Author: Catherine (Page 25 of 54)

Hugo reading 2017: Introduction and Graphic Stories

May 19, 2017 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Day 1:

The Hugo voter pack arrived in my inbox today, and because I take my democratic duty very seriously, I’m planning to read as much of it as I can. I’m comforting myself with the thought that it can’t possibly be as puppy-infested as last year, but I’m also wondering if I am truly morally obliged to read what is almost certain to be a rapetastic and nasty-minded Chuck Tingle parody by an author who chooses to go by the name ‘Stix Hiscock’.

I’ve already looked through and voted on the professional and fan-art, some of which was really lovely. I especially liked Elizabeth Leggett and Likhain in the fanart category, and was quite taken with Galen Dara, Chris McGrath and Victo Ngai in the professional artist category. Though, now I think about it, I think I actually preferred Leggett and Likhain to any of those three.

The latter was an interesting category to judge – I found that I tend to judge cover art on a) whether it’s pretty to look at (I’m really not a very visual person, and know nothing about art, so that’s the best I can do), and b) whether it suggests a book I would like to read. So the first three on my ballot all fell into the ‘very pretty’ category, and the last three, which did not appeal strongly to me, I really judged by how likely I would be to read those books. Which meant that John Picacio came last, not because he is a poor artist – none of them were, as far as I am able to judge – but because his covers said ‘1950s pulp SF with hardly any female characters’ to me. Julie Dillon, who is, I suspect, objectively not necessarily a better artist had books that screamed ‘fun, but not very well-thought-out fantasy or light SF with plenty of female characters, and I’d probably feel embarrassed to read this book, but I’d still love it’, and Sana Takeda – who I felt didn’t quite belong in this category, as she was the only one doing graphic novels rather than covers – came fifth on the grounds that her work said ‘graphic novels, probably quite good ones, but I don’t really like graphic novels’.

Which brings me to the graphic novels. Let me start by saying that I really do not enjoy reading graphic novels – I tend to find it hard to pay attention to the graphics, and I feel like I’m not getting enough plot-per-page to carry them around as reading material. (Yes, I’m a philistine, but I like my stories neat. So I’m not a great judge for this category, but that’s not going to stop me voting in it!

I started with Black Panther Volume 1: A Nation Under Our Feet, by Ta-Nehisi Coates and illustrated by Brian Stelfreeze. I am the wrong audience for all graphic novels, because of the aforementioned non-visual-appreciatingness, but also because I have terrible trouble telling the characters apart. I just can’t hold their faces in my head very well, and so I find the plot hard to follow. This was even more the case here, because the plot appeared to be complicated and political, and something that I would probably have rather enjoyed if it had been the start of a novel, but as it was, I couldn’t figure out which faction was which and who was allied to whom and why. Also, I found the narrative style a little irritating – very rhetorical and portentuous, which only works for me if I am quite invested in a story.

Rather a pity, because I’ve read and enjoyed a number of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essays, and I was hoping to enjoy this more.

My second graphic novel was Ms Marvel Volume 5: Super Famous, by Willow Wilson and illustrated by Takeshi Miyazawa. I came to this one with high hopes, having heard a bit about Kamala around the place, and I was not disappointed. It’s heaps of fun, super cute, and the ending is adorable. Nice plot about an evil development company using drones and evil magic potions to take over the town, but it’s really all about the characters (who I can actually tell apart! Hooray!). Kamala has a whole network of family and friends who are clearly people with their own stories, and her story is as much (if not more) about her relationships with them and her difficulty juggling all her responsibilities as it is about her superpowers. And there are some great one-liners. I love the whole concept of a superhero with physics homework and boy problems, and I’m always up for witty dialogue, so this one is a win for me.

I may even have to overcome my aversion to graphic novels to read more of it. Maybe.

