Making Decisions in Seven Easy Steps – Nuffnang Blogger Challenge

Regular readers might have noticed the new ads I have on my blog the past couple of months – they’re hosted by Nuffnang and so far I’m super in love with them; it’s a great blogging community and they have great support.

As it turns out this month they are holding The Nuffnang Christmas Blogger Challenge, which is:

Pick out the best blog post you wrote in 2010, and write a blog post which links to that post and explains why it’s your favourite.

The prize for this is an Apple iPad, which would be SUPER AWESOME to win. My first computer was an Apple: an Apple IIe to be precise. It was possibly the best computer ever made. But now there’s an iPad out there and I would so dearly LOVE to win one, not only because it’s really cool, but because early next year we’ll be going on a round-the-world trip to Argentina for the next World Rainbow Gathering, then to Israel for Littletree’s 8th birthday, then to India, because it’s Litteltree’s big dream to go to India, and if I had an iPad it would be so much easier to keep up with blogging along the way.

But the challenge… to pick out the best blog post from 2010. Whoa. I have 110 blog posts so far this year – it took a couple of hours to read through them all and select the contenders for best post. Another few hours were spent in whittling it down to a short list of 10 posts. I ummed and ahhhed for ages.

Should it be Of Rainbows and Sunsets, which has awesome pictures and encapsulates my life and my blog quite well, or should it be Surprise Flower, which is short and sweet? Should I go for something funny, like When Life Gives you Bananas or what about something that showcases Littetree’s cuteness and intellect, like The Question of Invention? And don’t forget midwifery-related posts like Beautiful Birthing.

Stuck in a conundrum, I decided to go about this in a rational, scientific way. Obviously the solution would be to build a Decide-A-Tron like the computer they made in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to find the golden ticket.

So I got out all my tools and set to work to build the ultimate machine! Unfortunately, just like the computer in the movie, it failed to yield the correct answer.

Perhaps I wasn’t being scientific enough. I tried to concoct a super elixir that would give me infinite wisdom

Still undecided, it seemed I needed to be more methodical, so I went for the Tibetan Deduction Technique demonstrated by Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks

It turns out (as would have been evident to anyone who knows me), I never managed to hit the bottle at all.

I realised that since this is about my favourite post, I would have to delve into how I really feel about it, tuning in to the heart rather than the head, so I had a sitting with a Tarot-reader…

I now know that there is a tall, dark stranger and an Apple iPad in my future, but as to which blog post is best, I was still in the fog. Clearly, I needed to connect with my own inner being. I sat in deep meditation and asked a pendulum…

The final answer still not coming to me, I went to my Guru and Master… Littletree. She just laughed at me, and finally we went with my best blog post for 2010: Faerie Shoes.

I love this post because it’s a little humorous, it has nice pictures, and in one brief snip gives a neat look into my life and what my blog is about. And it’s the post that’s gonna win me the competition, which will be the best Christmas present ever! Best of all, we’ve decided to celebrate Christmas this year, so it will be extra excellent to have a cool present under the tree.

So, everyone, tell me what you think; how do you go about making tough decisions?

Hole in the Wall

People often ask how unschooling works, and the main questions are generally centred around two things - how can children socialise if they're not in school, and how can they learn if they're not being taught.

The socialising question is one for another post, but anyone who knows my child, or even reads my blog would see that it's really a non-issue. Humans are social creatures, and children are born socialising. I don't see any reason to stifle that natural impulse by putting them in school ;)

As to learning, it's really about the same answer. Humans are born with a deep thirst for knowledge, and a profound ability for learning. The best thing we can do is to get out of the way. Children learn such a phenomenal amount of stuff - without being taught - before they ever get near a school.

One resource that I always want to point people to is Sugata Mitra's talk about the Hole-In-The-Wall project on the TED site. It's a fascinating video - a little long, and the best bits start maybe 7 minutes in, but the synopsis is that Mitra set up Internet computers in remote villages in India, where the children had virtually no schooling and no instruction in English, and left it alone. In very short time, the children not only taught themselves to use a computer and browse the Internet, they taught themselves English.

When Mitra came back to one village to check on the project, the first thing these children, who had previously had no exposure to English, said to him was, "we need a faster processor and a better mouse".

"We found that six to thirteen year olds can self instruct in a connected environment, irrespective of anything that we could measure."

"It was a demonstration of what a group of children can do without adult intervention."

"Primary education can happen on it's own."

"Learning is a self-organising system."

