it was supposed to be a quiet weekend, with nothing much on. but i ended up spending less than an hour at home yesterday, between the hours of 10.30am and 9pm. and today i was out for the whole afternoon as well. things just keep cropping up & its hard to say no.
dealing with the media has taken up a bit of time, and i'm hoping for a couple of stories to come out in the next week or so. last week i did a spot on the asian radio show, with one of my favourite columnists, tracey barnett. we talked about the slut walk & burqas, and issues around that. i've been trying to create space to talk about something other than burqas, and to have some coverage that doesn't depict muslim women as helpless victims but as strong human beings with agency and ability. i think i'm going to fail spectacularly in one case, but am hopeful that a second piece will be a lot more positive.
underlying the whole weekend is the tragedy which happened in norway. i haven't seen any tv coverage of it, not being near a tv for much of the weekend, but i've read a few newspaper articles and blogs, as well as being part of some discussions on facebook. i've just written about it at the hand mirror - a little nervous about that post, i'm not sure i got it exactly right.
a couple of other things happening over the weekend: we went out for a visit to church college, owned by the mormon church but no longer running as a school. this is going to be the venue of the next national interfaith forum, to be held on 18 & 19 february 2012. the mormon community are letting us have use of this wonderful facility at very low cost, which includes some pretty cheap accommodation. so i hope people will make an effort to come along. the theme for the forum is "spiritual identity in a secular society", and it's shaping up to be an interesting programme.
also attended a health workshop for muslim women, which was quite useful. and did some phone-canvassing for the labour party. i hate doing it, being a person that doesn't handle rejection well, but the stakes are just too high and this is an election that, if national win, will be terrible for the country. so, while i'm not planning to play a big role this year, i'll do what i can in my own small way to work for a change of government.
2 comments:
this is an election that, if national win, will be terrible for the country.
Sounds like any election ever!
i don't know, the last election national had so much promised to be labour-lite that they weren't able to implement the kind of agenda that, say, david cameron is doing in the UK. however, if they win this one, the gloves will really be off. for me, it's particularly asset sales and privatisation of the social welfare system that really bother me (though there is a heap of other stuff).
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