Day 2: My lunchbreak reading today was Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening, by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda. I do not recommend this as lunchbreak reading, as it is quite bloody. I have a feeling that I’ve read some of Liu’s short stories, but I’m struggling to remember them. This is another very political fantasy, and it’s humans versus arcana. Arcana have wings or tails or superpowers and seem on the surface of things to be more potentially powerful than humans, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. And also, it seems that killing them, or consuming parts of them, allows humans to be healed of wounds, and even become semi-immortal. You really don’t have to get very far with this premise to end up in some fairly unpleasant places, and this book certainly does that. Beyond this, there are multiple factions within both the Arcana and the humans, which again I found hard to follow, because I had trouble distinguishing between characters. (I just do better if I have names to tag characters to rather than faces – graphic novels rely much less heavily on names because they assume you can tell everybody apart. Ha.)

I’m a bit torn on where to rank this one. The artwork was really, really lovely, my favourite of all the books so far, but this didn’t help me recognise characters, alas. Which made it very confusing – when you have lots of factions and have trouble telling which is which, that’s a problem. And it was way too dark for my taste – highlights include torture, lots of maiming and killing, people being eaten, and babies being threatened with horrible fates. This is another story which I would have enjoyed more in novel format, I think, except that it is so VERY much not my cup of tea. But at least in novel format, I would have had fewer visuals in my head.

So yes. My instinct is to rank it higher than Black Panther, because of the artwork, even though Black Panther was just confusing, as opposed to confusing and distressing. But I haven’t decided yet.

My tram reading was Paper Girls, Volume 1, by Brian Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, coloured by Matthew Wilson and lettered by Jared Fletcher. I liked this quite a bit. It had a sort of 1980s feel to it, which was appealing, and centres around four teenage girls who are delivering newspapers when there is… an alien invasion. Or maybe a time traveller invasion. With multiple factions. Hooray, more politics! I found the characters mostly easy to tell apart (though two of the girls kept looking very alike to me), but I still spent a lot of this story feeling confused. I’m beginning to think that perhaps I am rather stupid. Then again, time-travel plots tend to require you to get to the end of the book before everything makes sense, and this is clearly just the start of the story.

This is definitely at second place on my ballot so far, after Ms Marvel, but ahead of the other two. Part of me would like to read more, because I did like the characters, and I always like a good time travel plot, but I’m not sure I’m willing to make the investment of time required. I didn’t love it, and the artwork did not excite me. And the weird near death experience stuff didn’t quite work for me. I think there is also possibly some religious subtext going on (apple computers = apples + fruit of knowledge; heaven and hell in dreams; a bearded guy who looks like a cliché cartoon of God in an apple T shirt, who is in charge of judging people), but I’m not too sure where it is going, and feel a little wary…

Day 3

Another graphic novel read in my lunch break! Can I have four categories done and dusted by tonight? Of course I can!

So, next up was Saga, Volume 6, by Brian K Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples and lettered by Fonografiks. I wondered how I’d go with making sense of this one, since it’s volume 6, but I actually quite liked it. The characters were strong, and I could mostly tell them apart, and there didn’t seem to be too many factions going on (though again, factions and politics – is that a big trend at the moment, or have graphic novels always been about warfare and politics and tribalism?). This particular story centred around a couple who are of different and enemy (but apparently cross-fertile) species, who are trying to find their daughter again. She seems to be locked in some sort of prison camp / re-education kindergarten, and if anyone finds out who she is they will try to kill her. The why of this is presumably in previous volumes. There was a bunch of stuff I didn’t quite follow which clearly related to the overarching story, but the central narrative of this story was quite nice, and I enjoyed reading it. Possibly the more so because it fit in so nicely with my enjoyment of the Vaughn short story… I apparently like narratives where supposed enemies are friends and working together.

Again, I don’t feel any particularly strong need to read more of the story (and for goodness sake, if you are reading it, don’t read it at work. There were several pages I had to turn quickly without reading because those were images I just could not have on my work computer), but I did like it. It has just overtaken Paper Girls and is sitting in second place, after Ms Marvel.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to read The Vision, Volume 1: Little Worse than a Man, by Tom King, illustrated by Gabriel Hernandez Walta, between work and my hair appointment today, and I will post the review then…

OK. I started The Vision. I got nearly halfway, and was finding it OK (and for once, having no difficulty telling characters apart), but then there was a scene with someone doing something terrible to a cat who looked quite a bit like Mystery, and that was it for me. I’m afraid I’m not going to read any further into that one, because I don’t need more pictures like that in my head (the cartoonist draws cats really well, and that doesn’t help), and I really wasn’t enjoying it enough to risk it. I don’t know how I can possibly judge this one, so it just won’t go on my ballot.

