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the rise of ecofeminism

living more creatively no smartphone challenge the day women walked out

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Antonia Case EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Zan Boag ART DIRECTORS

Aida Novoa, Carlos Egan COVER ILLUSTRATION

Stavros Damos ADMINISTRATION

Marnie Anderson, Claudio Faerman CONTRIBUTORS

André Dao, Stav Dimitropoulos, Clive Hamilton, Helen Hayward, Sara Maitland, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, Sarah Moss, Elizabeth Oliver, Lucy Treloar ARTISTS

Monica Barengo, Carlos Egan, Yidan Guo, Karolina Larusdottir, Aida Novoa, Catrin Welz-Stein, Jeanie Tomanek PHOTOGRAPHERS

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Snaefellsness Peninsula, by Lee Frost

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16 Editor’s letter Antonia Case Editor-in-Chief, Womankind magazine

Why are ‘successful’ people often miserable? By that I mean people who have risen to the top of their field, be it in television, the arts, business, and so forth. Having reached the pinnacle of their careers, some frantically pen their memoirs revealing their inner turmoil, angst, loneliness, and frustration. “Oh, I was miserable,” they cry. “I was anxiety-ridden, and in despair”. A life coach warns on his blog: it’s a lonely road to the top. “Working towards your own aspirations in life can be very lonely”. As you venture on, he warns, you will begin to feel your isolation. If reaching the top of one’s career is often accompanied by loneliness and isolation, it makes me question whether our modern definition of ‘success’ - that being to toil away for personal gain, for individual reward and self-aggrandisement - is the only goal worth striving for. Perhaps our understanding of what makes for a ‘successful’ life should be broadened beyond the personal to make way for goals and achievements that bring glory to more than just oneself. While it’s certainly satisfying to excel personally, there is also something magically exhilarating about working with others to accomplish ends that few could achieve alone. Because for those who do strive for the common good - we might include here the environmentalist, the human rights campaigner, the political activist, the feminist, and so on - a life’s achievement could never be a source of misery, but only elation and joy.

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32 TRAVEL

Contents 5 8 9 12 20 24 28 32 38 44 47 48 50 52 58 62 68 72 76 78 82 92 94 98 104 108 118 120 122 126 128

Editor’s letter Womankindmag.com Contributors News from nowhere Ecofeminism The Everywoman The potentialists My Icelandic odyssey People being themselves Isolated dreams Photographers’ Award XVI: Botany Living more creatively Letting go The art of falconry The day women walked out And 100 years on The world’s first female Head of State Iceland’s First Lady View from my window The last great auk Womankind’s smartphone challenge Quarterly challenge: morning pages Testing times of pregnancy Letters from Iceland Welcome to the Anthropocene Photographers’ Award XIV Winners: Animals Books What’s on Documentaries Subscribe to Womankind The World

My Icelandic odyssey Sarah Moss

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And 100 Years On Sara Maitland

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PHILOSOPHY

ORNITHOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGY

The potentialists

The last great auk

Isolated dreams

André Dao

Lucy Treloar

Antonia Case

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ART

ACTIVISM

The Everywoman Jeanie Tomanek

The day women walked out Clarissa-Sebag Montefiore

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PHOTOGRAPHY

INTERVIEW

ART

The art of falconry

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir

People being themselves

Rob Palmer

Stav Dimitropoulos

Karolina Larusdottir

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CONTRIBUTORS

Antonia Case: Antonia Case is the Editor-in-Chief of Womankind and the Editorial Director of New Philosopher. In 2016 she was awarded the AAP Media Professionals’ Award for excellence in the presentation of philosophy in the media, and was shortlisted for Editor of the Year in the Stack Awards in 2016 and 2017. Sara Maitland: Sara Maitland is a novelist and writer of short stories and non-fiction. Her first novel, Daughters of Jerusalem, won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1978. She has written 16 books of fiction and 13 non-fiction books. In 1995 she worked with Stanley Kubrick on the film script for A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Lucy Treloar: Lucy Treloar’s novel Salt Creek won 2016 Debut Indie Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the 2016 Miles Franklin, Australia’s most prestigious literary award. Lucy also won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacific). Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore: Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore writes for The Guardian, The Economist, New Philosopher, Financial Times, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Statesman, New Internationalist, The Huffington Post, and Time magazine. Stav Dimitropoulos: Stav Dimitropoulos writes for BBC, Discover, VICE, Overland, Permaculture Magazine, Science Magazine, Earth Talk, and has reported for CBC and CBS. Sarah Moss: Sarah Moss was educated at Oxford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She is the author of five novels: The Tidal Zone, Signs for Lost Children, Bodies of Light, Night Waking, and Cold Earth. As a visiting lecturer at the University of Reykjavík, she wrote the non-fiction book, Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland. Clive Hamilton: Clive Hamilton is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is the author of 10 non-fiction titles, including Requiem for a Species, The Freedom Paradox, Growth Fetish, Defiant Earth, Earthmasters, Affluenza, Silencing Dissent, and Silent Invasion. André Dao: André Dao is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. He is the co-founder of Behind the Wire, an oral history project documenting people’s experience of immigration detention, and the deputy editor of New Philosopher. Dao was a finalist for the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Young People’s Medal in 2011. Helen Hayward: Helen Hayward is a freelance writer, a trained psychotherapist, and author of A Slow Childhood: Notes on Thoughtful Parenting. Elizabeth Oliver: Elizabeth Oliver is a medical doctor who has written for The Medical Republic and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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News from nowhere

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“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.” Eugène Delacroix

News From Nowhere

“No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.” John Ruskin

“BEING TOO CAUTIOUS IS THE GREATEST RISK OF ALL” JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

Living more creatively

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ince the 1960s, roughly twenty thousand papers have been written on creativity. And today, online bookstores list over 22,000 books on creativity alone: how to spark it, explain it, guide it, or find it. Creativity, it seems, is a hot topic not least for finding personal fulfilment and happiness, but more importantly as a strategy to overcome life’s hardships, illness, breakup, loss, grief. And it’s true, creative people with meaningful projects to engage in have an advantage over the rest of us. When life becomes too much - its injustice or cruelty, its inevitable disappointments - the creative person has the studio, the laboratory, the garage, or the study, to forget about life for a bit. But can the art of creativity be learnt by everyone? In the book Wired to Create: Discover the 10 Things Great Artists, Writers, and Innovators Do Differently, authors Scott Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire describe the typical creative as being a mess of contradictions, a “multitude” - a person with messy processes and a messy mind, more chaotic than controlled, more spontaneous than linear. The authors quote Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who said: “A painting is not thought out and settled in advance.

L’Homme aux cartes, by Pablo Picasso

While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change.” The authors found that creative people are typically “hubs of diverse interests, influences, behaviours, qualities, and ideas - and through their work, they find a way to bring these many disparate elements together… Highly creative work blends together different elements and influences in the most novel, or unusual, way.” Creativity is distinct from IQ - it is a skill that can be fostered in childhood. For instance, imaginary game-playing in childhood - the make-believe world of monsters, fairies or witches in the garden - is seen to encourage

creativity in adult life. But in some way, conclude the authors, we are all “wired to create” and life presents many opportunities to exercise and express that creativity. Whether it’s expressed through words, photos, fashion, food, craft, gardening, or business, the authors say that all works of creation share commonalities. “People who engage in a creative lifestyle - perhaps by drifting off in daydreams, taking photographs just for fun, talking passionately about personal goals, writing thoughtful cards or letters to friends and family, keeping a journal, or starting their own business - tend to be more open minded... They also report a greater sense of well-being and personal growth compared to those who are less engaged in these everyday creative behaviours.” Furthermore, creative projects can be especially helpful compatriots when times are tough. “Creative work can be highly therapeutic for those who are experiencing hardship,” stress the authors. Indeed, while creative pursuits may seem superfluous and unnecessary when life is good, your creative endeavours, like best friends, nurtured over many years, are the best line of defence when tragedy strikes.

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News from nowhere

Housed in nature iving in a turf-roofed house was fairly common in Iceland up until the late 19th century. With timber sparse and slow to regenerate, the island nation turned to turf for roofs and walls, turf being widely available and a good insulator against the winter cold. Today, urban planners are beginning to understand the wisdom behind this rather quaint architectural practice. A new law in France requires all new commercial builds to be roofed in plants or solar panels. Sydney, Australia, has recently adopted a Green Roof and Walls Policy, a necessary move as summer temperatures soar across Sydney’s rapidly expanding urban

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landscape, where pasturelands have been erased for rows of utility housing. A study conducted in Toronto, Canada, concluded that green roofs not only improve air quality, reduce water runoff, and save energy, but the modelling showed that if green roofs were installed on 50 per cent

of downtown infrastructure, an entire city could be cooled by as much as 0.8 °C. Green roofs, it seems, are not just beneficial for beetles, butterflies and birds, but humans too. Would you prefer to behold the vista of houses veiled in greenery or an expanse of metal sheeting?

Photo: Traditional house, Iceland, by Ivan Kmit

“Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn’s dismal rain that was falling - rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat, rain suggestive in its dreariness of everlasting waterfalls between the planets, rain that thatched the heavens with drabness and brooded oppressively over the whole countryside, like a disease, strong in the power of its flat, unvarying monotony, its smothering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting cruelty. Smoothly, smoothly it fell, over the whole shire, over the fallen marsh grass, over the troubled lake, the iron-grey gravel flats, the sombre mountain above the croft, smudging out every prospect. And the heavy, hopeless, interminable beat wormed its way into every crevice in the house, lay like a pad of cotton wool over the ears, and embraced everything, both near and far, in its compass, like an unromantic story from life itself that has no rhythm and no crescendo, no climax, but which is nevertheless overwhelming in its scope, terrifying in its significance. And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one nervous woman.” – Halldór Laxness, Independent People

News from nowhere

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Imprisoned by the past “One of the most powerful wellsprings of creative energy, outstanding accomplishment, and self-fulfilment seems to be falling in love with something - your dream, your image of the future.” – E. Paul Torrance

e spend about one third of daily life thinking beyond the here and now a form of mental time travel where we ruminate on past events and contemplate our impending future. But according to a study by psychology researcher Jonathan Smallwood at the University of York, low moods make us more inclined to go backwards in time rather than forwards, and this mental regurgitation can cause depressive symptoms. The paper titled Imprisoned by the past: Unhappy moods lead to a retrospective bias to mind wandering suggests that while it’s normal and healthy to reflect on past events, perhaps we should leave such rumination for times when we’re feeling happy, not sad.

Paper doll, by Jeanie Tomanek

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News from nowhere

MARGARET HEFFERNAN

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

EMMELINE PANKHURST

“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”

“You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”

“We have to free half of the human race, the women, so that they can help to free the other half.”

“I have written most of my melodies walking and I feel it is definitely one of the most helpful ways of sewing all of the different things in your life together and seeing the whole picture.” – BJÖRK

Mysterious lights cause alarm he mysterious bright lights over the North pole - the Aurora Borealis - is normally not any cause for alarm, until recently that is. The pale green, and at rarer moments red or violet, arcs and shooting rays come from solar winds hurtling towards the Earth, taking roughly 40 hours to get here. While these hurtling particles of plasma have not, in the past, affected people close by, police in South-West Iceland have recently reported erratic driving, swerving, and veering under the Aurora’s magnificent shield of light. Meaning the “dawn of the north”, the Aurora Borealis is matched by the Aurora Australis in the southern hemisphere. The Aurora’s eerie glow is a result of

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charged particles from the Sun’s atmosphere colliding with gaseous particles in the Earth’s atmosphere. While charged particles from the Sun are mostly deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field, at the poles - where the Earth’s magnetic field is weakest - these particles can enter, showering the sky in light. The resulting spooky green, or flashes of red, pink, and yellow, is causing havoc, it seems, on Iceland’s roads. Police have reported drivers veering between lanes, and taking dramatic turns, as the Aurora Borealis shimmers overhead. Thinking the drivers must be intoxicated, police have since discovered that drivers are mesmorised by the light. A green aurora happens when charged particles collide with oxygen

Photo: Chistopher Becerra

at lower altitudes, while higher altitude collisions produce the rare allred auroras. Blue or violet come from contact with nitrogen gases.

