To whom it may concern,

As a graduate of Sydney University, I am appalled, but not surprised, to read that a group of past and present students, including many from St Pauls College, created a pro-rape, anti-consent Facebook group.

It’s no secret that the colleges have long fostered an environment of privilege where binge drinking and violence against women can flourish out of control.

What’s horrifying is that in the second decade of the 21st century, the university still apparently lacks the institutional leadership and political courage to address this toxic culture.

I call on the colleges and the university to expel the students involved.

Failure to take strong disciplinary actions against students who advocate for rape sends a clear signal to women that the university does not consider them fully human.

Rachel Chalmers
BA Hons and University Medal, 1992

ETA:

Tracey Fredson
Personal Assistant to the Master
Accommodation and Function Manager
Wesley College

Hard though this may be to believe, I sometimes underestimate the sheer well-bred-ness of the horses I grew up around. We all knew Ralvon Ilk was royalty, and Wellworth Morning Star and Finewood Lefire, but at the time I failed to appreciate that my own Arab horse Alfie’s milk-white half-nephew Tristram Apparition was Australian champion Arabian stallion in 1984.

Alfie’s family is still in the ribbons. His jet-black great grand-nephew, River Oak Tabu, was three times reserve champion on the East Coast.

Here’s Bellboy’s father Aethon looking exactly like our pony.

Poldark is by the same sire. (You only call them half-siblings if they are out of the same mare.) Poldark famously won a supreme championship in open company, and his son Zakah Zahara is a world champion endurance horse.

So, you know, it was nice.

[09:19] mizchalmers: o noez
[09:19] FurHordinge: ohez?
[09:19] mizchalmers: we forgot to have a windoze 7 launch party
[09:19] FurHordinge: zomg!
[09:20] mizchalmers: *fake laugh* what do you use the new features for, my husband jeremy???
[09:21] FurHordinge: oh, it’s so easy! if I want the screen to go blue, I just do this!
[09:21] mizchalmers: here is our friend token minority! she has this to say! “…”
[09:22] FurHordinge: look, Female is showing off her recipe database and pictures of the kids!
[09:23] mizchalmers: teehee!
[09:23] FurHordinge: and Male is watching his DVD of explosions again!
[09:23] mizchalmers: (resignedly) oh, male!
[09:24] FurHordinge: (I propose we make a family movie for all the family: Exploding Princesses Talking About Their Feelings)
[09:25] FurHordinge: (And Ponies!)

[11:07] mizchalmers: of course the seminal Exploding Princesses Talk About Their Feelings (And Ponies) film is LadyHawke

Bit better, although I can’t walk up the hill from Safeway without getting out of breath. McKenze has the girls. Pleased with myself for roasting butternut squash for soup and changing cat litter. (Separate operations with thorough hand washing between.)

Beebs is so awesome when I am sick. She just snuggles up to me and purrs and purrs and purrs.

So sick. Jeremy is in Tokyo and I have manflu – fatigue, muscle pain, headache, cough and debilitating self-pity. I stumbled out of bed and made it to Nervous Dog where we found Katherine, Claire’s friend from Mandarin camp, and her mom Michelle. Katherine took up wushu after Claire’s demo at Mandarin camp, so Michelle walked both girls over to the studio. Then Salome arrived, took charge of Julia and sent me home to bed.

All of it unplanned. Reminds me why I work so hard to live where I do. Thank you neighbours; you are beyond price. I sleep now.

We bought the girls’ alarm clocks and imposed new structure on bedtime and the morning routine in the hopes of getting more shuteye, because we are all a bit psychotic from sleep dep.

Apparently the clocks gain quite a lot of time, because this morning they went off forty minutes early.

