I'm really happy for the staff at CWA New Media in Wellington. The Dom-Post says they get to take their pets to work on Thursdays. Fine - though I'm not sure I'd be thrilled to have a blue-tongued skink wandering around the office in search of cuddles...
But here comes the catch:
"Their bosses say it's a way for modern workplaces to address work/life balance, by bringing people's favourite part of home into the office."
Well, no, not exactly. "Work/life balance" is a stupid phrase, but what it's supposed to mean is being able to fit together your paid work and all the other stuff you need to do without becoming totally stressed out. For most of the women I know, it's more about "paid work/unpaid work balance".
What we call "full-time work" means the amount of paid work someone [being very gender-neutral here] can do when they have someone else at home to do all that other stuff. It wasn't ever meant to be done by the people who DO all that other stuff.
But now all these people, usually known as women, have moved en masse into paid work, and even into full-time jobs. What to do? Introduce work/life balance. We mustn't go too far, of course. Pets at work, maybe. Kids at work - definitely not.
But wait, there's more. In a new book of essays just out from Victoria University Press, Rethinking Women and Politics, Tania Domett looks at the reality of this great new idea. The news isn't good: those who make use of such policies are generally seen as not really committed to their work.
These policies, she says, are a "band-aid" remedy for what is fundamentally an issue of gender injustice. While they do "facilitate women's dual roles and allow them at least limited access to the labour market", they also mask and perpetuate existing gender inequalities.
She quotes Philippa Hall of the [now dismantled] Pay and Employment Equity Unit: "Women have got to get more money and men have to get more time. Men have to work less [for pay] and women have to get paid more for things to change."
Sorry, but it's not about the pets.
Declaration of interest: I have an essay in Rethinking Women and Politics.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Julie and Julia/Elizabeth and me
I've just been to see "Julie and Julia" and I loved it. Meryl Streep is magnificent. Not ever having seen Julia Child's TV programmes, I've never paid much attention to her - not that I noticed, anyway. In fact I did buy the two volume Penguin edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking about thirty years ago, without particularly observing that Julia was one of the authors, as her name meant nothing to me then. I use it, too, from time to time. Well, Volume I, that is. I don't think I've ever gone so far as to tackle anything from Volume II, Advanced.
There are a clutch of easy recipes I make quite often, such as the leek (or watercress) and potato soup, or the mayonnaise. I occasionally make the hollandaise instead, but I quail at the quantity of butter it contains. The oil in the mayonnaise seems healthier, though given the quantity I eat once I've made it, it's probably not. I make it with a processor (I haven't got a blender, but the processor works fine). Julia, Simone and Louisette (though according to the film, she didn't contribute much) point out that the amount of butter the yolks will absorb if you use a liquidizer - 4 ounces (115 grams) - is only half as much as if you make it by hand! I love the way the difference is discussed:
"It is extremely easy and almost foolproof to make in an electric liquidizer, and we give the recipe on page 100. But we feel it is of great importance that you learn how to make hollandaise by hand, for part of every good cook's general knowledge is a thorough familiarity with the vagaries of egg yolk under all conditions..."
"If you are used to hand-made hollandaise, you may find the liquidizer variety lacks something in quality; this is perhaps due to complete homogenization. But as the technique is well within the capabilities of an eight-year-old child, it has much to recommend it."
Indeed. Julia spent a long time converting all the measurements to imperial - here, now, of course, it would be better if they were metric. Maybe newer editions give both. I should look for one - the print in the Penguin, beautifully set though it is in Monotype Bembo, is getting a bit small.
Every so often I tackle another classic recipe properly. This year I've made the boeuf bourguignon that figures prominently in the movie, as well as the blanquette de veau a l'ancienne ( a slow cooker is excellent for poaching the veal). One Christmas I started well ahead of time and worked my way through the recipe for duck a l'orange. It's always worth it.
Valuable though this precise masterpiece is, it doesn't get the same response from me as Elizabeth David's collected works, and I use them much more often. I also love her two collections of articles (and some recipes), An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House?
It was Elizabeth who said "Authenticity is the only true luxury", and she's right. In these books she often protested (very wittily) against nasty commercial imitations of, e.g., mayonnaise.
If she could come back, she'd be appalled at the way the industrial food manufacturers bandy about the names of honest dishes. They know this will appeal to people who've heard of them and maybe eaten them in a restaurant. And unlike champagne, these names aren't protected, because no one owns them. So they stick them all over concoctions that bear about as much relation to the real thing as those old bottles of Camp Coffee and Chicory did to carefully roasted beans.
