Good Books

Here are some good books I've read recently:

The Luminaries-Eleanor Catton

Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte

The Woodlanders-Thomas Hardy

Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow-Peter Hoeg

A Room With A View- E.M. Forster

Here are some that I will be reading soon:

The Shipping News-E. Annie Proulx

Middlmarch-George Eliot

Terra Incognita: Travels In Antarctica-Sara Wheeler

The Child Molester In The Duggar's Brood

If you've never heard of them, the Duggars are an American family who have carefully brainwashed their 19 children into follow their particular flavor of Christianity.

They are also notable for their strong hatred of homosexuality and transgendered persons, going so far as to suggest they are all child molesters.

Recently, In Touch Weekly broke a story that suggested the Duggar's oldest son Josh had allegedly molested five minors.

From the report:

"Josh Duggar was investigated for multiple sex offenses, including forcible fondling, against five minors. Some of the alleged offenses investigated were felonies."

"According to the police report, in March 2002, Jim Bob was told by a female minor that his son, then 14, had been 'touching her breasts and genitals while she slept' on numerous occasions."

"Josh allegedly admitted to this according to the report, and Jim Bob says he was 'disciplined.'"

"He was accused again however in March 2003 of allegedly touching the breasts and genitals of 'several woman,' both while they were sleeping and even when they were awake."

"Also 'some time during this time frame, [redacted] had been standing in the laundry room and [redacted, Josh] had put [redacted] hand under [redacted, victim's] dress.'"

"The police report says the alleged victims 'live with their parents Jim Bob and Michelle.'"

"At that point Jim Bob reportedly informed the elders at his church of the situation, but no one notified law enforcement."

"Shortly after this is when Harpo, [Oprah] Winfrey's production company, received the email about the allegations and faxed it to Department of Human Services."

After seeing the email, police asked Jim Bob to bring his son in for an interview but he 'refused to produce his son for questioning.'

Jim Bob also tried to hire a lawyer for his son but 'at least two lawyers refused to take his case.'

Police questioned the fifth victim after the other four, who said she was sleeping over the Duggar's house on the couch when her breasts were touched.

Authorities could not pursue charges at this point however as the three-year statute of limitations had expired."

The Duggars follow the strict bible-based teachings of the Advanced Training Institute which is run by Bill Gothard, a man accused of harassing and assaulting up to 34 women.

It is disturbing to read the literature that Gothard publishes in relation to child molestation. In a text entitled "Lessons From Moral Failures In A Family" an example is given of a boy who was molesting his younger sisters.

The boy is asked to think about "what teaching could have been given to each child to resist evil," pray about what he had done and write out his thoughts. 

This gives him a prime opportunity to blame his sisters in some way.

The boy comes to the conclusion that his sisters' immodesty coupled with the fact that he was forced to change their diapers led to the behavior.

The example shows a blatant disregard for personal responsibility. 

It also laments what will happen to the young man's reputation. 

Since the victims are only girls, very little thought is given to their well being.

Like many Christian sects, this ones reinforces the idea that all males are weak willed potential perverts who go to pieces in the presence of any female form which is not heavily shrouded.

The responsibility to protect men from temptation falls to women and girls. 

The logical conclusion of these teachings is that sexual assault victims should always be questioning what they did to bringing the assault upon themselves.

What I want to know is how the hell someone is supposed to respect the patriarchy when its leaders can't even control their urges to sexual gratify themselves every second.

If you are truly that weak then maybe you should be locked up and women should take the reigns for a while.

Bearing in mind that this is the sort of teaching the Duggars subscribe to, their response to Josh's actions should surprise no one.

Jim Bob first "disciplined" his son himself. When the abuse continued he sought the wisdom of the men in his church. 

In the end, he sent his son off for three months to build a house for one of his friends and referred to this as his "getting help."

The police were not consulted until the statute of limitations had run out and no criminal charges were filed. 

Josh got away with some light indentured servitude and his parents were able to hush up the scandal and keep making money off their "brand" through their TLC television program and various book deals.

And if you think Josh is really cured and sorry for what he did, then just read part of his statement in response to the allegations:

“I understood that if I continued down this wrong road that I would end up ruining my life."

His life might be ruined. 

His parents earning potential might have been destroyed. 

The teachings of Bill Gather might have been shamed.

And through this all the family has invoked the name of God.

The irritating thing about God is that he never gives direct quotes to the news media about things like this. 

Instead, we are left to have his views interpreted for us by those who profess to worship him.

This conveniently allows Josh to say his private correspondence with the Heavenly Father has made things all better.