My delving into Graphic stories for this year is officially over.

Hugo reading 2017: Short Stories

May 19, 2017 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Since I had choir last night, and PDFs of graphic novels are not too portable, I decided to take a break from them and have a crack at the Short Stories category. Which is SO MUCH BETTER than last year you CANNOT IMAGINE.

NK Jemisin – The City Born Great. This is a story about the birth of New York, not in the sense of its founding, but of its birth and coming to awareness as a sentient, living being. The protagonist is, for want of a better word, the city’s protector and its midwife, which is a bit tricky, since they (I’m not actually sure if gender was ever specified) are decidedly underprivileged – homeless, hungry, and black. I loved the bits about singing to the city, and graffitiing by circles in a black so dark that it looked like a hole so that the city could breathe through these new ventilations. NK Jemisin clearly loves New York the way I love Paris. There is a nice poetry and sense of history to this story, and I love the concept. I like this story very much.

John C Wright – An Unimaginable Light. I went into this one a little prejudiced, because I know that Wright is associated with the Catholic end of the Rabid Puppies. I tried very hard to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Alas, this happened on page 2.

The kneeling girl did not look like a robot. She looked like a love goddess. Her face was piquant and elfin, her eyes danced and glittered. Her lips were full, her smile ready. She was pulchritudinous, buxom, callipygous, leggy. Her torso was slender, and her abdominal muscles as well defined as those of a belly dancer, so that her navel was like a period between two cursive brackets. Her hair was lustrous, and tied in a loose knot at the back of her swanlike neck. Hairy eye, and skin colour were optional. She was, of course, naked.

Oh, of course she was. And Mr Wright needs to put down his thesaurus now. And also wash the hand that wasn’t holding the thesaurus because I think we all know where it has been. Ick.

This story seems to be a philosophical argument about who is truly human disguised as a short story about a man interrogating a robot, with rather pretentious styling. It is also a fable about how moral relativism is stupid. And how PC culture is oppressive and whiny and microaggressions are just about people bullying people who have *real* morals. It is not as clever as it thinks it is. However, it is heavy-handed, pompous and sexist, and it also gets sadistic and rapey in the middle, which is just lovely. Also, Wright never misses an opportunity to remind us of the robot’s shapely form or flirtatious gaze. Bleargh.

Then we have a plot twist! And theology! And our constantly objectified heroine – who turns out to be called Maria, because that’s just how subtle John C Wright is – isn’t a robot at all! The interrogator was the robot all along, but he didn’t know this! Oh, my shock, it is so shocking! Of course, the way he discovers this is that Maria gets executed in a particularly gruesome and painful way because apparently this is the best way to convey that Love is the most important value and that without religion people will obviously make terrible, sadistic choices.

(Also because Wright’s Catholicism is big on suffering, but it’s better if women suffer, especially if we get to describe their shapely limbs in detail while they do so.)

Also, this plot twist kind of makes a lot of the rest of the plot illogical. Because the whole bit about the interrogator being turned on by hurting Maria is revolting enough when he is human, but makes absolutely no sense if he is a robot, especially as he is apparently following Asimov’s three laws of robotics.

I think this one is a clear No Award for me. It’s pretty terrible.

Alyssa Wong – A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers. This one is very good. The protagonist keeps trying to change time so that she can save her sister, again and again. So many permutations of one event, but not enough. It reminds me a lot of Kate Atkinson’s novel, Life after Life, actually. It’s sad and sweet and rather beautiful. It’s going to be tough to choose between this and the Jemisin. I think the Jemisin is more original, though. And I do have a thing for sentient objects.

Carrie Vaughn – That Game We Played During the War. This story is set in the aftermath of a war between the telepathic Gaantish and the non-telepathic, but very practical, Enithi. A Enithi former nurse who looked after Gaantish prisoners of war (who had to be kept sedated to frustrate their telepathy) comes to visit a former prisoner, and former captor, and friend, who is now in hospital, recovering from wounds received in one of the last battles of the war.

