"People of the parish..."

I still get the weekly church "bulletin" - or "pew sheet". It comes via email early on Sunday mornings. 

It gives me an idea of what is going on. There are notices about funerals, weddings and the occasional baptism. The usual notice about the weekly barbecue held outside the big hardware and gardening centre is there. There are messages about other events like a film morning or an afternoon tea. Requests for donations for the homeless, for the Christmas hampers and so on appear too.

This week there was also a request for people to write about "people of the parish". It is one of those things that has apparently been decided on for their 175 year celebrations. The request was for two hundred and fifty word contributions about people and their contribution to the life of the church. I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen.

"Cat..." and then, "You can write things..." and "Do you think you could write something..." and "I have to write something but I don't know what to say..." and.... 

Writing just two hundred and fifty words about someone's contribution to a complex place like that is not easy. I will do it because I will write about my own parents and someone who went to teacher-training college with my mother. 

Looking up that other person's details to remind myself was an odd experience. It was a jolt to be reminded of just how different the world is now.  M.... was born at the end of WWI. She grew up in a tiny rural community and travelled the seven kilometres to school in a horse drawn cart. She did a year as a "junior teacher" (an untrained teacher) before going to teacher training college. Her early career was tiny one teacher schools in remote places where the children taught her as much as she taught them.  Farm life and those experiences made her into a very practical and able person. M... ended her career as the head of a big junior school. She had worked for the same employer, the state's education department, all her working life. 

It is nothing like that now. There are no junior teachers or teacher training colleges. The tiny schools have been closed and children go longer distances to "area" schools. There is no continuity of employment. You go from one "contract" to another. The work of the head of any school is vastly different.  

I am not sure we are better off, indeed certain we are not. M... contributed a lot to the education system. And, she contributed a lot to her church. She was the sort of person who was there and involved, a person to be found in the kitchen or behind the fundraising stall. That stall would contain something she had baked or made and it would be baked or made well.

She eventually moved back to her rural roots so as to be closer to her extended family. I kept up contact with her after my mother died.  When she could no longer correspond due to a stroke her niece wrote to me and asked if I would go on writing to her. She wanted to know what was going on at "her" church, about the people who had been her "family". I did it because I thought she needed to know.

I doubt that sort of thing happens much now. I will help people write things and perhaps one day one of their grandchildren or great grandchildren will read about it and wonder at how different things were "back then".  

There will likely be an interest rate

rise tomorrow. It seems everyone is forecasting a "twenty-five basis point" rise...or a quarter of one percent or around another twenty-five to thirty dollars a week on the "average" home loan. Rent will rise too.

I am told there will be people who "go under" or "default" or "go to just paying the interest" on the loan. This includes "first home buyers" who have a "package". 

House values have also dropped. There are now people who owe more than their house would fetch on the open market. That is likely to send even more spiralling downwards.

It is a complex mess and it has largely been created by a demand for something we have never been able to afford. Not everyone will agree with me over that but I still feel it is likely.

There is a "satellite city" north of this one. It was "planned" and it was thought it would be a success. The late and much missed Queen Elizabeth allowed it to be named after her, opened some of it when she was here and almost certainly watched in despair at what happened. 

A great many people were moved into cheap housing all at the same time. Many of them were "working class". They worked at the sort of jobs which have now largely disappeared. Qualifications for alternative employment are low. The unemployment rate in that area is high, very high. There are high numbers of single mothers. Many of them were very young when they had their first child. The majority of them now rent. Social welfare housing is high. It always was.

As an experiment in social engineering it was a failure. Now it seems the government is attempting to repeat the experiment but add in "home ownership". People are being told their dream of a solid construction home with a minimum of three bedrooms on an individual block is still possible.  They are being told that this is not just what they should aspire to but what they should expect, what they have some sort of "right" to own.

It is unrealistic. In the twenty-five or more years before a mortgage is paid off many of these people will be unemployed. Their jobs will no longer exist. 

Many of these same people will be living in social isolation, isolation brought on by working conditions and "work from home" policies. It will be isolation increased by the "entertainment" available at the price of a television set and a remote control. Yes, some of them will have played sport when young but will those team friendships last? Like it or not "sport" friendships are not the same as those developed over active participation in other common interests.

That likely interest rate hike is going to isolate many people even more. We do not seem to be learning from past mistakes.  

 

 

"I have found a photograph

of E... and I wondered if you would like it?" came the text message. It was one of those messages that are unexpected. It was not simply the information in it but the contact from the person sending it. P... is in her nineties and I would not have been sure she would know how to send a text message of that length. I think she is rather better at it than I am.

I called her back, had a short chat and agreed it would be good to have the photograph. It was always E... behind the camera and I have never had one of her. 

Perhaps it was just one of those weeks where that sort of thing happens. Two days later I saw someone who had been to school with E...  O... was a "junior" when E... was a "senior" but they had known one another. They sang together in the choir.

O...still sings in choirs. We have known one another since Guide camp days. I went to the university choral society with her. I cannot sing but their director had other uses for me.  E... was a member of that in her university days too. 