A while ago I was looking for fine cracked wheat in the supermarket to make tabbouleh, the extremely simple and very good Middle Eastern salad made with lots of fresh parsley and lemon juice. You can get it at Mediterranean Foods in Newtown, Wellington, but I was short of time. The supermarket used to have it, very cheaply, in the large help-yourself bin section, but that must have been too unprofitable and is long gone. All I could find was horrible and incredibly expensive boxes of what claimed to be "Instant Tabbouleh".
The makers of all this rubbish should be locked up and force fed on it until they promise never to besmirch the real thing again.
There are a clutch of easy recipes I make quite often, such as the leek (or watercress) and potato soup, or the mayonnaise. I occasionally make the hollandaise instead, but I quail at the quantity of butter it contains. The oil in the mayonnaise seems healthier, though given the quantity I eat once I've made it, it's probably not. I make it with a processor (I haven't got a blender, but the processor works fine). Julia, Simone and Louisette (though according to the film, she didn't contribute much) point out that the amount of butter the yolks will absorb if you use a liquidizer - 4 ounces (115 grams) - is only half as much as if you make it by hand! I love the way the difference is discussed:
"It is extremely easy and almost foolproof to make in an electric liquidizer, and we give the recipe on page 100. But we feel it is of great importance that you learn how to make hollandaise by hand, for part of every good cook's general knowledge is a thorough familiarity with the vagaries of egg yolk under all conditions..."
"If you are used to hand-made hollandaise, you may find the liquidizer variety lacks something in quality; this is perhaps due to complete homogenization. But as the technique is well within the capabilities of an eight-year-old child, it has much to recommend it."
Indeed. Julia spent a long time converting all the measurements to imperial - here, now, of course, it would be better if they were metric. Maybe newer editions give both. I should look for one - the print in the Penguin, beautifully set though it is in Monotype Bembo, is getting a bit small.
Every so often I tackle another classic recipe properly. This year I've made the boeuf bourguignon that figures prominently in the movie, as well as the blanquette de veau a l'ancienne ( a slow cooker is excellent for poaching the veal). One Christmas I started well ahead of time and worked my way through the recipe for duck a l'orange. It's always worth it.
Valuable though this precise masterpiece is, it doesn't get the same response from me as Elizabeth David's collected works, and I use them much more often. I also love her two collections of articles (and some recipes), An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House?
It was Elizabeth who said "Authenticity is the only true luxury", and she's right. In these books she often protested (very wittily) against nasty commercial imitations of, e.g., mayonnaise.
If she could come back, she'd be appalled at the way the industrial food manufacturers bandy about the names of honest dishes. They know this will appeal to people who've heard of them and maybe eaten them in a restaurant. And unlike champagne, these names aren't protected, because no one owns them. So they stick them all over concoctions that bear about as much relation to the real thing as those old bottles of Camp Coffee and Chicory did to carefully roasted beans.
A while ago I was looking for fine cracked wheat in the supermarket to make tabbouleh, the extremely simple and very good Middle Eastern salad made with lots of fresh parsley and lemon juice. You can get it at Mediterranean Foods in Newtown, Wellington, but I was short of time. The supermarket used to have it, very cheaply, in the large help-yourself bin section, but that must have been too unprofitable and is long gone. All I could find was horrible and incredibly expensive boxes of what claimed to be "Instant Tabbouleh".
The makers of all this rubbish should be locked up and force fed on it until they promise never to besmirch the real thing again.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
The personal life?
"My great hope is that......women would remember that one of the gifts that they have is that they remained so very close to the personal life, and that the qualities that were discovered in the personal life, the value of human life, the value of tenderness, the attentiveness to others' moods, the need for compassion and pity and understanding, the things that women practice every day in their daily lives, in their small kingdoms, are enormously important." Anais Nin
A friend sent me this quote. I think it goes to the heart of the dilemmas still facing women. We do value these things - don't we? We know they're not really "personal" at all, they're what keeps everything else going. But as things stand, if we hang on to practising them and want to do them well, we put ourselves at risk.
For all the guff about "family friendly" workplaces, the world of what we call "work" pays no heed to this "gift" at all. You're supposed to have women doing all that for you! In countries like ours, the jobs that actually require this "gift" to be done well are at the bottom of every heap going.
