Dogs Don't Lie

I thought I'd create this little meme to share with anyone who is wondering WTF it's all about. This is how I make sense of things, and my inability to fit in.

Image: Author. Original pen drawing, digitally manipulated and coloured.

Toy Poodles Are REAL Dogs

This is my pooch Hamish McNeill Thomson-Frantom, proving that toy poodles are real dogs. He has been gone 2 years in September and I still miss him terribly.

When he was alive and I took him for walks many people didn't see him as a 'real dog'. He was very pretty I guess but that's like assuming blondes aren't smart. Poodles are traditionally highly preened and have ridiculous pom-pom haircuts, though these are practical when they are used for hunting. Hamish hated being preened and I never subjected him to that, though he did need haircuts because poodles have wool and don't shed hair. They are like sheep. He looked like a fluffy little sheep when his coat got long.

Hamish loved nothing better than getting amongst it - as you can see by the muddy feet in the pic above. He was independent, fun loving, loyal, a risk taker and met big scary dogs head on. 

Hamish was a real dog. He was my real dog.

This From That

I took this as a passenger driving around our town.

Sometimes I take a photo that has potential but needs work to make it read properly. It's a bit garish but it wouldn't have worked any other way because of the lighting and lack of contrast in the original - as seen below pre-Photoshopping

I have to confess this follow up post is quick on the heels of the former because I had to get rid of the image of Trump every time I opened my blog. It was really annoying!

Image: Author. Photo taken with iPhone and Photoshopped using Adjustments and Filters.

Trumping the Trump

People who regularly read this blog probably know that I dislike Donald Trump immensely. He represents everything I despise about the blue-suited, autocratic, patriarchal despots who have traditionally held power on planet earth. These men are destructive and usually sexist - though many would say they 'love' women. Phhhttt! I've tried but I can't unhear: 'grab 'em by the pussy'.

Out of sheer frustration I have resorted to parody or, as we would say in Australia (and as I explain it to my students), 'taking the piss'. I have to admit that it gives me a degree of self-satisfaction in a very frustrating world.

The following images demonstrate how I create these parodies in the form of digital collage.

First step is to find the highest resolution base image I can of my subject in a pose I can work with. You can see here how I have found some guy in a blue suit with his hands up, cut it away from it's original background, found another photo of Trump with his mouth open (which isn't difficult), similarly isolated it from its background and plonked it on the other guy's body.

In the image below I have applied some effects to a photo of the Whitehouse to create an appropriate background. I've also manipulated the mouth a little with the Liquify tool to make Donald's crying look more 'belligerent'. As in 'waaaahhhhhhhhhhh' - the sound a pissed off baby might make. 

I've also erased the figure's hands so I can replace them. I've then found another photo (I think I Googled 'baby crying'), cut out the section around the eyes and transferred it onto Trump's stupid head. You can see where I have started drawing into the suit to integrate Trump's head shot with the body.

In the image above I've worked on the suit, shirt and tie a bit more and blended the new eyes into Donald's head. Hopefully now he's starting to look more like a spoilt brat chucking a tantrum.

In the final - which still needs a bit more drawing - I have Googled images of children's hands, cut them out, transferred them to the body and started drawing into them to make them more consistent with the colours and style of the head.

The background, hands, body and head are all on different layers so I can work on each individually and move things around easily. I can adjust colour, tone and composition.

I haven't quite finished because it came to me as an image of Trump bawling like a baby without a caption. I'm not sure if there will be a speech bubble with dialogue yet - I'll have to wait for some smart arse comment to leap out at me.

Images: Randomly Googled photos (for which I didn't get references). Rightly or wrongly, parody is one of the only times you don't have to respect intellectual property rights. Yep - it's stated clearly in copyright law.

Menang Noongar

This amazing photo, which has been colourised and restored, was taken  by a visiting German photographer in 1877.  It was posted by Boorloo Boodja, a Facebook page that describes itself as: 'a place to honour and learn about the people and culture of First Nations Perth.....Past present and future'. According to the page admin. this is a group of Minang Maaman from Albany and the gentleman third from the left might be Wandinyil, a well-known Minang Elder. 