O... and I reminisced about that. When I left her to go on her way in the supermarket I thought about connections, connections with the past. There are not a lot of those connections in my life. I moved around too often. I have no connections with my school days. I was much the youngest in my first year at university and that was on the other side of the world. It does not make for the sort of long-term relationships which can arise from spending your childhood and adolescence in one place.

And it made me think of the woman who has just lost her appeal against her conviction for the murder of three people and the attempted murder of a fourth. She still denies any wrong doing. She will almost certainly go on doing that. She will almost certainly die in prison. She will have no long term connections with anyone. Her fellow inmates will come and go. The guards will come and go. Her children, if they visit, will come less often as the years go by. It just seems such an immense waste of a life. 

Perhaps that too is why photographs are so important. They are a reminder of and a connection with the past.  

Youth suicide is not

"because of social media" or "bullying". Those things may contribute immensely to it but the problems associated with suicide are much deeper and more complex than that. 

I cannot claim any sort of expertise on the subject. I have read articles, books, papers and more. I will almost certainly read more. They will no doubt make me feel the same sort of sick despair that anyone should feel so worthless and such a burden that taking their own life is seen as the solution.

What I can claim is a belief that we are more aware of the issues. I also believe that some of the things that might help are not being recognised. 

As a child and a teenager the late Senior Cat's social life revolved around school and church. The same was true of many of his friends. Their mothers were, for the most part, "stay at home". Their fathers were in steady employment. The vast majority of people were not wealthy but they had housing and food. They made their own entertainment because there was no television, limited radio (for which you needed a licence and could only hear inside a building) and no "social media". If your father read a newspaper you might see it. He might tell you something about politics and you would hear about major events. 

It was not that different for me or my brother. Our social life was Guides and Scouts, Rural Youth and the church youth club. We did not "party" or "go out clubbing". I do not know of anyone who did. There was no money for that. 

There was "sport" of course. There were plenty of people our age who played football, cricket, netball and tennis. Involvement in those activities for my brother would have meant my parents being able to transport him to matches. He was not interested. They did not have time. 

Lack of involvement in sport did not really matter too much. We were still patrol leaders in Guides and Scouts and on the working parties in Rural Youth. We played our parts in youth club events and argued about whether it was right to "mow hay on Sundays". There were debates and school "socials" where we had folk dancing because the Seventh Day Adventists could not come if it was a "two step" or a "waltz". 

At home at night and when not studying for an exam or doing farm work we read books and more books. We drew and painted, knitted and sewed, made models from balsa and "crystal sets" from kits. We had to find our own entertainment. Communicating with a friend outside of school meant you made the arrangement before leaving school for the day. There might be a phone call but that was about it. Our parents usually knew where we were because arrangements had to be made in advance. It was very, very unusual for anyone still at school to have a car. If you lived in the city you took the bus or the train or rode your push bike.

Yes, it was different. We knew who the real isolates were. They could not hide it the way it can now be hidden. Guides and Scouts are no longer as popular. They have had to deal with other issues, some of them very nasty issues indeed. Rural youth group membership has dropped too, as has the rural population.  The number of people who attend church has also dropped. Even if you want a weekly church service you can "attend" via a zoom link. Is that the same as actually dressing in your best, going there and standing around chatting afterward? I doubt it.  Clubs of all sorts have a dropping membership. People do not want to take on the responsibility for running them, especially when the rules and regulations for such events seem to increase each time you meet.

And perhaps that is where things have really started to go wrong. It is not social media as such but the expectation that all we need to do to be entertained is push a button on a remote control and sit there. We do not need to make an effort to be entertained any more.  

If we do that as adults then the next generations will expect to do the same. They will not have the inner resources to entertain themselves. Young and healthy? You are expected to go and play sport for entertainment and friendship but it really is not the answer. There is much more to life and social life than that. We must, absolutely must, teach the generations below us the skills which will allow them to entertain themselves. It won't stop all suicides but it will surely help some of them be more aware.    

Did you have birthday parties

as a child? You must know what I mean a party on or near your birthday with a special cake, your friends running madly around after you had opened the presents they had given you, that special "party dress" or new t-shirt with the racing car on the front. There would be raspberry cordial, tiny pies and pasties, jelly and ice cream. Games would be organised by the adults when you would rather just have been racing around with the new football or giggling over the toy "make up". 

I never actually went to a party like that but I did hear about them, a lot of them. We did not have them in our family but I know other people did. As children I don't think we really missed them. Very little fuss was made about birthdays. It would be fair to say none was made about mine. It is on a day of the year when most people are getting ready to party. It was always in the middle of the school holidays. Two of my three siblings faced the same problem as did my parents. Birthday parties were not a thing in our family.

But they are in some families. It seems some people are going to extreme lengths even when money is short. There is a story in this morning's paper about a couple who have just spent ten thousand dollars on a birthday party for their one year old daughter, a party they acknowledge she will not even remember. Another mother has admitted to lesser expenditure, around a thousand dollars for a nine year old.

