Vale Margaret Whitlam

Vale Margaret Whitlam. What a beacon of intelligence and warmth you were in Australia’s political and cultural history. A national treasure, not just as the wife of a former prime minister, Gough Whitlam, but in your own right.  

One evening, many moons ago (almost 19 years ago), I encountered Margaret Whitlam. It was at Launceston University and Gough was there to give a lecture on the Mabo ruling - the High Court recognition of Native Title. An empowering, passionate, clear and exciting lecture that left no moments  for distraction or mind wandering and would have had us all running to vote for Gough if we could. An expert, Gough held us all in the palm of his hand. Margaret sat on stage with him, listening intently, exuding her own presence.

After the lecture, the audience crowded around the statuesque couple as they left the hall - these wonderful people who spoke with passion and inspiration, who never seemed wearied by experience or bleak about the future. Two powerful people cutting swath through a room like a hot knife through butter. There was something so appealing and inspiring about the energy of them.

I was there, very small of stature, mesmerised, holding my three month old baby girl in my arms. Looking back now, I realise that being a young Uni student with a baby, I actually stood out. Margaret, with warmth, gravitated straight to the baby, who obligingly gurgled and grinned and gazed into Margaret's sparkling blue eyes. Despite the crowd and the noise, Margaret was perfectly composed and asked all about me and the baby – our names and what I was studying (Fine Art). She called Gough over and he was immediately at her side. Guiding him with a touch on his arm she said, “Gough! Look here.”

Well! The great man looked at the baby with that penetrating gaze, framed by those famous eyebrows, and swept her out of my arms! Margaret placed her hand on my shoulder reassuringly as if to let me know my baby was safe – mind you I had no qualms handing her over.Gough, with all eyes on him, kissed the baby and raised her into the air. “There!” he announced to the crowd, “She’s been blessed by Gough!” The crowd clapped and cheered and he very gently passed her back down into my arms. Margaret coordinated the whole moment.

The perfect end to this story would be to say that the child grew up to be a great orator and political thinker. Well. I can say she is a good talker!

Margaret had the aura of a great person and the unpretentious warmth of a grandmother. The connection between her and Gough was, evidently, amazing. One word from her and he stopped what he was doing to pay her instant attention.  It was one of those wonderful moments when your head buzzes with inspiration and possibility.

My Inheritance from Grandma Tum

Bedspread made by Grandma Tum

This time last year my family were celebrating Grandma Tum’s 100^th birthday. Grandma Tum was my Dad’s mum and she died last November. And so my thoughts turn to her today.

When we told her she was 100, she answered, “Oh I’m not am I? I should be dead!” then giggled.

That sums Grandma up well. She was pragmatic and down to earth with a good sense of humour and a ready laugh. If her children couldn’t find her at home after school they would walk the streets listening for her giggle! Her one hundred years of life saw many changes. She liked to say she had many “little lives” and she didn’t dwell in the past. She liked to keep moving and keep busy.

Grandma Tum, central, with her mother in front, my Grandfather on the right, her brother on the left and my Dad Peter behind her

Grandma Tum was a sprightly little lady who loved playing golf and played until she was into her 90’s, still able to keep four scores in her head. Her real name was Hilda but was always known as Tum, a nickname from when she was a toddler. She reluctantly left school at 13 because her mother suffered a mysterious undiagnosed ailment for a time (she recovered and went on to live to be 96 years old!) and Tum had to look after her. She married my Grandfather, Mick, a teacher, and they lived in small communities where he taught in one room schools. Tum would help out and teach the kids craft.

After falling and breaking her pelvis at 93 years old, Grandma’s mental health declined and she moved into a home. I inherited all her crochet and knitting patterns then. She preferred to crochet than knit because she liked lacy patterns and enjoyed how fast crochet grows (I’m with her there!)

In fact, I have a few things in common with Grandma Tum. Like her, I’m a small framed person with lots of energy. Like her, I love shoes – even in hospital Grandma had high heel slippers! I, like Grandma Tum, love wearing bright coloured plastic beads. She also liked dangling earrings and a dab of eye shadow on each eye lid.

Grandma's twin boys, Patrick and Michael

Also, like me, Grandma had identical twins. By the time I had my twins, Grandma had already lost a lot of her memory. She said she didn’t know who I was, but she knew she loved me. When I told her about the twins she was suddenly very lucid. “Twins!” she exclaimed. “They always want the same toy and there are only ever three socks.”  Some things just get burnt into the hippocampus I guess!

