The combination of the US financial crisis, climate change and my reading of various reports this week dealing with the changing social and economic times here in Australia has reinforced for me the absolutely dire need for people to be able to manage themselves and their affairs way better than they have over the past 10-odd years.
To link this with my blog, I feel that the sooner everyone wakes up, smells the coffee and realizes that when push comes to shove, responsibility for oneself must become the way to live, the better. Peter Cundall has been selling the backyard/patio veggie garden concept for 40 years. Margaret Fulton has been providing sage advice on cooking and ingredients for about the same amount of time. Yes, they’re old and probably, in many peoples opinions, way past their use-by date, but the principles they preach have absolute validity (if not, more) just as much today as they did 40 years ago.
The ability to learn how to adapt to your personal circumstances at any given time should be an obligatory subject at school. Life is constantly changing and evolving. Just when all things in our lives seem stable and predictable, something changes, and we need to re-adapt to this new circumstance. It might be a change in job, or an illness or death in the family, or the subtle impact of the gradual progression of a childs life within the family.
There is too much reliance on others for our ‘satisfaction’ in our lives. As a child I learned many skills which I thought at the time were the norm, and which I never expected to use at any time in my life but obviously were thought by my parents as being handy to know. How to clean and use a gun; how to make a fire; how to kill and deal with a dead chook; how to cook/survive with the most basic of ingredients, like flour and water (damper); how to subsist with minimal money.
Since my teens I’ve never touched a gun, and never expect to either, but I would be totally comfortable with shooting a rabbit for my dinner if I needed to. (It would break my heart to do so but in a life/death situation could do it). It would never occur to me that I could also use this aid to actually do harm to a human. For me, it would be the equivalent of a spade, ie a utensil to assist my putting food on the table.
Hence I have always felt totally competent that I could cope with most disasters life might throw at me. But could my kids? Could their kids? Could you?
We need to become more aware of the fact that in order for the world to progress and exist, we need to each take responsibility for our lives and the way we live them. We need to be more gentle on the environment. We need to use less water. We need to give away excess veggie products to friends. We need to help others in our community. We need to listen to the ‘food miles’ debates and think seriously about that. We need to be more in touch with local producers, and use them in preference to mainland products. We need to read labels on food in the shops.
By the way – does anyone have a lemon tree with plenty of spare lemons on it? I need a quantity!
Sunday, 28 September 2008
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8 comments:
Good points Rita but why so serious on a Sunday?
Too many sherries before lunch?
Yes Rita, but we know all that stuff. Your audience is aware of all of that. So can we all make some positive suggestions. Let me start:
The first thing we need to do is move all the restaurants and other destinations back to town so we can stop wasting so much petrol cruising around.
Can I suggest we convert the old Myer location into a rural location, blocking off the rivulet so that the water level can rise so we have a nice lake and using the rest of the area for cool farmgate and cheesefarm stuff. Pigs everywhere!
And get the gobbler and your mates from Bicheno and Swansea and everybody else out of town to set up restaurants in the old cosmetic area. Stillwater could be by the lake which could double as a fish farm.
Enough from me.
P
Look old sausage (ripened and gorgeous of course), the world as we once knew it ain't the same as it was. But lets take some responsibility for the way it has become. The baby boomers were responsible for gen x, and both were responsible for gen y. We all wanted these changes, as we thought for the better, and we screwed up collectively. The old ways are disapearing, but we all encouraged it.
It makes me laugh a little to imagine gen y with a gun, shooting a rabbit. What would they then do. Record it on their mobile, post it on my space and declare it a rabbit McNouggit?
And hey, we are responsible for this.
Cartouche.
has anyone tried piccolo? it's the new place where the old aroma records was.
keen to know
I would like to see local council's encourage each household to have 4 choocks and give a water/rates rebate if you have a certain size vegetable garden.
Wishful thinking of course, but people might just eat a bit better.
Planned to try Piccola today but alas, yet another restaurant that closes on a Monday - Why is it common for restaurants to close on a Monday - I know people need to have a day off but what about all the people who have days off on a Monday - where do we go?
Woops, that's Piccolo!
Plus eating less wouldn't hurt 50% of the population either.
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