What's more, this "gift" is not and should not be seen as confined to women! Men are perfectly able to exercise it too, and many do, brilliantly. But all too often our "small kingdoms" are just that - what he says goes, or else. In the Dom-Post this morning: male partners or former partners kill 14 women each year, and are involved in 3500 convictions for assault on women. So far, no amount of compassion, pity and understanding has managed to stop them.
[cross-posted to The Hand Mirror]
A friend sent me this quote. I think it goes to the heart of the dilemmas still facing women. We do value these things - don't we? We know they're not really "personal" at all, they're what keeps everything else going. But as things stand, if we hang on to practising them and want to do them well, we put ourselves at risk.
For all the guff about "family friendly" workplaces, the world of what we call "work" pays no heed to this "gift" at all. You're supposed to have women doing all that for you! In countries like ours, the jobs that actually require this "gift" to be done well are at the bottom of every heap going.
What's more, this "gift" is not and should not be seen as confined to women! Men are perfectly able to exercise it too, and many do, brilliantly. But all too often our "small kingdoms" are just that - what he says goes, or else. In the Dom-Post this morning: male partners or former partners kill 14 women each year, and are involved in 3500 convictions for assault on women. So far, no amount of compassion, pity and understanding has managed to stop them.
[cross-posted to The Hand Mirror]
Sunday, October 25, 2009
The earth in her hands: Doreen Blumhardt, 1914-2009
From 1981 to 2007 we lived in the Wellington suburb of Northland, a few streets away from the distinguished potter and art educator Doreen Blumhardt, who died on 17 October. In 2000, I interviewed Doreen for an article, but it was never published. I'm posting it here in memory of her.
The Earth in Her Hands
Doreen Blumhardt leads me into her sitting room. It’s very hard to believe that this dynamic, vibrant woman is now 86 years old. A wall of windows gives a breath-taking view across Wellington harbour to the Orongorongo hills. The blues, greens, browns and reds outside are echoed in the glazes of the pottery lining the room - great platters, vases, superbly shaped sculptural pieces.
As a first-generation New Zealander, Doreen spoke only German for her first five years. “It’s so strange to me that anyone can ever forget their first language.” Her father, David, was born in Bad Boll, near Goppingen, where his family had a small estate (Hof). The beautiful 18th century Kurhaus that belonged to her great grandfather Johann Christoph, a pastor and healer, is now run by the Moravian Society. In the churchyard, there are Blumhardt headstones dating back to 1500. Doreen has visited several times, and her German relations have become friends.
David was 20 when he came to New Zealand in 1895, with his father, three brothers and a sister. His mother and the other seven children stayed in Germany until she was safely past child-bearing - a drastic early form of birth control! After years of hard work on the stony family farm near Kamo, in the north of the North Island, his father sent David back to Germany to find a wife. He chose a young governess, Minna Hartdegen, and brought her to a small farm near Whangarei. Doreen, the last of her three children, was born there in 1914.
“I always spoke German to my mother. Her great desire in life was to get back to Germany. She tried to save enough to go, but it never happened. It must have been so difficult for her - she was an educated, musical young woman, she played the zither and loved the opera. She had no idea what she was coming to - washing in an open-air copper, cooking on a rusty old wood-burning stove, and a seat over a hole in the ground for a toilet. She had to work morning and evening in the cowshed, helping to milk 40 cows.”
Despite their hard life, both parents passed their love of music and books to their children. Her father taught Doreen to play the violin; her mother sang lieder as she milked, and wearing her heavy workboots, she showed the children how to waltz.
Even as a little girl, Doreen had to do her full share of the farm work - feeding animals, making hay, picking grapes and strawberries for sale, and scraping the bristles from slaughtered pigs. All that hard work, she says, gave her a real advantage. It not only taught her how to use her hands, but also gave her the courage to break new ground as an artist and art educator.
She still gets up early and works nearly every day in her neatly organised studio, with its two potters’ wheels, a slab roller for large press-moulded dishes and wall panels, jars of glazes, brushes, and a big tray of leafy green plants. In the garage below stands her electric kiln and her gas kiln for stoneware. Her friend and handyman, Michael Austin, comes in to help her handle the larger pieces and move the heavy sacks of clay, which come up from Nelson.
“Even though I’ve been potting for so long - nearly 60 years now - I still find it enormously exciting to open the kiln after a firing. What I get such a thrill out of, as I think many potters do, is the unexpected.”