News from nowhere

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Pessimistic goal setting Everything happens for a good reason

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Målning Isländsk jaktfalk, 1759 - Livrustkammaren

few years back, positive thinking was all the rage, but recently psychologists have started documenting some downsides to adopting an overly sunny perspective, especially when it comes to setting and achieving your personal goals. Being overly positive about your ability to attain your goals, it is found, can make you less likely to achieve them. Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg, recommends adding an extra column to your personal goal spreadsheet. While it’s fine to list your major goals in life - learn to speak Icelandic, or write the great sciencefiction masterpiece, or even just to get fit - also remember to add a list of the major obstacles you foresee in their attainment. Terming it “mental contrasting”, Oettingen found that candidates who spent time imagining their desired goal and then visualised the obstacles that could get in their way of attaining it, however small, achieved better results than those who simply fantasised on a positive outcome. “We need the dream ... this is a good starting point. Then what we need to do is identify and imagine the obstacles that actually hinder us from fulfilling these dreams. Then we understand what we need to do to achieve these dreams,” Oettingen says.

As you think, so you become. Avoid superstitiously investing events with power or meanings they don’t have. Keep your head. Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren’t there. Assume, instead, that everything that happens to you does so for some good reason. That if you decided to be lucky, you are lucky. All events contain an advantage for you - if you look for it.

Epictetus, The Art of Living

Ten facts about the world’s largest falcon • Gyrfalcons are the largest falcon in the world. • They mostly prey on large birds such as ptarmigan and waterfowl, as well as some mammals. • Females weigh nearly twice as much as males. • Gyrfalcons come in many colours, not simply white with black spots. In North America, grey birds are more common than white or dark brown. • As birds of prey, gyrfalcons either fly high and attack from above or

chase close to the ground. • Gyrfalcons are the national animal of Iceland. • As a hunting bird, humans have long associated with gyrfalcons in the sport of falconry. • Its only rival is the world’s fastest animal, the peregrine falcon. • In the medieval period, the gyrfalcon was considered a royal bird. • Scientists estimate that these large-eyed birds can see two to eight times better than humans.

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News from nowhere

Distracting consequences hile there’s plenty of literature on why distraction is bad for our brains, there are occasions when it’s not so bad to be distracted. Sometimes mulling over a problem for hours is not the answer. If a solution simply can’t be found, psychologists advise getting up and doing something unrelated - allowing the problem to incubate at the back of your mind. The theory is that by distracting your conscious mind, your subconscious has time to think it over. And more often than not, it will guide you to the solution you were looking for.

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Mother Autumn, by Jeanie Tomanek

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir

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“If anything can save the world, women can.”

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir

Illustration: Monica Barengo

Ecofeminism

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Ecofeminism by Antonia Case

In her essay Feminism or Death Françoise D’Eaubonne calls on women to lead an ecological revolution to save the planet.

Someone once told me that no matter how many lanes you add to a freeway they’ll eventually be full of traffic. Build a two-lane freeway and by the end of the year it’ll be at peak capacity - a slow, painful crawl for commuters into work and back home again. Build a six-lane freeway, and more people will decide to drive around the place and within no time, it’ll be full too. But that doesn’t stop more freeways, even larger freeways with even more lanes, being built each year. This contempt for nature - that lives and breathes underneath these vast bitumen tracks - makes me angry. But what can I do? In the 1970s, a number of women writers tried to describe this situation - that is, the powerlessness we feel in the face of destruction to nature. We witness our beautiful world being bulldozed, sliced

up, trammelled upon, and concreted, and there’s nothing, we believe, that we can do about it. French writer Françoise d’Eaubonne coined a term in the 1970s called ecofeminism, which examines the relationship between the exploitation of nature and the position of women in society, believing that there is a link that warrants further examination. D’Eaubonne argued that the ecological disaster we face is a result of a patriarchal system that treats nature as a resource to be used and exploited - dominated and controlled - rather than a precious reserve to be given the space and means to flourish. A prolific writer and essayist, d’Eaubonne lived by her motto, “Not a day without a line”, which propelled her to write over 50 works in her lifetime across genres as diverse as poetry to historical fiction to

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science fiction. Her first novel, A Flight of Falcons, was written a short time before she was introduced to feminism, having read Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, a topic that was to permeate her writings thereafter. Born in Paris and raised by intellectual parents in Toulouse, d’Eaubonne saw overcrowding and exhaustion of resources as twin threats to our ecological survival. Viewing the plight of nature and the plight of women as interlinked, d’Eaubonne drew on Greek mythology, or Gaia, the Mother Earth goddess, to suggest that when nature is threatened, so are women. One quiet morning, a bulldozer pulled up on the lush grassy bank of my old hometown. From a distance, the bulldozer was a phosphorescent yellow stain upon the hillside. Construction work on the highway ‘upgrade’ - a 150km four-lane highway linking city to city - was to replace a perfectly viable freeway, suddenly deemed too small. When the rich expanse of green was sliced open, it was as distressing to the eye as a cut across the face of a beautiful child; blood-red soil gushed from the wound. In a town of ‘activists’, it was also disturbing

to see not a single person on the grassy bank that day. Townsfolk, so versed on propaganda that the highway ‘upgrade’ was necessary for ‘economic activity’, or ‘safer travel’, for ‘reduced travel times’ and ‘transport efficiency’, or simply having become so accustomed to a position of inferiority against the infrastructure army clad in yellow vests, turned their backs on the grassy knoll; in town, it was business as usual as a war raged against nature on the other side of the hill. In her essay Feminism or Death, D’Eaubonne calls on women to lead an ecological revolution to save the planet. Anthropocentric, or human-centred, thinking must be replaced with a worldview that humans and non-humans are inter-connected, reliant on each other for survival. While wars rage on social media between diverse groups clamouring for attention - for their right to be heard, to be loved, to be respected - nature does not have a voice. Not unless, that is, we make it our voice. Not unless we realise that the plight of women and the plight of Mother Earth are one and the same. Not unless we all become ecofeminists.

Ecofeminism

Photo: Patreksfjörður Westfjords Iceland, by Bill Ward

The Everywoman

Jeanie Tomanek Georgia, United States

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Art

Artwork: Jeanie Tomanek

The Everywoman

House on a hill, Jeanie Tomanek

Artist Jeanie Tomanek explores the ‘Everywoman’ - the ancient feminine archetype who bears the scars and imperfections that characterise the struggle to become. She leaves the familiar and journeys towards the unknown.

Small craft warning, Jeanie Tomanek

The Everywoman

Anniversary, Jeanie Tomanek

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Art

Art

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The Everywoman

Eclipse, Jeanie Tomanek

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Editorial by André Dao Oxford, England

Philosophy

The potentialists

Artwork: Aida Novoa and Carlos Egan

Every commitment is a giving up of other possibilities and for some, this truth is paralysing.

The potentialists By André Dao

As I hold my baby daughter at four in the morning, feeling the softness of her cheek against my own cheek, waiting for her breathing to settle into the regular rise and fall of sleep, the rightness of this scene feels self-evident. How could my life be any other way? Yet, less than 12 months ago, I knew frighteningly little about children, let alone babies. I didn’t know how to hold one, nor how to change a nappy, nor how loud a cry can be in the dead of the night. I certainly didn’t know about the heady mixture of love, responsibility and notknowing-what-to-do that can strike at any time: watching her picking up slices of banana to shove by the fistful in her mouth, settling her down after a delivery man with facial hair knocks on our door, letting her hold my little finger with her tiny hand in the maternity ward.

And 12 months before that - when we were seriously talking about having a baby - I didn’t even know how little I knew. But could it really have been any other way? Of course, I might have known more about the details of what having a baby would be like. All the same, those details are only incidental to the real decision under consideration, and for the purposes of that decision, I knew about as much as one needs to know: that what we were embarking on was something fundamentally life-altering, with its attendant joys and sorrows - and, most importantly, that there was no going back. Once our baby had come into the world, we knew that our lives would never be the same again. This seems so obvious as to verge on cliché. What is perhaps less obvious is that this truth holds

not only for the decision to have a child, but for all of our major life decisions. Why? Because of the fundamentally limited nature of human experience: we are limited in both time and resources. We have limited attention to give, we are limited in the life goals we can pursue, and there is a limit to the number of close bonds we can form. In other words, every commitment is a giving up of other possibilities. For some, this truth is paralysing. We can call these people ‘the potentialists’. For them, the good life is one that is full of potential. We can see that this view has some intuitive appeal. Who wouldn’t prefer to have more options, and more opportunities, rather than fewer? In a way, the potentialists are right. Whatever your idea is of the good life - a satisfying career, health and financial security, a happy family

The potentialists

environment, or a combination of these things and many others - potential is a necessary condition for you to live that good life. Where potentialists get it wrong is that they forget that potential is only a condition for achieving an end - it isn’t an end in itself, something to be desired for its own sake. The potentialist’s error typically plays out like this: if every commitment closes down other possible commitments, thereby limiting our potential, and the having of potential is a good thing in and of itself, then committing to any life decision will be a poor choice unless we know that the decision will be a success. And because it’s impossible to tell the future, the potentialist decides to defer deciding: they wait for life to give them a sign that they’re on to a sure thing. The extreme potentialist ends up wasting away, convinced that by doing nothing, they are at least leaving the door open for the perfect opportunity that’s just around the corner. Even as they draw their last breath, they can think to themselves, “I might still become a concert pianist, you know…” Clearly, most of us aren’t so extreme. But we do often behave like potentialists - whenever, for example, we hedge our bets, and fail to fully commit to projects that we think might interfere in our pursuit of something better. One way of avoiding the potentialist pitfall is to think of the good life not so much as an end, but as an activity. This can be an easy point to forget, not least because philosophers are sometimes less than clear about the difference. Aristotle, for example, famously said that happiness is the ultimate end of human life. That sounds a lot like he’s saying that happiness is the goal that

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Philosophy

all our striving seeks to achieve that happiness is something we can get and possess. But we have to pay closer attention to what Aristotle actually means by happiness: it is, he says, the excellent performance of the proper function of humanity. What is that function? It’s “a kind of life”, “an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue”. In the more modern language of contemporary philosophers, we must all have a rational plan of life - to be human is to ask, “What should I do?” Now, Aristotle had in mind a set list of virtues which should orient the “activity” of our souls (virtues like courage, temperance, patience, and truthfulness) but the precise content of Aristotlean virtues need not concern us here. Instead, Aristotle’s

The extreme potentialist ends up wasting away, convinced that by doing nothing, they are at least leaving the door open for the perfect opportunity that’s just around the corner.

crucial insight for present purposes is that happiness - the ultimate human end - is a kind of activity, a way of living one’s life. So our end goal isn’t really something that can be achieved, in the way we might achieve a finished outcome at the end of a particular project, like a good mark on an exam, but rather something in which we participate without ever fully realising - except, perhaps, at the end of our lives. Happiness, as Aristotle reminds us, is subject to a further qualification: “one swallow does not make a summer… neither can one day, or a brief space of time, make a [person] blessed and happy.” Once we realise that the good life is not a state of being but an activity, we can see how wrongheaded the potentialists really are. By waiting and doing nothing, they only guarantee one thing - that they are not living the good life. Another way of thinking of this is to look at the existentialists. Though an existentialist is likely to disagree with Aristotle’s list of objective virtues, they would at least agree that to be human is to have to choose what to do. Indeed, we can say that this is one of existentialism’s key insights: that we are free and responsible insofar as we are at liberty to choose how to live our lives, and burdened by having to do so ourselves. Although other people can either enhance your opportunities or limit your choices, in the final analysis, no one can choose for you. Indeed, as the potentialists show us, no one can make you choose at all. But if you don’t choose - if you don’t commit - then you are passing up the sometimes terrible, but ultimately liberating responsibility that comes with realising that your life is your own, and no one else’s.