After Grandma died, My Uncle Michael (one of her twins) met with me for afternoon tea and handed over this little case. Inside were some craft things - scissors, yarn, doilies, handwritten patterns and books.

He also gave me the bed spread Grandma had made (at the top of the page)

Grandma Tum and Grandad Mick

When Grandma was widowed in her early fifties, she went into an uncharacteristic slump. A good friend rallied her, encouraged her to learn typing and got her to go out into the workforce. It was a formative lesson and after that she would always be of the belief that you have to pick yourself up and brush yourself off and carry on.  I remember when Grandma was widowed a second time, in her eighties,  and I asked her what she was going to do. She answered, “Adelaide! I’ve never been to Adelaide! I think I’ll catch the train there.” Which she did.

Sitting down?

Okay. Are you sitting down? Then stand up!

Didn't you hear about this report into the health hazards of sedentary work? 

The Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute has found that the problem with sitting is not just about burning calories. It’s far more than that. The research has found that using our muscles helps our body to process glucose. That we need the signals from moving our muscles in order to avoid huge highs and lows of glucose levels that lead to diabetes.

The research found that moving every 20 minutes for at least 2 minutes is enough to keep processing of glucose – and also found it doesn't matter if the movement was brisk or ambling. This breaking up of sitting time can lower glucose and insulin levels by as much as 30 per cent, helping people avoid diabetes.

Phew! That’s good news for me. I do craft and emails standing up because I’m always on the run and get interrupted at least every twenty minutes to wipe a bum, get someone a snack, break up a fight, wipe a nose, do up a shoe lace...the list is endless....so I should be glad every time I'm interrupted, huh?

The report made me think about the eccentric old man in Oxford Circus, London. Does anyone else remember him? When I was in London in the early nineties (and if you could see me now you would see me do my particular “memories of London” face - which is a cross between an I’ve-just-eaten-a-rotten-lemon crinkled nose and a forlorn you-must-be- kidding-look of disappointment. Yep, I hated it!) I came across a man who stood with a billboard proclaiming we eat more vegetables, less protein and declared, almost as an after thought – less sitting! I kept his booklet for years.

Stanley Green displayed his billboards and sold pamphlets of his philosophy for 25 years.Peter Ackroyd wrote in London: The Biography that Green was for the most part ignored, becoming "a poignant symbol of the city's incuriosity and forgetfulness." Well I was a tourist there, so I was quite curious and found him memorable. His philosophy was around a belief that protein caused excess of sexual passion.

Green's letters, diaries, pamphlets, and placards are now at the Museum of London, and some other artifacts went to the Gunnersbury Park Museum.

When I heard the report into sitting and diabetes, old Stanley popped into my mind. Well Stanley Green – you were right about the sitting being bad for you! Now everyone - stand up and walk about for two minutes.

letter writing

I'm not the only one interested in reviving the art of letter writing.

Fellow blogger Lotti's World has recently written a very insightful post about the importance of letter writing to her. In the media, I listened to a program on Radio National discussing the importance of letters with an historian discussing what an incredible source of information are contained in them and then I read this article, with the headline, "Writers bid to revive letter-writing" in The Guardian. Author Dave Eggers is participating in an initiative from the Rumpus, an American arts magazine, which is offering readers the opportunity to receive a letter a week from literary names including Eggers. The magazine wrote, "Think of it as the letters you used to get from your creative friends, before this whole internet/email thing," The Guardian article also mentions American author Mary Robinette Kowal who launched a "Month of Letters Challenge" for February. It calls on participants to send a letter almost each day of February.

A month of letters sounds a bit intense to me in my already pretty busy life so I'm thinking of writing at least one letter a month this year (and that doesn't include Christmas cards and notes!). A year of letters!

I'm going to plan it out - buy the stationary and stamps so there is no excuse for not sending the letters. And I think I'll set a rough guide about who I will write too. I do have two friends who I write letters to and a large family who live all over the country. I also want to keep in touch with Aunties and Uncles and older relatives who don't use email.

Anyone else keen to write letters? Or to receive them?

Putting Pen to Paper

I’m well aware, it is not necessary to put pen to paper in order to communicate with friends or loved ones. But not necessary does not mean not relevant and I can’t help but be a big fan of the old fashioned hand written letter or card.

