Doin' the Crunchie - part two

Doin' the Crunchie - part two
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.

Apology and Dissent - the big BUT!!! (Part One)

Apology and dissent – the big BUT!!!
PART ONE © Melina Magdalena 2008

I began this week with a sour taste in my mouth; realizing that my refusal to consider my Uncle F’s apology to my parents was pushing me into the same corner he was trying to scramble out of.

Then came an email from GetUp requesting me to write to my local MP, seeking support for Prime Minister Rudd’s commitment to saying Sorry. My local MP is smarmy Liberal politician Christopher Pyne. I wrote a short, but passionate email, urging him to support The Sorry on the basis that it is just, necessary and important for his future credibility, the credibility of his Party but most of all, for the credibility of the apology that Rudd will make on my behalf, and on behalf of us all, for the wrongdoings past and present Australian perpetrate against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation.

Next, I received an email from my sweetheart’s parents. They are among the group of reverends who intend to march in this year’s Sydney Mardi Gras, bearing a public apology to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people” for the way they have been treated in general, by churches and the people who attend them. To see their full apology, go here (100 Revs). This endeavour has been widely reported in the last few days. I have heard that those involved are suffering repercussions for the stand that they are choosing to take. Here’s one of the news stories that caught my attention. It links Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations with the 100 Revs.

On Lesbian_Parents_Australia this week, a focus has been on the issue of which schools will welcome our children. Many mothers on the site have had bad experiences as non-heterosexuals growing up Catholic, and also with working in Catholic schools. They do not wish their children to grow up stigmatized. This is their basis for choosing not to subject their children to an education in a Catholic school.

So apology has been on my mind a great deal, as my students returned to school and I began my second year of teaching.

We spent a great deal of time in the classroom on Monday discussing and committing to a set of classroom rules and expectations. This group of students has already had up to one year of schooling in an Australian context, and was quickly engaged in a process that is already familiar to them. We made our list, and felt good about it.

Yesterday, a young Sudanese woman interrupted class with a “What the HELL are you doing?” to a young Afghan man as he walked past her, to his seat. I didn’t catch what the hell he had done, and my automatic reaction was to question the woman, rather than the man – I am sorry for this, because it works directly against the principles of Restorative Justice , to which our school is committed. I feel that my reaction definitely falls into a “blaming the victim” mode. I do not know what happened in my classroom, except as a teacher, who was interrupted mid-flow by an interaction, accidental or purposeful, between two students of different genders and different cultural perspectives.

In speculating, it could be the man brushed past her accidentally. This woman often sits with her chair very far out from the desk, in order to work closely at her exercise book. It could be he touched her head (a severe cultural taboo) because she was not wearing one of her wigs that day, and this particular student has a fascination (borne of envy) with African hair. Or it could be something completely different.

Like so many classroom incidentals, it has been left unexamined and unresolved. If we were to devote our full attention to such occurrences each time they arose, we would have scarcely any time for teaching of the content that is deemed so vital.

On the other hand, such classroom incidentals clearly indicate a need for finding a way to work within our multicultural and culturally diverse communities so that we do not end up at perpetual war with one another.

To summarise, the focal points for me this week are:
· Homophobia
· Cultural Diversity
· The nature of formal apology
· Harm and Harmony

And that’s all I’ve managed to pull together this week. More next week, I hope.

my propensity

my propensity
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007

Last night at Shabbat, I was sitting at the table with my parents and my children, enjoying peppermint tea and brownies that were still warm from the oven, and deliciously gooey. I mentioned that I had finally found out what happened to the official complaint I had made against my boss in my job that I left six months ago. As I talked about the email exchange in which I was informed that the substance of my complaint was never adequately dealt with because by the time the complaint had reached a stage in the process where it could be raised and discussed, I was no longer an employee of the institution whose Staff Complaints Policy had made it possible for me to make the complaint in the first place, I noticed that my son was making faces, had become tense, and was trying to find a crack in the wall of my verbosity, to chisel his way into the conversation.

"Let me guess", he said cynically, "what you did next. You wrote a letter..."

We all laughed. I was desperate to know where this would go, and tried to get him to tell me, but the others wanted me to finish my story first.

So I told them that indeed I had written a letter to express my valid dissatisfaction with this outcome; that the union to which both I and the person I whose behaviour I had complained about belonged to had opened up this devious method whereby the behaviour would neither be dealt with nor acknowledged, and that I hoped in my new career path that despite the certainty that I will come face-to-face with my ex-boss, I will have the professional strength and integrity not to be victimised again.

I received with a promptness that beggars belief, a most indignant response to my letter from the person who had been originally assigned to deal with my complaint and who has concertedly ignored my every effort over the past six months to ascertain what was being done about it. She suggested I am insensitive and inconsiderate; unable to understand the bereavement she has been going through, and that I ought to respect the need to keep certain things confidential.

I really don't agree that keeping things confidential assists in making the world a better place. I don't agree that not telling me what was going on was the right thing to do. I don't agree that seeking the loophole serves any purpose other than maintaining a shaky status quo.

SO THERE!!!