Results:

MORNING SCHEDULE

7:00am Wake up and sofa snuggle
7:10am Get dressed for school
7:15am Breakfast, one episode of TV
7:45am Put on shoes
7:50am Brush teeth and hair
8:00am OUT THE DOOR, ON THE BUS

EVENING SCHEDULE

3:00pm Home from school
5:30pm Homework
6:00pm Besos y abrazos por Blanca
6:30pm Piano practice
6:45pm Dinner and one episode of TV
7:05pm Dessert
7:15pm Put pyjamas on
7:20pm Brush teeth
7:30pm BEDTIME

To support the project, aimed primarily at More Sleep For Everyone, Jeremy got a frog alarm clock for Claire and bees for Jules.

…we’ll see how this works out.

Fish tacos. Lemos Farm. Spork. Don Reed’s East 14th. A nice day.

Events have conspired to endow hyper-topicality upon Light Industrial, my scandalous kiss-and-tell expose of the two weeks I spent working in Australian television in 1993.

This is nice and all, but on the whole I would prefer for Australian television to stop being so hideously embarrassing…

Jeremy came home to find these instructions.

“Clue Book.

“1. You will find us.
“We will help find thus.

“2. Second you look in front of TV.
“You will find clue. Maybe.

“3. Look under the sofa, on the very right.
“It is long, you will find it’s light.

“Claire’s Clue Co. You clue us here!”

The hoard was a snuggle of plush toys in a child-illuminated scroll.

After the recital Jeremy and Claire finished their centipede robot – pics to come – and today I got Light Industrial published. What a talented family! Nerds.

I’ve been shopping at the Webb Ranch farmer’s market, around the corner from the barn. The blue lake beans are just quietly great; crunchy and juicy and sweet.

Jeremy stir-fries them with chicken breast strips, cherry tomatoes from the garden, garlic cloves, peanut oil and soy sauce. Nom.

I steam them with broccoli, zucchini, peas and corn, and then drown everything in too much butter. I call it a butterbath. Nom.

Mission Mission and Burrito Justice are competing to be the best blog on earth.

“Sutro is endlessly scanning for threats on the horizon to our fair city.”

“A gang of Mission hoodlums made a raid last Saturday night upon Hermann’s saloon, on the Mission road, carrying away three barrels of beer, which they secreted in a barn belonging to a man named Bell, on the very summit of Bernal Heights.”

R: “Who’s the nicest person you’ve ever been married to?”

J: “Hmm. The Rach. Who’s the nicest person you’ve ever been married to?”

R: “In the real world, or in Rach world?”

J: “Sigh.”

R: “Johnny Depp would never sigh at me like that. Neither would Simon Schama.”

J: “That’s because they are not real.”

R: “Rory Stewart would never tell me my imaginary boyfriends aren’t real!”

R: “Didn’t sleep very well.”

J: “Why not?”

R: “Well the president came by.”

J: “Oh?”

R: “Yeah and he was all handsome with his sticky-outy ears, and he smelled good. So I was all girlcrushy and starstruck.”

J: “Ah.”

R: “We discussed health insurance reform. I did remember to declare my support for a strong public option; I’m proud of that.”

Reminds me of the time I was pregnant with Julia, and the entire Supreme Court dropped in.

Kind of broke myself hauling water to the new trees at Monroe. It’s too much work for one person, even one ably assisted by Miss Claire. Got home and Jeremy had emptied his office out and there was a ziggurat of recycling at the top of the stairs, so I just sort of burst into tears half way up. “You know we have guests coming in twenty minutes?”

To be fair, it wasn’t random guests, it was Bryan and the boys who are as low maintenance as can be, and Jeremy had already put the chicken on to roast. I made a spinach salad and cut up nectarines and pluots and grapes for dessert. They liked everything and demanded third helpings and played adorably with the girls.

Ruairi: “I love you Daddy.”

Bryan: “I love you, too. You’re awfully cute.”

Ruairi: “You’re awfully cute too.”

Me: “It’s not shocking that the nuns are doing heroin. What’s shocking is that they are proposing to share needles.”

Jeremy: “It was a simpler time.”

A lovely warm lazy quiet summer evening. I want Christmas cake, and the sound of cicadas.