What's Your Poison?
(c) Melina Magdalena (2008
A couple of weeks ago I went walking in Paradise, down by the riverside. Across the dried-up riverbed in some long grass, I saw a mother and a dog, followed by two little girls. The little girls were brandishing large leafy branches over their heads. They marched along as though on parade. It took a few renditions of their chant before I realized what they were saying:
I love God! I hate Devil!
I wonder what Devil means to them? Interesting that like God, for these little girls, “Devil” implies a vast uncountability. Certainly if the whole world were reduced to simplistic terms of black and white; good and evil, a vast evil threatening, beckoning on the horizon is definitely something to hate and to fear.
And I wonder, what’s your poison?
These days we are so obsessed with number crunching. It seems a lot of it is being done to erase accountability, rather than to face one’s behaviours, consider them and take action to change them if our considerations warrant such action.
If you’re interested in statistics, consider the following:
A recent Australian study found that gay-identified young men (aged 18 - 24) were 3.7 times more likely to attempt suicide. Most of these attempts occurred after the person had self-identified as gay, but before having a same-sex experience and before publicly identifying themselves as gay. Wesley Mission (accessed on-line 14/3/08)
People who are bisexual or homosexual are at greater risk of having depression than people who are heterosexual. This is reflected in suicide statistics which have found that bisexual and homosexual people are six times more likely to attempt suicide than people who are heterosexual. This may relate to people who are homosexual and bisexual being more likely to struggle with their sexual identity and/or being discriminated against or bullied because of their sexuality. BeyondBlue (accessed on-line 14/3/08)
I heard anecdotally this week that within this group of non-heterosexual people, those who had religious upbringings are four times more likely to attempt and succeed in committing suicide than the others. (If any readers can confirm a source for this staggering statistic, I'd be keen to publish it properly.)
CRUNCHY PARENTS
I first came across the term crunchy in the domain of parenting. The criteria for being crunchy parents include our choices about nappies (or no nappies), vaccinations, breastfeeding, co-sleeping and schooling. Take a look at the quiz, and see where you fit. According to this quiz I’m probably not “a natural mama you are – you know, crunchy, like a "granola girl." I only scored 84 out of 130+ and that makes me “pretty crispy”.
But it got me thinking about judgments. I got so upset at the way my food choices were labelled traif – my Jewish identity is clearly a difficult, complex and touchy topic! I’m touchy about a whole lot of other subjects, too – driving a car, cleaning products, meat eating, plastic bags, and all those ecological ideas that position me in a place of power, according to my product and lifestyle choices. I suppose it’s no different from political correctness or that carbon footprint, in that it’s a way to track and judge and compare your actions against those of others, according to someone’s grand plan of what is right and wrong.
Now who’s to say any one of us is more correct than the other? Who gets to make those judgment calls? Who says homeschooling is better than pumping one’s children through the factory process of institutional schooling and socialization? Who says I’m wrong to put my children in childcare so that I can spend my waking hours working in some secondary or tertiary or post-tertiary industry for a living? Who says I should not feed meat to my children? Who says I am irresponsible for keeping cats?
Such ontological and unnecessary questions stem from the years I spent under the tutelage of a professor of linguistics whose belief was that if we stopped talking about the environment as though it were separate from us instead of as though we are part of it, the perceived problems would go away or naturally be dealt with as a matter of course and perception. I think it takes a great deal more than talk. Like the professor, I question my ability as an individual, to make an effective impact on our environment through my product and lifestyle choices. But if it makes me feel good to be contributing in some way, however small, then why should I question it?
I cast my mind back to the days before Linguistics, when I followed, blindly and mutely, the tutelage of another man – my husband. He never doubted his responsibility in taking action to save the world and the environment. Yes, he may have ruled our home with an iron fist, and I may have been the household member who worked hardest to do my bit in order to prove myself to him, but the way we lived back then has many admirable qualities. It took me quite a while to break myself of certain habits. Some I choose to retain, and others I have made my own.
My husband objected to childcare in a big way. But that was one battle I managed to win. My kids both had one half-day session of childcare on a fairly regular basis from the age of one. And when I studied, they had more. His argument was miserly – why pay someone else to look after his kid? And he’s carried this attitude throughout our long years of separation, in refusing to pay child support. I don’t like the idea of long daycare. I prefer the ideal of parents caring for their own children, and I am passionate about the recognition of child rearing as a legitimate form of work.
Homeschooling though, is a notion that just doesn’t grab me. I’m a state school girl, and I’ve sent my kids to state schools, too.
CRUNCHY IN THE BATHROOOM
For example, I had to convince myself it was OK to use hygiene products such as shampoo, conditioner, moisturizer, pads, deodorant and the like, even though they are marketed in plastic packaging. I tried to reuse my bottles for a few years, but the inconvenience broke me of that habit. Life got too busy, what with raising two kids, running a household, studying and working all at once. I’m sure many can relate to that.
These days I’m trying to swing back to the reuse of packaging. I’ve recycled religiously my whole adult life, and I don’t know that I can reduce much more than I already am.
CRUNCHY IN THE LAUNDRY
It goes without saying that my kids only wore cloth nappies. And we washed them in our twin tub. And we recycled a great deal of the water. And we used only soap flakes that had to be dissolved in hot water first. I say “we”, but of course it was mostly “me”, doing my eternal bit for the family and the environment, just as when I dug the bed, planted the seed and raised the homegrown spinach crop that was one of our son’s first foods.