Finally, I was able to return to the subject of my son's attitude toward my propensity for letter writing. He was simultaneously reluctant and eager to tie me to the post above the flames that were already licking the bare soles of my feet.

"Well," he began, with a brittle tone to his voice, "You know that letter you said you didn't write?"

(which one, asked myself in a silent whisper)
"The one about the cricket trip to Malaysia?"
(Phew - I guessed correctly.)

"Well, that's why I got dropped from the First 11s."

My son, my son. He is crushed, he is proud, he is angry and he is defeated. All this at once. How can he possibly achieve what he wants to with a mother like me?

I pressed for more information. Sure enough, his coach, who previously had talked to me about the very real possibility that my son would be made captain of the team, unceremoniously, with no explanation omitted my son's name from the list of players on the team.

NOW THAT'S JUST NOT CRICKET, IS IT?

It's very clearly my fault, and I feel very badly about it. Why should my son suffer for his mother's big mouth? Especially since the letter I wrote on behalf of myself and the scared, silent parents of players who also could not afford to fund their son's trip to Malaysia to play elite cricket had such a prophetic quality. In the end, I was the only parent who stuck my neck out and said I simply could not condone the proposal on the grounds that it was inequitable. Other parents took a passive approach, pretended to go along with the scheme until the very last minute, when they were honest about their inability to pay for the trip. Their sons are still on the team. Mine is not.

My propensity for letter writing gets me into trouble. It's ironic that when I write letters to promote and protect those close to me, sometimes they get shot down in my place. I don't seek martydom for them, or for myself. But I do seek to stand up and speak out when it's necessary.

So as badly as I feel, and as angry as I am at the petty and unprofessional behaviour of this cricket coach, I don't think I will write to him again. Next time I see him, I shall attempt to have a face-to-face discussion with him about what happened. After all, when I tried to raise my concerns in the meetings that were called about the proposal to send the team to Malaysia, I was dismissed as though I were simply being negative or stingy.

I plan to make a card this weekend, for the Human Resources person whom I offended so greatly this week. It's high time I got my paints out again. I can sense where she's at. She's hurting, grieving deeply, casting about for the source of her distress. Poor thing. It's never easy to lose one's life partner, and I feel bad to be causing her more grief at this time. I'm certain she feels guilty for not being in a position to manoeuvre my complaint through a process that would have led to a more satisfactory outcome.

I make an easy target. After all, I'm getting on with my life and therefore should not be dwelling on the unpleasantness that led to me to my distress eight months ago. It's natural for her to take this out on me. I forgive her.

A Dog's Life (part three)

A Dog's Life (part three)
(c) Melina Magdalena (2006)

Dog Bosses

The three most prominent bosses in my Life have all been Dogs, like me. It’s a sobering thought – I wonder what kind of boss I would make? Is it just the Dog’s typical opinion that no one could possibly do this job better than she could, if she could only be bothered, or summon up the energy to do everything herself? Is she grumpy because she can’t do everything and is forced to leave it to the plebs who – no matter how good they are, won’t do things completely the way she things they ought to be done? Does power necessarily corrupt even the most kind and loyal person? For a Dog therefore, self-employment would seem to the best option.


Top Dog No. 1
I met this man after completing my TAFE Certificate in Signwriting. Frustrated by my circumstances, being a mature-aged single mother whose circumstances seemed to prevent my entry into a profession that demanded single-minded dedication to the manufacture and installation of signage and allowed no competing demands, such as children or the need to feed them, he took me into his small workshop after I used a computer program I’d never seen before to create an image of a gingerbread man for a hypothetical bakery sign.

I worked for him for almost twelve months, and finally left after he took on the latest of a string of apparent prodigies, all men, who invariably disappointed him. He hadn’t really noticed me, working feverishly in the background of his business, learning everything I could, and begging to be given more interesting and complex tasks to do. His wife, who also worked there, was a vicious, jealous, spiteful bitch who finally accused me of theft and deception. Nothing injures a Dog’s pride more than to be falsely accused of dishonesty. I left feeling quite the sucker, wondering what the point of that exercise had been.

As well as his cultivating his prodigies, Top Dog No. 1 was a notorious namedropper. I've come to think this must be a Dog trait. He cultivated relationships with small business and large business, and had a wide network of so-called friends for whom everything he did was presented to them as a personal favour. Yet behind his back they talked and sniggered and readily acknowledged that they were players in his game. Never mind - they got what they wanted, and he got to feel like the emperor of his small domain.
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Top Dog No. 2
This Dog was my University lecturer and supervisor. I knowingly took on a protégée role, and perceived him to be quite the father figure. He saw himself as the lynch pin in a vast network of youngish women (we had to have attained a certain amount of education before joining his parade) who worked on his projects for no credit and who had (as I discovered) no academic future.

It was my understanding that hierarchy amongst academia was to be avoided as presenting a false picture of the greater whole that was the sum of the different parts we played. Besides, the Great Professor had so little support – how could he be expected to keep up his end of the work we were doing, when he himself was only a two-fingered typist at best, and was confounded and frustrated when the computers refused to do what he demanded?