The Minang, Mirnong, Mineng or Menang tribal group lived (and still do) on the south coast of WA. 

Hopefully most Aussies know by now that at  the time of European 'settlement' there were more than 200 Indigenous language groups in Australia. Some groups never lost their language but some, like the Menang, have only relatively recently started clawing back what knowledge is left. Albany was one of the earliest European settlements in Australia and this particular group suffered heavy losses of their culture as a result.

The Menang are part of the Noongar nation who inhabit the south-west of Western Australia. Menang territory is about ‘6000 square kilometres and ranges from Albany to about 70 kilometres north-east of Many Peaks to the base of ‘Koikyennuruff’ in the Stirling Ranges, east to Moorilup near Kendenup and south-west to Wilson’s Inlet’. 

Traditional life and land use focused on hunting, gathering and particularly fishing 'around freshwater lakes, river channels and estuarine environments in and around the coast' in the warmer months. (Beard and Dortch, 1987) Large groups of Menang people met at King George Sound and Oyster Harbour to carry out ceremonies and social business.

In the winter months they broke up into smaller family units and moved into the 'hinterland to the open woodlands to hunt kangaroos, wallabies and possums', where I assume it would have been warmer - away from coastal storms and wind. They travelled along the King and Kalgan rivers - probably because it made it easier to navigate the terrain, but maybe to stay close to water and food sources. I'm also assuming the group pictured above are wearing their winter kangaroo skin cloaks. (I'm hoping Sarah Toa will chime in in the comments section with some more info as she spent some time researching these people for various writing projects).

I love this photo. I am in awe of these people. They had little impact on the environmant for the tens of thousands of years of their occupation. And they were tough - it gets really cold down here on the south coast and as far as I know, they didn't even wear shoes. Seeing photos like this both delights and saddens me. My family and probably most non-Aboriginals would just see a primitive 'savage' people.

I work with the direct descendants of the Menang - and other language groups from the Nyoongar nation and wider Aboriginal population - in the prison system. I see the ravages of generations of dispossession, stolen children and colonialism. I am regularly in conflict with my own family over their fate, what should be 'done' about them and how we might all move forward and away from a vicious past. But year after year, even after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's apology, there are more of them in prison now than 20 years ago and I can't see that reducing any time soon. 

The demographic of Australia has changed considerably. To prop up the economy the government has encouraged many new immigrants from diverse cultural backgrounds to move here. These people are even more removed from our history than 1st to 6th generation Europeans and Asians. Most non-Aboriginal Australians, particularly those living in urban areas (which is 90% of the population), don't even know an Aboriginal person. The BLM movement has empowered the Aboriginal population but it has also fuelled a rise in negative responses and racism as the 'fragile white' - people like my own family members - insist that 'all' lives matter. No matter how 'civilised' we claim to be as a society it always comes down to rampant self-interest.

A comment by one of my Aboriginal students from a Northern tribe pretty well sums up the whole dilemma for me. This guy was an initiated man and although these guys are also suffering terribly under our occupation - they know who they are, they have a solid sense of culture and therefore self. We were observing another Aboriginal student, urban and I would assume uninitiated, having a bit of a whiney meltdown about not getting his own way about something I had denied him. This Northern man just shook his head from side to side slowly and said quietly: 'they are just children'. I think the same could be said for my own culture.

Information: KINJARLING REPORT 2005, Kinjarling: The Place of Rain, The City of Albany & Dept. of Indigenous Affairs Aboriginal Heritage Survey, pp 43-45

Map: http://noongarboodjar.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/30-Noongar-map-v3.1-copy.jpg

Don't Lose Your Head

Last Saturday I spent all day in emergency departments. I woke up feeling extremely nauseous and was in such terrible pain around my diaphragm and back I fronted up at 6.30 am. They and I thought it might be gallstones and referred me to a hospital 50 kms away for scans and an ultrasound. But those indicated I had a healthy gallbladder and they couldn't find anything else wrong with me either. 

In the end they figured it might have been a peptic ulcer and that I had had 'gastritis'. Wouldn't surprise me. I have been very stressed lately because of work. We have been put under pressure because of funding cuts and I was so angry I probably internalised my emotions and imploded. 

