Mexico City and kids

Mexico City is a good place to visit with children. They are welcomed in most places; indeed, often given special attention, and there are many activities to naturally attract and engage them, such as the colourful street parade of the last post, or the weekend buzz of squares and plazas such as that at Coyoacan.



But more specifically, it also has what must be one of the best museums ever designed for children - the Papalote Museo del Nino:



The Papalote (which translates as 'kite') is enormous and has activities for children of all ages. It's broadly arranged around themes that managed to escape us as we moved from one exciting activity to the other. There are young, enthusiastic attendants everywhere to help and gently supervise - though our lack of Spanish sometimes was a bit of a challenge for them, and us! There are activities that demonstrate scientific principles in fun ways; lots of imaginative games such as riding in a fire engine or shopping in a most realistically recreated supermarket(though here there was also 'educational value' as the children had to find items across the food groups before they could shop freely); telephones that enabled you to dial cities around the world to hear greetings in their languages, as the city lit up on a giant globe; adventurous and challenging outdoor playgrounds designed for children of various ages; lots of lego, colouring in, an IMAX theatre, even a bed of nails - the list just goes on and on. We were there for hours.



As usual, I've somehow managed to take photographs that make it appear as if we were the only visitors to the museum. That's far from the truth. It was a school day and there were lots of school groups visiting - often tiny uniformed children with their teachers - and later in the day (it was late closing) informal groups of adolescents began to arrive.

Incidentally, on our first attempt to visit the museum we were turned away as the museum was closed for a visit by Crown Prince Frederick and our Mary of Denmark. Those Danish royals really do get around. I couldn't help thinking it would have been so much more interesting for them to see the museum buzzing with excited children as it was when we visited.

(minor) knitting troubles

I seem to have another troublesome knitting project on my hands. This time it's not the knitting itself, as the project could hardly be simpler. I'm knitting Kay Gardiner and Ann Shayne's Moderne Baby Blanket, which is all neat-edged garter stitch. Easy-peasy. But so far the blanket has been surrounded by (admittedly minor) difficulties.



So far I've knitted nothing for my grandson Joshua, who's now two and a bit. He lives in the Philippines where it's just too hot for knitted garments of any kind - even those from cotton. But I've really wanted to knit for him, and for knitters, knitting is an expression of love and attachment, so I've finally decided to knit him a cotton blanket. It can be used for him to lie on, or to cover him if he sleeps in air-conditioning. Or it might not be used at all, but I will have had the satisfaction of expressing my knitterly affection.

In a moment of madness I decided I could complete this project in the two weeks leading up to my most recent visit to the Philippines. Perhaps fortunately, fate and Australia Post conspired to make this impossible. I'd ordered 8ply cotton from Bendigo Woollen Mills and it just didn't arrive. And didn't arrive. [Bendigo cotton, by the way, is perfect for a project such as this. Reliable quality, washes well, relatively inexpensive. It would be good if it came in some more exciting colours, but maybe that's a trade-off for its reliability]. I checked that Bendigo has sent my yarn promptly, but then had no way of finding out what had happened to it once it was in the hands of Australia Post. Frustration. Eventually, as I checked my mailbox on the way to catch my plane to the Philippines I found a final notice to collect the parcel from the post office. This is not the first time I've received a final notice without ever having received an earlier notice. Double frustration. Fortunately I was able to phone the post office and arrange for them to hold the parcel till my return. I couldn't bear the thought of the parcel being returned to Bendigo and then having to be resent.



Now the only problem is how to complete the blanket and send it to Joshua. The Philippines postal service is even less reliable than Australia Post. Things not only get lost - they are never found. If I finish it by Christmas time I can send it with a friend who is travelling to the Philippines. Normally, this would be an easily feasible schedule, but I will be travelling in the US and Mexico for five of those weeks, and a cotton blanket is not a sensible knitting project when doing lots of plane, train and bus travel. So, I'm hurriedly making a start on the project, and hoping to complete the acres of garter stitch between my return home in early December and Christmas time. I'm telling myself that I always work best when I have a deadline. Let's hope my slightly arthritic hands get the message.

Rather gratuitously - here's a pic of the intended recipient. I can't imagine he'll appreciate the blanket, but his parents and I know it will come with lots of love.

