Early abundance

and strawberries start to form tiny fruit

the first strawberry flowers

thrifty gardeners plant seed and try to get potatoes in as early as they dare

seedlings take forever

Daring the late frosts

new planting works around the winter spinach

winter veges are still welcome

The lemon tree braved the hardest winter frosts

lemons are the greatest fruit trees

Other fruit burst back to life

Raspberries just starting to flower

brave little seedlings from direct sown seed

parsnips

beetroot

The first summer flowers

early roses

and the last of the spring flowers

camellia

and spring blossom magically transforming itself into summer fruit

Tiny cherries. Not as pretty as blossom but full of potential

Habitat for man and beast

Campbell sees all

especially chickens

chickens in the herb garden

Recent research suggests that a lack of empathy is a handicap when trying to help people with psychological or social problems. In a 2002 quantitative review of numerous studies, psychologist Arthur Bothart, then at California State University, Dominguez Hills, and his colleagues found a correlation between high levels of empathy in therapists and successful outcomes in patients. In a 1992 study, psychiatrist David Burns, then at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and his colleagues used advanced statistical techniques for distinguishing cause and effect and found that a therapist’s ability to empathize not only is correlated with a patient’s progress but also contributes to it. Empathy is the cornerstone of psychotherapy, both because therapists need it to provide useful and relevant guidance and because patients benefit from feeling truly understood. (H. Arkowitz & S.O. Lilinfeld, p65)

 Change “psychotherapy” to “teaching”  in that last sentence and “therapists and patients” to “teachers and students”.

Schooling tends to evolve to suit a particular type of student from a particular type of background. My guess is that group differs over time and location but it is always the dominant group in that society.  It makes sense because they benefit from maintaining the status quo. It also makes sense for anyone seeking to break into that group and gain access to more resources to change to fit in. “The world doesn’t owe you a living”.

I am not too sure of the significance of the trend of girls doing better than boys in school, and now women doing better than men in further education. We are not the dominant group and don’t control the allocation of resources, even within a school. I do know, however, that this educational success does not transfer to better pay for women. In NZ  it is actually going in the opposite direction. As women are becoming more qualified, the income disparity with men is getting worse. I think this is probably a case of the dominant group moving the goalposts. Educational success may determine income for men, but it is not allowed to move women as a whole to a position of equality. Schools may be becoming “feminised” but society is not.

When I was young, girls did need to try to leave their gender at the school gate if they wanted any chance of “equal” opportunities. For example, I remember that it was thought that girls were inherently inferior in Mathematics and the top  Maths class in my school was only for boys and a few “exceptional girls”. Anyone who wanted to progress onto higher study in Science, Medicine or Engineering needed to be in that class. I wonder how those girls felt? I know that us unexceptional girls certainly didn’t envy their status as “honorary boys”. It might have made some sense if us ordinary girls had been taught in a way that suited our female selves but actually we were just taught the same way as the boys were and any female maths teachers we had seemed to be men masquerading as women.

What does it take for a woman, or anyone outside the dominant culture, to enter the halls of success? That is something I will never know for myself, and you know, that suits me fine.  I would rather be who I am, my authentic self, than change to be successful. It has taken me a long while to realise that. Not that I have been striving to be powerful and make a name for myself. I have a name. I am effective, in my own realm I am successful. What I haven’t realised is that it is I who have chosen my lack of status. I have made a series of decisions to be consistent with my self and my chosen values. Those decisions have kept me a lowly teacher…a happy teacher with a massive sense of self-worth.

What is the cost of leaving one’s culture or any other part of the self at the gate? Psychologically massive. My own education took me completely out of my social background. I have no idea what it would feel like to completely belong to a community. I have no idea what it would feel like to feel safe. I wouldn’t choose to give up who I now am, but looking back I can see that this self hasn’t had a secure path. I walk alone, and since  I was not born at the top of the food chain, my survival is a freak of nature.