Illustration: Aida Novoa and Carlos Egan

Illustration: Catrin Welz-Stein

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Editorial by Sarah Moss Coventry, England

Travel

My Icelandic odyssey

Artwork: Catrin Welz-Stein Photography: F.J. Fdez Bordonada, Kim Hart

It wasn’t landscape that pulled us this time but the idea of a better society.

My Icelandic odyssey By Sarah Moss

My husband and I had always meant to live ‘abroad’, as if abroad were a place, defined only by not-Englishness. Scotland might have done, France would have been better, Denmark or especially Sweden, headquarters of Nordic social democracy, would have been ideal, but meanwhile I kept an eye on academic jobs in the US, Canada, and Australia. We settled in Kent, less than ten miles from where Anthony had grown up. We owned a house. The children started school. We had interesting jobs at comfortable salaries. It was all perfectly nice, and there was no reason why it shouldn’t continue to be perfectly nice for the next thirty years. Then Anthony lost his job. Max was unhappy at school. Iceland, sang a newspaper feature read late one night while the children slept, was

the happiest country in the world, a Nordic paradise of gender equality, fine schooling and public art. It wasn’t landscape that pulled us this time - or not only landscape - but the idea of a better society. According to the website of the National University which I chanced to encounter at work the next day, Iceland needed an expert in nineteenth-century British literature. Six months later, I stand in Iceland’s National Museum, under the flat-screen television showing rolling news at the end of the exhibition of twentieth-century Icelandic material culture, when the International Monetary Fund steps in to save Iceland from sovereign default. It’s November 2008, and I’ve just finished my interview and verbally accepted the job. Over lunch, my future colleagues were talking about arranging

new courses around texts available on Project Gutenberg, because they were expecting the import of books to halt. The headmistress of the international school is frank about her concern that all the foreign families are about to leave the country. The value of my proposed salary drops by a third during the week. Well, we reason, Icelanders aren’t going to starve, so there’s no reason why we would. I don’t know why the collapse of the Icelandic economy, the kreppa, doesn’t put us off; I think it seems important not to fear poverty. I think it seems likely to be interesting.

July is a good time to arrive in Iceland. The lava field beside the road from the airport has wildflowers and rowan bushes growing out of its fissures, and the mountains are sharp

My Icelandic odyssey

Darkness doesn’t fall. I stay up later and later, because there’s no particular reason to go to bed, and because I want to see what happens.

against a blue sky. The city lies in a pool of sunlight, the red corrugated iron houses and white roofs small as Lego against the dark northern sea. People sit outside cafés in the city centre where we stay in a hotel for the first few days, and there’s a flow of tourists, of other people who also need a map and someone who speaks English, around the craft shops and museums of Reykjavík. We take the children out and show them the place to which we have committed them. Look, we say, a ship coming into harbour! Look, a playground! Look at the light on the mountains! Aren’t you glad to be here?

We’re waiting for the builders to finish our apartment, which we haven’t yet seen. It was organised for us by Hulda Kristín, one of the PhD students in my new department. Hulda Kristín is half-Lebanese, halfIcelandic, but grew up in London. She married an Icelander and came here to live when her two sons, born like mine four years apart, were pre-schoolers. We met her when we came to Reykjavík in May to find

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Travel

an apartment, a school and a nursery, and had more trouble with the apartment than we were expecting. Icelanders, by and large, don’t rent; ninety per cent of housing is owner-occupied and renting is a sign of youth or indigence. We needed to be in Garðabær, Iceland’s wealthiest suburb, for the International School, and, despite the newly built and empty blocks of flats crowding the shore, there was nothing to rent. Hulda Kristín heard me complaining to Pétur, my new head of department. Let me make some calls, she said. I can probably sort something out. Her husband is in charge of buildings safety inspections across Iceland and knows most of the builders. She did indeed sort something out, and we see our new home for the first time through the tinted windows of her lumbering SUV. The other apartments in our block are shells. The building is on the corner of a development that was half-built when the banks collapsed and the money ran out, and it’s still half-built, as if the builders had downed tools and walked away one day in the winter of 2008. Our northward sea view will be blocked if the luxury flats across the road are ever finished. For now, we see the waves between the bars of metal rods that grow out of concrete foundations. Looking the other way,

towards the city, a yellow crane towers over us, a line through our view of Mount Esja. No-one else lives in our building. The stairs are unfinished, raw concrete. The lift glides up and down its glass tower just for us. The automatic doors in the lobby sweep for us alone.

Adult Icelanders share Thatcher’s view of bus travel. Car ownership, Pétur says, is higher than anywhere else in Europe. We are surrounded by houses with three or four cars on each drive, and the cars are newer than at home and larger, including monstrous SUVs that aren’t imported to the rest of Europe. Icelanders adore America, Pétur says. Most people here won’t be happy until we’re beating the Americans on carbon emissions and pollution. Nobody walks anywhere; people think you’re mad if you walk. Cycling? I ask, because there are what look to me like bicycle tracks running along the coast. No, he says. People say the weather’s too bad, but it’s not much worse than in Denmark, which has one of the highest rates of cycling in Europe. The Norwegians and Swedes drive less, walk more and have fewer and less damaging cars than Icelanders, though Scandinavian winters are in fact colder because Iceland is an island in the Gulf Stream and Norway and Sweden have continental climates. During the boom, says Pétur, sometimes Icelandic couples would each take their own Hummer to the same party. Yeah, and another one for the teenage son, adds his daughter. I think she is joking but I’m not sure. At first, we think this car-dependence is reflected in the town planning. Walking in Garðabær, or anywhere in Reykjavík except the

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My Icelandic Odyssey

Photo: Reykjavik, by F.J. Fdez Bordonada

My Icelandic odyssey

oldest parts of the city centre, feels like walking in American suburbia. There are no pavements. The only shops are in malls, which have no pedestrian access. We find ourselves pushing the pushchair across dual carriageways and up turf embankments. Going to the other supermarket, we have a choice between

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36

crossing the lava field and going along the freeway.

Darkness doesn’t fall. I stay up later and later, because there’s no particular reason to go to bed, and because I want to see what happens. On the field on the peninsula across

Photo: Blue lagoon, Svarsengi geothermal plant, by Kim Hart

the inlet, people start to play football at 11pm, and are still playing two hours later. In May, I didn’t believe the woman who told us that people go out to wash their cars at midnight in summer, but I find my own evenings stretching. The children go to bed late, around 9pm, and then I work on my book for a couple of hours, and then read for an hour or so, and then decide to go for a walk before bed. Icelandic children, out in unsupervised tribes as if it were the 1970s, swirl around the development and along the coast paths until midnight. Joggers come past in the early hours of the morning. We’re south of the Arctic Circle here, and it’s already July, a month past the solstice, so around 1am the light dims, the birds fall silent, the wind drops. It’s not a sleep but a holding of breath, a sudden thought of death that gets longer each night. Anthony and I each go for a walk every evening, taking it in turns to have the sunset slot, which is a few minutes earlier every day. The shore path from the city out to Hafnarfjörður passes our apartment, and I take the same walk every day, will continue to take the same walk every day as the nights lengthen and sunset slips along the horizon, further south and earlier day by day, and the warm breath on the air in July is replaced by a screaming wind that tears at my skin. I pass the blocks of half-finished and empty flats by which we are surrounded. Automatic doors glide open as I walk by, as if there are invisible New York doormen to go with the ghosts of wealthy Icelanders who never came

Travel

into being and never bought these apartments, big enough to park a freight truck in the living room and with triple-glazed windows of a size to admit several. I glance in to see wires hanging out of the walls and hardwood kitchen units stacked on the (heated) floors. Ramps lead into heated basement garages, cavernous as mausoleums from which imperial bodies have been stolen. Obese SUVs jostle on Reykjavík’s freeways, but here, in the cages built for them, there are none. The abandoned yellow crane reaches above the penthouses at the top, high as a holy statue set to watch over our folly. Reykjavík is ringed by these untenanted suburbs, whole townships built with imaginary money for people who never existed. There was a building boom but no housing shortage, a drive to cover the lava fields with more and more and more open-plan kitchens and steel-railed balconies and underground carports that reminds me of Max, aged about five, covering the floor with wooden train track that looped endlessly back on itself, going nowhere via flyover bridges and turntables and level crossings, a baroque engineering that was its own justification.

Every night, Max and I check the online aurora forecast, run by the University of Alaska but also covering ‘Europe’ where, roughly, we are. The scale for auroral activity goes up to ten, which never happens, but we’ve found that on a clear night, anything over three is usually visible, even if only as a green wavering

I check both the forecast and the sky just before going to bed, and we have a pact that I’ll wake him for anything over a five.

on the northern horizon. I check both the forecast and the sky just before going to bed, and we have a pact that I’ll wake him for anything over a five. And one day it happens: a six on the scale, and purple flames licking the sea. It’s only half past ten. I shake Max awake and put out layers of clothes: thermal underwear, socks, trousers, thicker socks, over-trousers. T-shirt, polo-neck, jumper, gloves, coat, hat, hood. We creep out and ease the door shut, scurry like excited children into the car park and bundle ourselves into the car. This time, we’re going to look properly, not blocking out the city lights by crouching behind the builders’ rubble on the head-land. I drive out across the isthmus to the Álftanes peninsula. There’s no thermometer in the car, which is probably just as well, but the warm

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My Icelandic odyssey

air coming out of the exhaust fills the rear-view mirror and there’s ice on the gritted road. There are no other cars, and the settlement ahead lies silently under the street lights and the curtains of green and pink light. I turn right, northwards, and we’re bumping along a gravel track behind the last houses before the breakwater. I stop when I realise that I have no idea how we’ll turn round and get back in the dark, and we get out. We should have brought a torch. We stumble towards the sea wall. I climb it, and haul Max up behind me, and we sit there. The sea is still rough after the last storm, refracting oblongs of lime and violet framed by white foam, and the upper half of the world is festooned with light, swaying in figures and swathes that remind me one minute of a crowd of ball gowns hanging to dry, the next of searchlights coming from above. The aurora are unsettling partly because they show the depth of the space, the falsity of our illusion that the sky is two-dimensional, and partly because it’s hard to convince your instincts that something bigger than you and grabbing at the sky isn’t out to get you. Salt spray spatters against my coat, and suddenly the lights are all around us, between us and the yards on the other side of the car, sweeping the sea at our feet. I clutch Max and we keep still, as if they might take us for rocks, these bright forms coming out of the sky. Max talks about aliens all the way home, and for once I can see why. From Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah Moss, published by Granta.

The Anniversary, Karolina Larusdottir

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Leyja comes to Hotel Borg, Karolina Larusdottir

People being themselves

Art

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Editorial by Antonia Case Hobart, Australia

Art

“Act well your part; there all the honour lies.” – Alexander Pope

People being themselves

Tea and toast, Karolina Larusdottir

People being themselves

Artwork: Karolina Larusdottir

People being themselves

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A rt

The angel and the horse, Karolina Larusdottir

Low tide, Karolina Larusdottir

Life in her artwork is an unfolding drama of different characters, earnestly acting out their scripted roles.

Art

There is something theatrical in the spirit of artist Karolina Larusdottir, faintly reminiscent of Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” Life in her artwork is an unfolding drama of different characters, earnestly acting out their scripted roles. Karolina Larusdottir’s childhood experiences in Iceland framed her vision as an artist. “I spent much of my childhood with my grandmother,” she says. “My grandfather built Hotel

Borg and they lived in the top flat there. I would go there every day after school. My grandmother always kept a silver bowl with sweets in it at the entrance. We would fill our pockets with these sweets every time we went - we were very lucky to have sweets like these.” Larusdottir’s grandfather was a strongman with Barnum & Bailey’s travelling circus in America before opening Iceland’s first grand hotel. “It was a very grown-up world at the hotel - there were lots of events and

Sunday, Karolina Larusdottir

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People being themselves

parties and preparations for them and I would watch the chambermaids, chefs, and waitresses prepare for these.” Such busyness is evident in her paintings, where characters dine together, or pay each other a visit, the seriousness of their everyday endeavours etched on their faces. And just like a theatre set, every scene is peopled with characters. “I only ever wanted to paint people - that’s my favourite subject,” says Larusdottir. “People and what they’re doing.”