The familiarity of the past

I've been to Young, in central-west NSW, for a cousin's funeral. As I drove to Young I was acutely aware of the accuracy of the now-cliched description of Australia in Dorothea Mackellar's poem - that we are a country of 'droughts and flooding rains'. It was raining as I left Sydney and the radio was a constant flow of information about the imminent dangers from floods in Queensland and Northern NSW. But as I drove further west the country-side changed from green to the gold of stubbled paddocks and dried pasture-land.



The grey clouds of my photo brought only a few spots of rain. Not enough to please the farmers.

The cousin whose funeral I attended is the first of the cousins of my generation to die. It's a significant marker of passing time. He had a mild intellectual disability and had lived a sheltered, very private life. He was steadfast in his Catholic faith all his life, so that the requiem mass with its well-worn ritual and predictability seemed a perfect last marker of his life - even to an unbeliever such as I.

Afterwards there was tea and sandwiches (and later, beer and wine) and gossip among the cousins who are now spread around NSW and whose last catch-up with one another had been the funeral of an aunt from the previous generation of relatives. One of my cousins is compiling the family history of this part of my family and took us to see the gravestone of our earliest Australian ancestors in the Young cemetery.




Thomas (1807-1877) and Catherine Joyce (1811-1871), my great-great-grandparents, came from County Kilkenny in Ireland to join their three sons, Thomas, Edward and Patrick who had already settled near Young. I don't often catch up with members of my family of origin, but it's always very reaffirming of my past when I do.

The quirks of genetic inheritance

Neither of my two children look like me in the slightest.

But this is  my daughter at age 5, in her first school photograph



And this is my grand-daughter at age 5, in her first school photograph



An uncanny resemblance, isn't it? My grand-daughter's hair and eye colouring are lighter than my daughter's, and I think this had distracted me from realising just how alike they are. Discovering my daughter's old school photo was a revelation.

 I love these photographs. One of those reminders of connection across generations.

Sunday morning knitting

Sometimes, when you're knitting, everything goes well



but sometimes you need to concentrate very hard



and sometimes, especially when you've just turned five... well, it's all just too much!

Miscellany

I've been lax about blogging over the past couple of weeks. In fact, I've been thinking about writing a post about blogging and its relative decline, but that will take me some time and thought and might even become an excuse for further procrastinating my blogging. So, in lieu of a more thoughtful post, I'm dotting points about how I've been filling my time (other than work, of course).

****** I revisited the annual Knit Camp at Mount Keira Scout Camp - just out of Wollongong. The camp is generously hosted annually by Christine, Rae and Kerry from CR&K Daisy Designs. A few posts ago I wrote about the pleasures of revisiting places, and Knit Camp definitely falls into that category. This is now the fourth time I've been to this knitting camp - long enough to have built up traditions about what should be done and how it should be done. Top of the list is to sit in the autumn sun outside the main hall with one's feet (in knitted socks) on the stone wall and with a view of Wollongong in the distance.




Of course, you have to knit, and talk about knitting, and it helps if the weather is cool enough (as it was) to display and wear your knitted shawls. This year I've been busy and managed to get to camp only for one day - but, as invariably happens when you hang out with knitters, it was a fun day of shared experiences.

****** I discovered I can wear RoseRed's crocheted neckpieces as a most satisfactory bangle.



****** I spent a weekend in Brisbane.



My weekend in Brisbane was for a very special fifth birthday party. The grown ups made lunch boxes for the guests (twenty five-year-olds plus several younger brothers and sisters) with some help from Ana Maria



and Ana Maria made her invitations, party hats and party bags for the guests with a very little help from the grown-ups.



****** My cotton log-cabin blanket has been growing. It's such a convenient knitting project to carry around, and so fool-proof to knit in company that it's grown almost without my noticing. I wish I had other projects that grew with so little effort.



I've now finished twelve squares which was my first goal for a possible finished blanket. It measures 132 x 99 centimetres and is a good size for a rug for the sofa. But I still have some yarn left, and after all the trouble I went to to acquire the discontinued yarn, I can't bear not to use it up, so I think I'll make another four squares and have a 16 patch rug. I don't find square blankets as aesthetically pleasing as rectangular ones, but the need to use up the yarn is irresistible! Anyway, it's become my comfort knitting and I think I'd miss it (though even when I've finished knitting I have to sew it all together and do the i-cord edging. It'll be with me for a while).

