12 words
The micro story isn’t new. Ernest Hemingway once said his six-word story, Baby Shoes, was his favourite. “For sale: baby shoes: never used”
Gertrude Stein beat him with a shorter story still called Longer “She stayed away longer.” More recently, New York based writer, Amy Hempel wrote a twelve-word story – Memoir – “Just once in my life. Oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life.”
What we love about the micro story is that it is accessible for everyone. Whether you are a published writer or you have never written any fiction before, you can give this a go and enjoy it. It’s also quick to text, email and tweet.
There are also loads of sites with micro blogs and very short stories on them, see our links below, and suggest more if you know of any.
Gratitude to Kate for sharing this link, and for her 12 words, which will be posted next.
August 9th, 2010 - Posted in learning, personal growth, play, community, wisdom | | 0 Comments
Ethical pet food
picture by furtwangl
A friend in my network is taking her family home to New Zealand, and they cannot take “Shady” their four year old black Labrador X Kelpie with them. We agreed to adopt her and she has fit in with our family very well in all but one very problematic way: she loves chickens. Her previous family didn’t know it but she loves to chase chickens, she loves to catch chickens, she loves to romp on them and carry them around in her mouth. When they’re dead, she likes to eat them entirely–there’s no waste–unless we interfere at some point in this cycle. You can imagine, this has been very bad news for our chickens.
And it has been very bad news for Shady since this means she lives her life on a running chain while the chickens are out. We snap-decided the dog would have to go. The chickens were here first, they’re our priority, and having them free range the orchard was an important part of the design of the garden. We’d only just managed to breed some chicks for the first time. Now it’s chick: singular. And we’re down to two laying chickens from a population of nine. But I don’t want to dwell on the negatives.
I called a dog trainer for advice. He said that she’s had too many chickens now to be trained out of it. I’ve been trying to rehouse poor Shady for the past two weeks but she’s a bit of a hard sell now. And in this time we’ve seen there’s a really delightful side to Shady too.
She’s playful, and affectionate, and likes to stay close to her family. She’s undisciplined, but a good communicator. She doesn’t bark much and if she gets a bit of a run every day, she’s quite mellow the rest of the time. She’s a great kids’ dog, and she’ll roll over and present her belly for a scratch if you even so much as look in her direction. She delighted us with a flying leap off a pile of earth in the yard as she ran around with the kids like a crazy young pup. She’s managing to work her way into our hearts and I keep trying to think of ways to keep this dog away from our chickens. You’d be asking for trouble keeping chickens and then keeping a dog that kills chickens, wouldn’t you?
We’ve had our share of challenges keeping chickens here. Feral dogs and cats and foxes roam the neighbourhood at night. Rats and snakes also present problems if you don’t have a secure coop for the birds. And human error, I’m sorry to say, has lost us many birds as well. So it’s not like this dog is the first chicken disaster we’ve ever had to manage. We could pen the chickens. We could fence the dog. We could put the chickens in tractors. We could set up a perimeter dog run. We could … We could ….
At the same time, this is a situation we can avoid altogether by just taking Shady to the RSPCA and being done with her.
If only it were that simple. Do you know someone with a fenced yard who’d like a fixed, micro-chipped, vaccinated, wormed, flea-treated female dog? Please get in touch.
May 31st, 2010 - Posted in childhood, play, duty of care, sustainability, grief | | 4 Comments
Conspicuous consumption
picture by permanently scatterbrained
Cars slow down on our street to check out the progress on our front yard landscaping. It’s a big job, including a swimming pool and a kabana-type shelter. I know what they’re thinking. They’re wondering how much it is costing to build this monster and where we got the money from in this economic climate. They’re probably figuring out whether we’ve met before, at the neighbourhood Christmas party maybe, or perhaps our kids go to the same school. Even worse, we probably have, they probably do, and I don’t remember their names. And they don’t like us anymore.
These things are so simple for my husband. He works hard, we both agree, so he should be able to spend the money however he sees fit, knowing it will enhance our family time, provide a place to engage with our community, be an asset for our lifestyle. “Imagine us years into the future,” he assures me, “having our family around us.”
Of course, I come at it from a different angle, worried that we’re wasting our season ticket to the local community pool, that we won’t have the pleasure of bumping into (or making) friends there anymore, that the kids will get ’soft’ and be unable to swim in the local creeks with their friends where the rocks are slimy and scary-but-harmless creatures lurk below the surface. I worry that people will make assumptions about our family and our lifestyle and I’m worried that those assumptions might turn out to be correct. What happened to our goal to live simply, frugally, and maintain a small footprint? Shouldn’t we be chopping wood for our combustion stove so we can bake the bread before tending the composting toilet?