“Although you do have a certain amount of control, and you aim at getting particular effects, fire has a mind of its own. Stoneware is fired at up to 1300 degrees Celsius. In the gas kiln, you adjust the balance of gas and air throughout the 12 hours of firing. That changes what happens to the glazes on the clay. Lots of gas makes the atmosphere smoky, and turns a copper oxide glaze to pinks and reds. With more air, the glaze turns green.”
“But it also depends on what you use for the underglaze. The range of possible effects is endless. So you’re never quite sure how your work will turn out. Of course, things can go wrong, and sometimes you’re absolutely devastated by the results. But sometimes they’re amazing.”
Although Doreen continues to sell smaller domestic and decorative ware from the showroom in her home, today she spends much of her time on work commissioned by people who are eager to have a large Blumhardt piece for their home or garden.
“I always have to make some smaller pieces to put in the kiln around the big ones, so as not to waste the space. The small pieces sell more quickly, but there’s a presence to a big piece.”
At her own front door stands a golden wall of tiles modelled from coastal rock formations. Doreen’s method of moulding slabs of clay directly onto the rock preserves the original folds and cracks. She first used this technique for a large tiled wall in the Christian Science Church in Wellington, where water runs continuously down over the wall into a tranquil pool, creating a constant play of reflected light and colour.
In 1992, Doreen was asked to work with 24 students to create a wall for the entrance to the Wellington teachers’ college, where she had previously been head of the art department for 21 years. She wanted all the ideas to come from the students themselves.
“They had never touched clay before, but it worked very well. One girl put together a multi-ethnic face representing the different groups of students at the college. The Maori students came up with the idea of showing the traditional concept of the baskets of knowledge. They made long sausages of clay and wove them together, just like real flax baskets.”
That same year she was asked to create a memorial to the American Antarctic explorer, Admiral Byrd. For this landmark, Doreen glazed commercially made tiles in a myriad of colours, then fitted them together to make a triangular canopy showing the spectacular Aurora Australis of the southern skies. It stands in one of Wellington’s most popular visitor sites - the summit of Mount Victoria, with the intricate patchwork of the city spread out below.
The commissions have grown since Doreen retired from full-time work in art education, her first love. Right now, she’s working on a smaller private commission.
“I just have to be careful that I don’t get overloaded. But I’ve got lots of ideas for things I want to carry out in ceramics. I hope I’ll be given the strength. There are so many different directions you can take - domestic ware, individual pieces, sculptural pieces. That brown pot there, for example - it’s halfway between a pot and a sculpture.”
“I think I’ve been lucky that I’ve never had to earn my living by my pottery. The work has to be valued, and that means charging the right price. If you undervalue your own work, it affects what other people receive for theirs. In Japan, the prices for fine pottery and ceramics far outstrip the prices for paintings.”
“The Japanese don’t even have a word for craft. Why do we draw a line between art and craft in Western culture? The professors and the art critics try to come up with reasons. They say it’s the materials, or the techniques, or the fact that craft pieces are made to be used. I think that’s crazy. What’s the difference? There isn’t any.”
The Earth in Her Hands
Doreen Blumhardt leads me into her sitting room. It’s very hard to believe that this dynamic, vibrant woman is now 86 years old. A wall of windows gives a breath-taking view across Wellington harbour to the Orongorongo hills. The blues, greens, browns and reds outside are echoed in the glazes of the pottery lining the room - great platters, vases, superbly shaped sculptural pieces.
As a first-generation New Zealander, Doreen spoke only German for her first five years. “It’s so strange to me that anyone can ever forget their first language.” Her father, David, was born in Bad Boll, near Goppingen, where his family had a small estate (Hof). The beautiful 18th century Kurhaus that belonged to her great grandfather Johann Christoph, a pastor and healer, is now run by the Moravian Society. In the churchyard, there are Blumhardt headstones dating back to 1500. Doreen has visited several times, and her German relations have become friends.
David was 20 when he came to New Zealand in 1895, with his father, three brothers and a sister. His mother and the other seven children stayed in Germany until she was safely past child-bearing - a drastic early form of birth control! After years of hard work on the stony family farm near Kamo, in the north of the North Island, his father sent David back to Germany to find a wife. He chose a young governess, Minna Hartdegen, and brought her to a small farm near Whangarei. Doreen, the last of her three children, was born there in 1914.