The pleasures of revisiting

Mostly, I think we associate the pleasures and rewards of travel with discovering new places; of doing new things and experiencing different cultures. But there are also pleasures - different pleasures - to be gained from spending time in places you've visited before and already know well.

Sometimes the pleasure comes from doing things you've done before and that you know you will enjoy. You plan these things and anticipate the delight they'll bring. Shopping at Silahis in the old part of Manila - Intramuros - is always on my list of things to do. I've posted before about this four-storied treasure house of Filipino arts and crafts, and of my fears each time I visit that the Filipino crafts I value will no longer be available. But so far Silahis continues to provide many pleasures.



I'd love to buy some of the big, intricately woven baskets they sell, but the thought of trying to get them home on the plane, and the reaction of Australian quarantine once I arrive is enough to deter me. So I bought textiles - as always. I bought a yellow hand-woven Yakan cloth from the southern Philippines that I'll use for a table runner and some yellow and indigo abaca cushion covers. Abaca is traditionally woven by the T'boli people of central Mindanao using intricate ikat warp-dyed weaving techniques and naturally-dyed fibres. My cushion covers are less intricate and use modern dyes but still enable the weavers to make a living from their craft.



This is what we saw on our way home from Intramuros:


(Sorry for the out-of-focus photo taken hastily from the car window).

I'd tried to time my visit to the Philippines for the dryest time of the year, but the seasons are now less reliable and there were several downpours during my visit. Some of the older areas of Manila, which also have very old drainage systems, are now at or even below sea level as land has been reclaimed from Manila Bay. They're very prone to flash flooding.

Sometimes the pleasures come from unexpectedly discovering new places and new experiences. We decided we'd have a brief family holiday at a beach resort. I'm not generally enthused about beach resorts - anywhere in the world. However, our trip to Laiya, Batangas was a great success. Even though the swimmers amongst us reported that the beach was rather too rocky for swimming, a beautifully landscaped swimming pool, plentiful, well-cooked local food, picturesque cabanas along the edge of the sea, and (in my case) a thorough, firm massage, more than compensated for the less than perfect beach. Anyway, if you come from Australia, it's a bit pointless going anywhere else in search of a wonderful beach. What I particularly liked about the beach was that it is clearly still part of local people's lives. Small fishing boats set out from nearby villages and in the morning and afternoon school children use the beach as the shortest route to and from school and home.




Sometimes the pleasures come from remembering things that had slipped from your mind. Given that it lasted for almost four centuries, the Philippines bears relatively little trace of its Spanish colonisation. There are the Spanish surnames of most Filipinos; there's some evidence of Spanish influence on the vocabulary of the local languages and, most noticeably, there's the Catholic religion - though even the practice of Catholicism has significant local characteristics. But on my visit this time there were a couple of experiences that reminded me of this Spanish influence. One was simple. We were driving through the town of Nagcarlan, Laguna when we stopped for a brief visit to a Catholic chapel and cemetery that's now maintained by the National Historical Institute. It's interesting partly because of its unusual underground crypt with graves of Franciscan friars, but also because in the 1890s it was used for secret meetings at which the Katipunan rebels plotted the overthrow of the Spanish rulers. The province of Laguna was a major site both of Spanish dominion and eventually resistance and evidence of their presence is scattered through the towns and villages.




A more modern Spanish connection was a performance we saw of the ballet, Giselle, by a group called the Philippine Spanish Dance Connection - primarily a Spanish dance company incorporating many Filipino dancers. It was classical ballet, but with a modern version of the story and brilliant staging using the projection of images to literally give layers to the story. We had some ballet neophytes with us and they were riveted by the updated tale of lovers faithful beyond death.

Sometimes the pleasures come from just going about your everyday life. Most simply, we happened to be in Magdalena on the one day when the native orchids bloomed. They were in bud one day, bloomed the next, and were all gone by the third day.



Or, we were driving home from the local shopping centre when... we saw the dancing traffic cop...in person...in real life! We had front row, or at least front car seats for his performance. There's something so admirably Filipino about this. It's about a talent for transforming mundane and tiresome necessities into participatory, and even fun, occurrences.