Earlier this year when my mother died, I received many unexpected cards and letters which really did act as a salve on my grief. That these individuals had gone to the effort - physically put pen to paper, folded it, slipped it into an envelope, got a stamp and sent it - just meant so much more than a text message or email at such a time. It showed not only sensitivity to what I was going through, but a regard for the life of my mother. At such times words can seem inadequate, but gestures worth so much.  It certainly surprised me to receive such condolences from people like my ex- husband’s very elderly Grandmother and old high school friends. Their efforts were truly heartening to me.

As teenagers, my friends and I would write a letter to each other just when we had been apart for a few classes! We would pass the folded scrawled pages to each other in the corridors, reading frantically of each other’s (usually romantic!) intrigues before the next classes began.  My best friend and I went to different high schools but spent the morning and afternoons together on the country school bus -yet we still wrote to each other almost daily while apart. I still have some of those letters. They seem to have a power to conjure up my friend more than anything else.  Her light, fast, scrawly handwriting and her words, yes, of course. But it’s so much more. It’s the foolscap paper, the pen she favoured, the smudges that can transport me to the noisy school bus. Most of all, it is the blank outer layer of paper that makes her feel present.  Folded to be an envelope and scrunched around the letter. It’s as if her hands only just clenched it and stuffed it into her school dress pocket. As if her hand was a moment away and I could reach out and catch it and hold it in mine. After she died when we were 15, I just had to look at these blank bits of paper and it would break my heart, scraping the scab off my grief.

One high school friend and I have continued a correspondence and send each other pages and pages – big fat letters – a few times a year. It goes so far beyond an email or text (which we do as well). To see her hand writing, to have her sustained thoughts laid out for me, to have her describe things so extensively  and humorously and to follow the train of her thoughts as she leaps from insight to insight (she’s a perceptive one!).  It helps her to stay real to me and connected to me in a more meaningful way because in these letters we bear our hearts. I wouldn’t trade those few letters a year for a daily tweet or weekly email in a millions years!

Another good friend travels extensively and although I love the emailed photos and the itinerary updates, it is the postcards I treasure.  They are by far the best testament to our friendship. Here is the physical object, blessed with his handwritten marks, sent halfway across the world from him to me. For me. Can there be anything more exciting and connecting?



My suit case of old letters....



Then there are the great letter moments in some of the classic books! Who could forget the devastating outcome after the letter slipped mistakenly under the mat and never received in Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”? Or not burst with joy at the letter, secretly written in the presence of the intended recipient, by Captain Wentworth in Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”?  Ah was there ever a better letter scene than that? Goosebumps! Can you imagine any of these dramatic moments being transferred to an email bouncing back or replaced with an update of a facebook status?

When I was courting my husband, I would often leave cards and notes in his letter box, even though we could text and email as well and even though I  lived around the corner! My father wrote to my mother every day of their engagement – and if he had nothing to write he would draw a picture or write a poem. There is something revealing in your hand writing, something personal and generous in sharing words hand written, and something respectful in the effort to write and send a letter.

I know letter writing can be seen as obsolete and inefficient, I know that people can now tweet to numerous people at once, or post something on facebook that communicates to many, but the action of taking up the pen, and sharing thoughts with just one other, in your own hand,  I think is worth the time and effort.  So excuse me while I go and put pen to paper.

For the vintage post enthusiast -  the re-sew-cool vintage stamp brooch kit!



Halloween reminiscence....

Me (the witch) and the gang of trick or treaters.

Well I know that Halloween hasn’t traditionally been celebrated in Australia. And of course, the cynic in me sees how it has been commercialised,our culture commandeered by Americanisms etc...

BUT....I have always loved Halloween!

As kids, some friends and I dressed up and went trick or treating. Living in a very small country town I guess we were bored and always seeking to make our own adventure! We knocked on doors, only to be greeted with blank stares, impassive shrugs and a few annoyed groans.

We were known as the difficult misfit kids anyway. The ones who wanted to play soccer, not netball, even though there was no soccer club. The ones who wanted girls to be part of the fire brigade training and races and climbed the tower and sat there in protest. The ones who asked the bishop to ask the pope to let girls serve on the altar. The ones who were running bike-a-thons in the holidays to raise money for ventures - the ones who were always upsetting the apple cart. That's not how people like things to be, in small country towns.