People being themselves

Art

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Visit to the Summerhouse, Karolina Larusdottir

Larusdottir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, but for nearly fifty years resided in the British Isles, at one time taking out a studio in Cambridge. She studied art at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, graduating in 1967. When women in Iceland were campaigning for women’s rights, eventuating in the 1975 women’s strike, Larusdottir was in England. “I remember thinking how brave these women were, and how unhappy their husbands must be to look after the children for the day! It wasn’t really ‘done’ in those days. I had two children at that time, aged 7 and 5 - it’s quite something to be a mother on strike.” Today, tourists who visit Iceland’s largest church in the centre of

Reykjavík, the landmark Lutheran church Hallgrímskirkja - a striking white modernist structure rising 75 metres high - will find Larusdottir’s artwork hanging inside. Her oils, watercolours, and etchings are reminiscent of the Iceland she knew as a child: a magical time when she says, “nobody could do anything without other people knowing”, when there was no television, just occasions parties, birthdays, and being invited to people’s homes. While Larusdottir acknowledges that her characters might not look happy in their unfolding dramas, they certainly don’t look sad either. They’re just busy, getting on with things. As Larusdottir likes to say, just people being themselves.

“I only ever wanted to paint people - that’s my favourite subject. People and what they’re doing.”

Art

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People being themselves

A bird in hand, Karolina Larusdottir

New Year’s Eve, Karolina Larusdottir

Illustration: Catrin Welz-Stein

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Editorial by Antonia Case Hobart, Australia

Isolated dreams

Artwork: Catrin Welz-Stein

Psychology

Success in life, or so say the self-help books, is about following your dream.

Isolated dreams By Antonia Case

In my final year at high school, a career adviser sat inside a makeshift caravan for a full day waiting for students to file in, one by one. “What is your passion?” he enquired. “What are your goals? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What,” he asked, “is success for you?” Back in high school I liked reading a lot and playing sport, so the career adviser plugged these words into his computer and out spat an answer. I should pursue a career in sports journalism it recommended - not that I had any interest whatsoever in writing about sport. It was an attempt to match our skills and desires with the job market because, as we were all too keenly aware back then, success in life, or so wrote the self-help books, was about “finding your dream”; it was about “doing what you love” and then working hard and never ever giving up. Some 207 million students today are enrolled at universities globally,

pursuing all sorts of individualistic pursuits. And then there are millions of others at home alone, or isolated in studios, pursuing their dream of making it big in the arts, like writing the great novel, painting a masterpiece, or creating a music hit: or in the business world, the lone entrepreneurs in lonely ‘garages’ dreaming of start-ups that will make them squillions. Having ‘discovered’ their inner passion, these lonely automatons are hard at work in the suburbs, eschewing all other opportunities because nothing, absolutely nothing, should get in the way of their dream. A basic feature of Western thought, writes Edward Slingerland in his book Trying Not To Try is “extreme individualism”. The ideal person in Western philosophy is radically alone, he writes. “For the past couple hundred years in the West, the dominant view of human nature has been that we are all individual

agents pursuing our own self-interest.” And this dominant viewpoint, it seems, has trickled down. It has infected how individuals relate to each other; the attention they devote to their own individualistic cares compared to activities that benefit the common good, or other people. “As economists and political scientists have only recently begun to realise,” writes Slingerland, the extreme individualism of the West is a “fairy tale cooked up over the last century or two by a bunch of elite, landowning males - what the philosopher Annette Baier has scathingly referred to as ‘a collection of clerics, misogynists, and puritan bachelors’.” Slingerland, a professor of Asian studies, contrasts this lonely Western mindset with ancient Chinese thinkers from the warring states period (the fifth to third century BCE), a time of exceptional philosophical creativity. Central to theories of the pursuit of the good life

Isolated dreams

was a concept called wu-wei (pronounced ooo-way), best translated as “spontaneous action”. The good life was about cultivating the art of spontaneity, and living an effortless, harmonious existence. A person in wu-wei operates in a dynamic, unselfconscious, and effortless fashion, writes Slinglerand. “It feels good to be in wu-wei,” he states. “We’re also attracted to effectiveness, and people in wu-wei tend to be socially competent as they move through life.” Apparently by embracing spontaneity, according to ancient thinkers, we can make better sense of our work and our goals. Wu-wei is similar in theory to the highly popular flow concept in the West, touted by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Wu-wei, like flow, is a desirous state for humans to be in; great leaps in creativity and insight happen when people are in flow. But while flow in the West tends to refer to people pursuing individualistic activities - the lone concert pianist, the tortured artist, or hard-working investment manager, the Eastern wu-wei places this concept in a social realm. “Wuwei is about more than isolated individuals incrementally improving their personal bests in the Ironman Triathlon or mastering a new level of Tetris,” writes Slingerland. “Wuwei involves giving yourself up to something that, because it is bigger than you, can be shared by others,” he writes. “An essential fact about wu-wei is that it’s not just about the

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Psychology

Wu-wei is about more than isolated individuals incrementally improving their personal bests in the Ironman Triathlon or mastering a new level of Tetris.

experience unfolding within the mind of an isolated individual but also about social connections between people.” It’s this ‘social’ aspect of wu-wei that Western approaches tend to overlook. What’s also overlooked in the West is that success is not an isolated case. Take the talented tennis player, the up-and-coming talent on the courts who’s destined for greatness. While those in the West call attention to her individual talents - what’s forgotten is her father who got her to the courts each day, her mother who

paid for her lessons and equipment, and her coach who taught her everything she knows; and that’s not to mention her biological forefathers and mothers who passed on their incredible tennis-playing genes. Nothing exists in isolation. What’s significant is that our life becomes meaningful only when it’s shared. The great novelist requires readers, just as the tennis player requires an opponent to whack the ball back across the net. “We have been taught to believe that the best way to achieve our goals is to reason about them carefully and strive consciously to reach them,” Slingerland adds. “Unfortunately, in many areas of life this is terrible advice. Many desirable states - happiness, attractiveness, spontaneity - are pursued indirectly, and conscious thought and effortful striving can actually interfere with their attainment,” he concludes. Had we been taught at school to consider dreams as a group, or collective endeavour, what would have changed? Had we been taught to seek out a network of like-minded people to pursue something that none of us could have achieved alone, would we be happier? Would we, in fact, be more successful? But instead, millions upon millions ferret away at their individualistic pursuits in the suburbs, in their garages, on the kitchen bench, or alone at the café. Opportunities to collaborate are shunned in favour of time devoted to lonely crafts and isolated dreams.

Closing date: 31 August 2018 Format: One photograph per entry. Applicants: Open to all amateur and professional photographers. Entries must also include a separate photo of an edition of Womankind. File size: Please send large file sizes (larger than 3,000 pixels wide, 300dpi). Entries must be provided in file sizes suitable for publishing.

award

XVI

For full details visit: womankindmag.com/award

Details

Send to: [email protected]

OPEN TO ALL READERS.

Win $500 and get published in the next issue of Womankind magazine.

The theme of this quarter’s award is botany, which is the study of plant life. Photographers may focus on plants including leaves or flowers, or smaller plant life such as algae or moss.

Photographers’ Award

Botany

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Living more creatively

Creative leaps - whether that’s in technology, science, or the arts - almost always arise from people getting together and sharing ideas. That’s why creative hubs - places like Silicon Valley in the United States - are so innovative. On the following page, write down a few ideas on how your creative endeavours could be shared with other like-minded people.

Letting go

Helen Hayward Hobart, Australia

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Motherhood

Artwork: Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan,

Will I, once my daughter leaves, know who I am? It makes me clumsy, a little vertiginous, even thinking about it.

Letting go By Helen Hayward

For years my mother warned me. “Before you know it,” she’d say, “they’ll be off and away.” But I never believed her. How could I? My kids were in the middle of everything, of the everything that was my life. For twenty years it felt natural to drop everything when the school nurse called, when my kids wanted driving lessons, when an open-ended conversation in the hall needed more time. Just like her brother, like a trout ready to spawn, jumping the rapids, my daughter is getting ready to swim upstream. It’s not for me to ask where she’s going, rather to marvel that she’s going. Just as I hoped, eighteen years ago, that one day she would.

“You won’t know yourself,” Mum would say on the phone, the night before the end of a school holiday. She was right. The shift from “What shall we do today?” to “What shall I do today?” always felt huge. However this time the shift feels bigger: the end of a road, not a mere change of pronouns. Will I, once my daughter leaves, know who I am? It makes me clumsy, a little vertiginous, even thinking about it. Friends with kids at school regard me wistfully; all the things that they could do, were they in my shoes, flickering across their face. A few of them admit to feeling relief that they’ve yet to reach this crossroads, are yet to regain their freedom. Last spring I went to a writing workshop led by Anna Krien, whose work I admire. During a coffee break, chatting about our kids, I confided to her my definition of family life, which is of being run

over very slowly by the people I love most. When we laughed, was it at my crazy image, or at how far it strays from the idyll we mostly want for ourselves? My husband finds it less unacceptable that our kids must up and leave than I do. For him it’s the natural way of things. But, I say, birth and death are natural, and we struggle against these for all our worth. He smiles gently, looks at his phone, and rushes upstairs to change for tennis. My kids still need me. But even more they need me to let go, and for them not to feel bad about leaving me dangling. It’s not that they don’t want me around. They just don’t want me in their heads, clouding their field of vision. They love me not less, but differently. Just as Mum waved me off at the airport thirty-five years ago, now it’s my turn to let go. A bird flying out of opening hands, into the waiting sky.

Motherhood

I always knew that I’d wait until my kids were ready to let go. I knew I wouldn’t push them off the side of the pool to prove that they could swim. Partly to protect myself, I was never a tough-love mother. This wasn’t to shield my kids from difficulty, I knew they’d be plenty of this. More that in my heart I felt sure that, when it came time for them to leave, they’d push off all by themselves. It was always my plan, from when I first fell pregnant, to devote myself to family. I worked all the while, work is sacred to me. Yet I felt quietly confident that there’d be plenty of time later, once my kids left home, to do my own thing. However my airy calculation overlooked something essential. It left out how having children would change me, making it impossible to slip back into the old ways of being me. Do I even know any more what ‘doing my own thing’ is? Most evenings I walk our reactive dog on a bush track near our house. On getting to the top of a rise, where the hill flattens off, there’s always the same surprise. The flax grass and peeling gum trees fall away and, like a theatre curtain lifting, the distant hills and harbour come into view. Tonight, as I push up the hill, without my daughter at my side, thoughts flood in. Can

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family life really be over? Have I, as one friend told me she felt, served my evolutionary purpose? Should I sit back, as a local GP suggested, and wait for grandchildren? Standing at the top, my dog’s head darting at a twitch in the grass, I wait for my panic to pass. Perhaps, I wonder, looking down at the valleys, there’s another kind of letting go. Which is not about reinventing myself, nice though that sounds. Which is not about letting my responsibilities slip, wandering barefoot on a pristine beach. Though that too sounds nice. Nor is it about waiting for grandchildren. It’s about letting go of a view of family life that has comforted and haunted me for so long. It’s about accepting that I never did have the answers, and that I’ve paid a price for eschewing a professional path by caring about what I have. It isn’t about filling all the windy spaces, scheduling myself to within an inch of my week. It’s about touching the sides of my loneliness and not struggling quicksand against it. It’s about getting to know my husband as a person, apart from a husband and father. And it’s about taking comfort in our reactive Kelpie-Collie dog, who makes it inevitable that most evenings I’ll get to look down from a beautiful hill onto valleys below.

