Green Unconference (by sarah)

Today I attended the first ever Green Unconference in Long Ashton near Bristol, organised by Daniel Lewis. It was an amazing setting with brilliant speakers - I only wish more of the people I'd invited had turned up but apparently most of them hadn't seen the FaceBook invite until the event was actually taking place 🙁

I have come away saddened but optermistic and re-energised about the stuff I do to try and be a bit more friendly to the planet. Everything from government policies to how to garden to how to save/use waste food to feed those who are increasingly needing to use the food banks in this country was disguessed. I myself did an Upcycling and Junk Art workshop - complete with a mini talk and slides.

It was the most gorgous setting for a workshop

The girls were about as well behaved as I think I could realistically expect :/ I think Jeany eat most of the buffet before we officially had stopped for lunch!

I'm glad that people are taking on board that the average family can not afford or percieves at the least that they cannot afford organic food and that steps are being taken towards sorting this out. I wish I had managed to catch a few more of the talks but they clashed with my workshop and we had to leave early due to having triple booked ourselves for the day :/

I am going to attempt write up a few more of my junk art and upcycling projects. In making the slide show I realised I had a lot of material which I may try to collect together into at min an ebook.

(There will be a follow up post or two of the fantastic photos I got of bits of the church though I forgot to take one from outside 🙁 )

And talking of e-books don't forget to download your copy of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry before midnight on the 31st of October! Click the image below for your free PDF.

Green Unconference 2012 (by sarah)

Saturday I will be running an Upcycle and Junk Art workshop as part of the fantastic programme for the first ever Green Unconference.

This pot of flowers made from an old New Scientist mag, a tin can and a jumper will be on of the things I will be showing people how to make 🙂

I will also have some other bits with me including stuff to make visual poetry greeting cards, collage and maybe a festival sheep (if I can fit it in with the kids in the car!). There are going to be some really cool talks going on at the Unconference so if anyone is in the Bristol/Bath area they should check it out 🙂 Its all free by the way.

Ada Lovelace Day and Women in Science 2012 (by sarah)

I thought long and hard about this this year and you know what? I decided it was my teachers at school that really instilled the idea that I could do science now obviously there was not just one teacher and the male played as important a role as the female but I am going to dedicate this years Ada Lovelace Day post too Miss Scudder (I hope I've remembered her name right! I believe she turned into Mrs Black or Blacker or something like that).

Miss Scudder was my GCSE Chemistry teacher at Gaynes School and she did the extra bit which involved the beginnings of Geology like rock cycles and what have you as well. She was about the same height as me with curly dark hair that reached her waist - I had cut all my hair off but decided to start growing it again at this point 🙂 Alot of the boys had a crush on her and we used to make up stories about how she would marry the Biology Teacher (as you do at 14/15/16 ~cough especially when you have a crush on said Biology Teacher).

She had lots of funky ways of teaching meaning that she managed to get concepts across to EVERYONE!

Now for my GCSE's I was at a huge disadvantage, I had been put up into set 1 from set 3 something they weren't entirely sure of doing as I had missed alot of the basics that were needed but we all agreed (me the head and the science heads and my then science teacher) that I should give it a go and that I could drop down to set 2 if I really couldn't cope. I ended up in the Super Set 1 which was a smaller group that met at lunch times. I got a B which counted as two B's I didn't finish any of the exam papers and had a panic attack in the Physic exam and had to be taken out of the hall to calm down ( I couldn't remember Ohms Law - still can't).

Anyway Miss Scudder's teaching techniques were grate and she introduced me to flash cards, and coloured summary sheets and various other things which I still use when working on large prodects of going to give a talk. She is also the origin of my Periodical Periodicals in that she used to draw little cartoons of atoms interacting - cartoons where each was a little character - bonds were them holding hands etc...

It was she who intially told me of Terry Pratchette when she saw the novel I was trying to write - she thought it would be right up my street as it has science hidden within it. She made science accessible and even when the class miss behaved it was never bad like it could be for other teachers even if there was the inicided of the water tap being unscrewed and passed around the room!