And sometimes the pleasures come just from spending time with family and getting to know a new grandson.



I imagine I'll be revisiting, again, soon.

Another world

A few days ago I was half-listening to Radio National which was replaying an interview with Jeff Fatt, one of the Wiggles. He commented that one of the things he liked about his job was that it gave him access to the world that's inhabited by young children and their parents. His words reflected my experience of the couple of weeks I spent looking after my grand-daughter at the end of December and beginning of January. For those couple of weeks I inhabited a world I knew very well when my own children were small, but that I've not really lived in since then. To describe the world of small children and parents and carers as a parallel universe is going a bit too far; but it's certainly a space where your view of the world is transformed.

I found myself going places and doing things I've not done in a long time. I went to the beach and jumped over waves and swam in the sea and built sand castles




I went to the movies and saw two animated films (you have to know just how avidly I avoid animation in any medium to know what a departure this is from my usual practice)

I visited the local park and playground and hung out at the charmingly unpretentious Ithaca swimming pool.

I visited an animal park and exclaimed over the cuteness of the wombats.

I spent quite a bit of time in the children's section of both the City and State Libraries in Brisbane. Both wonderful.



[The children's section of the City Library, by the way, has views through its modern angular windows of the Brisbane Casino - a very elegant late nineteenth century building that used to be the State Treasury. Somehow that seems very appropriate and very Brisbane]

I went to a Dinosaur Picnic arranged by the State Museum where we made dinosaur masks and tails and listened to a performance of factually accurate songs about dinosaurs by Jurassic Joe. These songs are readily transferable as earworms and simply by typing this I have 'The Sleepy Stegosaurus Stomp' echoing through my head.

And of course we visited - twice - the very child-friendly Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), my favourite gallery. It currently has a large exhibition of works by senior Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama that extends in a most enveloping fashion through several of the Gallery's rooms. Of special delight to children - and to most of the accompanying adults - is the Obliteration Room where the aim is to cover all the white spaces of the walls, floor, ceiling and furnishings with dots (Kusama has a passion for dots). Everyone is issued with a sheet or two of dot stickers as they enter the room which they can use as they wish. It's fun to see children sitting on the parents' shoulders to reach the ceiling or crawling beneath the table to paste dots on the underside.




As you exit from the Obliteration Room (such a great title) you're inspected to make sure you're not transferring dots outside the room on your clothes or the soles of your shoes. Nevertheless, the dots have escaped to lots of other areas of the Gallery and the surrounding areas. It became quite a game to 'spot the spots' around the cultural centre precinct, and even at the bus stop.

GoMA also has an installation called 'we miss you magic land'. Ostensibly it's designed for children, though as the title implies, it's just as captivating for grown-ups temporarily inhabiting the child's world. To quote the exhibition blurb, Perth artists Pip and Pop draw on 'children’s stories, creation myths, Buddhist cosmologies, video games and folktales, (to) create large-scale fantasy worlds coloured with a bright, often fluorescent palette, using cake-decorating tools, intricate layers of sugar, glitter, modelling clay and mirrors'. (I wonder if any of the participants in the astonishing cake-decorating sections of the Royal Easter Show ever dreamed of putting their talents to such use). The magic worlds are arranged in clusters at various levels and can be viewed through small windows and by looking up at the ceiling.




You can even create your own magic world at home, which we did, several times.

Being an adult in the world of children means a change of perspective. Time stretches and contracts. Some things take much longer to accomplish than you could ever imagine possible; others you thought might be absorbing are passed over with barely a glance. You have to expect the unexpected. Things you find deeply boring can entertain a child for hours. Plans you make can be overturned in an instant. At the risk of sounding pollyanna-ish, I rediscovered that many of the most enjoyable things are free (other than the 'cost' of your time). Time at the beach - admittedly made possible by visiting a generous friend, imaginative games, playing with other children in the park or at the library, all cost nothing.

I'm back in my adult world with my adult perspectives - until the next time I visit my children and grandchildren.

Afterword...on my day off from doting I went back (yet again) to GoMA to see the exhibition Matisse: Drawing Life. There are rooms of Matisse drawings and you see the development from his already skilled early works to the late collages. Matisse drew and drew and drew - dozens of drawings each day - to refine his portrayal of the world. You see an artist continually honing his skill and vision. Definitely worth viewing.

