February, 2017

Words in times of loss

27 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Barbara Snook

During my life I have had more opportunities than most to witness people struggling with words to express sympathy. Not only did my parents die well before their time, but I have lost a son, a husband and a daughter out of the natural order of things. I do not presume to speak on behalf of all bereaved persons, but for me, I appreciated people taking the time to say something – anything. There are no answers or magic words of comfort that take the pain away, but it has always helped me when people open up a conversation about my children or my husband.

Speak up! Poems about deafness

27 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Ruth Arnison

Melbourne on the quiet

a 10-day holiday
with broken hearing aids

Would you like some gunpowder with that wound care, Sir?

27 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Rabies is a viral disease causing inflammation of the brain. Its symptoms include agitated mood and body movements, partial paralysis and hydrophobia (fear of water). Suffering is intense, and even in the twenty-first century the prognosis for an infected person is poor. Fortunately there are effective vaccines, the first of which was produced in 1885 by Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux.

Therapy dog: Jack and the SPCA Dog Squad

20 February 2017 3 Comments

Joanne O’Carroll-McKellar

I have always wanted to be a member of the SPCA Dog Squad. I’ve owned Curly-Coated Retrievers since 1995, but my previous Curlies, for various reasons, were not suitable: too bouncy, dribbled, didn’t like children. And then, two years ago, I adopted Jack. I soon realised he was a perfect mix of cheerfulness and calm, an important quality for a therapy dog.

Our first ‘job’ as a member of the SPCA Dog Squad, with our coordinator, was to the children’s ward at the Dunedin Public Hospital. Who was more nervous, Jack or me? It was hard to tell.

From nurse to novelist: Penelope Todd

20 February 2017 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Writing fiction enlarged the scope of my thinking” – Penelope Todd

Penelope Todd is a novelist, editor and publisher. She trained as a nurse, and practised for almost 20 years in hospitals, GP surgeries and a hospice. Her powerful novel, Island, draws inspiration from her nursing experience, and from a real-life quarantine hospital on an island near her home in Dunedin, New Zealand. About making the transition from nurse to novelist, Penelope says:

I went into nursing keen to make some sort of practical difference in the world. I was young, idealistic and somewhat blinkered by my ideals. I’m glad now of the exposure to such a variety of people and to the suffering of others, which doubtless lifted the lid on my insularity. It didn’t occur to me to write (besides in letters and journals, which I’ve done since childhood) until I had three young children, and found myself exhilarated by the act of writing a short story for a competition deadline. This galvanising activity seemed suddenly necessary, and I was to learn in due course just where that vital current could lead someone willing to follow it.”

Island of shame

20 February 2017

Barbara Brookes

Boys diseased in body, and sullied in soul, lost forever as builders of our country” – Mrs Harrison Lee Cowie, in Ashburton Guardian, 8 June, 1917

Mrs Cowie, of the ‘Strength of the Nation’ movement, was referring to boys being held at Quarantine Island (Kamau Taurua) in Otago harbour (Dunedin, New Zealand). At least Mrs Cowie ventured to discuss the subject in public. When the New Zealand House of Representatives were to debate the war regulations relating to venereal disease in July 1916, women were asked to leave the public galleries. Such an indelicate subject was not one for their ears. By this time, ninety soldiers were already ‘segregated on a certain quarantine station’. Proclaiming that he was not the ‘Minister of Morals but the Minister of Health’, George Russell sought measures to prevent the spread of the disease be believed to be ‘rampant’, spread ‘in lavatories, privies, and barbers’ shops, by the use of towels, the kissing of children, the smoking of infected pipes, and in other ways’.

[Read more…] about Island of shame

Archives for February 2017

Melbourne on the quiet