Oh, I love this. Not least because I want to read the romance novel that I am convinced is hidden behind and around this story.

I love that they have developed a way to play chess – which is of course tricky with telepathy involved. Calla, the Enithi nurse, thinks about all the moves Valk could make, but does not think about her moves, and in fact often moves at random, because it’s the only way to hide her strategy from Valk, and also, the randomness drives him up the wall. I admit to finding this especially appealing because I am a horrible chess player who gets overwhelmed by possibilities and thus also moves at random, only I do that most of the time. I also love the implications for how soldiers and prisoners and captors think about each other in this war, and the ways in which fears don’t match up with reality. But most of all I love the friendship in this book, which transcends war and enmity. This is such a kind, affectionate sort of story, the perfect antidote to John bloody Wright. It reminds me of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Shards of Honoor, in all the best ways. I want to read more of Vaughan’s work. This is going to the top of my ballot.

Brooke Bolander – Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies. A sadistic killer decides to make a harpy his victim. It doesn’t end well for him. This story is pretty clearly inspired by reading one too many stories about the ‘distraught father and husband’ who murdered his family, or the ‘promising young man’ whose bright future is being put at terrible risk by the fact that he raped someone (thank goodness for judges who won’t let him suffer too badly for twenty minutes of action!). It is full of rage, as is appropriate. It’s a good story, but there are a lot of good stories this year, and I prefer friendship and wonder to rage, so it’s probably going to be low on my ballot. But can I just say how delightful and refreshing it is to be forced to put a good story low on my ballot because there are so many good stories and they can’t all be at the top?

Amal El-Mohtar – Seasons of Glass and Iron. Another one that I love! This is a subversive, feminist fairy tale, so I am all over it like a RASH. The girl with the iron shoes (and I love how she reflects that the boys get seven league boots and slippers that make them invisible, while the girls get shoes made of molten iron or slippers that make you dance yourself to death) meets the girl on the glass mountain (who really does not want any of the suitors who fall in love with her, then shout horrific abuse at her when they fail to win her). I love how each heroine can see the injustices in the other’s story so easily, but cannot see the injustices in her own. And the ending is obvious and inevitable and utterly appropriate. This is totally the story I wish I’d written.

At this stage, I’m having trouble deciding on whether to put Vaughan ahead of El-Mohtar (mostly because I love Vaughan too much, and feel like I love it for the wrong reasons) (but I still love it more because that’s who I am), but Jemisin is definitely third, Wong is fourth, and Bolander is in fifth place. Woe is me, I shall have to read the Vaughan and the El-Mohtar stories again, just to be sure of who should go first…

An excellent post on how to be an activist in Australia

January 30, 2017 / Catherine / 0 Comments

This is just a brief post to share an excellent blog post I read this morning on achieving effective activism in Australia. If you are wondering where to start, or want scripts, or aren’t sure which charities to support or what works, this is an excellent primer.

Includes handy contact details, scripts for what to say when you ring or write to a politician, and advice on how to maximise the effectiveness of your activism.

Ideas for Australian Activism

Imperfect activism

January 29, 2017 / Catherine / 7 Comments

There has been a lot going on in the world of politics, both Australian and international since I last posted, most of it disheartening at best and enraging at worst. Even if one has only one or two foci, it’s pretty hard to keep up with everything, and to be honest, I haven’t tried all that hard. I’ve been busy and stressed at work, and when I haven’t been, I’ve been using my spare time to sleep, try to cook and eat something healthy, and basically recover in time for the next busy period.

I can’t be the only person out there finding themselves horrified by what’s going on in the wider world, but lacking in time or the energy to devote to activism. Part of it is, I think, the sheer mental exhaustion from reading terrible thing after terrible thing, day after day. Part of it is that there are so *many* things to worry about – it’s hard to pick just one. And it feels as though governments are getting less responsive by the day. I feel a sense of despair, too, that whatever I do won’t be enough.