Early this year a young man who I knew just a little, died. He killed himself early on on his “path to success”. I don’t know why he did it. I do know what some other people said about their anger and disappointment in him. That he took an easy way out. That before he decided to take the final opt out, he had turned his life around and that he had finally had a future. My memory of him is of before he became a potential success story. My memory is of when he was an underachiever, a waste of time. My memory of him is of a totally lovely person who cared deeply about those around him and who I, an insignificant person in his world, could rely on for a smile and kind helpfulness. I don’t know why he died but I do remember that the last year I knew him he was more solemn, less likely to catch the eye and raise his eyebrows and smile. Something had changed. I don’t know if he wanted to change, I don’t know if he wanted to be on the road to success. I don’t know why he died. All I know is that the world has lost a lovely person. Personally, I would take a lovely person over success every time if I had to make a choice.

I am not qualified to talk in technical terms about how the loss of self affects the psyche. In personal terms I know that when who we are is not valued and we feel threatened enough to need to try to be, or pretend to be something else, the self disappears and it feels like it no longer exists. There is only a facade, what the world sees. There is nothing of substance, nothing of personal worth. The image in the mirror is not us, because we are not real. The image in the mirror is fragile and could break up, like a reflection in water in a gust of wind.

I started thinking about this when a friend phoned to say that she was running late and wouldn’t be able to get to the gym for our workout at 9.30. I realised that she was meaning that she would get there at 10.30 for Stretch Class. Nothing very profound so far, but then she  said, “It’s 9.05, I’m not going to be able to make it by 9.30.”  My instant reaction was, “You’ll get there when you get there.” Given this was the second week in a row she was potentially bailing on the gym workout, she got the subtext and arrived before 10am.

That gave me 20 minutes of quiet time on the exercycle to reflect on why she may have thought that 9.30 was an all or nothing concept. Surely she realised that at least one of us was usually late, or sometimes early. Hmm, being late is “bad” and being early is “good”. Binary thinking again.

Why does it matter that our culture is heavy on polar opposites, binary absolutism? Why do I hate this thought culture so much? Mostly it is probably because it is antithetical to my personality type, ENFP.  For me, life has no absolutes, everything is swirling in a fantastic spiral galaxy and at any moment it could reverse its spin or rotate on its axis or cartwheel across the cosmos scattering sparkling stars.

It matters so much because of the damage it causes. How many overweight people have “fallen off the wagon” because they were “bad” and ate that piece of chocolate and then gone on to binge on “naughty” food. What’s “over” and “under” weight anyway? What’s “fat” and “thin”? What’s so awesomely significant about a BMI of 30 that triggers the label  “obese”.

As a teacher, I am continually confronted by students who believe they are “dumb” and therefore cannot learn. Equally frustrating are students who believe they are “smart” and do not need to learn. All this is compounded by teachers who buy into the binary labels and use them to justify perpetuating a system is which students “fail” because they are dumb or “pass” because they are clever and in which no-one learns very much at all.

We are not rich or poor, beautiful or ugly,  privileged or under-privileged, developed or under-developed, sane or mad, law-abiding or criminal. At any moment in  time we are somewhere on a spectrum which has no end points. We can be really early or disastrously late but we could be even earlier or perhaps a little more or less late.

I really resent spending time and money just to get my medication but at least these tests were free… apart from my time and and travel expenses. Oh, and the blood can only be taken in the mornings after 8am so that means Saturday morning. And it is important not to eat anything for 12 hours beforehand.

So, there I was at 8.10 am, nauseous with hunger, number 16 on the waiting list, squeezed into a narrow waiting area with 14 other people (number 1 was already under way, which was some kind of relief).  Numbers 6 and 14 were on my left and right and blessedly both were occupied with magazines.  Maybe if the blood taker was fast, and  no more people arrived, I would get out without any claustrophobia.

Stories never turn out that way, eh? Otherwise we wouldn’t bother to tell them.  Shortly after I had decided that the situation was survivable, Number 14 was greeted by a long lost buddy. They were both male, and amped up to full volume.  I slouched into the seat and willed the newc0mer away.

No such luck. Blokey platitudes were exchanged.

How’s the world treating you?

Not too shabby.

What are you here for? They checking out the ticker again?

Just getting the old  warfarin checked. What I’ve got can’t be cured, just managed. Gotta take the warfarin for the rest of my life.

Any side effects with that?

Oh, just some sore bits but not too bad.

Pretty good at home?

Yeah, can’t complain.  I’ve got two boys now. The first one is eighteen months, the young one is just coming three months. He’s pretty neat. How about you?