But it hasn’t turned out that way. It seems like, in order to live frugally, we need to spend money upgrading this or that appliance to a higher energy rating, getting more solar panels, even a back-up battery system for power outages (because the power does go out regularly here). I get terribly confused about what is reasonable consumption for a human being in a single life-time and whether we are setting our family up to feel entitled to consume. Or is the infrastructure we’re creating (swimming pool and all) a way for the next generation to not consume as we once did, because everything we need to live well is already here? I dunno. It just doesn’t come in black and white.
Eilleen from Consumption Rebellion doesn’t seem to have these dilemmas. She lives a beautiful life with so much less. When she was deliberating about needing/wanting a new digital camera and a new mobile phone, I was like, “Honey, you can do both.” But that’s not the point. The point is to consume conscientiously - and a big part of that word ‘conscientiously’ is ‘conscience’; that part of me from which my crisis originates.
If ‘frugal’ is a lifestyle I’ll admit, this isn’t it.
May 22nd, 2010 - Posted in partnership, consumerism, play, beliefs, wisdom, money, self-care | | 8 Comments
Out of the mouths of babes #7
picture by jj.figueroa
Miss Four asks me where her chihuahua is. I look at her blankly.
She persists, “Maaa~aam, do you know where my chihuahua is?” “Maaa~aam, can you help me find it, pleeeeeeze?”
I’m baffled. I try to think if she has any pictures of dogs in her books, on her clothes, or maybe she has a stuffed toy somewhere? Surely not or I’d know about it.
Knowing full well what a chihuahua looks like I figured I’d ask her anyhow. She rolls her eyes.
“You know Mum, the princess chihuahua I wear on my head!”
Oh, that chihuahua. I find her *tiara* and try not to look amused.
May 18th, 2010 - Posted in childhood, parenthood, play | | 2 Comments
Sync-y Sex
picture by thegrocer*
Yes, I know how stupid the title sounds. No, it’s not a typo. It’s meant to be sync-y, not kinky. Here, let me explain….
It’s probably rather voyeuristic of me, but I recently discovered a network of married men blogging about married/monogamous sex (or the lack thereof). I am always amazed, and a little bit appalled, by the male point of view on sex; about the necessary frequency and variety of it, and about their desperation during the droughts in between.
Sexuality is a major aspect of being human. It would be remiss of me to blog about humanist personal growth and never talk about sex. I’m just waiting for the day the principal of my kids’ school discovers this blog and reads this entry - it’s bound to happen. But hey, we’re all human, and at least it’s not a religious school (’cos y’all will know where I stand on that issue).
I hope my dear hubby will forgive me for blogging on this subject but, like all couples, we’ve had our ups and downs in the intimacy department. We’ve even sought counselling at times. He’s a very wise and patient man, my husband, and I’m not going to embarrass him by sharing details of the history of our sexual relationship. I mean, really, there will never be a marriage that doesn’t encounter periods of mis-matched libido, changing tastes in the sensual, or extended spells of sheer physical and emotional exhaustion. Hands up if you have kids. Even if you don’t, most people have a day job to suck all the vitality out of them.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that the frequency with which other couples are doing it has any reflection on the health of my own relationship. It’s simply not on my radar. A: who cares what other people do in the privacy of their bedrooms or living rooms, or cars, or whatever? (… well, maybe I am just a little curious, but please, no pictures!) And B: I find the practice of keeping a log on such events a major, MAJOR, turn off.
Surely keeping the physical spark in a monogamous relationship is about empathy? It’s about understanding where your partner is at; about acknowledging where you’re at yourself; and then addressing the space in between?
Which, for a heterosexual man, to be more direct about it, means keeping track of his woman’s menstrual cycle, and going with the flow of her sexual receptivity during the first two weeks of her cycle, and then easing off and giving her room to breathe for the rest of the month. Really guys, let go of this twice-a-week or every-second-day attitude and trust that she’ll initiate it if she really wants it. There is nothing new about this concept. It is the wisdom of ages. But for those of whom this is new information, here’s a neat little article that explains it in its simplest terms (so the blokes can understand).
There is, of course, a biological purpose to the fluctuating desire woman experience during their menstrual cycle, which is, of course, to guarantee the survival of the human race, which does, of course, require … you guessed it - sexual intercourse. Husbands and partners can choose to work with the menstrual cycle, or be foolish, and probably damned frustrated, to work against it.
My dear husband has gone the technological route and downloaded an app for his Blackberry that keeps track of my menstrual cycle and guides him in demonstrating his love and desire for me. At first, I was leery, even offended, that some slip of a software program could possibly enhance our love life. But since I don’t chart my cycles on a calendar, and since I don’t have any visible code that communicates where my cycle is at, what choice did the poor man have? Now I see the value in this slip of a software program telling him where I’m at, physically and emotionally, and I blush to share that we’re in better sync than we’ve ever been.
March 25th, 2010 - Posted in happiness, partnership, play, beliefs, love, wisdom, health, self-care | | 4 Comments
