The 188yr old department store

which has just "gone bust" is not just the victim of "online" shopping. It is the victim of much more than that.

As children the Christmas school holidays (summer here in Downunder) meant, among other things, a trip to "town". In other words we went into the CBD and the street with the department stores.  It is where our school uniforms and school shoes were bought. It is where Mum looked at "pattern books" and bought a dress pattern and fabric for whatever she decided I would wear to church that year and another to make my brother's shirts. (Grandpa made his suits and school trousers.) Wool would be bought from a neighbouring area on the same floor to make another round of cardigans and pullovers. 

My grandmothers bought their "corsets" which were individually fitted in the underwear section on another floor.  All along the street the footpath was crowded, so crowded you could barely move. There were window displays with Christmas themes. One store had "the Magic Cave" where children could get a "lucky dip" package after enduring being photographed with Father Christmas for "Nana". (I was not going to school when I stopped believing in Father Christmas or "Santa". My brother was not much better.)

In the store owned by the company which has now ceased trading there was a man who played the piano on the ground floor. The lifts were operated by several ex-servicemen, one of whom had only one arm. 

Books and toys were sold in large quantities. There was a "food hall" in the basement and a cafeteria at the highest level. 

My brother and I would have preferred to be reading books at the library but we endured these trips largely without complaint. We did not expect anything extra. These trips were about necessities. We knew we were fortunate to be getting hard wearing and long lasting items we needed. 

The big suburban shopping centres changed that. The first time I saw one was in another state. We were on a camping trip and we children were taken to see the very latest in shopping areas. It would be considered small now but it had about a dozen specialist shops all under one roof. I remember Mum commenting, "Having everything in one place will save a lot of time I suppose."  

But things are not in one place, not really. They are in small stores, brand name stores. They are often expensive too. You can trudge from one place to the next looking for the "right" item. It will be expensive. It will be made in Asia with what amounts to slave labour.

I am as guilty as the next person. I have bought cheap t-shirts from on line places. My preferred jeans have come from a similar on line "shop". I know it is a warehouse somewhere but they call it another name. I know the jeans I see in the shop opposite the supermarket cost about $5 to make and sell for twenty times that price. The women who work in there tell me to "wait until the sale comes up" because they also think the prices are too high.  

Of course they are high. There is rent and power to be paid and then all the expense of employing staff but they have a little more space here than they would renting a space in a "department" store. All this has been sold to us "better" and "easier" and sometimes "more personal" but I doubt it. I only happen to know the women who work in one place because of something which once happened to an elderly customer I knew. Most customers will go in and out without ever knowing the names of the staff. For them it is much the same as shopping in the supermarket.

It is all soulless. I need to get some buttons for something I have just finished knitting. It would be so good to be able to go into an old-fashioned drapery store and buy them from someone who knows the stock and what might be good to use. Instead I will need to catch two trains and look at buttons on a wall in a store which sells manchester and "home wares" and art materials as well as cheap Asian sewing materials and acrylic yarn which comes from China. When I cannot reach to the top row someone else will have to help but it will be another customer because there are minimal staff - and the staff know almost nothing. 

 

Tsunamis can do a lot

of damage. They can wreck everything in their path.

I will not be cheering for the "tsunami" in the midterm elections in America. I would have been much happier with a more balanced result, one which made both their Democrats and Republicans work more closely together. I would have liked the sort of result where those in power were given the sort of jolt which said, "People do not like what we are doing. We need to do better. We need to find out what they do not like and why they do not like it."

This will not happen of course. When their election for President comes around in two years there will likely be other changes. Their current vice-president is not likely to become their president...unless they have a very inadequate opposition candidate.

It is something which should and does concern us here. The election results were made up of a representation of the same sort of mishmash of ideas and views and demands as we have here. How they will be handled is something we can only guess at because they are vary so greatly.

Here we have a government which appears not to be taking any responsibility at all for the latest rise in interest rates. Every minister and every member questioned has tried to tell us the problem lies with external factors. The "price of oil" and "war" and "trade" are all blamed. Government expenditure never seems to be an issue.

I have no doubt there will be some cuts to government spending in the next budget round. There will then be complaints from people affected by those cuts. I also have no doubt there will be a "sweetener" from somewhere. It will be designed to make people think they are still getting something.  Yes, I know this is the way politics works here...and elsewhere. 

Our opinion polls are still suggesting there will be no tsunami here. At present "the Opposition" is seen as weak. The redhead's party is still just in front but they do not yet even have a strong presence in parliament. If they were to gain power there would be people with no experience in representing their electorates also trying to govern the country. 

That would not be a good thing. My state electorate is currently represented by a first timer. She was catapulted straight into a ministry as well. It would be more than reasonable to suggest she is struggling. There have been calls for her sacking as a minister and I would have to agree. If this happened at federal level we could see serious harm done. 

Being in power is not everything. It can make problems worse. Good government cannot occur without equally good opposition.   

An old school photograph

came up in my search for something completely unrelated. It was one of those odd coincidences that can come about doing an internet search.

This photograph was of the Senior Cat and "grades four to seven" in the two teacher school he and my mother taught at in a remote rural area of this state. Mum had "grades one to three", the Black Cat (who was only three when we first went there) and a very slow learning boy with muscular dystrophy. It was the sort of thing that was considered quite normal in rural areas at the time. 

Our school was actually considered "big". There was a school in one direction which had just sixteen students and one teacher and another in yet another direction which had just eight students and one teacher. There were none of the resources that the really big city schools had. We had a "library" of books on a shelf and a box which held "the reading scheme". The library books came in a box from the children's lending service in the city. The Senior Cat had organised that before we even left the city. He did it knowing my brother and I would need books to read. He had also organised our individual membership to be transferred to the service for country children. 

The Senior Cat had talked to the school committee about raising the money to buy the reading scheme materials. (It was considered the latest thing at the time, indeed had been around for only a few years. There were cards in various colours to represent the level you had achieved. It consisted of reading comprehension and other exercises which you could mark yourself. One advantage was that older children could work on it alone. You can still buy the (updated) sets.) Apart from that I remember just the very basic things like a map of the state, another of the country and one of the world. If you wanted teaching aids you made them yourself.

There were almost no art and craft materials. Looking back I suspect my parents bought what limited materials we had from their own pay packets. The people in the surrounding area were generally poor. 

I looked at the photograph which had come up though. Someone had named everyone in the picture. The names came back to me. I would have recognised some of them if they had appeared in front of me still at that age. Would I recognise them now? It is unlikely. More than one of them is deceased. I doubt many of those who are still alive are actually to be found on the social pages of the internet.

They were a large part my life as a child but for the most part they were isolated on farms outside school hours.  By the time they were old enough to legally drive on the roads we had long gone. (We will ignore the fact that driving without a licence on rural roads was sometimes seen as a necessity.)

So yes, like the person who had put the photograph there, I wonder where those who are still alive are to be found now. What did they do with their lives?  

"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.