Jim Bob and Michelle are then able to turn their son's bad touch tendencies into a positive experience that brought them closer to the Almighty.

Some of you might be wondering about his sisters who he molested on numerous occasions. 

Don't worry, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have spoken on their behalf saying they forgave their brother. 

Of course they did. 

What choice did they have? 

They have been home schooled and sequestered from anyone who might teach them dissent.

From Yahoo:

Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), tells Yahoo Health that while some juvenile sex offenders continue their patterns of abuse throughout their lives and others do not, the long-term effects on children who have been molested by their siblings has “a lot to do with the factors and terms of whether [the abuse] was disclosed, how the person [to whom the abuse was disclosed] reacted, and whether the victim feels they received support from their loved ones and family” in response to the disclosure of their abuse.

Furthermore, she adds, if victims who have been abused by a family member feel that their family is siding with the perpetrator — and in turn feel not loved, not supported, and not as important to their family as their abuser is — they are at even greater risk for negative health behaviors.

When I was little I was molested by a male babysitter on two occasions.

He lived up the street from my family and my parents were friends with his.

I can still remember him standing over me while I lay in bed and looking into my eyes as he touched my genitalia repeatedly. 

I told my mother what had happened and she listened without saying much. I guess the idea of confronting his parents was too embarrassing because she never said anything to them, she just made sure he didn't babysit me again. 

I will never forget what he did to me and I will never stop worrying that he did it to someone else.

I won't dwell on the fact that if this had been some story involving a Muslim or a homosexual the Duggars would have been vocally condemning it while self righteously humble bragging about their chasteness in some way.

I will say that TLC has done the right thing by cancelling the show and refusing to broadcast it any longer.

I don't pray all that often but the next time I do, I'll ask God to grant Michelle and Jim Bob the ability to value their daughters as human beings.

Progressive Parenting

As an adult, I am constantly challenging people who cling to the notion of set gender roles.

My whole childhood was an indoctrination into a sect obsessed with defining what was acceptable for boys and girls to like, think and do.

My interests, clothing choices, conduct and (lack of) career options were all carefully monitored and enforced by my mother, my religion and the old white men in power in the Deep South.

Any sign of deviance was unacceptable.

The men of my religion spoke on behalf of a God who had made me weak, emotional and lesser than themselves. I would just have to trust them on this fact and know that they had my best interest at heart.

Like the celibate priests who teach children about sex, these men were there to tell me what being a woman was all about.

They spoke of a God who loved me so much that he sent his son to die for me. He didn't love me enough however, to tolerate aberrant behavior or too much sinfulness. These things would force him to throw me into a pit of fire at the end of my days.

To avoid this I would have to stay a virgin until I was married, not wear revealing clothing and always be meek and put my needs secondary to those of the men around me.

Realizing that this was a load of bollocks was a long and painful process.

Even now, I realize that some of the old training is still ingrained in me.

For instance, when I recently went to buy a birthday present for a little girl, I automatically drifted to a pink princess sticker book.

To be fair, it had some pretty cool unicorn stickers that even I, a 36-year old woman, was tempted to paste into the forest scene on page seven.

But what if the present were for a little boy and I bought him the same thing?

It would be outrageous, insulting and offensive to most parents and I would never do it.

But really, why?

Pink does not have a neutering effect on men.

You could put a little baby boy in frilly skirts with bows in his hair and he would never instinctively "know" that this wasn't right.

It's just a color or a bit of fabric but we are terrified of what it says to the rest of the world about us or our children.

I had a friend who took his wife's last name and let his young son have long hair. People would come up to him and say, "She's beautiful! How old?" And then he would patiently correct them as I admired him in silence.

When I was about five, I got into a heated argument with my friend Rusty because we were playing with toy helicopters and he said his was the one from the television show Airwolf and mine was the one from Magnum P.I. ( a Hughes 500 D). That was unacceptable to me. We both knew the Airwolf had much cooler (albeit imaginary) abilities and he wasn't going to take it from me.

Before I joined the fifth grade band at my conservative Christian school I told my mom I wanted to play the drums. I ended up with a flute.

The real trouble started when I became a single parent.

A society which teaches that men go out and provide for their families while women stay home with the children was not well equipped to deal with the eventuality that a man might abandon the mother of his child and leave her with no choice but to work outside the home.

There were other issues as well; ones that I feel weren't fair to fathers.

The narrow definition of manliness which embraced the premise that diaper changing, pram pushing and the healing of boo boos was women's work meant that men missed out on some of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of being a parent.