Both hospitals treated me very well. I have absolutely no complaints at all. Despite the draconian right-wing neo-liberals we currently have in power our government funded health system is justifiably the envy of many other countries. But it is under stress. It is costly and inefficient and my episode on Saturday partly demonstrates why.

When I went to my small local hospital they thought they had done what they could with the 'equipment' they had. When they referred me to the larger hospital they offered me an ambulance. My reply: 'no, don't waste an ambulance - I'll get my partner to drive me there'. Seriously?......I didn't need an ambulance and if I used it someone else who really did need it may have missed out. It is also very expensive. I'm not sure who would have paid the bill but my guess is it would have been covered by Medicare because I was in one hospital being transferred to another.

When I got to the larger hospital I occupied an emergency bed for hours while I waited for the ultrasound and scan. The doctor was fantastic, said I should call her 'Steph' and had the best bedside manner I have ever encountered. She was so friendly and casual I thought she was a nurse at first. Scans and ultrasounds aren't cheap. Being an ultrasound technician is specialised and requires a double degree, so I'm guessing the pay rate for my scanner to be there on a Saturday would have been pretty high.

Anyway, long story short - after waiting around all day for blood and scan results I finally got out of there about 4.30 pm. I was starving because they had fasted me in case I needed surgery. They gave me the best tasting cheese and salad sandwich a little while before I left. Before I left they also booked me in for an endoscopy and stress tests for my heart - even though my blood pressure is low and the blood results didn't reveal anything nasty.

I signed up for the after care tests at the time but have since changed my mind. The heartburn medication they told me to take for 2 weeks did the job. Which seems to indicate the diagnosis is an ulcer and I need to manage it. I gave up the medication after 2 days because one of the side effects is gastritis! FFS - this is what I mean by inefficient - medication to treat an ailment that has side effects that brings on the same condition? I haven't had any of that medication for a couple of days now - so far so good. I've been very careful with my diet (which is usually very good anyway) and I'll take the medication again if I have to.

The most astounding thing to me though - not one person asked me if I was under stress!! 

This feeds into a blog post I read recently by Kylie about specialisation. An encounter with the health system is like stepping onto a conveyor belt - the destination of which is unknown. And it's very difficult to get off. I remember escorting my ex-husband to a specialist in one of the big city hospitals once. As we walked up the corridor, arrows pointed to either side - this department for that part of the body, that door for another. I wondered how someone would negotiate the corridor if they had several related issues, because of course they always do. The body is a whole system with parts that function in unison with other parts. Medicine seems to have forgotten that.

Medicine has become so smart it has forgotten the basics. Instead of whisking me off to a hospital for expensive tests and booking me in for even more expensive surgical day procedures like endoscopies, someone might have saved the taxpayers a bit of money by simply talking to me. They would have discovered that I had had a similar episode a couple of years ago, had all the heart and blood tests and got a clean bill of health, that I have always had a touchy stomach, that I used to vomit as a kid when I was upset (like stressful times during the breakup of my parents), that I was on anti-inflammatory drugs for 33 years for endometriosis - which is known to 'erode' the stomach lining, that I had only the week before received some very stressful news about my job, was absolutely furious and felt disempowered in that anger. 

I'm not saying this thing is over - I may not be able to manage it myself and it may well be something else that's making me feel like this. But if you were a GP or an emergency doctor wouldn't you start with the most simple explanation?

And just to add weight to my argument - many years ago when doctors were going around in circles trying to diagnose my then husband, one doctor who had taken up medicine late in life, saved my ex-husband's life. I rang this doctor from 30 kms out of town on a gravel road in desperation to give him my ex's symptoms. When I described them he paused and said: 'get him to emergency straight away'. Not long after that my ex had a double bypass. At the time he was probably having a heart attack. Every other doctor had missed it because my ex was thin and fit. But what they didn't take into consideration was the fact that he had worked with  pesticides for years. The doctor who saved his life had been a farmer. I think he still was at the time. I believe it was that grassroots common sense approach, out in nature observing the paddocks and his animals, that gave him that insight. Plain old common sense, and listening to what people are telling you.

Image: Author. Hand drawn in pen, digitally tweaked and coloured.