stanselen~ (to sparkle + & spark)

We had a lovely afternoon at our favourite beach with asher and luca yesterday (I spend alot of time at the beach, but then I am a crab so you would expect it).

The water was all sparkly and clear and calm, even though i didn’t bring my togs i had a wee paddle about and collected some shells.

No one else at all was there, except a naked swimmer that I missed seeing. Oh well, better luck next time.

The end of summer is nigh, it is technically Autumn already, so it was nice to enjoy a final trek over the hill to Rapaki before it gets too wintery.

Whilst on the Soup motif…

Here’s ten favourite things to make with soup. (abit like mince recipes except with soup.)

~  Pasta stew… cook pasta, either twisties or tunnels (as we call them) add soup.

~ Soup on toast… abit like soup with toast except the toast is under the soup, no need to have a bowl!

~ Vegetable pie… make a flaky pastry, cut in half, roll 1/2 out to fit a 16inch quiche dish, add soup, cover to fit with rest of pastry, prick or score the top. Bake for 25min or until ready! Woah, fancy.

~ Vegan Surprise Lasagne… layer lasagne sheets with vege soup and a creamy soy milk fake cheese sauce  (mix yeast flakes to flavour), repeat repeatedly. Bake 20-30mins.

~ Souper Douper Sandwich… always a fav with the kids! Abit like soup on toast except you don’t have to toast the bread and with two pieces! Especially good if you have quite thick soup. Great in the lunch box.

~ Vege dumplings, self explanatory.

~ Vege Supreme Cottage Pie…  boil five large potatoes till soft. If you cut them up really small they’ll cook quicker. Mash together with soy milk and dairy free margarine, add a little salt & pepper.  I think you’ll get the idea from here, but anyway, pour soup into baking dish, smother with mashed potatoes, sprinkle sunflower and/or pumpkin seeds over potato. Bake till it’s looking good.

~  Soup Frittata (not completely vegan) mix two cups of soup with 6 free range eggs and fresh herbs (whatevers handy), heat a tablespoon of vege oil in a heavy bottomed fry pan, add the soup mix. Cook on stovetop over medium to low heat till its done.

Well eight is enough for now! Pic’s later.

A message to my friends & fellow bloggers;

As the KhristKhurchKouncil (CCC) has just swiped the overdue rates payment from our Mortgage account, sending our family into a spiraling circle of more debt and account fees from which it may take some time to recover. Until they pilfer us again that is.

You can expect that we will be living on soup for the next 6 months, you may even meet us at late night dumpster dives on our bikes, when (of course) we can manage to keep the wee ones up late enough.

And if I’m ever up in court, don’t bother forming a support crew, it’ll just be for stealing Calciplus Vitasoy. The Civil Union is postponed indefinitely.

arohanui.

your’s in relative poverty,

josephine xx

I never wonder why mortgage is french for death grip.

Cheery advice the bank won’t give u; If you’re thinking about borrowing money to buy a house, don’t. At least not in NZ, not now.

I have often thought this myself…not so much future employee, but ohmygosh what will people think of that? Fortunately (for me but maybe not for everyone else who puts up with me) the desire to be creative and as honest as possible from my own perspective over rides any desire to moderate or tone myself down. I read somewhere once that if you want to be creative the first thing you have to stop doing is wanting people to like you.

It’s true.

I’m putting this up a day early cos I know I’ve a really busy day tomorrow and won’t get a chance to write up anything…

Joy is the kind of feeling a woman has when she lays the words down on paper just so, or hits the notes al punto, right on the head, the first time. Whew. Unbelievable.

It is the kind of feeling a woman has when she finds she is pregnant and she wants to be. It is the kind of joy a woman feels when she looks at people she loves enjoying themselves. It is the kind of joy a woman feels when she has done something that she feels dogged about, that she feels intense about, something that took risk, something that made her stretch, best herself, and succeed - maybe gracefully, maybe not, but she did it, created the something, the someone, the art, the battle, the moment; her life.

That is a woman’s natural and instinctive state of being. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves.

I couldn’t decide what version to stick up, but since I’m feeling non-positional heres both…

Well I feel like I’ve sat on that last post-of-shit (not the bullshit kind, just the real life stuff that really stinks) for long enough now and I’m ready to move on here.

SO to make up for the shit I’m gonna have a week or two of cheery gladness. After all, I did say I was going to try to be more positive from now on, though I’m not much good at trying, sigh*

Best parts of the last few days, the pouring days of endless rain always bring out the best in me, my big pot of minestrone soup that lasted three days and is now all gone.

