Cheers, mate!

Newsflash: Australia Elects Its First Woman Prime Minister

June 25, 2010 by Anna Kelner (reprinted from Ms. Blog)

Australia just beat America (and Hillary Clinton) to the punch: yesterday, Julia Gillard was sworn in as its first woman prime minister after a surprising Labor Party leadership vote.

Gillard defeated Kevin Rudd, who began the year as the most popular Australian prime minister in three decades, but his popularity declined over the last few months. Among other things, he shelved his proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), effectively doing away with what would have been landmark environmental legislation.

Gillard, who previously served as a deputy prime minister under Rudd, challenged him on Wednesday night at a news conference. She declared that “a good government was losing its way” and vowed to breathe new life into the Labor Party before general elections in October.

Feminists everywhere can rejoice, as one Tweeter did, that Gillard is an “unmarried female atheist redheaded migrant Prime Minister.” Although women compose almost one third of the Australian Parliament–putting the U.S.s Congress, with a measly 18.6 percent, to shame–gender norms still prevail in Australian elections. Gillard gives a refreshing new face to women in power: a champion for workers and women in Parliament, she tempers political savvy with leftist ideals. Decidedly unconventional, she is Australia’s first unmarried Prime Minister.  (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia user Adam Carr under Creative Commons 3.0.)

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Jane Austen would say: "you go, girl".

Well, probably.


Speaking of Australia, a fellow Jane Austen blogger left a comment on one of my posts.  I checked out her blog, and it turns out she's from Australia.  It was kind of cool that someone clear around the world found my blog.  I spent a month in Australia a few years ago, in Melbourne and Sydney, and I loved it.  It was the first time I had been out of the U.S., so a friend bought me a stuffed elephant to accompany me on the long flight.  That elephant has now been to several states and England (for my Jane Austen trip, of course).  I visited my visitor's blog without the elephant, since one place stuffed elephants can't go is cyberspace.  Her blog is called thebennetsisters, and it's all about Pride and Prejudice.  Even though I don't necessarily have a favorite Jane Austen novel, I did like her blog.  Another yay for Australia!

Big news: today I'm cutting my hair. It's time. And of course, I looked around for ways to donate it. I found a charity called Matter of Trust, which, believe it or not, accepts donations of hair and fleece to make oil booms. As the second video shows, they are remarkably effective. Just let your hair go one day without shampooing and see how much oil it can absorb. What a cheap way to make a donation! They do prefer bulk shipments from salons or pet groomers such it is cheaper for them to process, so there is a flyer on their website if you want to give it to your salon or groomer. And this has nothing to with Jane Austen. Every picture/movie all the women have long hair. Though maybe they did cut their bangs, but they would not have needed to donate it for oil cleanup.

Anyway, here are a couple of videos about Matter of Trust:

Jane Austen Maids Foundation: Sex and the City 11, the Martian Wedding

Where do you go after Dubai?  Well, for Sex and the City 11, the ladies are heading to Mars, Sector 6 Colony, for Carrie's great niece's wedding. To a little man who is, oddly enough, a little bit green. But oh so stylish.

And it's time for my 11th donation this year.  For the second donation in May, Lars donated to the Best Friends animal rescue society.  He hopes that all of the animals waiting to be adopted are getting belly rubs while waiting for their forever homes.

And then I realized this morning I hadn't donated for June yet.  I'm cutting it down to one donation a month, and this month my little measly donation goes to the Environmental Defense Fund for more work in the Gulf.

Though my income may be a bit more constrained, the Jane Austen Maids Foundation will keep going.  The charities may not be getting as much money, kinda like the servants in Sense and Sensibility who go from being maids in the big estate to the little cottage and end up probably living in a tiny room in the attic.  A tinier one, anyway.

No gifts, please.

Gifts are not usually discussed in Jane Austen’s books. Fanny Price does receive a lot of hand me downs in Mansfield Park, and a gift of a necklace from Edmund for her ball. In the Emma Thompson version of Sense and Sensibility, Elinor gives going away presents to the servants when her family is forced out of their home due to inheritance laws in England at the time. Also, in the new version of Emma, she brings a Christmas present to a sick Harriet. But the practice of gift giving is not really mentioned in her novels.