It left out how having children would change me, making it impossible to slip back into the old ways of being me.

Letting go

The art of falconry

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The art of falconry

Photographs: Rob Palmer

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Antonia Case Hobart, Australia

Photography

Rob Palmer observes falcons in the wild, and then patiently waits for the chase.

By Antonia Case

Hiding out of sight, Rob Palmer is frozen still. He is less than 100 feet from the falcon’s nest site. He waits for an hour, and then several more sometimes as long as eight hours in a stretch, his eyes keen on the site. Palmer knows that once darkness falls, he must return to his hotel to prepare for another day. “The birds are very wary,” he says. And for this reason, he typically arrives on the scene with another person. “Then the other person leaves,” he says, “and the falcon thinks that the blind is empty.” He continues: “They don’t count very well.” In Nome, Alaska, Palmer returns to the hotel to sleep. He will drive and then hike back to the same spot in the morning. Back in his hiding place, sometimes hours will pass before there’s any movement at all. “You have to be ready behind the lens to get the action when it occurs,” he says. “Understanding the birds’ behaviour is critical.” Conditions too have to be right for the shot. Sunlight, cloud cover, snow, and rain alter outcomes. In college, Palmer spent hours studying the nesting territories of prairie falcons in Northeastern Colorado, and researching screech owls nesting along the Boulder Creek trail. He became a wildlife biologist, taught life science and biology, and spent his free time studying raptors.

The art of falconry

Photography: Rob Palmer

The art of falconry

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Photography

Photographs: Rob Palmer

“Gyrfalcons are the largest of all the falcons and, to me, the most stunning. They are also the strongest and fastest (in level flight) of the falcons.” The gyrfalcon is a large, broad-winged bird with thin tapered wings evolved for high-speed flying. The female, which is larger than the male, averages 51 to 65cm in length, its plumage varying with location, from all-white to dark brown to the grey gyrfalcon which is more

frequently spotted in Alaska. Falcons, like hawks, eagles, kites, and vultures, feed on other birds, rodents, mammals as large as hares, and fish. Sharp, binocular-like vision enables them to see up to eight times that of humans, and spot prey at a distance of more than 2km away. Gyrfalcons kill by striking prey to the ground with their powerful talons - biting the neck with a razorsharp tooth on the edges of their beak and severing

Photography

the vertebrae. Gliding at thousands of feet above the tundra, or speeding at 200km/h just above ground level, these agile hunters have been utilised by humans since early civilisation. Falconry, which is the sport of hunting wild quarry with a trained bird of prey, was, before gunpowder, a common pastime in the East and the West. Palmer, who is also a falconer, trains falcons to hunt wild game in Alaska. “The birds are flown free and trained to chase quarry that is flushed for them by the falconer,” he describes. “In the case of the gyrfalcon, the main prey that I attempt to catch are ducks, pheasants, and

grouse. This is not at all like hunting with a gun as the falcon is the hunter and you are just the watcher. The sport has been around for thousands of years and has not changed very much since that time.” Palmer calls falconry “glorified bird watching”: he observes falcons in the wild, and then patiently waits for the chase. When a magnificent

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The art of falconry

shot opens up, Palmer is at the ready behind the lens of his camera. The white falcon (seen on page 57) glides through the dark sky, its partially translucent eye set on its prey with unwavering concentration. Palmer hits the trigger on his camera and the image of this magnificent bird at the height of its life is caught forever.

The art of falconry

Photographs: Rob Palmer

Falconry, which is the sport of hunting wild quarry with a trained bird of prey, was, before gunpowder, a common pastime in the East and the West.

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Photography

Photography

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The art of falconry

Illustration: Catrin Welz-Stein

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Editorial by Clarissa-Sebag Montefiore Sydney, Australia

The day women walked out

Artwork: Catrin Welz-Stein

Activism

What would happen if women stopped work? What would happen if fifty per cent of the population went on strike?

The day women walked out By Clarissa-Sebag Montefiore

What would happen if women stopped work? If they refused to go to their jobs in offices, hospitals, cafés, schools, and banks? If they refused to pick up the children, do the washing, cook the dinner, make the bed? What would happen if fifty per cent of the population went on strike? That scenario was tested just under half a century ago when the women of Iceland, for one day, walked out on their everyday lives. Proposed by the women’s movement the Red Stockings, the 1975 strike was a way to force men to recognise the value of women’s paid and, critically, unpaid labour. Dubbed “Women’s Day Off”, women from all walks of life - young and old, working class and upper class, and all sides of the political spectrum - rallied at a march in

Reykjavík. The date was October 24 and a brass band belted out tunes, women gave rousing speeches, and rights were discussed. A key reason for the strike’s success was the “involvement of the unions... showing the grounding of the action in working-class organising,” says Hannah McCann, a lecturer in gender studies at The University of Melbourne. In a country with a population at the time of just 220,000, 90 per cent of women participated. And the impact was palpable. Factories had to slow down or stop operations for the day. Men, with no one to look after the kids, took them into work; they bribed them with sweets and, at home with no one to make the dinner, resorted to ready-made meals (in supermarkets, sausages sold out). The daily newspaper Morgun-

blaðið published half the usual number of pages with women returning to the newsroom after midnight to help push it through. The day was referred to as “the long Friday”; without women, men found life tough. As attendee Elin Olafsdottir told The Guardian: “It was the real grassroots. It was, in all seriousness, a quiet revolution.” “Women’s Day Off”, of course, came on the coattails of a larger worldwide movement. On 26 August 1970, 50,000 women had marched on New York’s Fifth Avenue, literally stopping traffic. As Time magazine had written shortly beforehand, “virtually all of the nation’s systems - industry, unions, the professions, the military, the universities, even the organisations of the New Left - [were] quintessentially masculine establishments.”

The day women walked out

In Iceland the strike had a long-lasting effect: just five years later, in 1980, divorced single mother Vigdís Finnbogadóttir won the election - and became the world’s first democratically elected female president (see interview on page 69). At the time of the strike only a meagre nine women had ever won seats in Icelandic parliament. Vigdís, however, went on to hold her post for 16 years, and by 1999 over a third of all MPs in the country were female. Today Iceland is considered one of the world’s most progressive countries for women’s rights. Non-transferable paid parental leave was introduced in 2000. Just under eighty per cent of women work. There are mandatory quotas for corporate boards. As a result, Iceland has come first in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index for the last nine years. Economics editor of ITV News, Noreena Hertz, wrote in The Guardian in 2016 that one clue to Iceland’s success is its unique history: “For

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Activism

centuries, this seafaring nation’s women stayed at home as their husbands traversed the oceans. Without men at home, women played the roles of farmer, hunter, architect, builder. They managed household finances and were crucial to the country’s ability to prosper.” Battles remain, however. Last year, the country held another protest. Women left work at precisely 2.38pm on Monday 24th October. The timing was symbolic. Women still earn 14 to 18 per cent less than male colleagues in Iceland, meaning that during an eight-hour workday they are effectively toiling without pay after 2.38pm. Iceland Review reported that, based on trends over the decade, it will take another 52 years to achieve pay equality - a figure Iceland’s women weren’t going to take sitting down. President of the Icelandic Confederation of Labor, Gylfi Arnbjörnsson told national broadcaster RUV: “No one puts up with waiting 50 years to reach a goal. It doesn’t

matter whether it’s a gender pay gap or any other pay gap. It’s just unacceptable to say we’ll correct this in 50 years. That’s a lifetime.” Protests in Iceland work. In January the government introduced a new law requiring businesses with 25 or more staff to prove that they are paying men and women the same amount. So what can the rest of the world learn from Iceland, in particular in the era of Trump? Globally the pay gap widened in 2017, according to the Global Gender Gap Report - for the first time since reporting began in 2006. In Australia, the Workplace Gender Equality Agency states that more than two-thirds of unpaid work, amounting to some $650 billion annually, is done by women. Australian women, meanwhile, suffer a 27 per cent gender pay gap. Australia sits at number 35 on the Global Gender Gap Report. “The cultural idiom of ‘she’ll be right’ is actually an incredible insight into the psyche of Australians in that

Today Iceland is considered one of the world’s most progressive countries for women’s rights.

Photo: Women’s History Archives

Activism

Photo: Women’s History Archives

Photo: Women’s History Archives

we prefer to absolve ourselves of responsibility to motivate change. That speaks to a misplaced trust in a system that is fundamentally flawed as well as a pervasive sense of slovenliness,” says filmmaker Sophie Mathieson, director of For Film’s Sake (FFS). In 2016, Mathieson and fifteen others crashed Australia’s film and television academy in Sydney dressed up as giant sausages, making headlines nationally. They wanted to protest what Mathieson calls “Australia’s biggest sausage party”: in the film industry, just 16 per cent of film directors, 23 per

cent of screenwriters, and 32 percent of producers are women. “It’s fundamental we defend our rights and challenge those who threaten them,” she says. “Protest can never be a polite act, it’s messy and confronting but essentially it’s one of the only ways to convey a sense of solidarity between those whose rights have been impinged.” Echoing the march of 1975 are, of course, today’s Women’s March rallies, which have brought millions of women together in over 600 marches held worldwide. The protests are reactive: there is a fear

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The day women walked out

that under Donald Trump’s policies and rhetoric, rights will be eroded not just in America, but globally. While these are a start they “arguably do not have the clarity of demands and foundation in working class organisations that the 1975 strike in Iceland had,” points out McCann. “The overall lesson here might be that marches and strikes are most effective if they focus on clear and concrete demands relating to gender and economics, rather than more general demands for equality.” Still, “if the women’s marches continue year on year, then essentially they are achieving a kind of endurance protest, which I think is clever and may do much in the creation of new feminist traditions,” argues Mathieson. “I think it’s important not to position one action as a game-changer but rather to see that all actions, big and little, collective and individual, work together to achieve a shared outcome.” In Iceland, at least, women can look to the past for inspiration. In the 1975 strike one of the speakers’ husbands was asked by a co-worker why he let his woman “howl” in public places, adding: “I would never let my woman do such a thing.” As the BBC reported, the husband shot back: “She is not the sort of woman who would ever marry a man like you.”

Editorial by Sara Maitland Galloway, Scotland

Feminism

Photography: Jacques Demarthon, Daniel Leal Olivas

2018 ought to be a big celebration year for women in the UK. One hundred years ago we won the right to vote.