As an Australian, I’m finding the US situation particularly distressing, not least because the Republicans and Trump are doing a fine job of making Turnbull’s government actually look good by comparison (of course, Turnbull has given me a belated appreciation for John Howard, which is something I never thought I’d be saying). I’m close enough to read my friends’ posts and to worry for them, but too far away to do anything – I receive call to action after call to action in my email, but all for things that require a US zip code to be effective.

And so I find myself overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness, and guilt that I’m not doing enough, and wind up doing nothing at all.

I suspect that this is exactly what the far right wants.

So. This post is not going to be about any one specific thing. There are *so many* things that one can be angry about right now. This post is about finding ways not to be paralysed by the size of the problems, by their overwhelming variety and nature. And it’s about figuring out ways to use the resources we have right now, be they energy, time, money, community links, or other things, to do what good we can.

Theatre review: Twelfth Night in the Botanical Gardens

January 7, 2017 / Catherine / 0 Comments

Last night, we went to Shakespeare in the Gardens, where they were doing Twelfth Night. They are doing this all season, but naturally, we had to go on Twelfth Night itself. It was a good production – very strong on clowning, as this company always is, though Sebastian was a little weak, I thought. He was having trouble with his lines, which is unfortunate, given how few of them he has.

Some tools for talking about suicide

November 11, 2016 / Catherine / 2 Comments

Recent events have had me remembering some of the stuff I learned when I was doing crisis counselling, in particular the stuff we were taught about suicide prevention. I got to use this knowledge rather a lot, unfortunately, since I usually worked a late evening shift which was apparently one of the prime times for suicidal thoughts and actions, as I averaged one or two callers at risk of suicide every shift. (As well as the guy who used to ring up at exactly 8pm on Mondays to tell us how ‘confused’ he was about various sexual issues and fantasies. In detail. But that’s another story.)

Anyway, since a couple of things have made this a bit more relevant than is precisely fun of late, and since it strikes me that a lot of this is useful, or at least non-harmful, information, which may not be quite such common knowledge as I think it is, it seems worth writing some of it here.

Note that I am writing about suicide prevention under the cut. You don’t have to read it if it’s going to make things worse for you right now. If you yourself are feeling vulnerable, distressed, or especially suicidal, at the moment, for any reason at all, please talk to someone. Note, too, that it’s easy at a time like this to feel guilty about being miserable because others have it worse off. But feelings are feelings, and it’s not a competition. If you are in Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14. If you are overseas, here is a handy list of suicide helplines all over the world. Please stay safe.

At the going down of the sun…

November 11, 2016 / Catherine / 7 Comments

I found out last night that a friend of mine in America killed herself shortly after the election results were announced.

She had a health condition that was painful and disabling, and which required daily medication to manage. And, from what I can gather, she died because she knew she would not be able to afford that medication if Obamacare was repealed.

She was a wonderful writer, a collector of folktale retellings, and an adopter of rescue cats. I’ve known her for fifteen years online. I never met her in person, and now I never will. But that did not make her less of a friend.

She is not the first casualty of this election, and she won’t be the last.

Lest we forget.

+++++++

Please, everyone, look after yourselves and each other. And if you are not coping, please call someone.

(The link above has a list of suicide helplines for countries all over the world (the USA ones are in the right sidebar).

Fear

November 9, 2016 / Catherine / 2 Comments

I’m afraid.

I’m deeply afraid for my American friends, who are, by and large, left-leaning folk in a country that is becoming increasingly and terrifyingly right-wing. I’m afraid for my friends who are gay, for my friends who have chronic illnesses, for my friends who are people of colour, for my friends who are women, for my friends who are Muslim, or really any flavour other than straight, white, Christian, male, and conservative.

I’m afraid for the people who will lose their health coverage or their homes or their livelihoods if election promises are kept. I’m afraid that people will lose their lives when Obamacare is repealed and they can no longer get coverage for a chronic illness, when they are refused terminations for pregnancies that are killing them, when they make the mistake of being black or transgender or hijabi in the vicinity of someone who needs to Stand His Ground. No, not afraid – horribly, miserably certain.

