Pandora and her... ?

For a number of years I've been following the blog The History Girls. They post once a week on a variety of subjects relating to history and their writing - most of them write historical fiction and they often talk about their research which is fascinating. Because they are always interesting and informative I really look forward to each new post. 

This is where I came across a review of Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes and was so intrigued that I bought the book. With a background in history including ancient Greece I was hooked immediately by the premise that all we ever hear about women in Greek myth and legend is in relation to men. Haynes has taken the stories most of us are familiar with and looks at them from the woman's point of view. It is illuminating to say the least. I thought I had a good grasp of Greek myth and legend but hadn't realised - although I should have - the bias that exists from the earliest versions of these myths. Neither the Bronze age nor ancient Athens were an ideal time for women and Greek gods and goddesses weren't paragons of virtue either with their behaviour often morally skewed to put it politely.

The women Haynes chooses - Pandora, Jocasta, Helen, Medusa, the Amazons, Eurydice, Phaedra, Medea and Penelope - are those whose names are familiar to many of us even if not all would know their stories but once she takes away the focus on the achievements of the men the stories we thought we knew becomes something very different. Using ancient sources - often only fragments including such things as paintings on ceramics, moving on to Homer, through other texts like the plays of Euripides and other depictions in art and books up to the present she pieces together the way in which these women lived and gives us a much better idea of them as real people. 

It wasn't just a place full of battles, sexual violence and frequently murder. The ancient Greek world was a scary one with gods and goddesses taking an active part in every day life. Many of these women - and the heroes whose tales they appear in - were supposedly the offspring of gods and their mostly unwilling human partners. Helen - she of the face that launched a thousand ships - was one such daughter of Zeus, who in the form of a swan - let's not be delicate here - raped her mother, Leda, and this is only one of many such encounters. Hera, the wife of Zeus, was so incensed by his infidelities that she put considerable time into punishing the unfortunate victims and their children. It didn't pay to reject a god or goddess either. You were likely to be turned into something - a monster or a tree seems to have been popular - or be pursued by a vengeful suitor who would make sure your life was a misery.

I won't go through the whole book in detail - if you want a detailed review I recommend Mary Hoffman's on The History Girls blog - but I do highly recommend reading it. It was eye opening to me and I am definitely going to read some of the modern retellings she mentions. Oh and the heading of this post - Pandora and her...? is because it turns out Pandora never had a box containing the ills of the world. She had a jar and the reason we all think it was a box is due to an incorrect translation back in the sixteenth century by the scholar, Erasmus.

Aah Facebook!

 The massive Facebook over reaction to being expected to pay providers for news content while predictable was not user friendly. If you're not in Australia you may not have heard that our federal government has just passed a law requiring tech platforms like Google and Facebook to do just that. Google was also not happy but they have already in advance negotiated with media companies. Facebook has not. So although the act is not yet in force - although it is expected to be soon - they have blocked all 'news' pages and links from their platform Australia wide. 

For the most part not having news on Facebook doesn't personally affect me. While I do like to share news links with my very small group of Facebook friends - 92 at the last count and only consisting of family and people I actually know and care about - Facebook is not my main source of news. I find their habit of tailoring what information I receive to what they think I'm interested in less than useful so I subscribe to various news sources online and or go directly to our national broadcasters' websites for my information. 

For others, though, it is important, often their major source of news, and being blocked would have been inconvenient at the least - but it got worse. Facebook then compounded things by expanding the definition of 'news' and removing all information sources. This included government departments like the Bureau of Meteorology, emergency services which give bushfire and storm warnings - critically important at this time of year when bushfires and cyclones are at their height, State and Federal Health Departments - in the middle of a pandemic when we're about to have a nationwide vaccination roll out and the list goes on. Along with those they blocked the pages of charities, book publishers, small businesses and basically anyone who was trying to promote anything. Many of these were eventually and slowly restored but by no means all are back. 

The cost to small businesses which get much of their traffic from their Facebook pages has been high and you have to wonder what exactly Facebook has gained from this. The federal government is showing no signs of blinking, multiple charities and businesses have incurred considerable losses and the chat among most people I know is saying 'let's find another platform'. No doubt they hope we'll forget and just stay with them out of inertia but the anger is real and although as far as Facebook is concerned Australia is a small market there's likely to be a backlash elsewhere with a number of other governments world wide apparently considering similar laws.