I came 17th for my GCSE's in the whole year which I think was about just under 200 strong - not distingishing really except that a few years previously my parents were being told I was unlikely to be sitting them at all. I won awards for this etc... and a large chunk of that was becuase of the teachers believing in me. I went on to do A'level Chemistry - it was my lowest grade at A'level but I got more than enough points to enter a University that excelled at the subject I wanted.

But one of the things that I thought was so amazing was that Miss Scudder had had to work hard and over come obsticles to achieve her science credentials. She had gone to an all girls school that did not do science - they had no labs - they could handle the basics but they had to send the girls to the all boys school if a lab was needed. As a result she was the only one to take science A'levels and was on her own in with all the boys at the boys school. I always remembered this as a sign of - it could be done!

Women could be scientist and they could have fun, be fun and pretty as well. So I think I owe her a big THANKYOU.

Harvest Festival Food Bank Grumps (by sarah)

Ok so there have been times in the past few years especially after the flooding in 2007 when we have not had enough money for food - this thankfully is not the case at the moment and we hope it never will be again but you never can tell unfortuantly. During those times we were lucky and friends and family provided or lent us stuff and I have managed most years to produce quiet alot from fishing in hedgerows and growing things in buckets or on veggi plots. So I like the fact the school have teamed up with the Food Bank who provide food for poorer families but Jean came home with even more restrictions from them than before.

This time it is no baked beans and no plain pasta.

I am furious - seriously. There have been harvests when this is all I have had in the cupboard to give becuase it is the only things we as a family had ourselves and now I am being told that is not good enough. This to me is humiliting, degrading and a slap in the face.

Now I understand that they are trying to get a balance of food to give away but this is one of the issues I find with charities alot - how ever much you do for them it is not enough and rarely appreciated and probably due to the demographic incharge/mostly volunteering (not forced to volunteer but actual volunteers) they seem to think that everyone just have money to give away. I have observed people with little money emptying their wallets for charity - causing themselves hardship and yet it is not appreciated in the same way as the tenner given by big earners who really will not miss it. It's like the time the Shelter Chugger guy was really laying it on think to get me to sigh up - I explained I couldn't as we had nothing at that point - he then explained what it means to be homeless - the definition and you know what? At the time we counted as homeless due to the floods - we had just spent the summer sleeping on friends couches and office floors, startled I pointed this out to him and his response was... 'that maybe so..' and then just continued with his sales pitch and that is what is getting to me - charities run as businesses rather than businesses run as social enterprise.

Of course I'm still going to provide food for The Food Bank but I am really insulted by this. When I was younger (yes I realise that makes me sound grumpy old!) we had Harvest Festival at school, Brownies and Church and the tinned food and flowers went off to old peoples homes, hospices, hostels and childrens homes, the fresh produced was either auctioned off or made into a communial dinner everyone shared or in one case turned into a soup kitchen. There was a nicer feeling and no obligation - if all had was blackberries from the bushes along the fence of the school that was fine - of course I was young so I may have missed stuff and be looking at it through rose tinted lenses. But now there is this feeling that you have to give food and that it has to be well POSH food etc...

I just feel disillusioned with it and Harvest, is part of what I love about Autumn - it is my faviourite time of year. I think I might have to do my own little autumnal thing to set my mood back in place and I realise it is probably petty and childish to feel this way but I am just hacked of with charities in general at the moment, they just seem to be so money grabbing and that puts my back up.

Banks! (by sarah)

Bank 'we urently need to talk to you about your account' I agree to go in get there and 'so what did you want to talk to us about?' Urg! I repeat what they told me - we go through the accounts and transactions and they say 'oh your credit rating is good do you want a loan - you could put your credit cards on there.' me 'erm no I have paid two off already I am out of my over draft and have a payment plan in place to deal with the other.' bank 'are you sure it's so fiddly having all these different payments you could put your husbands on the same account.' me 'erm no I didn't like having loans to pay off before.' bank 'but you did so well with paying them off you sure you don't want another?' me 'no thankyou.' Bank 'well if you change your mind or it gets to the point where you can change your mortgage over to us do come back and talk to us ok?' me 'ok thankyou bye.' bank 'buy'