Barbara Brookes
Many of us now resort to Google whenever we want to know something; in fact the ease of looking things up also makes it less important to retain any information. We can, we believe, be instant experts. In 1881, a group of women in Rochester, New York, decided that they had pressing questions to which they did not know the answer. They decided that ‘the only bad question was the one that went unasked’. Unashamed of their ignorance, they advertised the fact, forming the Fortnightly Ignorance Club. One of the earliest American women to graduate in medicine (graduating in 1851), Sarah Adamson Dolley, became the first President of the Club, and remained in office until 1893.
It seems unlikely that any male doctor at the time would have owned to ignorance but Sarah Dolley had never been one to stick to convention.
Taking a shower is a personal affair, the bathroom a place of privacy. However, there have been occasions where I’ve willingly shared the intimacy of cubicle, warm water, soaping and sudsing with a carefully chosen companion, modesty overwhelmed by steaminess. It may not save much water but it does have a softening effect. Recently, after body-disfiguring surgery, I was invited to take a shower with someone I had known for only a few hours. No preamble or compliments. No time for coffee and a chat. No opportunity to take in a movie or a show, or to go for a slow, moonlit ramble along the banks of the Leith. Nor was there any suggestion of a long-term relationship. Just a towel over her arm and a seductive smile that glowed inside the boundary of bed curtains.
When you think of hunger, chances are you do not summon up an image of a clothed, housed and employed individual. Yet in New Zealand there are accounts of children arriving for their morning classes without having eaten breakfast at home, and people working two jobs but still having to queue for food handouts. The food insecure within this country are not necessarily destitute individuals. They are also those on benefits, the under- or hidden employed, and the underpaid or working poor. In a country that is prosperous, free of conflict and agriculturally self-sustaining, a high level of food security is assumed, but that does not mean that the small pockets of those who remain food insecure should be any less disregarded, especially when the reason behind their insecurity is systemic.