I've always known that being on Facebook is not free. The cost is that they mine our data and information and sell it on. That was a cost I was prepared to pay to stay in touch and is why I've kept the personal information they have about me to the bare minimum. Now I'm less accepting of this. If they are willing to do things that put people's lives at risk - yes, I know they say it was a mistake but if they're as clever as they claim, they really shouldn't be that incompetent - I'm reluctant to stay. So I and many others have spent much of the last few days investigating other alternatives - and it turns out there are a quite a few. 

Has Facebook done itself serious harm? I don't know. We shall just have to wait and see what the final outcome is but I will be going elsewhere for social media as soon as I've worked out which of the alternatives suits me best.

Ooh Look!

There's a naked lady dancing in my garden. See.

I have to say Pisces was a tad disappointed when he found out I meant a belladonna lily also known as an Easter lily.

This particular lily is special to me because I transplanted these bulbs from my parents' garden shortly after we moved here. My mother's lovely garden is long gone - the suburb where I grew up succumbed to the lure of the developer years ago. The block we lived on was large for a suburban area - when the subdivision was planned the area was semi rural so the blocks were all larger than the traditional Australian quarter acre and they all had provision for a rear lane. This was for the use of the night cart men who would collect the cans full of night soil from the outdoor privy built up against the back fence (the dunny in Australian slang), leave an empty one in its place and cart away the full buckets. Why they had taken so long to sell the land I have no idea but by the time my parents built the days of the night cart were long gone (for which we were all very grateful) and so we had the lane area added to our already large block. This was just as well because my brothers and I had something of a menagerie, while Mum, a country girl, grew flowers, fruit and vegetables.

The days of the quarter acre suburban block are also long gone. In an effort to contain the sprawl of the city larger blocks are now being in filled or their houses are demolished (as is the case of my childhood home) and replaced with multiple units. My parents eventually sold up to go off in their caravan but before they left I dug up these bulbs and they've been flowering in my garden ever since. 

How I've Been Spending My Time Recently

 I was fed up because I never seem to get anywhere with the huge list of things that I really, really need to do and it is a very long and daunting list. 

So I sat down and wrote out the reasons why I hadn't been able to achieve anything worthwhile in the past week. Turns out I don't need to be beating myself up after all because the list of time consuming interruptions to my days was ridiculously big. I won't go into detail but since Thursday a week ago between us Pisces and I have had six medical appointments (there would have been seven but one was cancelled), we've had four visits to the pharmacy (one was due to a mix up on their part but still took up our time going back) and we had to go to the opticians to pick up our new glasses. On top of that Pisces was contacted by a specialist to arrange for him to go into hospital for a minor procedure next week. This took numerous phone calls as they had to call back about various things and as he's an IT illiterate, I spent about an hour the next day doing his online admission form (They say it takes about 30 minutes. They lie.) As well I spent most of one morning arranging new medical appointments and rescheduling others that had been cancelled due to the strict lockdown. Then the day after I had submitted the hospital admission they rang me to ask me half the questions on the form again. All this is, of course, on top of the normal things like doing the laundry, cooking meals and other household activities. 

While this was an exceptionally bad week looking ahead I can already see more of the same over the next month. We see medical people more than we see our friends now. That reminds me - somewhere in the middle of all this chaos a friend rang for a chat. Pisces, who took the call, said I would ring her back and I simply haven't had the time to do so yet. Sigh.

Rain!

 After close to a week of devastating fires north of the city we finally have respite. Steady soaking rain started yesterday and hasn't stopped. With it we have much lower temperatures - unseasonably low but no-one is complaining about that after the heatwave conditions we've been experiencing. It's quite a contrast to see rain sweeping in instead of the ash and smoke we'd had for days. The rain has washed away all the dust and ash that was clinging to the trees and their leaves are clean and green again, the grey washed away. As an added blessing the rain has doused the worst of the hills fires but there are still serious fires burning in the south of the state. 

While the city is currently safe the toll from the fire has been heavy. We're lucky that there has been no loss of human life but the environmental damage is huge and the number of native animals killed or injured is incalculable. Farmers are just being allowed back to their properties and will face the horrific task of dealing with  hundreds of injured animals, most of which will have to be put down. As well many have lost their homes - 86 dwellings were lost along with sheds and all their equipment. My heart goes out to them all.