Essentially I believe that this kind of learning can happen all the time, with all children. My aim is to raise my child with love and respect, supporting her to follow her own learning. But mostly we're just having a lot of fun :)

Fearless Birthing

The Essence of Life website, which I write for, has been updated - it's all shiny and new :) Since the update, all the URLs from the old articles have changed, so I updated all the links to EOL in the sidebar - if you scroll down my blog on the right side bar there's full lists of all my articles there.

They also have a new article of mine published, about Birthing without Fear. You can read it Here

And the forums are all upgraded and looking great (functioning better as well), so check it out Here

After the Fire Storm Comes the Rainbow Clothes

No doubt you all heard about the horrific bush fires that have wreaked devastation over a massive area in Victoria, in south-eastern Australia. The fires broke out the day before we left for Tasmania, and are still burning in some places, over 2 weeks later. 210 people (at the last count) have lost their lives, thousands of homes and businesses were lost and countless millions of dollars in damage.

I managed to miss most of the hullabaloo, by dint of being at the rainbow gathering, and mostly incommunicado, but a tragedy of this magnitude affects us all.

Several of my good friends lost everything, one family I know barely managed to escape the fire by jumping out the window with their new baby. The extent of the devastation leaves me breathless and astounded.

Naturally, the nation is banding together to support the survivors, donations can be made through the Red Cross.

Anyway, our good friends, with whom we stayed in Hobart, Mellow and Nemo, with their little baby, Nature, went above and beyond, donating a massive pile of boxes full of new stock from their clothing store.

Their clothes are all hand made in India, Mellow designs all the clothes herself, and then goes over to ensure everything is made under ethical working conditions and with fair trade practices.

Seriously, they make gorgeous clothes. I was blessed enough to get this awesome winter dress:

And Littletree got some cute outfits too. Their store is called Keshet, which means Rainbow in Hebrew. Check out their website HERE, or go to their stall at Salamanca Market.

Queensland's ailing education system

In my happy travels around the Internet, I came upon this article in the Queensland Courier Mail.

THE Bligh Government has sent out an SOS over the state's ailing education system after admitting the model it has overseen for more than a decade is not working.
Premier Anna Bligh yesterday announced an education specialist from Victoria would conduct a wide-ranging review into Queensland's increasingly poor academic performance.
Queensland Year 4 students finished last in science and seventh in maths out of Australia's eight states and territories in an international mathematics and science study, it was revealed on Tuesday.
Even students from Russia and the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan performed better...

The article goes on, and feel free to read the full article (here) but I thought the first part was interesting to have a look at.

First of all; yeah the Queensland education system isn't working. Duh. They actually tried out this failing system for over a decade. which basically means a whole generation of kids were "educated" under a system that even the government says is crap.

Next point; Queensland, students finished 8th and 7th out of eight states in science and maths respectively. At face value, that sounds pretty bad, but does anyone else see the irony here?

If you're going to rate anything on a scale of first to last, then *someone* has to be last. If Queensland actually manages to get their kids to ace their tests next year, then some other state will be last. It's never ending. And it's EXACTLY the same scoring system they apply to students in the classes. No matter how fantastic the children are, there's always going to be one kid who's "the worst".

One might have hoped the government might employ someone intelligent enough to see that and simply stop the whole ranking system. Home schooling anyone?

And lastly, "Even students from Russia and the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan performed better."

Racism anyone? Classism?
It makes me so pissed off, I can't even say anything about that. It speaks for itself really.

New Articles

Essence of Life published a bunch of my articles while we were in China;

Great Giver: Wangari Maathai about an incredible Kenyan woman's struggle to bring about political change and women's rights in Africa
A Joining of Tribes about our experiences at the Australian rainbow gathering and the native aboriginal ceremony there
A Child Environmentalist: Bindi Irwin about everyone's favourite little TV greenie :)

Check em out. and don't forget to visit the forum...

Pass-over Passover

Passover is coming on Saturday night, and everyone is busy preparing. The main point of the holiday is to remember how Moses busted the Jews out of Egypt. (They tried to kill us, we won; let's eat!)

The main way we remember, is by not eating leavened bread, because when the Jews escaped from the Pharaoh, they didn't have time to let their bread rise. Not only did they wander lost in the desert for ages, they didn't even have good Pita!

So, here we are, thousands of years after making this miraculous escape, and we keep eating Matzoh, so as to remember it. Let's be perfectly honest; matzoh is horrible stuff. it's like the driest, most flavourless, revolting, dry, tasteless, dehydrated, dry cracker you've ever eaten. Did I mention it's also dry and has no taste?