And I popped in, as I always do, to see the wall of Ian Fairweather paintings in the Queensland Art Gallery. I love his paintings as design, but I also find them sad and nostalgic and somewhat tortured. Definitely worth revisiting.


[Ian Fairweather 'Kite-flying' 1958]

Some time away

When I started blogging I don't think I ever anticipated that my family and old friends would use my blog as a way to keep up with my life. I think I expected it to reach a small audience of knitters and maybe of people whom I didn't know in the life I've lived so far. But I now have old friends saying things like 'I noticed you'd not been blogging for a few days so I thought you might be out of town' or family members commenting on an opinion I'd expressed in my blog as if it were part of an ongoing conversation with them. I guess I just have to accept that my blog has become an integral part of my life.

This is all by way of saying that I've been out of town and away from my computer for a few days and feel as if I need to account for my absence. I've been baby-sitting (or perhaps in deference to her four-year-old status I should say 'child-sitting') for my grand-daughter - the dotee - in Brisbane. The child-sitting went very well, although I've come away with an increased appreciation of why you have children in your twenties and thirties - maybe forties - but definitely not in your sixties. I've answered many questions; a few with expertise and many with creativity or confessions of limited knowledge. I was particularly chuffed by questions about word meanings; I love having someone around who's already so interested in language and how it works.

But I really meant this post to be about Brisbane. I think I'm probably repeating myself, but I'm always struck when I visit by how it seems to be more brightly coloured than Sydney. The vegetation is more riotous and brilliant, the sky seems to be a more intense blue, and it generally seems to sparkle. It's not a subtle city, but it's engaging.



So, some random things I like about Brisbane:

* The river. It's not the Seine or the Danube and it's not Sydney Harbour, but the Brisbane River is a central part of Brisbane's identity. I love the way it twists and turns upon itself so that so many suburbs have the river as part of their neighbourhood. And the river cat ferries often allow you to combine the pleasure of a river cruise with the necessity of travelling from place to place.



But then, of course, as the floods earlier this year demonstrated, so much of the city is also vulnerable because of the river. I imagine many people must still be suffering the ravages of the floods, but as you travel up and down the river there's no longer any evidence for the casual observer that the floods ever occurred. The recovery seems miraculous, though you know it must be the result of much hard and cooperative work.

* Queenslanders - not the people, although I'm sure they're as nice as people generally are - but the houses. My daughter has recently moved to an old suburb of Brisbane with lots of these modest and often modified wooden houses raised on stilts. Brisbane's hilliness always surprises me and these houses seem to perch precariously on the steep slopes. They're unpretentious and everyday and seem to sit very lightly on the land.



* South Bank. The cluster of museums, galleries, the State Library, and parklands, with its view back to the city, is such a gift for Brisbane. That it's well-served by public transport increases its pleasure.



The dotee and I spent an afternoon at the library that has a most wonderful section for children with books, cubbies, craft materials and dress-ups often thematically related to exhibitions in the arts complex. At the moment the theme is the sea and islands as the Museum currently has an exhibitions on the Torres Strait Islands. However, the main attraction for me just now is the extensive exhibition of photographs at the Queensland Art Gallery by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson worked from the 1930s to the 1970s and travelled widely. He had the luck or good management to be present at events and within periods that were formative in countries' histories. His back and white photos, however, are not usually of the main historical players (though the exhibition does include some of his superb portraits) but of the bystanders, or even of the neglected and unaware. I'd love to go back for another look.

* Leaving the best things till last - the dotee. It was good to have extended time with her.

Nine days in the Philippines

I've been travelling again. Though I've only recently returned from my Malaysian trip, this time I had a very special reason for travelling. Three months ago, my son, who's living in the Philippines, and his partner had a baby boy - Joshua John. The baby was born two months prematurely and he initially had quite a tough time with lots of setbacks. I really felt I had to visit so I could get to know Joshua at this stage of his life. Fortunately, over the last few weeks he's really flourished and is now a picture of health and contentment.



