full moon

tonight was chinese moon festival, with a big event at founders theatre in hamilton. nice to see such a range of people attend, and some wonderful performances. i'm always amazed at the commitment to musical performance witnessed at these events. tonight there was a lovely piece played on a bamboo flute by a young man that was quite impressive.

found this press release of interest, about the SPCA and CYFS putting in place a protocol whereby the SPCA will inform CYFS when they see cases of animal cruelty, and vice versa. the justification for this is:

"The correlation between animal abuse and human abuse is widely documented. That animal abuse is part of a web of factors that make up family violence is now generally accepted," says Robyn Kippenberger...

"Our animal welfare officers, when inspecting or uplifting animals subject to cruelty, may be the first to see signs of abuse of children in the family"

i think this is a very good move as it increases the chances of identifying at-risk children.

finally, this piece in the herald struck a chord, about the inherent racism in the promotion of beauty products to lighten the skin. this is particularly common throughout asia and africa, and i've grown up with that asian notion that fair-skinned = more beautiful. it's frustrating and extremely hard to fight. the blame on the mother highlighted towards the end of the piece seems to be so typical. when things go wrong, somehow it's always the mothers who seem to take the blame.

but more importantly, where is tapu misa? haven't seen anything from her for a couple of weeks and she was about the only writer at the herald that i read regularly. i hope she hasn't left.