I am a Researcher, Educator, Planet Lover, Grandmother who accepts the science of climate change and cares deeply about the state of the planet my grandchildren will inherit.
Renewable Energy Reduces Living Costs
Background The optimal energy mix in Australia has been vigorously debated in Parliament late this year, delivering vastly different proposals. Labor proposes a heavy reliance on renewables, and the coalition proposes a combination of fossil fuels eventually augmented with seven nuclear plants scattered around five states. Another, closely related, ongoing debate concerns whether Australia is…
Kudzu Republic – The Sequel
November 5, 2024 was a watershed moment in the history of American Democracy. With eyes wide open, and with 20/20 hindsight, the American people voted for Donald Trump to lead them through the next four years: a man “who knowingly promotes hatred and division; who lies—blatantly, shamelessly—every time he appears in public; who plotted to…
Making Hats
I’ve been selling my hat patterns from my Bandana Heads Etsy store for nearly 10 years and it’s time to close it down while I work on a new collection and revitalise some of my original patterns. My first new recent project was to create an extra large bucket hat. Here’s the happy recipient. The…
‘So all the cracks had gathered to the fray’
The title is a famous refrain from “The Man from Snowy River” by Banjo Paterson (1890) https://allpoetry.com/The-Man-from-Snowy-River. The highly valued colt from old Regret bolts to join the wild bush horses, ‘He was worth a thousand pound, So all the cracks had gathered to the fray’ to find him and bring him home. Climate has…
Grandma enters the Metaverse
All my Australian grandkids go to school now, and it’s a new era which takes some getting used to. My strategy to stay involved and connected with my grandchildren has been to immerse myself in the metaverse (not the real physical world), specifically the virtual realm of Roblox, an interactive form of storytelling and social…
Scotty’s Road to Damascus?
He may not see the light, but no doubt he’ll feel the heat at COP26 in Glasgow next month. Incoherent yabbering about plans and pathways, vague thoughts on targets. “Technology not taxes”, or is it “Technology not targets”? Hard to pin him down on a revised concrete emissions reduction target, much less a date. Australia’s…
Wake up Mr Morrison
The planet is burning Mr Morrison, how do you sleep while our planet is burning? The time has come to face the facts. You do not own the planet Earth, you are a caretaker, a very poor caretaker. When markets fail, governments are obliged to intervene and find ways to help the price mechanism find…
Radio-controlled
It was grandparents’ day in Brisbane this week, and along with other grandparents I was invited to my granddaughter’s Prep class to chat about memorable toys from our time as children. It was a Science class event with emphasis on materials that were used in the construction of toys. I prepared a short story in…
Self-settling
At any age we can benefit by observing what distresses us and finding ways to tune out and self-settle. Even though I live on the other side of the world, following the long, drawn-out US election process has been sufficiently distressing that I was becoming agitated. Observant and savvy parents can usually pick up on…
Counting Down 