By Sara Maitland

Photo: Jacques Demarthon, AFP

And 100 years on

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Feminism

Photo: Daniel Leal Olivas, AFP

2018 ought to be a big celebration year for women in the UK. One hundred years ago we won the right to vote. Fifty years ago the Women’s Liberation Movement began to emerge in Britain. It is, obviously, much harder to put a precise date on the second of these landmarks. We know to the day, probably to

the precise time, when the law was passed allowing votes for women (or for some of them, to be precise - the Act simultaneously enfranchised all men previously excluded and property owning women over 30. More males than females were given the vote for the first time in 1918). The Act is a clear landmark

victory, despite its now rather bizarre limitations; the beginnings of the ‘second wave’ of feminism is much harder to define. This is partly because equality for women is still a work in progress. In 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which can be seen as a first British

Feminism

We know we have not got equality yet; the dreary statistics barely change - globally women are poorer than men, we have less access to education, we do more of the world’s work, we are the victims of more crime and more violence even though we are less likely to commit crimes. And so it goes on.

attempt at feminist theory. She never mentions the vote - nor indeed most of the concerns which have become identified with feminism in the subsequent 200+ years. She believed that women should “toughen up”, abandon delicacy and sensibility as the fundamental expression of the “feminine” and the key to this was better education. Any practical idea that women should have a vote, should have representation, would wait another half-century until John Stuart Mill introduced the first Parliamentary attempt to enfranchise women in 1866. It failed totally. It

took over 50 years and a great deal of political work to achieve women’s suffrage. It was a very important symbol, but just a beginning. The wider feminism project is much more nebulous, no one can ‘give us’ equal rights of the kind that second wave feminism has struggled to articulate and then to demand. We know we have not got equality yet; the dreary statistics barely change - globally women are poorer than men, we have less access to education, we do more of the world’s work (although we have less choice about what work we do), we are the

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And 100 years on

victims of more crime and more violence even though we are less likely to commit crimes. And so it goes on. Women win the right to vote and women vote (to a slightly greater extent in the UK than men do). We win the right, for example, to equal pay for equal work (1970) and lo and behold 48 years later we have not got it. The failure to achieve that sends us back to structural questions, ‘why’ and ‘who’ questions which are rippled through with complexity and desire. What causes this worldwide inequality, especially in a global economy which has extremely little need for workers to be taller, or physically stronger? What do we do about it? While clearly defined issues can be argued for, and won, the second wave of feminism was more organic - we are probably not even sure what ‘winning’ would be. In 1963, some miles south of Iceland, something happened that was both strangely magical and perfectly explicable. A totally new island emerged from the North Atlantic Ocean. It is called Surtsey, named after Sutr, a Norse fire giant. It did not float up gently or bob to the surface; it exploded violently out of the depths of the sea in a volcanic eruption which lasted for four years and produced enough laval rock to create an island of over one square mile in area and with an elevation of 509ft (155m) above sea level (as well as the 426ft/130m drop down from the surface to the sea bed). This extraordinary demonstration of power was caused by activity along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge - a long ridge stretching right down to the Equator where it turns into the South Atlantic Ridge. It is a rift in our planet’s surface through which molten material pushes up from the

And 100 years on

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Feminism

“You are,” said someone to me recently, “often described as a feminist.” I wanted to reply, “I’m not described as a feminist, I AM a feminist.”

Photo: Daniel Leal Olivas, AFP

Feminism

mantle, the hot centre of the world. This fissure does not just create volcanoes and earthquakes - the emerging material is what is pushing the continental plates of America and Europe apart and widening the Atlantic Ocean, slowly but surely. Surtsey has become one of my favourite images for feminism, partly because the theory of Tectonics, the idea that things - things as large as continents - move and change if we apply enough pressure and have enough patience (if there is nothing inevitable and motionless about the continents then there certainly does not have to be something inevitable and unchanging about gender roles in society!) was developed in the 1960s just as the second wave of feminism was emerging, building up a head of hot power, deep in the cultural consciousness. There were, as there often are, pre-warnings of the eruption that built Surtsey while it was piling up its roots under the water; the creation of the island above the surface was violent - rocks were hurled around, tremors were felt, people were (not unreasonably) alarmed. The first investigators to land on the new island and try and see what was happening had to leave very quickly as its tremors and instability made it too dangerous for the visitors. But after a few years the explosions, eruptions, and excitements calmed down. Life forms - both botanical and zoological - began to colonise the recently formed island. There is soil with grasses and flowers as well as lichens and mosses on Surtsey now; there are breeding and passing migrant birds - fourteen different species have been seen there. The UN has given Surtsey a specially protected status because of how

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And 100 years on

much it can teach us all about how growth and life can arrive on apparently barren ground, and how different species can support and nourish each other - birds improve the soil for plants; plants provide nourishment for birds. Surtsey will not always be there. It is eroding steadily and has already lost about half of its maximum area and a good deal of its elevation; but for geological reasons the erosion rate is slowing down - the island is firmer, stronger and tougher, even as it becomes calmer and more fruitful. Nonetheless most of the experts calculate that it will remain above sea level for perhaps another century, before it disappears from sight - although of course its underwater base structure will last much longer. That seems to me to be a reasonably good estimate for feminism too. It may get more peaceful, less contested as time goes on but it will still produce new life forms, new ways of being - and eventually, we hope it will return to the sea, having taught us all a great deal, and merge into the always changing always moving human pursuit of justice and equality. “You are,” said someone to me recently, “often described as a feminist.” I wanted to reply, “I’m not described as a feminist, I AM a feminist.” I am a feminist just as Surtsey is an island. It was a new explosive thing to be in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It is quieter now - but I will be a post-feminist only in post-patriarchy. Inequality and injustice to women continue to matter to me. I am in this for the long haul.

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir

The World’s First Female Head of State Interview by Stav Dimitropoulos

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Interview by Stav Dimitropoulos Athens, Greece

Interview

The World’s First Female Head of State

Artwork: Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan

Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was the world’s first democratically-elected female president, her presidency lasting a lengthy sixteen years. She is the longest-serving elected female head of state of any country, and Iceland’s only female president.

Your election followed the 1975 Icelandic women’s strike. Why do you think the people of Iceland elected you for this role? People knew me because I’d been on television programs and they knew what I had to say. Then, they also knew me as a theatre director (of the Reykjavík Theatre Company). So, I’m very proud of the fact that they had confidence in me. I have to stress I was never a politician though, and that the President of Iceland is not politically elected as in other countries. He or she does not belong to a political party. You ran against three male candidates while you were a divorced single mother. You were also the first single woman to adopt a child in Iceland. Did this have any effect on your candidacy? No, that would be old-fashioned. Being a single mother was not a handicap in my case. Is Iceland a progressive country? We are a Nordic society and we are very democratic and, well, this was back in the 1980s. We were taking solid steps out of conservative,

hierarchical societies, giving women more space and power. And it was quite natural after the Icelandic women’s strike to look for a woman in an election and it so happened that they thought of me. It took time to convince me, I assure you. Why is that? Because I was a woman. I thought to myself, “Why should I do this? This is not the field of women,” especially since I had not been in politics. What actually convinced me was a telegram from a fisherman. I received a beautiful telegram from a fisherman who was out fishing at sea. He asked me to stand up for them, and I realised that fishermen who work at sea know that women ashore take care of everything. They know what women are capable of doing; they know women can do everything at home. So, they convinced me, my wonderful fishermen of Iceland. The beautiful and wonderful thing is they never told me they regretted it. You have been a role model for women. Is that important to you? I have inspired women because they can say, “If she can do it, I can

too.” So, yes, I’ve encouraged women and I always encourage them to study as much as they can. I can’t stress that enough. Girls who get educated are as skilful as men. You see women all over the world now at the very forefront of science. But women are not at the forefront of building war, they’re against war. Why are women against war? Women are on the Earth for life. They give life to humankind. Are women inherently more pacifist due to the fact that they give birth? Maybe they are just very intelligent. Please describe for us the eventful Women’s Day Off strike in 1975… It was never really considered to be a strike. It was supposed to be a day off and not a strike. It had been prepared so ladies working out of home or at home should leave their posts. They should ask their bosses, “Can I have two hours this afternoon because I am going to join the ladies in the community and

The World’s First Female Head of State

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Interview

working around the theatre. They asked me whether they could go, because I was the boss. And I said you have to decide that for yourselves but I’m going. So we all went.

which proved what part women played in running society. And then in 1980, when we came to the Presidential Election, people were looking around to have a woman among the candidates.

You’ve worked as a theatre director and as an academic. Do politics and theatre have much in common? The theatre is really a better school to go to. Politics is always linked to certain parties. You belong to a certain party and you speak for a certain party. But in theatre, you are analysing the human being from 10am when you start rehearsals until 11pm at night. You can take Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, whatever literature you have, and analyse the human characters for a whole day or for a whole season and, if that is not a good preparation for politics or political parties or for the Parliament or for becoming a president, then what is? Theatre is about understanding people.

Did you also go out on the street that day? Well, I was a theatre director and we were close to having an opening night and I heard a knock on my door. Outside the door were the ladies of the theatre and there were many - both performers and those

In 1986 you hosted a summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev… It was a meeting between two very powerful gentlemen. Iceland is a stepping stone in the Atlantic Ocean situated between these two superpowers, and we were hoping

Photo: Geir Ólafsson

the women in Reykjavík?” Men, of course, had heard about it because it had been prepared for a long time. So, they automatically said, “Yes, of course, my dear, you can go”. It was only supposed to last for three to four hours. So women of the country left their working places and also their homes to go to a meeting where they could listen to speeches and sing and point out that their situation was inferior to that of men. But what men hadn’t anticipated was that society came to a halt. Factories paused, banks paused, everything paused,

Interview

that something would be signed here in Iceland. But nothing was signed. But we all realised, myself included, as I attended the meeting, that a door had been opened. Did you at any point feel intimidated by the significance of the meeting? I was never intimidated. If anything I was realistic, realising how important that meeting actually was amidst the Cold War. I focused on hope for a positive result. But I was only the formal hostess. I had nothing to do with the meeting. I mean they visited us and we had good conversations and met later on, but I was not a participant in the negotiation and neither were Icelanders. Iceland was only chosen as the venue of the meeting. In today’s interconnected world, do smaller nations have more power? Smaller nations can set an example, because it’s easier for smaller nations to reach the population. Bigger countries could take lessons, for instance, in the way smaller nations are protecting the environment. But we need to protect the language of

smaller nations. There is wisdom in all languages, and if we lose our many languages, we lose contact with the past. I’m very concerned about it. We are now seeing a domination of one language, which is the English language. My personal opinion is that you should never, ever, suffocate memory.

Women have been very strong in many fields but were suffocated by an old tradition of male-dominated societies.

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The World’s First Female Head of State

The languages of the world - in excess of 5,000 - are the memory banks and we have to remember where we come from, who we are, why we are here, and who our ancestors were what they did, and what they wrote. In Iceland, we have this tremendous heritage in literature, worldknown sagas and the most horrible thing is that we know we are losing our memory. Losing our language is losing our memory, and losing our memory is dementia. A statement you’ve once said is: “Never try to be a man if you’re a woman”. Can you please elaborate on that? Women have been very strong in many fields but were suffocated by an old tradition of male-dominated societies. You have to admit that men are bellicose. They go to war, they plan war. Women are not into war. All fathers know about their daughter’s intelligence, but fathers have the tendency to follow the fashion of society. What is your advice to women of the world? Get educated, get educated, get educated. Education is the key to all.

Eliza Reid

The First Lady of Iceland Interview by Stav Dimitropoulos

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Interview by Stav Dimitropoulos Athens, Greece

Interview

The First Lady of Iceland

Artwork: Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan

Eliza Reid, from Ottawa, met her future husband, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson while studying at university in England and then followed him to his homeland, Iceland. In June 2016, Guðni Th. Jóhannesson was elected Iceland’s President and Eliza became Iceland’s First Lady. Today Eliza is the United Nations Special Ambassador for Tourism and the Sustainable Development Goals.

You are Canadian, yet relocated to Iceland, another cold climate… I moved to Iceland for love. My husband and I met in graduate school in England and if we were going to be together it was going to be in Iceland. But maybe the fact that I know winters, I know cold climates, it’s just something that’s in my bones; I’m used to it. Dark winters have taken some adjustment. Also, I have always enjoyed Iceland’s open-minded, welfare-state mentality. We have four children and I have always found Iceland to be a wonderful place to raise a family. How difficult was it adjusting to life in a new country? One thing I did immediately, sort of upon arriving here, was to try to put a big effort into learning to speak Icelandic. For a European language, I suppose it’s a difficult language to learn, but locals generally speak excellent English so it is possible to live here without learning a single word of Icelandic. Yet, because I knew I was always going to be either living here, or at least have a strong connection to the country, it was important for me to learn the language and so I think this has helped me from the beginning. Since I moved here, I thought to myself that I have just as much right to be here as anybody else and sort of behaved accordingly.