In other news the lockdown has now been lifted although we have restrictions on numbers of visitors and face masks are now mandatory outside the home. I've spent much of the weekend trying to find a way to make some extra reusable masks for Pisces and me - arthritic hands limit how much I can sew and my sewing machine has just decided to break down. Sigh. We do have a supply of disposables but if wearing them continues to be compulsory that will run out sooner rather than later. I've also got some on order but how long it will be before they reach us is anyone's guess, postal deliveries being as slow as they are these days. 

Bushfire!

 For the past few days a massive bushfire has been rampaging through the hills near Perth. Starting near Wooroloo - a small wheatbelt town - it has already brought some of the outer suburbs of the city under threat. Over 70 homes have been lost and there's a strong likelihood there will be more. I live well into suburbia but the suburb adjoining us received a warning that ash and smoke were expected throughout the day and we could see and smell both as the houses there, which are only about a 15-20 minute walk away from us, disappeared into the haze. We were warned to turn off evaporative air conditioners - the most common form of air conditioning in Perth - and keep houses closed up which with a maximum temperature of 34°C meant we were in for an uncomfortable day even without the threat of a fire. As well we were warned to be watchful for signs of fire and be aware that ember attack can precede the actual fire for up to 100 metres. (As we learned during last year's disastrous fires in eastern Australia, the 100 metres measure can be exceeded if there are strong winds so this is not comforting.)

My niece and her family, who now live on a rural bush block north of the city, have been told to be prepared to evacuate if the fire continues to move in their direction and where they used to live - quite suburban and densely populated - has already been evacuated. With wind gusts of 70 kmh forecast for this evening the prospects of containing the fire don't look good. Here on the coast we've already been experiencing strong gusty south westerlies for most of the afternoon which has at least mitigated the spread in our direction but does not bode well for those in the north and north east. All this on top of the total lockdown of the south west of the state due to COVID 19 means stress on stress. 

There is good happening, too, though. Most people have responded well to the lockdown. Very few have objected to the restrictions and the face masks which we were warned we should get weeks ago have been pulled out and and are being worn. There are, of course, a small number who are so invested in their conspiracy theories that they can't give them up but by and large most of us are complying without complaint. We know it's in the interest of the community as a whole. 

There are other signs of a healthy community, too. A number of motels - empty because of the lockdown - are providing free accommodation to evacuees from the fires, go fund me pages are being set up to assist those who have lost their homes and all their possessions and local community groups and individuals are collecting goods for distribution to those in need - and that's only a small part of what is being done. Makes me proud of my city and my fellow Western Australians.

Well, It Had To Happen

 Perth and the south west of the state are in total lockdown for five days to allow tracing of contacts of a security guard from one of the quarantine hotels who has tested positive for COVID 19.  The only surprise is that this is the first time this has happened since the initial lockdown back at the beginning of the pandemic last year. No school - due to start back tomorrow after the summer holidays - has left Miss I'm Nearly Five in floods of tears. The good thing is that we have been requiring everyone to sign in at many venues for a while so apart from places like supermarkets and other retailers where it wasn't required until a few days ago we have a pretty good idea of who has been where. There's even a handy app for your phone which makes it even easier although the technologically inept like Pisces can physically sign in.

Due to stringent quarantining of incoming folk so far we've been very lucky but anyone with any sense has been well aware that it would take only one infected person to spread the disease. I can't say I'm looking forward to the masking up which is now mandatory, though. I wear glasses and masks and glasses do not go together well. This means as long as masks are compulsory I will be avoiding going out as much as possible even once the lockdown is over. It also means I am very grateful to be living in a time when I can do pretty much all my shopping online. I had just put in a grocery shop order this morning before the news broke - and just as well because it seems people have again collectively lost their minds. Photos put up on the local community page show huge lines of people waiting to get into food shops and apparently the shelves are already being stripped of guess what? Yep, toilet paper, pasta, milk and eggs. The rush has been so intense that some shops have been forced to close their doors. Why do people do this? It's only five days, not weeks.

My only worry is that this panic buying may mean my shopping order won't get filled, not that this will mean we will starve. We have enough necessities to last for several weeks and the shops will stay open anyway so once the rush of panicking shoppers dies down we will be able to get what we need.

It's ironic that this has happened now because only the night before we were at a welcome home party for a family member who has just arrived back in the state and completed her quarantine a few days ago. 

Now I'm off to make us some reusable masks. See you on the other side.