I’m afraid of a world where Trump’s victory is just another symptom of a growing movement away from kindness and compassion and cooperation towards isolation, hatred and fear of the other. The Brexit vote, which could spell the beginning of the end of a union that had kept peace in Europe for a longer period than ever before. The tragic popular vote in Colombia against the treaty that would have ended a civil war. And we have nothing to feel smug about here in Australia, where we elected four Senators from One Nation, and where our fifteen year obsession with protecting our borders has led us to imprison and torture desperate people seeking our help. (And let’s not forget our ongoing lack of political will to work with indigenous communities to find ways to close the gap in life expectancy, to prevent deaths in custody, and to fix the intergenerational social problems that our policies caused.)

I’m afraid of the implications of this. Of war, certainly, but of all the other things we lose without mutual cooperation. Global warming threatens our existence as a species (and we’ll take a lot of other species with us when we go), and requires a global, cooperative response. The global refugee crisis requires countries to work together to find a way to help people in crisis and share our resources without impoverishing ourselves. Poverty and terrorism are difficult problems but not impossible if enough countries are committed to finding a solution.

I’m afraid – and, frankly, disheartened and angry and sick to the stomach – because I’m a woman and it hurts on a far more personal level than I ever expected it to that America chose a man with no experience in the role, and who has shown every sign of being a dangerously chaotic leader at best (and one who, setting aside his boasts about assaulting women, has chosen a running mate whose vision for America is straight out of the Handmaid’s Tale) over an intelligent, level-headed woman with detailed, well-thought-out policies and thirty years of experience in the role.

I’m afraid because I’m writing a public blog post about this election, and even though I’m on the other side of the world, I feel as though I have to censor myself in order to be safe.

For the first time, I’m glad I don’t have children. I have lost my hope for the future, and much of my faith in my fellow humans.

I do believe that love is stronger than fear, but I’m at a loss for how to apply this now. Especially when so many people are facing very real threats to their existence. And it is distressing – devastating – to know that so many people are choosing fear, taking their own fear and projecting it onto others until we all have to be afraid.

I keep thinking back to the late 1990s, when the Wall had come down, and we thought that war and extremism and the threat of nuclear strikes were done with. We were reducing CFCs and shrinking the hole in the ozone layer. I don’t *think* climate change was on the agenda, but there was a will towards international cooperation about the big issues. At least, I think there was. Maybe I’m remembering it wrong.

I can’t believe we’ve gone so far backwards. I want the alternate timeline, where we kept Keating and never had John Howard and children overboard and demonising refugees. I want the timeline where we somehow got things right so that there was no rise of extremism and terrorism leading to 9/11. I want the timeline where America got a president who cared about climate change and healthcare and poverty. I want the one where everyone turned out to vote against Brexit, rather than assuming someone else would do it for them.

(In addition to losing my faith in humanity, I’ve lost my faith in time travel. If it existed, surely someone would have fixed all this by now.)

To my American friends – I don’t know what to say. I don’t think there are any words that can help. So I’ll just repeat what I said yesterday. May your country hold together in hope and love and compassion, and may you all stay safe and well, today, tomorrow, and thereafter.

I’m thinking of you, and praying for you, and will stand with you as far as I can from this distance, and I hope you will be OK.

What you can do

I don’t like to leave a post which is just angst and sorrow with no constructive place to put those feelings afterwards. But this one, we can’t fix with a single action. It seems to me that a lot of the big battles have been fought and lost this year, and we can’t fight them again just yet, but that still leaves the small, everyday things. We can still be kind to each other. We can still listen to each other, and try to learn and to understand. We can do small things to improve our own lives and the lives of those around us. This may sound facile, but it isn’t – nobody can fight the big battles day after day, without taking time to regroup. It’s going to be a long road back for the whole world, I think, so we need to conserve energy, but also to do things that keep us in the habit of caring and of acting. We need to find places where we can act as individuals and have a few easy victories so that we don’t give in to despair.

Here is a highly incomplete list of really small, easy things you can do for yourselves and for each other.