So I spent most of my week or so in the Philippines just admiring Joshua. But I did manage a few other activities:

* I visited Intramuros - the oldest part of Manila and once a walled city where we saw a wedding with very grandly dressed guests in the late sixteenth century church of San Agustin;



where we were ushered across the street by a guard dressed in an 'historic' Katipunan uniform to my favourite craft and textile shop (but more of that in another post);



and where we strolled through the ruins of Fort Santiago and remembered Filipino hero Jose Rizal whose one hundred and fiftieth anniversary year this is.



I'm not sure how useful Rizal's advice now is. The Philippines' complex and often unfortunate history is certainly useful in understanding the present state of Philippine society and politics, but history doesn't provide any easy answers for how to exist in modern Asia. [Just as an aside - one of the unexpected minor pleasures of visiting Manila is the newspapers. Clearly I'm limited to English-language newspapers, but the Philippine press must be amongst the most free in the world. Most of the news stories are so partisan or so local or so convoluted I can't really appreciate them, but I love the comment columns...everything from sophisticated and informed sociological commentary on a current debate about art and blasphemy through to impassioned pleas from overseas Filipino workers arguing they should not be compulsorily expatriated from Libya because their families need the income they're generating. A window to a very different world].

* I had a two day trip to Magdalena, about 150k south of Manila in the province of Laguna where I stayed in a bahay kubo - a house of traditional materials. The house has grown somewhat since we spent Christmas there a couple of years ago so this time there was a separate living room where Joshua and I spent most of our time



and a brand new bedroom where I, (probably because I'm fussiest) had the honour of sleeping




There's lots to like and admire about a bahay kubo. It literally sits very lightly upon the ground. Almost all the materials are either locally gathered (the bamboo for the walls and floors; many of the support posts) or locally crafted (the lovely window frames). Reluctantly, after the thatched roof had been twice destroyed by typhoons, the roof has been replaced with a kind of hardy corrugated plastic. I particularly love the textures the local materials provide and the softness of the bamboo flooring that gives slightly beneath your weight. I love showering and having the water run through the bamboo slats to the luxurious undergrowth beneath the house. But I don't like the insects! My visit coincided with the season when termites grow wings and go hunting for new nests. Any attempt to read at night was thwarted by the surprisingly large winged termites attracted by the light. And there are ants and tiny bamboo inhabiting insects and...other things I could (and did) only imagine.

The area of Laguna in which Magdalena is situated is steeped in Philippine history. The large lake, the Laguna, that's the centre of the province, was a major transportation hub for the Spaniards who colonised the Philippines from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. It's partly the setting for Rizal's novels of nationalist sentiment that every Filipino school child has to study, Noli Mi Tangere and El Filibusterismo, and a major site for resistance to the Spanish in the late nineteenth century. The area is also just beautiful - but vulnerable. Overpopulation, over-fishing, periodic floods, pollution from fertiliser and pesticides, and growths of water hyacinth haven't quite destroyed the laguna (lake), but its health is precarious.



On the drive down to Magdalena we made a short detour via the town of Pila where luck or circumstance has enabled the preservation of a largish number of old houses around a charming town plaza.



Some claim they're houses from the Spanish period, but I suspect a number of them date from the early twentieth century when the Philippines was a US colony. Anyway, the town has charm and I'd like to visit again - preferably when it's not raining.

* I did some malling (as in spending time in shopping malls). I malled in our local, crowded, cheap and cheerful mall



and I malled in the most beautiful, echoingly empty malls where every exclusive and expensive international design company is represented. I can't imagine how such places stay open. I certainly couldn't afford to shop in them and I've rarely seen others shopping in them. But they do have beautiful settings and meticulously cared for gardens.



By the way, all I bought, (apart from traditional crafts), was baby clothes and baby paraphernalia, so there are no additions to my clothes tally for the year.

* Otherwise, I just hung around the house with Joshua, with brief forays into the local neighbourhood.




* And, as always happens when you visit Manila, I spent lots of time in traffic jams.



This is Aurora Boulevard, just around the corner from where I was staying. Eight lanes of traffic (in a road meant for six) with queues of jeepneys transporting people around the city, as well as two tracks for the ever-crowded light rail overhead. I guess transportation is always going to be a problem in a city of around 15 million people.

I'm not sure when I'll be back for another visit, but with Joshua's arrival I guess it won't be too long.