waited outside of their changing rooms, to meet them again.
By all accounts, she was a star struck girl.
Of course, we all know how the story goes. She ended up pregnant and was treated badly by the AFL when she went to them about it. That was nothing compared to how they treated her when she released the photos.
She’s been called a slut, a gold digger, a whore. Her reputation has been dragged through the mud, with the Saints trying to crucify her. What, for the crime of posting a naked photo of a player?
I’m sorry, did the NRL chase down and try to crucify the person who released the photo of player Joel Monaghan engaged in a lewd act with a dog? No. No they did not.
AFL chief Andrew Demetriou has apparently had over 20 meetings with this girl. Now, personally, I can’t see any reason for him to meet with her that many times – unless of course he was looking to get into her pants as well. Now that’s just my opinion of course, but does the AFL normally provide personal ‘counselling’ for every woman treated badly by the players? Methinks if they did that, there wouldn’t be time to actually organise any football games.
I am disgusted that the St Kilda football club has taken after this girl like a pack of wolves. Threatening to sue her for everything under the sun, for damages lasting possibly 15 years? Bullying is never okay, especially when you’re a multi-million dollar football club.
At the end of the day, this girl is 17. She’s a young girl, out of her depth and by all accounts, deeply stressed by the portrayal of herself in the media.
And so I’m asking, why aren’t we outraged by her treatment? As women, as mothers, why aren’t we sticking up for this girl? She might have done some stupid things, but she is seventeen. We all did stupid things as teenagers.
Imagine if it were your daughter, or your niece, or your sister. Imagine if they’d been put in this situation by heavy weights at the AFL and in the media. How would you feel, to see comments like this directed at her?
I hope they take you for everything you have you little gold digger. Its great that now the tables have turned and youve lost your “power” that your signing a different song. If I had a kid like you i’d kick your arse and kick you out and be ashamed that I could produce something as nasty and tacky as you are. Youre not sorry, youre just sorry things havent gone your way. Enjoy being broke and having a bad rep for the rest of your life, youve earned it. If i see you in the street I’ll be sure to spit in your face.
How is a reaction like that warranted?
I am disgusted at the way she is being treated.
She deserves our support, not to be abused even further.
I thought Australia was better than this. Apparently we are, but only when it doesn’t involve our football “stars”.
Discuss.
When a boat crashed into the rocks on Christmas Island last week, I watched the news reports come in and cried. All those families torn apart. They’d gone through so much to get to Australia, to somewhere where they would hopefully be able to find a new life and with one big wave, that hope was dashed.
Parents held their babies up above the water, screaming for help, while residents of the Island threw life jackets, only to watch the life jackets torn away and the babies drown. So much floating debris, that they couldn’t see what was wood and what was human anymore.
The death toll is expected to rise as high as 50, with exact numbers not being known. Some bodies won’t be recovered.
Three children were left orphaned. Can you imagine that? Arriving in a new land, a land that your parents have likely promised will be free of death, only to have your parents drown, leaving you alone in a foreign country. Those children are in the Christmas Island Detention Centre now, not knowing their fate. There are over 150 children locked up there.
I’ve been reading the news reports and stupidly, some of the comments below them. To the person who declared ‘We don’t want them here’, I’d like to know: Where did your family come from that you can afford to be so arrogant about the arrival of families who need our help? There is a very good chance they didn’t want to be here either, however their need to be here outweighs everything.
Thinking about it, would you want to leave your home, your extended family, your country and your culture on a whim, forever? No. It takes some major trauma to have to decide that a foreign country is your only hope. That’s why they’re asylum seekers, not holiday makers.
We don’t know their stories, or their horror. We don’t know what they were fleeing from. To trust their lives and the lives of their family to a people smuggler and boat that, at the end of the day, didn’t hold up so well, somehow I’d hedge a bet that it wasn’t rising rates and taxes that forced them here.
I am ashamed that in the wake of this tragedy, our politicians are using it as a stone to throw at each other, the ‘Boat People’ stone. It isn’t constructive to throw rocks and portion blame at this time, not when you could be using your collective powers to organise a better solution, a plan so that this doesn’t happen again. A decisive agreement on what should happen once they’re here, that is in the best interest of these human beings, not in the best interest of your polls.
Screeching at the cameras that you will ‘STOP THE BOATS’ is equally unproductive. By all accounts, the amount of asylum seekers who have made it to Australian shores this year aren’t in danger of flooding us out of our own country, like some people fear. “Boat people” has turned into a general term thrown around as a fear mongering tool that is handy for point scoring.
It makes me wonder if the politicians have forgotten that at the heart of this aren’t people with fangs and giant claws, but babies and mothers. Fathers holding their daughters, begging for them to be saved and now, orphans. They are families who are in search of a better life, one without starvation, or murder on the horizon. Not monsters who need to be stopped.
In a shining beacon of hope however, I’ve gotten to watch Louisa move heaven and earth to get gifts to the children incarcerated on Christmas Island. She’s organised for the parcel to make its way onto a Virgin Blue flight and clear customs quickly, in time for Christmas morning.
Louisa has helped me feel less ashamed to be Australian today. With her idea and the blogospheres support, amazing things have happened in the last few days. Blogging has, yet again, reminded me about the best in people, instead of showing me the worst in them.
So, thank you, to every single person who donated, who shared the love and who helped out. You people are amazing.
And to our politicians, maybe you should be looking at the outpouring of love coming from this community and realising that not all Australians are scared of The Boat People monsters that you created. Most Australians are sympathetic and think that they deserve to be here, in this so called Lucky Country.
Maybe you can see that too.
One day.