Why is ‘sustainable’ tourism important for Iceland? I think it’s a matter of both protecting not just our natural assets but also our cultural assets. The idea of sustainability is to develop tourism, locations, and sites in such a way that they can be enjoyed for future generations. How confident are you that Iceland can retain its unique culture as rising numbers of tourists enter the country each year? In Iceland, so many jobs have been created recently in the tourism industry that we are importing labour because we don’t have enough people here on this island already to take on these jobs... Sometimes there is this perception abroad that Icelandic culture has been very isolated. Ten per cent of our population is now foreign born. I am one of the 10 per cent who was born and raised somewhere else and yet feel Icelandic and fully part of society. Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates travelled very little in his life, claiming that physically leaving home is not necessarily the secret to the good life. Must we leave home to travel? Personally, I would say that physically visiting places, meeting people, experiencing cultures is

undoubtedly very important to expanding one’s worldview. Of course we are not all able to do that and there are many ways of experiencing cultures and learning about the world even if we are not able to travel. We can still experience other worlds through literature, music, food, cuisine, and other things like that, for example. I think one of the joys of travelling for me personally is what happens through serendipity or happenstance - the things that you don’t predict. In an age of rising income inequality, how should tourists behave towards locals of the host country they’re visiting? If I come from a wealthy country and visit a much poorer country, it’s not particularly culturally sensitive to wear my [expensive watch]. That is why it is important to educate ourselves as tourists, to develop cultural sensitivity and awareness. Also, tourists must be cognisant of where their money goes. Who owns that hotel where they are staying, or who owns that gas station? Is it a big international chain, or is it a locally owned and operated business? I think that’s our responsibility: to educate ourselves about the different places we are visiting so that we can be responsible tourists.

Gary Snyder

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“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.”

Gary Snyder

Illustration: Monica Barengo

Birds in her paintings are a symbol of freedom and a desire to live that way.

View from my window Interview with Jeanie Tomanek

I’m nobody, by Jeanie Tomanek

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Interview with Jeanie Tomanek Georgia, United States

Tell us a little about yourself. I live in Marietta, Georgia, United States, a suburb of Atlanta. Fortunately for me, my favourite thing is painting. I always drew and painted but never considered it as a career until 18 years ago at age 50. Tell us a little about your everyday life as a painter, and the view from your window. I rise early, usually by 5am. I let my dogs Lily and Annie out, feed them, make coffee while they’re eating. I settle in my library on the old beat-up loveseat, start drinking my coffee, share a gingersnap with the girls, check messages on my phone, and then do my ‘morning pages’ (three long, hand-written pages, as prescribed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way). I’ve been doing this practice for more than 25 years. It is a brain dump to get rid of all the minutiae and little worries that distract me. After these are finished, I will read a novel for a while, waiting for my husband Dennis to get up. After breakfast and a shower and a walk with the dogs, I’m in the studio by 9am. The studio itself is a 15-foot square room just off the kitchen with access to the backyard. There are windows on two sides - one facing north and the other east. I can see the backyard and the picket fenced vegetable garden where I grow tomatoes and cucumbers. In the summer we have lantanas and roses in the flower beds. Out one window I can see my neighbour Maureen’s beautiful English-style flower beds.

Art

How do you start a painting? The beginnings of a painting can come from many places but will almost always be fuelled by something that I am compelled to explore further. This could be my own experience, or the timeless quality of myth, poetry or folklore. When I first began painting, many of the themes were ones I’d explored in poetry I’d written. It was my main creative outlet until I decided to devote myself to painting. The common denominator is the translation of that exploration through my lens as a woman. More recently, I have let the process guide me - just start applying paint and colour and see what comes up. They may even be completely abstract. If I want to work with a greater degree of spontaneity, I will use acrylics for their fast-drying properties, but my usual medium is oil, sometimes mixed with cold wax or applied atop an acrylic sketch. I work mainly on canvas, but when using cold wax, I need to use wood panels to stand up to the scraping and rolling necessary. The female characters in your scenes are interconnected with nature in some way, with trees, the ocean, birds, the moon. Why is this? I believe that my childhood, growing up on a farm, running loose in nature, is the reason that the natural world calls to me when I’m trying to explore a theme. I was a tomboy and spent any free time outdoors: climbing trees, swimming in the creek, catching frogs and crayfish, picking wildflowers for my

View from my window

Artwork: Jeanie Tomanek

mother, helping in the vegetable garden, unearthing fossils, pretending I was an Indian brave, sledding and skating in the winter. Nature was the best teacher. What does the bird symbolise in your paintings? Different birds are different things. Hawks are a spirit totem for me as they always seem to appear in my life to bring messages and good tidings - of the promise of freedom and perhaps a return to the wild child. Crows and ravens are darker and more mysterious and I think for me are a shadier side of my ego or personality. Maybe something I’m afraid of or hesitant to explore except through imagination. Overall, they are freedom and my desire to live that way, even when I can’t quite manage it. An ideal of flying free. Your female character is often on a journey to someplace. She’s walking uphill, sailing. She is rarely inside. Why is this? Until you asked the question, I never much thought about why she’s rarely inside. Perhaps because she can’t really go on that journey until she leaves her home behind and strikes out on her own. I’d like to think that my life so far has been a journey of discovery and I think that’s a universal wish most of us have. The wish for enough strength and courage to leave the familiar and go toward the unknown is something I like to depict for my women protagonists. I think it speaks to many.

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Editorial by Lucy Treloar Melbourne, Australia

The last great auk

Artwork: Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan

Ornithology

Why would the Icelanders have taken such risks to capture just two auks?

The last great auk By Lucy Treloar

It would have been cold on the June day in 1844 that the last great auk died. Even in midsummer Iceland’s weather is described as “cold, windy and cloudy”, with a daytime air temperature of 12°C and a sea temperature that hovers around 7°C. Nonetheless, almost 200 years ago twelve men rowed a boat through a heaving grey sea towards Eldey Island, 16 kilometres off the Reykjanes Peninsula on the volcanic southwest coast of Iceland, a journey that people today still describe as “dangerous and nausea-inducing”. They were in pursuit of a valuable prize, a great auk (Pinguinus impennis), but set out in hope rather than expectation, so rare had the birds become. They would not have known of the auk captured in Scotland four years earlier, kept alive in a boat, its legs bound, for three days. Or that when a storm blew, the superstitious

sailors, fearing the bird had conjured the weather, stoned the poor creature to death. The Icelanders departed in the evening and rowed through the three-hour summer night towards Eldey Island, finally spying the dramatic column of sheer cliffs - 77 metres high, with an area of only three hectares - rearing from the sea after dawn. I think of them drawing closer, the heavy waves breaking on the island’s only landing place, a rocky ledge reaching into the sea. Seabirds wheel and call overhead, the wind buffets, and the island seethes with nesting birds. One of the men who plans to go ashore changes his mind in fear of the perilous conditions. A wave swells and three fishermen leap from boat to shore, scrambling for safety before the next wave arrives. They scramble up the steep cliffs, and in

the sea of gannets up top sight a pair of great auks. The lifelong mates are as large in life as they have become in death: almost one metre tall, flightless, black-backed and white-bellied (like the penguins named after them), with long powerful grooved beaks, tiny wings, stubby legs and large webbed feet. They are the only ones of their kind there, or probably anywhere in the world. At sight of the charging men the birds do their best to flee. One of the men slips, and looking back sees the remains of the beautiful cream and brown marbled auk egg that he has crushed. It’s a loss, but there are two more men to complete the job. Despite the encumbrances of their skin coats and breeches and their heavy boots, they outpace the clumsy birds. One is cornered, but the other keeps on. Sigurður Ísleifsson, one of the fishermen, later describes

The last great auk

its capture: “It walked like a man… but moved its feet quickly. [I] caught it close to the edge - a precipice many fathoms deep… I took him by the neck and he flapped his wings. He made no cry. I strangled him.” There, it is done: the world’s last two great auks and their offspring have been slayed. To imagine this scene, to understand the loss it represents, is to experience something like grief. The species’ extinction is a lament that sings down the centuries. Dig a little deeper to discover how it happened and the story becomes more complex. Clumsy on land but superb swimmers, the great auk had very specific requirements for its sixweek breeding season, the only time it came to land: remote and rocky islands with sloping access to the ocean and an abundant food supply. Although suitable places were rare, hundreds of thousands of breeding pairs occupied the 20 nesting colonies that dotted the North Atlantic in an arc from Newfoundland in the east to Scotland in the west.

Illustration: Aida Novoa and Carlos Egan

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Ornithology

They were in pursuit of a valuable prize, a great auk, but set out in hope rather than expectation, so rare had the birds become. The auk had been valuable to humans for millennia. Remains from 75,000 years ago have been found in Gibraltar, and they appear in Stone Age paintings, ancient burial sites, and even household rubbish in Iceland from the tenth century. The advent of the great maritime age that began in the sixteenth century accelerated their use as food, bait, and even fuel during the summer hunting season when fishermen camped on the treeless islands for weeks at a time. A 1622 account describes hundreds of great auks being driven onto boats “as if God had made the innocency of so poor a creature to be-

come such an admirable instrument for the sustenation of Man.” By the late 1700s the rate of destruction for their down, in great demand for stuffing mattresses, was “incredible” said one trader. It’s no wonder that they became scarce. People knew they were endangered; petitions to protect them were granted and yet the slaughter continued. But why would the Icelanders have taken such risks to capture just two auks? At the beginning of the nineteenth century a scant 16 percent of Icelanders had access to the sea and its lucrative fishing opportunities. Coastal landowners employed male and female farm labourers who doubled as fishermen in a system very like serfdom. A worker’s payment was shelter, board and some clothing, but seldom any salary; profits of their fishing went to their employer. For such people there was almost no chance of escape from poverty. It was rare for Icelanders to be permitted to marry unless they owned land. There was a loophole in the system of payment, though - the rare circumstance of a ‘lucky

Ornithology

One of the men slips, and looking back sees the remains of the beautiful cream and brown marbled auk egg that he has crushed.

haul’ (happadráttur or ábati), which allowed fisherwomen and men to keep a portion of a catch to sell. Perhaps the last great auks were a ‘lucky haul’ representing a life-changing windfall to their captors. After all, a single bird was worth an annual wage. (It’s worth remembering the fishermen’s equivalents today: the wildlife poachers and smugglers of every continent in the world.) As for who would buy such a bird, in the Victorian era of wealthy gentlemen collectors any great auk specimen was highly prized. “Ironically”, notes an article in New Scientist, “the end came not as a result of commercial exploitation, but from science.” Considered like this, the unbearably sad Eldey Island story at least becomes more comprehensible. It is not simply an exemplar of wanton destruction and human greed followed by the desolate thought of millions of years of evolution being snuffed out in a frantic chase. It’s about the final moments of a long process, men who saw these birds as a harvest that might change

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The last great auk

their lives, and wealthy collectors who thought of nothing but themselves then, as they do now. In 1856 British naturalists John Wolley and Alfred Newton arrived in Iceland in search of auks. Finding none they interviewed the fishermen who killed the last ones known. Afterwards, Newton developed a “peculiar attraction… to extinct and disappearing faunas”, and lobbied for one of the first wildlife protection laws: the Act for the Preservation of Sea Birds. History is a long arc and it is some solace, however small, that a little good came of these dreadful deaths. Statues of great auks can be found dotted around the world, including one on Reykjanes that gazes towards Eldey Island. They are not only reminders of human excess, but also in some ways judges and messengers from the past. “We were here once,” they seem to say, and also, “Do better for this beautiful world.” We could all listen.

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

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womankind’s smartphone challenge Can you refrain from using your smartphone for five days? Womankind readers embarked on a challenge of looking up at the world, rather than down at their phone. Here’s how they fared.