Oh, my boy is six. The girl is ten. Second family.

Nothing wrong with that.

As for me, I am about to lose it. What the fuck is the overweight, middle aged idiot doing producing kids when he could drop at any minute. Second family, nothing wrong with that? What did Number 14 do with his first family? Decide he could get a new one on TradeMe?

What to do when you are in a public place and about to scream, “You disgust me.  Shut the fuck up or get a room”? Survival instinct was triggered and I slumped further in my seat and pulled my hood up and over as much of my face as I could.

At this point you may be thinking, “She has issues”. Well, so what? You want to make something of it? Go on, make my day.

So, there I was, a fifty-something woman, hunched down into her hoodie, wishing I had an iPod to  blast any other noise  into my brain. Not possible for me to look like a surly teen anymore, so what was I looking like? My best guess is that I resembled a street person with a substance abuse problem (it was early Saturday morning so I was dressed in other people’s old clothes, not my weekday professional camouflage). Never mind how I looked, my hoodie (actually Dave’s hoodie) got me through another 60 minutes of inane personal details and things I never wanted to know about their workplaces and colleagues.

My hoodie experience also had a silver lining (bad English teacher pun),  because it helped me to understand why young people put up their hoods indoors. I mean, for my generation hoods are to protect one from the cold and wind outdoors, or to keep warm after sport. We get annoyed at hoodied youngsters in classrooms and malls. They are rude right? And are probably hiding their faces because they are up to no good.

My hoodie protected me from the world. It insulated me, just a little but enough, from the threat to my personal space.

Something to think about, for hoodie-hating old folk. That person hunched into their privacy may be desperately trying not to tell you to shut the fuck up and get out of their face.

I did realise, in a moment of clarity, through the blissed out peace, love and nature, totally non-chemically-induced fog, that Maslow would have described it as a peak state. The thing is though,  I didn’t do the painting.

It wasn’t even just that I was looking at pretty pictures. In fact, the paintings were nowhere near as pretty as they look in pictures. From a distance they look like their familiar reproductions. Mothers and children in a garden, haystacks, a valley, the sea. Up close, they are living brushstrokes of wild colours, not realistic but more real to the mind than a photo. More real because they express the experience of the artist as he painted that place in that moment ( of course, it wasn’t the experience of one moment in time,  Monet just waited for a similar moment to recur so he could continue work on the painting). I guess that does explain why the paintings seem so real, it was the reality of the painter’s experience,  not external  reality.

Hmm, maybe it is that I was experiencing the painter’s creativity in the same way we shared the acrobats freedom from gravity. Maybe, even though I have never created wonderful paintings,  I have experienced the same joy in nature as Monet so his experience can also be mine,  and his peak state can be mine too.  I understand a little better now why some people spend fortunes on art.

I could have stayed at the exhibition forever but i knew I didn’t need to. I have seen the shadows passing over the hills and the light on the valley and it makes me happy that Monet thought it important that others saw it too.

Borsch

Borsch is a signature dish of Ukranian and Russia cuisines, but generally speaking Ukranians prefer a very hearty version – they use speck, which is ground down with onions and added to soup just minutes before removing it from the stove. My mum’s version is light, particularly because she doesn’t fry the vegetables before adding them to soup (as a doctor she thinks it’s healthier and preserves more vitamins), and this version can even be vegetarian. Get a big pot (5L) and and a piece of veal brisket, pour cold water to fill the pot, place meat and bring to boil. After the first boil, the meat should be rinsed with running water and the stock goes down the drain – the first stock extracts pesticides and other harmful substances from meat. Fill the pot again and cook for 1-1.5 hours. After the stock is ready add some salt. Borsch can now be cooked. (For vegetarian borsch skip this part). The order in which you add different ingredients is crucial, as for example adding tomatoes before potatoes adds acid which doesn’t allow potatoes to get cooked. Take one medium to large size beet root (depending on the desired sweetness of borsch, usually after cooking it a few times you know the amount of ingredients, everyone I know measures with eyes), clean, peel and cut into straws, add to the stock, let simmer for 7-10 minutes (until beet root gives part of its color to the stock) and add 1-2 small chopped onions (if you are making vegetarian borsch at this point add 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil), let simmer for another 5-7 minutes. After that add shredded fresh carrots (2-3 medium size ones) and cubed potatoes (3-4 big ones would be good, potatoes are good in borsch), leave simmering for another 5-7 minutes while you are peeling 3-4 big tomatoes. Shred, mush or roughly chop tomatoes and add them to borsch, leave simmering for another 3-5 minutes (tomatoes add acidity so it’s important to add enough fresh tomatoes, if after tasting borsch seems too sweet still, some people add tomato paste, all to taste). After tomatoes have been simmering for 3-5 minutes, add chopped capsicum, or even several small ones, simmer for another 3-5 minutes, taste the salt and sweetness/acidity, make adjustments by adding more salt or tomatoes if needed and then add a good portion of fresh thinly chopped cabbage and some fresh chopped parsley or dill (or both). After the cabbage is added, turn off the heat, cover the pot with a lid and let stand for another 5 minutes – don’t simmer borsh with cabbage as it will turn soggy; cabbage should stay crispy. Pour borsh into a deep bowl and put sour cream on the table – a tablespoon of sour cream makes it tastier. Store pot with borsh in the fridge and it’s believed that borsh is best the second day.