Okay, I get it, there's a religious significance, and during the Seder (the long feast we eat on the opening night of Passover, where we read this long story about how the Jews escaped Egypt), we're supposed to eat several pieces. But does it have to be the only bread-product we eat all week?

Haven't the Jewish people suffered enough?!

Anyway, I digress; the thing I wanted to talk about, is the extent Jews have to go to, in order to make sure they don't eat anything leavened.

You have to clean out all your cupboards, and throw away anything that contains Hametz; wheat, rye, barley, oats or spelt (and just for good measure, also corn and rice), and anything that might be fermented. So after you've thrown away all your food, you have to clean the whole kitchen really well, just to make sure no crumbs remain, and then boil all your dishes in a deep vat for a long time, to make sure no traces remain.

If you can imagine the enormity of this job, consider that supermarkets and food manufacturers also must comply; they have to throw away all their stocks of food, and clean their machinery, under the observation of a rabbi.

Of course, no one is really doing this. Most secular Jews are doing a somewhat half-assed job, by putting all their hametz food into one cupboard, high up, and pretending it's not there.

The big food manufacturers, and all the supermarkets, have a deal with this one Arab family. They leave all the food in it's place, but shut the doors on it till after Passover, and they sell it to this Arab family. Who knows how much for. Then at the end of the week, they buy it all back again. So for the week, nothing has changed, the food is all still in it's place, life goes on, but legally the food is owned by the Arabs, and therefore, it's all Kosher.

Lately this has gone one step further, with websites like this one offering to buy people's hametz from them, and then sell it back after a week. Of course, all the food stays in your pantry at home, and I don't think anyone checks if you have a little nibble while no one's looking.

It is just another way in which the Jews go to extraordinary lengths to circumvent Jewish law and still remain Kosher.

Elimination Communication

My latest Natural Parenting article was published on Essence Of Life.
Its about Elimination Communication, which is a way of having babies without diapers and paying attention to their signals to know when they need to go. In general it means having "toilet-trained" kids at around one year old.
Again, I'm not thrilled about the editor's cut, but what to do? they pay me anyways ;)

My Little Aggravator

I was just lying with Littletree for a cuddle, and said to her:

"I'm so happy you chose me to be your mama."

She replied:

"I'm so happy you chose me to be your aggravator"

Hillarious.

I have been hard at work dealing with our online photo albums... thus far, we've been happily at Yahoo!, which is annoying for not retaining full-size pics, or the functionality of many sites, but, the wonderful thing is that its not an online "community" of people who do searches and view photos of strangers and comment on them.

Which means that I cant post any pics with nudity.

I had this issue with many photo websites; they delete all my birth photos, because of the nudity. even nude baby photos. and being a Midwife, I have a lot of birth photos, many of them I want to store in online albums. I want these albums to be public, but I dont want them to be on public searches. I like that I can just post a link to my albums, and my friends can find them no worries. So Yahoo! works for me.

BUT!

The bastards at Yahoo! have decided to merge with Flickr and close down the Yahoo!Photos. GRRR. So, all my online pics got transferred over to Flickr. see the pretty new gadget I have in my sidebar... You can go to my photos page, feel free to browse. there's more than 1,700 photos there, most of which are of Littletree being cute. They used to be (mostly) in some sort of order, but now... well, the albums are organised into sets. I went through all the pics with nudity (mostly birth pics) and made them private, so if you want to see those ones, you need to join Flickr and become my friend. At some point I might find some way of inviting people or something... but not today.

Anyway, I posted this nice pic of Littletree, being gorgeous, just because its a really cute photo. Though its from almost a year ago; before she had dreadlocks. (oh those gorgeous ginger curls!)

Spoiled Bumblebee

Someone sent me the link to this video on YouTube... I actually applauded my computer. This guy has some other great songs too, check them out!

A Brief Moment of Hilarity

Okay, so I stumbled onto this auction on eBay, its getting pretty famous now, but if you haven't heard about it, its HILARIOUS. seriously, check it out.
As I dont know how long item descriptions are kept on eBay after the auction ends, I've copied the description here... anyway, its a pack of Pokemon cards that ended up selling for $142.50US...

Everyone keeps asking me about my new computer... I spose I'll get to that later.

Where in the World is the Majikfaerie?

Its no secret that I've been travelling a lot. Just how much? well, for several years, I've been keeping an updated location going on a site called Where Are You Now. But I never told anyone about it. and it just occurred to me that I should. so I am.
If its interesting to you to see everywhere I've been in the past 9 years... click here