Donate to a charity on behalf of someone else. Oxfam Unwrapped will send a friend a card on your behalf, telling them what you donated in their name. The bag of pig’s manure seems like an appropriate choice right now. So does the Women’s Rights gift, that trains women in Bangladesh for leadership roles.
Bake something delicious and give it to someone. I feed my colleagues a lot (but not tomorrow, because I’ve spent all evening writing this. Sorry, my scientists!), but dropping something in to a local homeless shelter, or for the doctors and nurses at your local hospital is a nice touch. Or you could do this.
Write a letter to a politician thanking them for their work on something you appreciate. Or write a letter or a card to a teacher or friend who has helped you, telling them how much you value them.
If hand crafts are your thing, make a quilt or a cape or knit a teddy bear for a sick or traumatised child, or check out one of these campaigns.
If you are in a choir or orchestra or other musical group, get a group together and see if there is a local retirement home, or hospital, or detention centre, that might like a short concert.
Recommend a book to someone. Buy it for them, if you can afford it. Make it something fun and clever and escapist and quietly feminist. (My recommendations this week are Sherry Thomas’s book A Study in Scarlet Women, which is a really clever gender-swapped Sherlock Holmes; The Invisible Library, by Genevieve Cogman, a fantasy adventure with secret agents, alternate worlds, and stolen books; and anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, but especially Paladin of Souls.)
Ring someone who you know is having a rough time right now for a chat.
Volunteer for a tree planting day, or at a wildlife shelter.
Download Mapswipe, and help Medecins Sans Frontières find people in disaster zones (note that you will need good eyes for this activity)
Take a bath, turn off your phone, and have an early night. Books, music, favourite TV programs, partners and pets might all be part of this arrangement. It doesn’t have to be tonight. But give yourself permission to take a night off from the fear. You can afford one night. We all can.

Politics in the People’s Republic of Moreland: Council Election 2016 (North-East Ward)

October 16, 2016 / Catherine

I don’t normally do candidate posts for council elections, because that way lies madness, though hopefully not as much madness as last time. But I’ve had a few requests, not least from my husband, who will need to put in a postal vote sometime this week, and we do seem to have a remarkable number of candidates for one rather small ward, so here goes…

Marriage Equality letters

October 10, 2016 / Catherine / 0 Comments

I’ve actually been ill today, so I didn’t manage to write as many letters as I meant to. I’m hoping to do a bit of blitz of Senators tomorrow, but I have covered some of the main suspects at least. I understand that the Plebiscite is being debated in Parliament this week, possibly even this evening, so I went with emails rather than postal letters this time.

As usual, having written the letters, I find them entirely inadequate, but I’m posting them here for two reasons. Well, one reason, with two parts. The reason is, of course, that I’m hoping some of you will also feel inclined to write to your politicians, and sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Feel free to use these as a starting point – it’s easier to fix a bad letter than to write one from scratch, in my experience.

It’s also sometimes hard to decide that a letter is good enough to send, and that’s the other reason I’m posting these. I want to write the perfect letter, which will cause politicians to realise, at last, that they have made a terrible mistake and should be doing things differently (ie, my way…). In the real world, that’s not going to happen. Or at least, not through me – I am definitely not that eloquent. But at least part of this is a numbers game. A letter that does not perfectly express what you want to say is still a letter in someone’s inbox, reminding them that another one of their constituents opposes the plebiscite. And you never know – your letter of support to a politician who is doing the write thing may be the encouragement they need, or may provide them with an argument or phrase that they hadn’t thought of and can use to sway others. But even if it doesn’t, every little bit helps.

You can find contact lists for all Senators and MPs at this link. These include phone numbers, postal and email addresses, so pick the medium of your choice and go for it.

If letters are too hard write now, the ALP has a campagin ‘It’s Time for Marriage Equality‘, which is half petition, half tweet, and certainly worth a look. The Greens have a similar campaign. And Australian Marriage Equality have all sorts of actions you can take, depending on your time, energy and financial resources.

And if you just need a break from all of this, here’s a link I found earlier when I was looking (unsuccessfully) for some information about my local Member. It’s the 404 page for The Australian‘s National Affairs section, and it is absolutely hilarious. Enjoy!

Letters below the cut…