Last night, Moshe and Sarah and I watched the footy. Carlton v Melbourne. Great game in that we won. Not so great because we still can’t kick straight. Oh well. There’s more east to go. Half time came, and our own Melbourne born and bred Olivia Newton-John (who I just learned is a Carlton supporter so we love her even more) promoted her kick-ass Cancer and Wellness Centre that she’s building out at the Austin Hospital. I must live under a rock, because I hadn’t heard of it before last night. However. I got quite inspired by her and her amazing project, and jumped up with a smile to do my bit and call up to donate to the $10mil she still needed to complete the thing.

I get on the phone, and the guy gives me his name and asks if I’ve called to give a single-time contribution. I said yes, I have, and if I could give you a million, ten million, I would. He said oh, thank you, and then he said something I wasn’t expecting at all. He said, would you like to give it in memory of someone? Oh, I said, yes. Ah, yes of course… ah… yeah… yeah, I do…

And then I couldn’t say another word. In my head, it went like this, only really fast:

In memory of someone?

Yeah, Moshe had…

no…

oh my god

oh my god

Dad!

yeah, in his memory

oh shit

shit!

oh my god

yeah, he died of cancer

oh shit

silence

to the guy on the phone: yeah, ah…

more silence, as I tried to speak through the lump in my throat again

I handed the phone to Sarah. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I heard her on the phone to the guy, giving my credit card number, and then he must have asked her for the name on the card, and she said, Mrs. – M- R- S, spelling it out for him. She realized what she’d said to him, and cupped her hand over her mouth, laughing kinda, embarrassed. No! no, no, she said. She’d been caught off guard a little too.

She finally completed the transaction, and got off the phone. Thank god she was there with me! I couldn’t go back in to watch the footy right away, so I sat for a bit at my computer. I looked on the website of the hospital for a bit, looking for ways I could contribute, I mean, in ways other than financially. I then remembered that WordPress has donation widgets, so I spent a bit of time looking through those, but none seemed right. Either they didn’t do what I wanted, or they did, but they hadn’t been upgraded for yonks, and weren’t right for my latest version of WP.

So, finally, I created my own widget. You can see it on the sidebar. The photo of Dad and me? Yeah, that’s it. If you click on the photo, or on the link beneath it, you go straight to the website page for the hospital, and you can click on their donate button. Please do. The whole of Melbourne needs this hospital to be built. Somehow, I don’t think any of us can escape being impacted by cancer any more, one way or another.

I love my dog. Tommy’s so very refined. He’s not content to gnaw at his bones in just any location. He likes to dine in the best places, where his dining experience will be enhanced with aromas and flavours befitting of any good foodie worth his salt. He selects the greenest, most dense thyme plant of the herb patch, drops his bone right in the centre, before relaxing down to the ground to pick it up and, with a good helping of the best my kitchen garden has to offer, chew away and really enjoy his meal. So impressive, such class, don’t you think?

Afternoon tea (well, t-bone perhaps?)

Over the next few weeks, our wonderful gardener Bree and her crew – that’s David, will build an enclosure that will house our first real vegetable and herb kitchen garden since the one we had in Fairway Drive, Richardson, Texas back in the 1990s. We (that is, the gardeners) had planted pumpkins, zucchini, tomatoes, and other fabulous vegetables, and the vines grew and grew over the garden, with the promise of new vegetable growth, and then we had to move house. We never got to reap the benefits of that garden. Such a shame. Moshe and I had also created a vegetable patch in the first house we lived in, back in 1977, right after we got married. Remember that one, Moshe? There was a two metre square area in our back yard in that run-down house where the back door never quite closed enough so we could lock it, and we planted our vegetables – watermelon, pumpkins, and other things that I can’t remember now. The creeping vines covered most of the lawn, and I think we did get to serve some of the produce on our dinner table.
Here is the site of my soon-to-be new kitchen garden…

I’m so excited about this new venture. I’m about to browse the isles of the Diggers and the Greenpatch Organic Seeds websites for fabulous organic herbs and vegetables to plant in our garden, once the grass has died off, and the fence to keep our puppies and the local possums out is put up, and covered with netting to keep the birds out. Any recommendations for what I should plant this time of the year in Melbourne?

I have a new project. (Well there’s something new!) In the next little bit, in the next six to eighteen months perhaps, we’ll most likely begin building a house. Moshe and I have spent most of our married life living in one of two “one-day-we’ll-renovate-and-have-our-dream-home” houses that we’ve owned, or in rented houses or flats (apartments). Now, we don’t know exactly when we’ll be able to get serious about building, or if it’ll turn out that we just won’t be able to build, in which case we’ll need to consider alternatives such as buying and renovating, or simply buying. Or possibly, just renovating our current house. Doesn’t matter though, I’m on a mission to create a plan for building (or renovating as a backup) our own sustainable, green house. And all within our budget. According to one of my daughters, that could be a major problem. Turns out that the current conversation about building sustainable houses is that they cost a whole lot more than a regular house, and people’s budgets consistently get blown out.

So, my game is to see if I can do this without blowing the budget. I’m sure I’m not the first or last person to want to do this, but let’s see how I go. First thing I need to do is get really well-educated about this subject. I’ve watched the odd TV show here and there over the years about the amazing homes people have built, but I really don’t have any knowledge that’s of value to me in terms of building my house. So, this is the place to begin. Get educated.