I don’t like to talk about the topic either, since I find it difficult to ask for stuff. However, as I mentioned a couple posts ago, starting this fall I will be attending school full time and money will be tight. Plus, I don’t really need any more stuff or clutter, especially if I end up moving again for graduate school. So for any upcoming holidays, I am requesting that we all give hugs for gifts. Hugs are great gifts. If you insist on being generous, then practical gift cards (groceries, gas, etc) are the only thing I want. This may be difficult for those of my friends who like to buy stuff, but this way y’all can save money or donate it to charity. One that I approve of, of course.

More of Nothing

I haven’t done much with this blog this month. I’m finding that though there is a general theme (I can write about anything as long as I tie it in somehow with Jane Austen), it seems to work better when I have a monthly theme also. So next month will be all about the delicious leading men in movies made from Jane Austen’s books.

Hang on a moment while I wipe the drool from my keyboard.

While I may be more comfortable vicariously inhabiting the world in Ms. Austen’s novels, I have slowly been getting dragged kicking and screaming into a more modern technological one. From my initial email announcing that I, Ms. TechPhobe, was starting a blog, to my semi rants on the topic of facebook in said blog, to still resisting the world of shrill tweeting, to my buying a laptop supposedly for school but now loving it……

I think I forgot my point. Oh yeah…. Messenger. Someone asked if I had it. Turns out I had it all along cuz of the university email, and that was the icon that always seemed to be hanging out at the bottom of my laptop screen. So yes, I have broken down and set up the instant messenger part. I created a cute little icon, invited people (including the person who asked if I had it, who didn’t actually respond, go figure!) and have taken a tiny baby step to being more available. But I still don’t see what’s wrong with writing an actual letter. Letters stick around, and eventually become museum exhibits called The Letters of Jane Austen. If they are actually written by Jane Austen, of course.

The art blogging magazine I was reading at the time I had the crazy idea to start a blog contained an article in which a blogger stated to write about anything that impacted your life, and your readers would care. The article stated that if you were having a bad day, even making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich would be an accomplishment and your readers would support you achieving a goal, no matter how small.

Well, yesterday I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then I ate it.

And I should really think of something more important to write about next time.

Happy June!

It's the middle of the year, so I'm revisiting my New Year's resolutions (see Happy New Year post from January). Let's see if I can remember them:

1. Donate.
2. Keep making good grades.
3. Keep the apartment clean and work on organization.


They seem so easy!

The first goal was to donate twice per month to a different charity (The Jane Austen Maids Foundation, so named because maids during Jane Austen's time received next to nothing, and so were these charities). I've kept this up, with the second donation for May going to Soldiers Angels and the first one in June going to the Best Friends pet rescue organization. But for the second half of the year I will have to slow this down to once a month, and will be decreasing my Netflix subscription to compensate for the donation.

The reason for the change? As of Fall term, I will be attending school full time so that I can participate in things like teaching assistantships and internships, and will need to adjust my expenditures accordingly. In other words, I will be broke. Any loans I do through Kiva will have to be done through relending the money that my previous loans pay back (Kiva team name LunaLend).

But I'm hoping to be able to volunteer more so that I will still be giving time, just not as much money. Not that I was giving much in the first place! But it is actually a great feeling to help even a little, and if even one person also gave a little to one of the organizations, so much the better.

I slipped a little during Spring term on the grades, the second goal. I even got a B, and since it was in a five credit class, it tanked my cumulative gpa. I'm gonna pull it back together for summer. I just really don't like the +/- grading that some professors use. An A is an A, in my opinion. But that's probably just sour grapes, cuz I got an A- in a class.

And no comment on the third goal. I'll deal with that later.


And I think I'm going to add a goal: to take advantage of the university gym (even though I don't like the idea of the cameras) and work out. There's a couple of kickboxing classes this summer, though I would have preferred a salsa class. Maybe they'll have one again in fall.