“I always spoke German to my mother. Her great desire in life was to get back to Germany. She tried to save enough to go, but it never happened. It must have been so difficult for her - she was an educated, musical young woman, she played the zither and loved the opera. She had no idea what she was coming to - washing in an open-air copper, cooking on a rusty old wood-burning stove, and a seat over a hole in the ground for a toilet. She had to work morning and evening in the cowshed, helping to milk 40 cows.”
Despite their hard life, both parents passed their love of music and books to their children. Her father taught Doreen to play the violin; her mother sang lieder as she milked, and wearing her heavy workboots, she showed the children how to waltz.
Even as a little girl, Doreen had to do her full share of the farm work - feeding animals, making hay, picking grapes and strawberries for sale, and scraping the bristles from slaughtered pigs. All that hard work, she says, gave her a real advantage. It not only taught her how to use her hands, but also gave her the courage to break new ground as an artist and art educator.
She still gets up early and works nearly every day in her neatly organised studio, with its two potters’ wheels, a slab roller for large press-moulded dishes and wall panels, jars of glazes, brushes, and a big tray of leafy green plants. In the garage below stands her electric kiln and her gas kiln for stoneware. Her friend and handyman, Michael Austin, comes in to help her handle the larger pieces and move the heavy sacks of clay, which come up from Nelson.
“Even though I’ve been potting for so long - nearly 60 years now - I still find it enormously exciting to open the kiln after a firing. What I get such a thrill out of, as I think many potters do, is the unexpected.”
“Although you do have a certain amount of control, and you aim at getting particular effects, fire has a mind of its own. Stoneware is fired at up to 1300 degrees Celsius. In the gas kiln, you adjust the balance of gas and air throughout the 12 hours of firing. That changes what happens to the glazes on the clay. Lots of gas makes the atmosphere smoky, and turns a copper oxide glaze to pinks and reds. With more air, the glaze turns green.”
“But it also depends on what you use for the underglaze. The range of possible effects is endless. So you’re never quite sure how your work will turn out. Of course, things can go wrong, and sometimes you’re absolutely devastated by the results. But sometimes they’re amazing.”
Although Doreen continues to sell smaller domestic and decorative ware from the showroom in her home, today she spends much of her time on work commissioned by people who are eager to have a large Blumhardt piece for their home or garden.
“I always have to make some smaller pieces to put in the kiln around the big ones, so as not to waste the space. The small pieces sell more quickly, but there’s a presence to a big piece.”
At her own front door stands a golden wall of tiles modelled from coastal rock formations. Doreen’s method of moulding slabs of clay directly onto the rock preserves the original folds and cracks. She first used this technique for a large tiled wall in the Christian Science Church in Wellington, where water runs continuously down over the wall into a tranquil pool, creating a constant play of reflected light and colour.
In 1992, Doreen was asked to work with 24 students to create a wall for the entrance to the Wellington teachers’ college, where she had previously been head of the art department for 21 years. She wanted all the ideas to come from the students themselves.
“They had never touched clay before, but it worked very well. One girl put together a multi-ethnic face representing the different groups of students at the college. The Maori students came up with the idea of showing the traditional concept of the baskets of knowledge. They made long sausages of clay and wove them together, just like real flax baskets.”
That same year she was asked to create a memorial to the American Antarctic explorer, Admiral Byrd. For this landmark, Doreen glazed commercially made tiles in a myriad of colours, then fitted them together to make a triangular canopy showing the spectacular Aurora Australis of the southern skies. It stands in one of Wellington’s most popular visitor sites - the summit of Mount Victoria, with the intricate patchwork of the city spread out below.
The commissions have grown since Doreen retired from full-time work in art education, her first love. Right now, she’s working on a smaller private commission.
“I just have to be careful that I don’t get overloaded. But I’ve got lots of ideas for things I want to carry out in ceramics. I hope I’ll be given the strength. There are so many different directions you can take - domestic ware, individual pieces, sculptural pieces. That brown pot there, for example - it’s halfway between a pot and a sculpture.”
“I think I’ve been lucky that I’ve never had to earn my living by my pottery. The work has to be valued, and that means charging the right price. If you undervalue your own work, it affects what other people receive for theirs. In Japan, the prices for fine pottery and ceramics far outstrip the prices for paintings.”
“The Japanese don’t even have a word for craft. Why do we draw a line between art and craft in Western culture? The professors and the art critics try to come up with reasons. They say it’s the materials, or the techniques, or the fact that craft pieces are made to be used. I think that’s crazy. What’s the difference? There isn’t any.”
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