Monday Miscellany: No Kidding style

First, an apology: From time to time my readers reach out to me, and email. However, a few years ago, I switched my blog email from malinzblog at yahoo dot co dot nz to nokiddinginnz at gmail dot com, and noted it in the sidebars. However, if you read mostly by phone you might have missed this. Recently, I decided to clean out my yahoo email inbox. Generally it is the one I use for internet subscriptions, and little else these days, so it is full of marketing emails. I check it periodically, but not frequently, and so “real” emails sometimes get swamped by the marketing ones. Which means that I sometimes miss them. As I was going through, deleting thousands of emails (literally!!!), I discovered some emails from some of my much loved readers. Sometimes I had responded, but didn’t see the follow-ups. Sometimes I had missed the emails entirely. I wholeheartedly apologise to whoever emailed me. Hopefully, that won’t happen as often in the future, especially now that my inbox is largely clear of rubbish. I’ve also unsubscribed from lots of things that I just never had time to read. So genuine emails shouldn’t get swamped so easily. But my nokiddinginnz address is largely clear of detritus. If you’re going to email – and I love getting emails – I recommend using it. I still don’t check it on a daily basis. But I do check it more often. I promise – I’m not kidding!

I was reminded in a radio discussion this morning of the importance of language that, beyond excluding groups, doesn’t erase them from history, or the present. The context of the discussion was the welcome practice of returning to using the traditional Maori place names (or even spelling them or pronouncing them correctly), rather than the super-imposed British (mostly) names used in many cases, or using a combination of the two. It makes Maori feel more empowered, more “seen.” I can’t imagine feeling that your entire people are being erased. However, on another level, I could immediately relate. It’s (as I mentioned last week) the (lazy or deliberate or both) use of the word “grandmas” or “mums/mothers etc” to describe women at particular ages, or “families” instead of “households.” That language erases No Kidding people from existence. It hurts. Language is important.

I actually spent some time over the last week actively planning some future blog posts, and taking time to write them. Over the last few years I’ve fallen into a bad habit of writing my Monday posts on a Monday morning, afternoon, or even when I sit down at a computer on a Tuesday (taking advantage of the time difference between the US and NZ). So I’ve really enjoyed feeling that I’ve got time to think about what I want to say, or to look a few things up, or to just take my time to let my thoughts form. Ironically, as I write this, there’s a guy on the radio talking about planning, and how society these days often doesn’t value that. He quoted Augustus, a Roman emperor saying, “make haste slowly” or “hasten slowly.” He also said, “That which has been done well has been done quickly enough." A good blogging reminder for me. And I’ve found that it has been nice to apply that principle to my own writing! Even if I’m not doing it for today’s post. Ha ha ha!

Finally, it is still over a month away, but the Day that Shall Not Be Named is coming up in May (except for the poor UKers, who have already had it, and have to hear about it again – or the poor Swiss, who have to go through ours before their day occurs a few weeks later). So companies are starting to focus on it already. For the very first time, I received an opt-out email from a company saying “Mother’s Day can be painful – we’ve got your back.” I already love this little company – Metalbird (see pic from my garden below) – and I love the way they said, “we’ve got your back.” As I’ve seen women on social media – who previously celebrated M’s Day openly with their kids – begin to lose their mothers, they’ve realised it can be hard. I hope that, in their own pain, they start to realise that it might not only be hard for those who’ve recently lost their mothers, but for those of us who never were mothers. Meanwhile, yay to those companies who think about their customers.

A metal native ruru (morepork)