Kerry’s double batch of banana and bran muffins. Sacha sticking his whole hand down his throat and puking in solidarity with Briar, who was poorly (sick) yesterday.

Ahhh, its the little things isn’t it?

Dreaming about sailing the Pacific Ocean in a luxury cruise ship when in reality borrowing money from a finance company to get a root canal…not quite the Riveria.

Hearing my youngest children singing in Te Reo all day long. Dane starting piano lessons again, hooray!

Harvesting sunflower seeds, watching little yellow finches enjoying them from the kitchen window. Having a friend return one of my favourite books that I’d thought I’d misplaced. Fairy kisses.

Swimming, being healthy, eating well, and riding bikes.

Mid last year a group of like-minded people opened an Anarchist based Social Centre in Otautahi, of which all of my family were involved in… late last year we were told of some issues within the Social Centre.

Please; if things like this are happening and you know of them I think it is important to let people know immediately rather than waiting until something else happens to another child and/or woman.

It is to do with 3 men very active in the running of centre, one a sex offender, another one who raped a close friend- an A-fem who is no longer involved in things, and one who is a possible pedophile who was found alone, upstairs, with a young child.

The main organisers of the centre have not let people know about these men and their histories and I feel greatly let down by them. That a space, that is in name “safe” is so potentially dangerous, especially for young children and an emotionally/physically unsafe space for many women, has covered up these abusers pasts is of concern to many people in the wider Anarchist community.

I’m writing this and putting this on my blog in the spirit of openess and transparency because it is “in secret [that] we perpetuate these cycles of abuse and violence by not openly confronting and challenging them.”

If knowledge is power then surely within an Anarchist community where power is to be shared, knowledge must also be shared.

I remember when friends of my brother’s burnt down some cabbage trees at a local park. I was 7 or 8 at the time, we had all been playing with ciggies and lighters and these 3 trees somehow ended up ablaze.

When the dairy owner (shopkeeper) from across the road came over, he started telling the white fire-men (who had just put the fire out) about this Maori kid who always hung around the place, asking us if we’d seen him that day or if we knew where he was.

We all knew we’d be in shit if we confessed, so well - didn’t, but I remembered, as a little white kid, knowing even then it was on account of our whiteness that we were “getting away with murder.”

The Maori kid (a good friend) was our scapegoat, we didn’t say we’d seen him that day, in fact we hadn’t, his mere existence as being “out there” was enough to satisfy the white fire-men. They jotted down their notes, they asked us his name, one of the boys told them. We were free to go. Later that same day his home was visited by the police asking if he knew anything about the fire. His name was on record, he was from this day forward a suspect for the authorities, whitey’s scapegoat.

9 years later this same friend was found dead outside the local police station. It was, from the police report, a drug overdose and not considered suspicious. The media report said something along the lines that he’d been known by the police for years, and had a “record”. Whatever.

His death at such a young age and in such unexplained ways is something that sits very heavily on my heart, especially my part of not speaking up, my collaborative silence as a child.

The way his death was presented in the news, through the police report showed their lack of concern for his life and gave no dignity and peace at such a sad time for his family. From an early age, a very kind and loving friend was singled out by the white/pakeha community and their police and authorities. This is what people mean when they say Maori, Tangata Whenua are targeted by the system.

My white friends and me as young teenagers were shoplifting, doing dope, smashing stuff up and doing all kinds of illegal things that he could never ever get away with because of one reason only, that he had dark skin, was Maori, born into a racist, capitalist, white society out to get him from day one.

This is one story of many many.

I don’t wonder about the high numbers of Maori in prison, I know why.

And I don’t wonder about the high numbers of Maori losing their lives before their time, on the street, in their homes, in the prisons, by white police officers, whitey family “business men” and those in power who pull the strings to create overwhelming amounts of stress, anger and frustration that these young indigenous men/kids face on a daily basis.

I know, as much as my white pakeha lens allows me, where it begins. It begins when they first come into this world and are faced with one injustice after another and then told by those with power over their lifes that these injustices, that are vividly real, don’t actually exist, because white Pakeha don’t experience them.

This is one of my experiences of racism as a white Pakeha, there are hundreds more…

and just in case you’re thinking of some snappy come-back to this post I will not be tolerating or allowing any racist, ignorant comments following this post, but if you have any thoughts or experiences of your own please share!

[This post was triggered by the recent murder of a tagger in Aotearoa, I made a bunch of copies to hand out at our Katipo/Anarchist stall at “One Love” on Waitangi day, though I have edited and added to the original piece (which was just the raw story) to try and share some of my understanding of what was surrounding these events, and my own collusion to them. It wasn’t easy.]