On our first trick or treating venture, walking at dusk, despondently chewing on an Arnott’s biscuit begrudgingly handed over by Mrs McCarthy, we knocked on the door of an unfamiliar house. We were greeted with a squeal of delight! “Oh my God! Trick or treat? Here? In Australia?” Living in the house was an American couple, recent additions to our town. And boy were they excited at our little band of trick or treaters! We were ushered inside, stuffed with lollies they had ready,“just in case”.


After that we went running home. On a sugar high and high for having made someone’s day – even if we had annoyed everyone else in the town!

Mother's Day Stall

Remember the mother's day stall at primary school? Carefully looking over every single item and trying to choose the best thing possible for your 50c? Mum must have groaned as all her kids (she had six at primary school at one stage) brought home the little gifts. Surely she would have repackaged them for the following year's stall?

Not my mum! A very funny and very ugly "world's best mother" plastic figure, given to her by my brother Pat, remained on her dressing table long after it became discoloured and sun damaged -we're talking over fifteen years! And a freckle face plant my sister Kelly bought her was placed behind the t.v. and grew (from the radiation?) like a monster alien plant in Dr Who. Although it grew straggly and towered over us from the corner, Mum always looked after it, often commenting where it had come from, like it was an exotic treasure.

The sister outlaws have decided to have their own little Mother's Day stall this Saturday, the 7th of May, at the Fitzroy market http://fitzroymarket.com/

The market is open between 10am and 2pm and as well as our usual bounty of re-sew-cool kits, we will have a few last minute cards and gifts for mums -  like these made up versions of some of our brooches. 

I will be posting sneak peeks of other items as they materialise from the work bench. Better get to it!
(I must also add the Fitzroy Market is a fantastic spot for vintage clothes! Might even raid the wardrobe, sell some of mine and buy some new pieces.)

posted by Julianne Sister outlaw

I'm hooked

Remember those latch hooking kits you used to get as a kid? Well to tell the truth, I never had one! We were a very crafty family but never had anything as sophisticated as a boxed kit with tools. It was more, “here’s a ball of wool – see what you can do”. The simple art of picture making latch hooking passed me by.

And I’m sure any opp shoppers out there will attest that most of these latch hooking projects are never finished and end up in the miscellaneous unfinished craft bin like a pile of craft compost.

But I must admit, daggy as it is, I’m attracted to these projects. And no, surprisingly, it’s not just the cheesy images of teddy bears and sunsets and dogs. Most of all, I can’t help but be attracted to the wonderful shaggy texture, ala shag pile.

 

Ever since I was four years old (in the seventies), I have loved shagpile. My family lived in a country school house, me, the youngest of seven kids. We had hand me down clothes, handmade toys, homemade biscuits and hard floor boards which my mother polished with shoe polish and a covered with a few wholesome rugs. In stark contrast, my best friend down the road was the youngest of three, had new dresses, new dolls and their house was deluxe! They had cowskin rugs in the “family room” carpet in the kitchen (Can this memory be correct??!!!) a pool and best of all, a grownups lounge room. This forbidden room couldn’t help but draw me in with it’s’ mystery (hey – I was only 4 years old!), temptingly peeping through the sliding door from the dining room.

I still remember sneaking in there, creeping along the plastic sheet path way over sumptuous white shagpile carpet! Best of all was the nudey painting in her parents’ bedroom! In purple hues! Hilarious! But ever since then I’ve always wanted whatever my friend Nadine had – and on that list (pink and green floral dress, new doll, holly hobby EVERYTHING!) is shagpile carpet.

I was looking for a project to use up the woollen seams that the sister outlaws cut from our felted jumpers and a very clever crafty friend called Calamity suggested latch hooking a rug. After getting the supplies and experimenting I was away.

 It’s very therapeutic and easy to do in an evening brain fried state. As it's a rug, I am still going.....

Then fellow outlaw Leanne, suggested using flat cut pieces of felt to latch hook. And it looked even better!

Not wanting to bite off more than I could chew, I decided a cushion cover was more achievable than a rug! So here is the first finished project – hand dyed recycled felt, cut up and latch hooked into a cushion cover.

Next up is a cushion cover in lime and turquoise tones. And then? Well it’s tempting to simply keep going! I'll be latch hooking teddy bears and rainbows in no time! Or just about any image you can imagine!

Look out for the deluxe re-sew-cool kit coming soon so you too can latch hook up a shagpile storm and satisfy your seventies fantasies!!

Posted by sister outlaw Julianne