Where I'm from, housework and child rearing are seen as demeaning to men.

So it is women who must demean themselves daily and not expect praise or monetary compensation.

Because men are usually away from the home, having a career, an impression seems to be formed in their minds that the wife has it pretty good because she "doesn't have to work" and gets to spend "all of their money."

I have read essays written by stay-at-home fathers where they express the same sentiments of overwhelming exhaustion and boredom that stay at home moms feel.

Meanwhile, women in the workforce are constantly made to feel selfish or unreliable when it comes to having children.

No man is ever asked what his work plans are once children come along.

Why?

How many more years of evolution do we need as human beings to realize that equality in housework, child rearing and career choices (even if staying at home is one of them) are what make for happy, stable homes?

And it all begins before a child even comes into the world, when the pink paint goes up in the nursery or the blue onesies are purchased in bulk.

Why?

Because this is the way to maintain a power structure.

And for some, that's more important than accepting Timmy's love of ballet or Mary's fondness for automotive repair.

Sound of the Surrounds

I'm interested in the processes that occur when human beings form accents.

I want to know what happens between the ear and the brain, between the language we learn and the region of the world we come from and how it makes us sound the way we do.

I am not covering the psychological aspects of accents which involve such concepts as social identity theory or accent bias I am more interested in phonology and prosody.

Several examples come to my mind from personal experiences.

I once knew brothers who had a mother from Denmark and a father from England. Both of them had grown up in Alabama but the elder brother had a neutral sounding American accent while the younger brother had a distinctly British one.

At one of my last DJ gigs I met a guy whose American father had met his Kiwi mother in Christchurch while he worked for Navy as a Antarctic pilot. He spent his childhood moving from U.S. city to U.S. city before his father retired to New Zealand. His accent was a unique hybrid of New Zealander and military brat.

A Kiwi family I worked for had recently returned from a multi-year stint in the U.S. Their middle child had the accent of a Californian while the other two children sounded like the local Cantabrians.

When the NPR and I first arrived in New Zealand we were endlessly amused by the accents of those around us. Now, nearly two years on, I barely hear it.

In much the same way that people who live near pulp mills manage to block out the smell of sulfur over time, my ear has grown used to the New Zealander's particular disregard to the proper pronunciation of vowels.

At the same time I find myself modifying my own English use for the sake of making myself understood as quickly as possible. I now place stress on the word "garage" in the same place as the English and Kiwis do. I only change Alex's diapers when I'm around the NPR, the rest of the time I'm dealing with nappies.

When I speak to my little sister in Alabama I hear the southern twang come out in my speech. In a recent job interview with a Kiwi I was told that my American accent was subtle. An American I met at Willowbank asked if I had lived in New Zealand for a while and said it took him a while to pick up that I was American.

I will be interested to hear how my son's accent turns out. He lives in a home with two Americans, a Kiwi and an Englishwoman. As he grows older the majority of those around him will speak with the Cantabrian accent.

If I were to do research on accents and how they develop in relative isolation I would want to focus my research on the island of Tristan da Cunha.

The island has a tiny population of 297 and is a British oversea territory. It is remote and almost completely free from outside contact and influence.

 In the 1960s the entire population was moved to London due to the eruption of a volcano. In England, the islanders became reluctant celebrities and objects of curiosity and most of them chose to return to Tristan as soon as they were able.

All the families on the island are related and there are only eight surnames in use.

I have watched all the YouTube videos available on the islanders so I can hear what hundreds of years of being left alone can do to a person's English accent.

I have discussed varieties of the English accent here but I am also interested in the accents of individuals who have more than one language spoken in the home and the ability of older adults to mimic or acquire native accents in foreign languages.

More later.

Why can't the English learn to speak?

The Weird Bird Lady

I hadn't seen the keas in a while so I went to Willowbank yesterday.

When I came into the enclosure I saw two ladies working with some wooden contraptions into and out of which a bunch of the young keas were hopping.

A video camera was set up to record events.

As I was watching Kati flew over and hopped on my hand.

I sat on the bench by one of the feeding stations and was soon surrounded by curious birds.

Bill was there too but he was in a foul mood. He fluffed up at his siblings, pushed them away with his foot and even made a biting gesture at one of them. When I didn't respond to him sitting beside me he craned his neck over and gave my arm a firm pinch-something he had never done before.

I guess everyone has bad days.

I asked one of the ladies what they were studying and she told me she was assisting with PhD research to look at keas cooperative problem solving skills. She said three of the youngsters were dominating the exercise.