The Great Professor worried and whined continuously about his professorial salary and superannuation, while I continued to struggle daily to afford bus tickets to be able to get to work. He grumbled about lack of funding, lack of grants, lack of equipment; bitched about the lack of secretarial support, lack of space and lack of university recognition. I took on his complaints and made them my own – tried the best I could to alleviate them. More fool I.

It was my mistake in believing that by working for him, my abilities were being stretched and nurtured so that the wings I was growing would set me into full flight upon research of my own.

I began to feel exploited when I began to see the repeated patterns of promised contracts to continue to do this work that came to nothing. I assisted him for three years in a row to prepare grant applications for grand projects that would employ me on a three-year research contract. As a casual employee, I had no status, no sick leave, and no holiday pay. If I refused work because of school holidays, I made do with my Centrelink payment and hoped he hadn’t replaced me during my absence.

As I became more vocal with my demands and needs, I was relegated to an obscure project that no one else wanted to work on. The Great Professor never gave me a contract. He continues to employ youngish women to work on his exciting projects, and expected me to train them up to be able to do their work on equipment that was hopelessly inadequate to the demands that were being placed upon it. This was our fault, of course – if we wanted to, we could make it work.

The scales finally fell from my eyes and I finally saw what I was – just a simple cog in the machinery of the Great Professor’s universe; a cog that would be replaced in due course by some other youngish, able, needy woman who would do her duties for as long as she could stand herself in the subjugated role, going nowhere very fast.
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Top Dog No. 3
I have to wonder about my meandering career path sometimes. I’ve left no gingerbread crumb trail to lead me home again, and probably haven’t peed on enough signposts, either. From tradesperson to academic was almost a horizontal kind of movement; I now work in office administration, which even I perceive to be down several rungs on the ladder of success. The pay is as low as ever, and the trade-off in mental health has been severe. I suffer from the effects of misplaced, abused fanaticism no less than everybody else in our office, and have begun to wonder when the rewards will start kicking in.

A woman this time, whose adherents are fanatical in the loyalty she exacts. No sense in calling her behaviour sexist: although she is hopelessly entangled in attempting to divorce the master’s tools from the master’s house, she happily uses those tools to demolish those around her, whom she perceives as threats to her empire.

There are no boundaries, no limits and no logic to the construction of her complex world, but I have slowly come to see where I fit within the whole. This boss excels in setting up personal connections with everyone in her world, and speaking of each and every one as though she is privy to their most personal secrets, but she persists in believing that having set up these relationships, she can drop names, throw switches, push buttons and pull strings to her heart’s content, and we will all come running to do whatever she demands. (Believe me – we do our best, because there is nothing better than the feeling we get when she lavishes praise for our efforts.)

I suppose it is logical to assume that despite the display of egalitarianism in terms of being able to relate on a personal level with everyone in her world, this boss also has a tensile strength notion of hierarchy and where we are all situated on her totem pole. Moreover, this in itself determines the strength of our personal connection with her, and what we can expect in what she demands of us.

My servile position is particularly painful, because this boss is simultaneously run by her subconscious hidden agenda, which directly affects the way she treats me. Because I am both competent and compliant, she tells herself that I am the one with the hidden agenda, when all I want, is to belong. I want is to do a good job. And I want is to be treated fairly. The fact is, I do a good job, and I am as fanatical in my loyalty as any other of her minions.

Unhappily, I am in admin, and she in academia, and in her mind at least, never the twain shall meet. As is my wont, I was rather slow on the uptake. It has taken me ages to accept the evidence that I do not, will not, can not belong to her pack. I will ever be the faithful slobbering servant, backtracking, begging and working like a dog to please her, but I will always be an outsider.

That hurt, particularly as I was brought into my role as a person who because of my past experiences, could straddle both worlds effectively and work to build bridges between them. Over the years, this boss has alienated numerous admin people, and I have just become the latest feather in her cap.
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Walking The Dog
My needs have finally risen to the fore once more. I need to feel valued. I need to be acknowledged. I need to be treated with kindness. I need to be allowed to express (and not repress) my emotions. I need to surround myself with people who see me and treat me as a person like them. I need to belong. I don’t need this anglified colonised stratified class system, which is obscured by the false social niceties that do nothing to relieve me of the feeling that I am inadequate and will be judged as never having done anything worth remembering.

I also know exactly where my bosses have been coming from. They are all nice people. I hated having to hurt them. I hated having to admit to myself that I couldn't stand to be around them anymore.

Like my bosses, I also cultivate relationships with those around me. I nurture those personal connections, and actively seek to build on them. I love the intrigue of seeing the way that people interact. People are my favourite pastime. I watch the circus of life with endless fascination. But observer status is just fine with me. I don't seek to be the one to control or determine. I believe people are natural self-determiners.

As a Dog, I know that I am incapable of toeing anyone’s line. It is not within my nature to permit others to determine my journey. I will strain at every leash and snap at every hand that tries to collar me. Nor does the irony escape me - as Miranda Priestly remains eternally disappointed by her assistants, I seem to remain eternally disappointed by my bosses.