Eggplant/Aubergine

Homestyle eggplant: slice big eggplants into 1cm-thick circles, fry with a bit of olive oil, arrange each slice on an equal circle of ripe sweet tomato and top with crushed garlic and thin layer of mayonnaise, sprinkle with chopped fresh dill. For a healthy version put the eggplant slices on an oiled baking sheet and bake until soft, then arrange eggplant on top of tomato slices, top with garlic and 1:1 mix of sour cream/yogurt and mayonnaise, sprinkle with chopped fresh dill. Also adding crushed garlic to mayo helps to save some time.

Potatoes

Best summer dish: new potatoes! Boil the potatoes, drain the water, add plenty of butter and let it melt under the lid, transfer to a plate and sprinkle with lots of chopped fresh dill. For a herbier taste add the dill together with butter in a pot with hot potatoes and let stand with lid on for several minutes. Sour cream on top will make it truly Russian.

Russian pancakes

Russian pancakes: every household has it’s own recipe, but I prefer crepe-like paper-think yeast-free pancakes, and my mum’s recipe is the best in the world for this. They can be stuffed with all kinds of things, but also can be served plain, accompanied by caviar, smoked salmon, sour cream, condensed milk, homemade jam, honey, melted butter for dipping. You will need 1L of fresh milk, 5-6 eggs, 2-2.1/5 cups of plain flour (depending on flour, you will need less or more of it), a pinch of salt, some white sugar (lets say 1 tbsp) and 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil (or other vegetable oil), melted butter for covering the pancakes. Pour 500-600 ml of milk into a mixer bowl, crack eggs, add half of flour, salt and sugar, combine on low speed until there are no more lumps of flour visible, add the rest of flour and mix again. The batter at this point should be thick and a bit stretchy. Start adding milk and mixing everything together until you have no milk left. At this point the batter should be the consistency of liquid sour cream (that’s the comparison we use in Russia, and liquid sour cream may sound like an oxymoron, but the Soviet sour-cream was 10% fat at best and very liquid). Add 1tbsp of oil and mix again – oil in batter prevents pancakes from sticking to the surface of a pan. Heat the flat non-stick pan (the best pancakes come from a thick cast-iron pan, but it requires extra oiling between the pancakes, for which traditionally a piece of pork fat was used, but I recommend wrapping some clean cotton cloth around a fork, in Russia we use drug-store bandage, and dip it into olive oil, shake off the excess and use it to lightly oil the pan). Oil the pan using your hand-made kitchenware and pour a ladle of batter in the middle, turning the pan to swirl the batter around and allow it to cover the pan. You will see how the surface bakes through and at this point use a wooden spatula to lift the edge of a pancake, then use spatula and your fingers (caution!) to grab it quickly and flip. Wait until cooked and then put on a plate, wait until it’s cool and taste before you make another pancake. If you are making pancakes to stuff with meat, fish, cheese-ham, mushrooms or other savory stuffings, you will probably not need to any any more sugar. Taste saltiness, sweetness and thickness, make adjustments by adding more salt/sugar and check if you need to ladle out less batter to make thinner pancakes. Keep baking on a pan and cover each pancake with a thin layer of melted butter (pour 1/3 or less of a tsp on the edge and rub around, the middle tends to stay soft and moist even without butter) before putting another one on top of a pile. The ones that are not finished can be kept in a fridge for 2-3 days and reheated in a microwave.

