So New Zealand now has a right-wing government, and Roger Douglas is back. I should be feeling angry and miserable, but actually I feel great.Today, we had some lovely people from Wellington South Transition Towns round for a solar cooking get-together - and it was the perfect antidote to Terrible-Election-Results Blues. Who cares what the government does, when Transition Towns communities are starting to get together and try sorting things out for themselves?
It was just an informal event. We set up our solar cookers - one bought - two home-made, and invited TT people to drop round any time during the day. We had curry, peppermint tea, and pavlova on the go. (Thanks to Heather for the pavlova inspiration.)
Just a few people came in the morning, and then more in the afternoon.
It got extra fun when Jean-Fabien and Rose brought some tin-foil coated cardboard and started cutting out more panel cookers ... and more ... and MORE!
Lots of different ideas for constructing and using solar cookers were flying round - as well as thoughts for another solar cooking event.
Meanwhile, our curry and pavlova were steaming away. My daughter was absolutely desperate for the pavlova to be ready. Luckily Wayne and Ping had brought some chocolate biscuits for the interim. Whew.
A lot of people had to go before we got the food out, but hopefully they enjoyed the afternoon anyway.
The curry turned out great.
The pavlova was good too - um - in it's own way. But I'm going to contact Heather for some tips.
All in all, it was a fantastic day, and we even got two nice little bunches of flowers out of it.
Anne brought this from her garden - a fully edible bouquet. Very cool.
And Rose picked these on the way.
And there's our cat, the publicity hound, again. It even managed to get into Rachelle and Rimu's photos at the Transition Towns website.
3 comments:
What a great antidote! It's true, whatever government we have, it's irrelevant to our everyday outlook on life and the way we live.
I think I'm living in the wrong place however, of course change here is always possible (maybe when the mining stops...)
hi Ruth - yeah ... I guess the way I look at it is that we can *make* it irrelevant.
I have no doubt that things are going to get genuinely worse for a lot of people over the next few years - and there are other groups of people that I anticipate will be hit harder and more quickly than us ... but it was so inspiring yesterday to talk to some people who are working on whole-community intitiatives - trying to make sure that *everyone* is okay ...
Yeah, the mining is a tricky one all right when you are living in the middle of a community that depends on it I imagine ...??
Totally...so you can imagine the mindset of people here...they probably cannot contemplate "green" alternatives because perhaps it compromises their lifestyle and for many, it's 'new money' and people are now able to live the 'middle class dream' without having to educate themselves other than learning how to drive a big truck!
Sustainability and local economy, community etc is probably quite a threat to them and is why they all prob. voted National!
Gee, aren't I quite the cynic!
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