Perhaps there is something wrong with me but I found the first one ridiculous and the second one not much less so. How can you justify spending that sort of money on that sort of event? 

The one year old will not remember. When she turns two it will not matter if her parents finally see sense and don't even bother with a party. At two years of age she will not remember either.

It is different for the nine year old. She will remember. What will she expect at ten, at eleven, at twelve and on into her teens? Will she expect bigger and better every year? What else will she expect? 

The Senior Cat was sometimes asked to a child's birthday party as "the magician". The occasions he enjoyed the most were the smaller events. There would be just a few children. The event would be held in the birthday child's home. On one occasion there were just four young guests and he spent time teaching them how to do a simple trick. The mother later told him it had been voted "the best party ever". Her children played at being magicians for months afterwards.

I am not a "party" sort of person but I know some people enjoy them. Am I wrong to suggest that children do not need expensive parties, do not really appreciate them? I still think it would be better to put the money aside so they can do or have something they really need later in life and just have a simple celebration.   

There is a "musical dice" game

that can be played on the internet. It consists of a sixteen by twelve grid. You use two dice, roll them together and then add the numbers. You can then click on the relevant box in the grid and repeat the process until another eleven times. When that is done you can "play" the "music" you have "composed". 

If the person who introduced me to this rather fascinating little page is correct (and he has a reputation for that and the quirky) then it is based on a game invented by Mozart. It is quite likely. Mozart would likely have had fun getting others to roll the dice. He would then likely have played something within the parameters that had been set. He would also have had the capacity to turn almost anything into something that could be played with many variations. (If you doubt me then find his variations on what most of us know as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.) 

I tried another way of "playing" the game without the dice. The result is, as I thought it would be, much the same. The sound is pleasant enough to the ear but it all sounds very similar. It is a bit of fun - and that is all it is. I am not "composing music".  I have absolutely no idea how to set about that. I can, up to a point, read music but that is all. 

The idea that those "training artificial intelligence" should be permitted to use, without payment, the work of actual musicians or writers or artists or anyone else who creates something is surely on this level. It is not "composing" or "writing" or "making" anything at all. It may seem that way to someone who does not have those skills but it does not have depth. It does not have those tiny little things which we, often unconsciously, recognise as "human". 

In an attempt to get "data centres" built and running in this country the Prime Minister wants to change the law. It would mean anyone who creates anything will need to "opt out" rather than "opt in". It will allow those "training" AI to take the work of actual human beings and use it without paying for it. If that happens it will not allow theft but we will be inundated with music, books and more which will all lack that "something" which genuinely satisfies us.    

I have not met my local/state member

of parliament. She is new. 

I did not vote for her. Voting for her would have been to vote for more than just inexperience. The alternative was not a lot better but I felt it was likely to have proved better. 

I have not changed my mind about that. It has been reinforced in recent days. Although she lacked any experience as a local member she was catapulted straight into a ministry, one of the most difficult ministries of all. She is also responsible for representing the members of her electorate. It is what she was elected to do.

There is a major construction underway in this state. There are road works and tunnels. When finished it will get some drivers to their destinations about ten minutes faster at the cost of billions of dollars. Someone, somewhere, thought this was a good idea.

Like any other major project the cost has blown out. It was always going to blow out. One of the major contractors, previously delighted to have obtained the work, is now wishing he had never heard of the project. He has been subjected to threats and violence. His family home was shot at while his elderly mother and his young daughter were there. A business he owned was burnt to the ground. He was refusing to pay the "fees" demanded by those who try to control any major project.

I do not know what his own business practices or habits are like. I have never met him. I am not likely to meet him. It does not matter. He won a contract to perform a job and, providing he keeps to the terms of the contract and the law, he should be free to do that job. He should be free to do it without demands from the criminal fraternity.  Nobody should be demanding more from him, least of all those who are not prepared to work.

When he went to visit our local state member to inform her of what had happened it was not simply because of what was happening to him. It was to say, "You, the state government, have a problem here. The cost of this project will blow out even further than it has. It is organised crime which will benefit."

If someone came to me with a story like that I hope I would have informed my boss immediately. The reports in our state newspaper suggest the first her boss knew of it was when it appeared in the paper. She had said nothing to her boss about a very serious issue with a major project. One of her ministerial colleagues said nothing. They are trying to blame their staff and also say that it is not up to them to deal with issues the police should handle. 

If this was bullying in the playground would you leave it up to the students to sort it out themselves? Would you do it even if you thought it might lead to serious violence? What if you were aware that a student had already been injured? Would you talk to a colleague but decide the head of the school did not need to know? If you were new to not just the school but to teaching would you ignore the issue or would you seek advice?

I do not like asking for help. I am apparently "far too pig-headed and independent" but I really do believe I would have informed someone with the capacity to take action that threats and attempts to intimidate had been made. What was allegedly happening to one contractor will likely be happening to others. This was not about telling tales. It should have been about saving millions and getting the job done.