I joined Shmeco, a site where people are invited to “exchange their ideas, stories and experience on sustainable living choices”. I found a bunch of Australian websites and blogs that I bookmarked and subscribed to, as well as Inhabitat, which isn’t Australian, but is so inspiring, and Michael Mobbs | Sustainable Projects. I bought a one-year online subscription to Green, and I’m investigating participating in the Sustainable House Day on 11th September.

Here are some images of eco-friendly/sustainable houses that I find interesting:

More updates on this project as news breaks

I think it’s time to put up a post about Tommy and Java. Here are some pics…

“I wan‘t the good guy‘s to win.”
“My family are leaving me for the weekend.”
“most of there clothes are about $5″

When in doubt, or simply as a rule, whack in an apostrophe, just for good measure. It can’t hurt, right? And what about those collective nouns? Out the door with them! Two of the above quotes came directly from the internet, and the third out of the mouth of a relative of mine. (I still love you! xx)

I have this dilemma. You see, I’ve always been madly interested in languages. I was brought up (as opposed to bought up) in a household of immigrants, where education was extremely important, and using correct language was ..well, just what you did. It was expected. My teachers at school expected it, and my parents, mostly Mum, expected it too. It wasn’t something that was up for grabs. It wasn’t optional. It wasn’t anything you would dick around with. You just spoke correctly.

One of my “fondest” memories is of getting into trouble as a child because I used contractions such as “can’t” and “don’t”. Even that was straying, for my mother.

At the time, I was quite the young rebel, and continued to use “won’t” and “shouldn’t”, almost more so to make my point – languages evolve! Don’t you understand that, mother?

So here’s where my dilemma comes in. It seems we’ve done away with any interest in correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. And when I say “we”, I mean the up-and-coming generations, the ones to whom the world now belongs. When I say now, I mean “now, when  I can just about smell the burning  candles and taste the cherries on top of my 55th birthday cake”. The world is no longer mine, at least not when it comes to language and grammar. For the most part, phonetics is all important. So, “there”, “their” and “they’re” are interchangeable. Even “”are” and “our” apparently can switch places!

Now, I know that language evolves, and it seems that that’s what is happening here, but I am not so sure. I’m not convinced yet, although I’m open to the possibility, that in fifty or a hundred years time, we won’t even have the written word to worry about. Perhaps language and communication will transform beyond what’s even conceivable now. Maybe this will all be moot. I really don’t know. The only thing for me is, I feel that now, in our time, we’re missing the whole point of language.

See, what differentiates us from the animals that roam the Earth, as we all know, is precisely the fact that we have language. More than that, language is the medium by which we communicate, and by which we create life and the world we live in, whether it’s to ask someone to pass the sugar, or to use the most expressive poetry to tell someone we love them, and thereby create a whole world that didn’t exist the moment before we spoke, or to create a significant document that reaches down the generations – take any country’s constitution.

Misuse of language, sloppiness with expression, any lack of understanding of the rules of language – all are opportunities for ambiguity, confusion, and mischief. When I hear on the radio, “The government are about to pass the bill,” I want to reply, “Are it?” It just doesn’t make any sense. It leaves me listening to and dealing with the bad language, and not fully engaged with what the speaker or reader is expressing. The flow of language is interrupted, and it becomes an irritant to the ear and to the mind.

But, as I’m bemoaning the demise of my beautiful, rich mother-tongue, I keep searching for a solution. I mean, how can language that has gone so far off the rails be revived? I’m devastated by the number of teachers, professors, academics, doctors, lawyers, politicians, government representatives, both here and abroad, who mess up the language. It seems hopeless. I mean, if those that educate and lead don’t have the thing flat, what hope is there!

Now, I do know of several people out there who are making a concerted effort to re-educate the masses. I only hope the masses get interested in learning from them. I’m gob-smacked by the lack of interest on most people’s part; they’re not even looking to educate themselves. It’s more of that dumbing down thing, mediocrity winning the day, “anyone can be a hero” mentality that mistakenly validates and almost glorifies ignorance. I think people completely missed the point in the movie, Forrest Gump. Forrest is not a hero because he’s a sandwich short of a picnic. He’s a hero because being a good person, having a full and generous heart, doesn’t depend upon how educated you are. And yet it seems that people think that any nincompoop is worthy of fame and fortune, and idolatry. You just have to turn on cable TV and count how many “reality” shows there are, shows about nothing really. Shows that do nothing more than provide the means for people to have Andy Warhol’s legendary 15 minutes.

So who are these people? Those that keep the Preservation of Language flag flying high? I know a couple of them. Well, not personally, but enough that I can introduce you to them, if you like. My list is really short, but start here, if you are interested. Start with these, and get a taste for it. Allow yourself to become fascinated, and then move on to others. You’ll find them. You just have to look. They’re everywhere. You’ll find them in books; just ask at the bookshop. You’ll find them on the internet, if books aren’t your thing. Here are two of my favourites for you:

1. Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue and Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words. Easy-to-read books with a humorous bent. Very smart and entertaining.
2. Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl, a website loaded with information and grammar answers. She publishes podcasts, she tweets, and her website is loaded with grammatical goodies.

So. What do you think? Is language simply evolving, or are you as frustrated as I am with the complete, blasé disrespect of the centuries that have gone into creating this thing of beauty and genius we call our language?

I’m guessing that if you’ve gotten to the end of this post, you’re someone who already holds our language dear.