This predated the data that compares the use of water in washing nappies with the ecological cost of disposable nappies. It predates the new technologies of truly disposable nappies. When I have my babies this time, I’ll probably still be washing nappies, but I may also use some truly disposables on occasion, and I’ll feel fine about that.
How does one measure the crunch between these two things? It’s tricky!
The first new appliance I ever bought in my life was a front-loader washing machine. It has 4 stars (out of 6) on its energy rating, and I save the water and dump it on my trees and pot plants.
CRUNCHY IN THE KITCHEN
I had the occasional backslide even while I was still in the marriage. There were the times I bought things I shouldn’t have, like a tub of yoghurt. Heaven forbid we have anything packaged in plastic. Our lifestyle was continuously evolving. When the Jesus Christians visited, they were still able to obtain most of their food from the bins outside supermarkets. In those days, the bins were not locked, and people could get access to an incredible array of products that were discarded because they’d passed their use by date. It was an affront to my husband to be served food that they had prepared – NOT because it came out of a bin, but because of how it had been packaged before it went into that bin.
We weren’t allowed to use food that came from tins, either – only glass and paper were kosher, according to my husband. But I learned to use tins after I left him. They are recycled as a matter of course.
Indeed – food between us was always a fraught issue. I grew up on a plethora of culturally diverse foodstuffs. Both my mother and my father are superb cooks, and I am well used to good food. Ours was a table at which everyone could have second helpings if they so wished. And we always had fresh fruit and salad available.
I was vegetarian through both my pregnancies, except for when I could get away with eating meat, such as at my in-laws house, and (before I left home) at my mother’s table. I used to sneakily patronize one of the Chinese takeaway cafes when I was at uni, and scoff down a lunch of greasy Chinese flavoured meat and vegetables whenever I could get away with it. It wasn’t that I minded being vegetarian, especially if it was the “right” thing to do, but my body craved meat.
So in 1992 when Bernie Maloney of the illustrious sombrero stayed with us for the second time and introduced me to the art of roasting beef and lamb, I happily embraced this concept into my repertoire. After all – not many come with his kind of credentials. I wasn’t willing to limit my diet in the way he did (tomatoes, strawberries, red meat, garlic and kiwi fruit), but I remember coming home from a Palm Sunday Rally at Peace Park to a kitchen filled with the aroma of roast garlic lamb he’d left in a slow oven to cook in our absence. I practically devoured the roast single-handedly, standing up. No surprise to learn I was chronically anaemic due to the depletion of my iron stores during pregnancy and breastfeeding and prolonged unsystematic vegetarianism.
But Bernie went on his way to yet another action, yet another protest somewhere else, and a new regime was put into place in my home. Yes, we might eat meat, but it must be the meat of vermin (rabbit) or native meat (kangaroo). These were not part of my cultural heritage and I could not smell them cooking or eat them without retching.
CRUNCHY ROAD USERS
We were staunch users of public transport. There were many occasions when we were offered lifts in someone’s car, and were obliged to turn them down. I used to stand on Main North Road outside Sefton Plaza, brandishing a homemade banner that read “YOUR CAR STINKS!” Oh yes – I did my bit for the environment. And when the bus came, I folded my banner, stuck it into my backpack, got the kids out of their pusher, folded the pusher single-handedly and loaded us into the bus and we were on our way.
I’m hopelessly addicted to my car. Even now I feel a tremulous excitement every time I get behind the wheel. I feel a sense of freedom and exhilaration – I can go anywhere. I learned to drive when I was 25. Now that I’m 38, I’m wondering how to reduce my car use. I’m still working on that.
CRUNCHY CONSUMPTION
So what’s the story these days, with all the organic cotton garments that are available in chain stores all of a sudden? I’ve not been in the habit of purchasing new clothes at all – and I figure there’s no point in limiting my op shop choices to garments that were not manufactured in China. The garment manufacture maze is very hard to navigate. This year’s Adelaide IWD focused on fairness for Outworkers – garment makers who work from home under very poor industrial conditions. I’ve not been in a financial position to make many choices about what I wear. Maybe this too will change as I enter a new phase of my life.
Well friends, expanding on the original Granola Girl I’m aiming to devise my very own crunchiness quiz. The scoring system is completely arbitrary, but it might be fun. I’ll try to have it up by next week, if other more pressing matters don’t crowd my writing time.
Oh – one last muesli-related story: 1976, we’re visiting my mother’s family in Germany. A cousin in West Germany has two kids around the same age as my brother and me. We stay with them. They have an incredible basement with tricycles and things we can ride around on. Every morning they have muesli for breakfast. You get to make your own! They have a cupboard with a myriad of little wooden drawers. Each drawer contains a different ingredient. You pull out the drawer and use a small scoop to make your own muesli. Never the same twice. What a gift!
What is the relation between Muesli and Granola? One is a brand-name variety of a kind of breakfast cereal, the other is a traditional food from middle Europe. But in Australia we don’t have granola bars – we have muesli bars. Hence the connection.
ps Just for fun, here's a photo from 1985 of my original crunchie Grandma Barnes, eating a gelati in Adelaide. During their working lives, Grandma and Grandpa ran a healthfood store and tree surgery, amongst other vocations as well as raising their brood. When I knew them they were the most amazing gardeners, and Grandpa caught a lot of their protein as well, in the form of fish and venison.
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