For stuffed pancakes you can skip buttering, or use less butter. Generally after stuffing you need to turn them back to the pan to just heat through and let the flavours blend, but this doesn’t work with smoked fish, caviar and fruit stuffings. Stuffings can be: ground meat+rice, cooked through and seasoned to taste; mushrooms and cheese with parsley, dill or other fresh herb of choice – cook the mushrooms, add shredded cheese, mix together, stuff the pancakes. If you fry them again or reheat in a microwave, the cheese will melt and the taste will be amazing. Hard-boiled eggs, mixed with fresh chopped spring onions (also makes a traditional stuffing for pies) fish and rice, cooked and seasoned fresh fruit, with a bit of sugar sprinkled on top (apples with raisins and a dash of cinnamon are good, some fresh strawberries and sugar, too.

Forgot to say about pancakes – the pan should be big! about 24-26 cm in diameter – that’s how we eat pancakes, smaller ones are Olad’yi.

What confuses me about altruism is that it is supposedly doing something good for no personal gain. It is not doing something good because you have to, or because you think you should, or because it will make you look good, but just because it is good. The difficulty for me is that altruism feels good, or to quote Sus, it is “happiness-making”. How can doing something that makes me happy be counted as doing it for no personal gain?

On the other hand, if doing good feels bad it is martyrdom and that should  never be confused with altruism. Altrusim is giving with a glad heart. It is not grudging or resentful. As soon as you begin to resent giving, please stop.

Another conflict I have regarding the whole business of altruism is that even after the buzz of knowing that I have made the world a little bit better for someone else, and therefore for the world in general, I start to find that I am getting all kinds of other benefits. I don’t go into the altruism business to get personal benefit but it just happens. Do these unintended gains disqualify my altruism?

An example. I have been helping a former student of mine with academic writing. About 4 times a year she contacts me for assistance to understand the requirements of her assignments and to plan her preparation. Then, a week or so later, she talks her essay through as she writes it. Why is this process necessary? She is dyslexic. The work is intensive and exhausting, especially since we both have demanding  jobs but I have gotten to learn so much from the experience.

I have learnt about what it is like for a very competent and ambitious young person to have to struggle with academic tasks..something that  frustrated her all though school and I didn’t notice because of all the behaviours that had gotten her thrown out of numerous English classes. Of course I have read about dyslexia but there is no way I could have gained as much understanding as I have through donating the occasional weekend morning.

I have also learnt about her world of Early Childhood teaching and thought about things like how competencies and dispositions that are being developed  in young children are also relevant to the teenagers I work with. Talking about learning intentions and success criteria , or principles of language teaching, in a completely different context really challenges my brain and gives me a deeper understanding of my own work.

Of course I also get the usual altruistic buzz, knowing that I make a difference, that my student has the chance of a successful career, knowing that she will make a difference to countless children because she is an excellent, caring teacher. My egotism tells me that the world is a better place because I am in it, because I do what I do.

This altruism game sounds rather selfish but anyone can play. The best thing about altruism is that it is free!

I enjoyed it because it made me feel good. In my mind I was flying and tumbling and stretching and performing amazing gravity-defying feats. I am sure that lots of other people were feeling something similar because we were oohing and aahhing and gasping and cheering in unison. We weren’t conciously thinking about responding, we just were. We were feeling what we were seeing. I don’t know what other people were feeling but my body felt wonderful and I walked away feeling light and free.

I felt happy and part of a spontaneous community of happiness. I don’t know how long that experience lasted for other people, or how intensely other people experienced it, but I do know it was a good thing. I also know that lots of little good things add up and that happiness can be built by fostering happy experiences.

Our society could use a whole lot more happiness, especially communal happiness and there is absolutely no reason why we can’t make it a priority. As a teacher, I know that people learn better when they are happy (Maslow etc) but its crazy to justify the creation of a safe happy environment on the grounds that it will promote better academic results. Happiness is worthy in its own right. Learning, mental health, safe communities etc are way more likely to eventuate when happiness is valued but happiness comes first.