While we were speaking she looked at me with a strange look as if I was a total weirdo who might do something sudden and dangerous.

The lady doing the actual PhD seemed curt and mumbled something about the inconvenience of doing this sort of research while being based out of Auckland. She said this while walking briskly out of the enclosure.

I am so far from doing anything that will ever be useful to kea research and moments like this really drive that point home.

I went back to the bench and sat with the keas. Kiki came and perched on my shoulder and Kati hopped on my knee.

Some of the park staff walked through including the man who is in charge of the native animals. He doesn't like me at all- a fact which has been apparent ever since he caught me dropping almonds on the ground for a kea snack.

This makes sitting with the birds when he walks through uncomfortable.

Then there are the guests that walk through and ask if I work there or if I am getting paid to sit with the birds. They take pictures of me with birds on my head or shoulders or boots.

I feel like such a weirdo when this happens.

I am torn between telling them about the keas and sitting quietly and waiting for them to move through so I can enjoy the company of the parrots by myself.

It's hard to describe the sense of well being I get from visiting these birds.

I have been coming to sit with them for almost two years and I've become very fond of the group.

I am not a scientist, I'm just a guest who sits with the keas for a long time and feels a great delight in watching them play and call to one another.

I really need to find a little cottage in Arthur's Pass where I can go and observe and write down my layman's account of what goes on with these amazing birds.

Maybe someone will discover my notes one day and use them to educate the world about the keas

.

Whip It Good

Last night Nick and I were watching Graham Norton and to my delight, the musical guests were Blur.

They played the song "Lonesome Street" off their new album "The Magic Whip."

I sat on the floor in front of the television with my hands clasped together, hoping that the song would sate my urge to briefly relive the Brit Pop heyday.

I liked what I heard.

"I will buy the new album," I told Nick over my shoulder.

Seeing the band sitting on Graham's couch brought a mix of emotions.

Damon's forehead bore deep creases and he looked exhausted. At some point in the past he lost one of his front teeth and replaced it with a conspicuous fake. Even so, he's pushing fifty and still rather lovely.

Alex James is still tall and handsome while Graham Coxon has lost his nerdy hotness and now just looks like a comfortable yet well worn sofa cushion.

Drummer Dave Rowntree seemed to fade into the background and disappear completely.

Today was mother's day and Nick draped a little yellow bag over the baby's arm and brought it out to me in the conservatory. Inside was a selection of chocolates and the new Blur CD.

I was really amazed at how good the tracks are. The album offers hints of Parklife's cheek and the moody meaningfulness of some of 13's tracks.

My favorite track by far is "Go Out" followed by "Lonesome Street" and "New World Towers."

When the disc began I threw out my arms and said, "I'm sixteen again."

Nick was a skeptic.

But I enjoyed the rush of memories from my late teens when anything seemed possible and the future held exciting things. I had a collection of little black dresses and a haircut like the lead singer of Elastica. I was in love with an imaginary man and I couldn't wait to get out of Alabama and see the world.

The boys did well with this one.

Even when the nostalgia fades, I'll enjoy these songs for years to come.

Blur Now

A younger Damon embracing the themes from "A Clockwork Orange":

On the Trail of the Hoi Hoi

Ever since I have arrived in New Zealand I have wanted to see a penguin in the wild. 

On a recent trip to Oamaru, Nick and I got a chance to go searching for the rare and endemic hoi hoi or Yellow Eyed Penguin.

Nick's friends James and Paula invited us to stay at their beautiful home and their daughter Ella was our penguin guide (because she had been to reserve before and knew where to look).

Driving out to the Katiki Point lighthouse reminded me so much of Point Reyes and coastal Marin County. We even saw the occasional Monterey Cypress.

As we returned from a hike to watch the sea lions, Ella spotted a penguin and I was able to finally get close to another unique New Zealand bird.

A bellbird painting I made for James and his family

Kereru

The Katiki Lighthouse

Katiki Point

A view from the lighthouse

Sleepy sea lion

James, Ella and Nick

A hoi hoi at rest

Watching the Rugby

I had never seen a rugby game live before but recently I had a chance to watch one of Nick's friends play down in Oamaru.

There were guys in striped shirts running around and crushing into each other.

I tried to ask Nick what was going on but he was too busy staring the players down, judging their moves and mumbling about how he would have done something much cooler had he been on the field.

So here is my takeaway:

The ref had a secret so everyone leaned in.

During the breaks, players pretended they were on a runway in Milan.

Several attempts were made to form a human Jinga tower

Certain people played the game better in their day.