Cultured Views

Mistakes we cannot repeat.

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Just lately most of us have read and heard that education authorities in the UK are considering banning muslim schoolgirls from wearing the hiqab to school. Reasons given are “safety, security and health”. And, judging by the publics reaction, this is a move in the right direction…but I wonder.

Whose safety, whose security, and whose health is threatened by a young girl having her face covered?.

They are proposing banning an individual from dressing a certain way. According to their religion. According to their culture. And a large section of the British, and it seems Australian public, agree with this.
I think it is appalling. Even dangerous. Because this sort of thing has happened before.

On a recent visit to Amsterdam I purchased the books, ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and ‘Anne Frank. Beyond the Diary’. Amsterdam is where Anne lived with her family after fleeing Nazi Germany, and of course, went into hiding with them for two years.
Reading this little girls diary, as an adult, was a far more harrowing experience than it was when I first read it as a 12 year old girl. Why? because as a 12 year old, as a child, the future that held such horrors for Anne and her family never entered my mind. As an adult, I knew only too well what happened after the phrase… ‘Anne’s diary ends here’.

Anne and her family, like hundreds of thousands of her fellow Dutch and Germans, were Jews. Not a specific ‘race’ but a ‘faith’. And for this they were persecuted. In her time Jewish men were not allowed to grow their beards; Jewish children could not go to school with other children; Jewish people were singled out and banned from doing what identified them as being Jewish.
Why? because the Jews were deemed to be the cause of Germany’s post-war problems, even the Dutch accused them of the same thing.

It seems to me that the UK, and scarily Australia, are heading the same way with their attitude towards muslims. Followers of Islam. Ban them from dressing a certain way? whilst we dress as we wish? Blame them for acts of terrorism that they had nothing to do with?. All these girls are doing is dressing in an overtly modest way…in contrast to most young females in our society who wear next to nothing at school and in the street. Disturbingly we openly accept the latter but question with suspician the former. Why?.

Australian and British societies are supposed to be democratic, we supposedly recognise freedom of dress; freedom of expression, and freedom of worship. We must continue this tolerance and extend it to all who arrive on our shores.
If we do not, if we start to demand…’Do it our way or else’…we run the risk of breeding the same prejudice and intolerance that caused so much misery, and ultimate tragedy, for Anne Frank and her family just over 65 years ago. Not too mention the millions of other ordinary people just like her. Followers of a certain religion, who looked and dressed the ‘wrong way’.

Breeding this prejudice and intolerance is bad enough…to legislate it, to me, would be unthinkable.
Do we wish to repeat mistakes of the past?.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Springtime and holidays

Spring here in the south of France is pretty much like spring in Australia. The weather begins to warm up and the landscapes start to look much more inviting.
When I think of this season in Australia one thing comes to mind - frangipani’s. We always had a frangipani tree in our yard and I can still smell that wonderful perfume of those flowers in the morning sun.

Here in France, we are into spring and gearing up for the summer season. Around our place we have olive trees - soon to grow new buds; a large cherry tree; a pomegranate vine; peach and apple trees - all in glorious bloom right now; and, of course, the miles and miles of grapevines.

Another, and important part of spring and summer for us, is the arrival of our guests on their holidays. Literally droves of them.
We are starting to see more Australians coming to stay with us, families especially, and this marks a change from when I was a child.

Dad bought what was called a ‘weekender’ down in St George’s Basin back in 1972. It was a 3 hour drive from our house in Manly and whenever there was a long-weekend or similar holiday we were all bundled into Dads old falcon squire station wagon for the trip down. My sister and I sat in the back with two cats, a dog, bedding, the odd piece of furniture, suitcases, food and - one time - our pet wallaby. Actually Skippy sat on the floor in the front by Mum’s feet and happened to poke her head up as we went over the Cahill Expressway in Sydney. The driver in the taxi beside us saw this marsupial looking out the window and nearly drove off the bridge!.

Our little ‘weekender’ was in Kerry Street St George’s Basin and back then Kerry St was hardly more than a dirt track with a few houses on either side. Our little place was meant to be an enclosed garage with a house on top but for some reason the builder stopped at the ground level. It was divided into 3 rooms and had a pot belly stove and an outdoor dunny - of course. Our backyard consisted of miles of bushland - I suppose there are houses all there now. There were cockatoos in the morning and at sunset, kangaroos would venture as far as the clothesline and, this being the Australian bush, lots of funnelweb spider holes in the ground. I used to help Dad pour the kero down the little holes.

I would say this sort of holiday was common for families in Australia back then as the trend for the big overseas trips were beyond the reach and scope of most parents in those days. Not so anymore, more Australians are taking their children to European countries, travelling around and it’s great to see.
My kids, and those who come to stay here, can get out and do pretty much the same summer-type things that my sister and I did at the Basin…here they can walk or ride a bike for miles along the country roads that wind through the vineyards; swim in the local rivers and creeks or the spectacular gorges of Goulyrous and Galamus that fill with fresh water after the snows melt.

Spring and Summer here, like in Australia, are definately times to be outdoors. You wont hear any cockies or kookaburra’s here but at least there’s no funnel webs!.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Playground or Playstation?

A study last week in the UK said that kids these days spend more time indoors than outside playing. And that parents actively encourage this. Various theories have been thrown around but I would say that parents these days feel safer having their kids where they can watch them, that it is too dangerous now for kids to go to the park or playground or simply play outside the house. As a parent myself I can honestly see the logic in this way of thinking.

Is society now too unsafe for our children?. In some ways I would say that it is but, to me, we seem to have a more heightened awareness of certain dangers now compared to our parents. OK, there are more cars around these days; assaults are more common; there does seem to have been a rise the number of children abducted and killed in recent years - even children are assaulting other children now. But short of locking our kids in their rooms how do we parents allow our kids the freedom to be kids and to experience life whilst ensuring that they are safe?.

I think it is safe to say that where there is a home with children there will also be the latest in games technology in that home. My kids are no different; they have a Nintendo, an XBox 360, a computor, Gameboys and a pile of games for these that you cannot jump over!. They, like many other children, spend hours on these machines whether it is raining or sunny outside. The XBox 360 also plays DVD’s, so they can watch their movies as well. Certainly beats going outside and inventing a game dosen’t it?…

I wonder what my childhood would have been like if these gadgets had been around then - I cannot say because they weren’t. We played netball on Saturdays, or tennis, or soccer. Then came home and played with the local kids. Each Saturday morning I would wake early and be straight down the road to see which kids were out playing. I lived in street with only a few boys across the road and they were a bit younger than me but it didn’t matter - we would kick a ball around our yards, play hide and seek - or ‘knock knock run run’ . The neighbours hated that of course.

I was lucky, I had creeks to catch tadpoles in and we kids would spend hours doing this. Or we would go over to the park across the road and play on the swings, ride our bikes around the nearby streets or just house-hop and go from one’s house to the other to play with each others toys. I was never inside and I think I rarely even had lunch during the day even though Mum would call me. There was also no Neighbourhood Watch scheme then either. The neighbours all knew us kids and, if one of us got into strife, they would phone our mothers and inform them. And if one of us did something we shouldn’t have…they phoned our mothers and informed them.

It’s hard to say which generation can claim that their childhood offered the most to being a child, but I would never have traded mine for anything. Not for all the XBox 360’s in the world!.

Popularity: 6% [?]