Rowan Montgomery  Day one: This morning I have to get to Cambridge for work, so last night I carefully wrote down my ticket reference number and train schedule, but still, the anxiety hits me as soon as I get to the station. Without music in my ears to soften the stress of a crowded commute, and citymapper to secure me when travelling somewhere new, I’m an anxious mess, eyes darting and feet shuffling on the platform. By the time I arrive in Cambridge two hours later, I feel equal parts proud for not reaching for my phone and terrified

that I have to do that journey sans phone and sans security blanket on the way home. Day two: My phone sends me to sleep at night, wakes me up in the morning, and tells me the weather outside. This morning, instead of scrolling the weather app, I open a window. I brave the commute minus a protective barrier of music and manage to read three chapters of my book. That night, I have a date with my boyfriend. I email him the event details at work, so I have no excuse to reach for my phone. Unfortunately, on the way there he has to deal with a work crisis. In between navigating, he makes calls and sends messages. The frustration of having to halt every time he pauses our navigation, to check in with work, makes me want to chew off my own elbow. Day three: Tonight I have plans to meet my friend for dinner in Soho. I’ve written down walking directions from the station to

the restaurant and on the train ride over I repeat them to myself like a mantra. Arriving at the station I’m swept out of the exit by a crowd of commuters and proceed to hover nervously near the exit. Usually, I’d whip out Google maps and stalk off with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where they’re going. Tonight, I put my glasses on and peer up at street names, trying to match the directions in my head to the path I’m walking. In the end, I enjoy the early evening stroll unaided by a little blue dot on my phone. Once at the restaurant I find our table and sit. Five minutes pass, then ten, then fifteen. The waitress comes over twice to ask if “everything is OK”. I try to explain that I don’t have a phone but my friend is DEFINITELY coming, while my face burns from the awkwardness of sitting alone at a table. My friend finally arrives 30 minutes late (train delays) by which point I’ve walked outside to check for her twice, ordered and drunk

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half a carafe of wine and eaten so many prawn crackers I’ve started to lose feeling in my tongue. At the end of the night, I read my book on the train home, relieved that I don’t have access to my phone and the inevitable Instagram double-tap frenzy that comes after a few glasses of red. Day four: I wake a little hungover and decide to walk to my local coffee shop for a caffeine hit. The venue is way too cool for me and I always feel a little inferior while I wait for my coffee, but today without my phone as a shield I begin to shrink inside myself. My nervousness increases as the anxiety of standing there with nothing to occupy my hands or brain while I wait begins to overwhelm me. Why didn’t I bring my book? But more importantly, what has happened to my imagination? My confidence? My attention span? My phone is a tool I use to survive the intensity of London, but this morning, standing alone in this hipster coffee shop, it’s becoming clear what my phone usage is costing me. I finally get my coffee and head to the supermarket where I promptly forget half my groceries because I can’t pull up my list on my phone. I head home deflated, the realisation of what my phone reliance is doing to my brain and my memory weighing heavily on me. Day five: It’s my final phoneless day and I wake with an odd sense of unease: I’m not sure I want to go back to my old ways tomorrow. I head to Covent Garden to meet a friend for lunch, and it feels natural to pull out my book while I wait, instead of mindlessly scrolling through social media. After lunch, I wander through some shops, but without the ease of transferring money from my savings account, I leave empty-handed and

with a sense of frugal achievement. Later, I walk to the cinema to meet my boyfriend. It’s been snowing all day and it’s utterly silent save for the crunch of my feet on the ground, and the distant yells of a drunk guy outside Sainsbury’s. For the first time since this challenge started, it feels nice not to be isolated by headphones. After the movies, I realise the challenge is done and I can indulge in my phone. But I find I’m reluctant to start re-downloading my apps or Whatsapping my friends. I’ve noticed this week that my phone is like a toddler, constantly demanding attention and drawing my focus away from the task at hand. I’m not quite willing to revert to a Nokia 3310, but I am willing to try and reduce my reliance on my phone, not only for my health, but for the sake of my relationships too.

Naomi Barnbaum Day one: Last year was meant to be the year I read War and Peace. See, last year was the year an auto-immune disease forced me to take a year off work. Last year was the year I would have the time and mental space to voraciously consume all the books on my ‘to read’ pile, study a language, create a crafting cottage industry. Instead, last year was the

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

year I became addicted to my phone and my attention span collapsed. It’s 10.45am and I’ve already used my smartphone for 27 minutes today. I know this because, in readiness for this experiment, I downloaded an app to monitor and supposedly curb my phone use. The majority of these minutes are the result of a futile mental battle when I woke this morning: every morning, through bleary eyes, the first thing I do is reach for my phone, scroll through social media, check emails, and scan through three news websites. Today, I tried to resist - I even told myself I could watch the news on television for a delightfully old-fashioned change - but 26 minutes of phone use tells you I failed. Day two: Initially, my idea was to put my phone in a drawer for five days. Then I realised that, without a landline, I needed it for calls. I thought about resurrecting a decidedly unsmart phone I found in a cluttered cupboard, then realised sim cards don’t fit in these anymore. So I allowed myself calls. But then I wanted to listen to music while I walked, and short of carrying about my laptop like an enlarged and demented Discman, I couldn’t think of another solution other than expanding the rules to allow calls and music. It’s just so simple to have everything on your phone! Or, it’s just so hard to not turn straight to your phone. The hardest thing has been feeling disconnected from the world’s happenings. “Did you hear Stephen Hawking died?” No. I didn’t. I’ve realised being informed is a large part of my ego, and I feel strangely anxious and unsettled. Day three: I know why my smartphone addiction snowballed: I was - I am - terribly lonely. For

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

a thirty-year old professional, a year of health-imposed exile from the spaces of my peers has been incredibly isolating. Most days, my body allows me to leave the house maybe once for a short period. The immediacy of the internet as an extension of my small and solitary world became a substitute for authentic daily interaction. My news obsession makes me feel part of a world I can’t walk in, and social media replaces human connection. I post often, inanely, in what is really a flag waving saying “please remember me! I’m still here!”. But a reliance on this replacement has gone too far: the ease of it hypnotises me to stay in my small world, allowing me to shape perceptions of my disability through what I share on social media, rather than permit the true intimacy of having people see me as I am, or gamble my daily allotment of energy on setting up a lunch date, or visiting a museum. In short, my smartphone has made me scared. But not using it, these past few days, has made me, nervously, turn outwards for entertainment. Day four: The main thing I want to achieve through this experiment is breaking my reflexive reach for my phone when I’m feeling flat or bored: a pause in conversation; an ad break; a slow moment. This need for constant but low-level distraction is like snacking on junk food - momentarily filling, but not at all satisfying. I find myself, dozens of times per day, flicking back and forth through social media, refreshing, scrolling, mindlessly chewing on junk. I’ve numbed myself - to the loneliness, the pain, and the disappointment of my reality. But I’ve also numbed my mind. This creeping habit has

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soiled my love of reading. I haven’t been able to stick with a work of literature for over a year. My mind grows restless and wanders, and I’ve been feeding it, allowing it to look up something on my phone and then meander down every rabbit hole. The book falls next to me, barely started, despondently abandoned. Now on day four, I catch myself longing for my phone (parked on a high shelf in a far corner) - to keep me company, to fuel my buzzing and unfocused mind but, with determination, I grit my teeth and force myself to persist with my task. Day five: I’ve allowed myself some time to catch up on social media this morning. In a startling and comforting revelation, not only have I not missed much, but I’m a bit bored by what is there and I dispense with my smartphone more easily than usual. I’ve decided, from here, my smartphone will be there (on a high shelf) for me, but I will not be there for it. I will schedule time to open its box of curiosities, but I know I will need to slam the lid shut after that time. To have news and books and articles and music and calculators and converters and notes and podcasts and emails and administration with me at all times is incredibly easy. But it also makes me incredibly anxious, tired, and weighed down. So I have set myself some boundaries that align with how I want things to be: a life more present and vivid, a mind more disciplined and engaged. Simplicity and accessibility come with great responsibility: in this case, I must practise self-restraint. And the reward? Maybe this year will be the year I read War and Peace.

Ala Paredes  Day one: I’m lying in a dark bedroom at two in the afternoon, trapped under a sick one-year-old who has been latched on to my breast all week. Outside is a beautiful sunny day. Inside is the stuffy smell of unchanged sheets, dried milk, and my child’s sweat-matted hair. It’s the fifth day of her illness, and I reach for my phone to write a status update about it, in hopes of garnering the emotional support I rely on so heavily. But then I remember that I’m supposed to keep off my mobile for five days. They say parenting is one of the most important jobs in the world, but it sure involves a whole lot doing nothing. This week, my only purpose has been to be a warm body and a pair of breasts. Nothing else in my life gets done. There have been many days like this. My addiction to social media spiked when I became a stay-at-home-mum. All those hours alone, trapped in my apartment, made me hungry for human connection. Social media provided me with a support network of fellow mums who cheered me on, commiserated, gave advice, and above all, made me feel normal. But I know social media has gone way beyond its initial purpose because I find myself reaching for my mobile every twenty seconds as if to scratch a brain itch. After only a minute without it, my mind is already desperate to consume something, anything: an

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image, a glib status update, a news headline. What is so wrong with the here and now, and why do I so badly want to escape from it? Day two: After five days of staying home and caring for a sick child, all the days begin to look the same. The same messy bed, the same unwashed pyjamas albeit with new food stains. My daughter will only nurse and take no food or water. I love being a mum, but weeks like this send me into a sort of low-grade depression. I admit that I have taken a sneaky peek at social media every now and then, but I don’t like how it makes me feel, as though my brain’s just eaten junk food. I also hate how I can’t seem to keep off my phone 100 per cent. Becoming a parent makes you think a lot about time, mainly the time you don’t have. I ask myself, how much of my life have I given away to the internet? It clamours so much for my attention. Well-meaning friends and relatives messaging me, tagging me, liking status updates, asking about my sick baby. Social media doesn’t let you go without a fight, not when your relationships are elaborately entangled in its web. Social media is the glue that holds some of my friendships together. Would these friendships exist if social media were wiped off the internet? My child is finally napping and I make an attempt to change my pattern. I decide to paint. I’ve forgotten about the immediacy of watercolour. At that moment, there is only me and the paper. It feels purifying. Day three: My daughter is finally well enough to go to daycare today - a big relief for me. I’ve gone on my phone only twice. Once to congratulate a friend on her newborn baby, and another time to chat

with my parents. Both were meaningful interactions that enriched my day. I also tried to read the news but didn’t linger long. I wanted to leave space in my head to think my own thoughts. I picked up the ukulele and attempted to play a Filipino lullaby, a melancholy one that my grandmother used to make me sing as she lay terminally ill. Memories resurface. I sang it to her several times, and she would close her eyes and smile. But what I remember most was the day I didn’t sing it to her. I was afraid I would be too overcome with emotion and start crying. She looked disappointed that I wouldn’t sing it. I wish I’d said yes. Day four: My husband is home making breakfast. A pot of coffee bubbles on the benchtop. The baby is cooing happily, and a slanting line of morning sun drops in to say hello. Surrounded by the ones I love, I have little desire to scroll through social media. It’s easier to keep off my phone when I am not alone. I wonder how many other people use social media to self-medicate their loneliness and boredom? Yesterday I bought a plant. I automatically photographed it with the intention of posting it online. Then I asked myself why I felt the need to capture, crop, filter, and caption every moment of my life. Do I really need the watchful gaze of an audience in order to make an experience count? What would happen if I didn’t say anything about it on the internet? I refrained from posting the photo, and the itch went away. Life carried on as normal. But today, I decided to post it anyway. One day late. Day five: My mother is visiting from the Philippines. It’s been four months since I’ve seen her. She’s worried that the baby might not

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

remember her, even though they’ve been video-chatting every other week. But my daughter smiles as soon as she sees her grandmother. She squeals in delight as my mum tickles her and pushes her around the living room in a plastic crate. They spend the afternoon playing fetch with the dog. They are both ecstatic. I vacillate between capturing every precious moment on my mobile, or just taking it all in. Eventually I decide to snap a few photos to share with family. Later on that day, I spend five minutes on my mobile sharing it with a group thread on Messenger called “family”. My family is scattered around the world, and in the absence of each other’s physical presence, we chat to each other on Messenger every day. We discuss serious and trivial things, share memes, and random photos of our day. We stay pretty connected, more than most families maybe. Your mobile can either devalue or enhance your life and relationships, depending on how you use it.

Heather Wallace Day one: As a freelance writer I use my phone for business. I’ve challenged myself to use it only for calls and checking work-related email, and not plunge into the rabbit hole of social media. I break that resolve

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

at 8.32am. I’ve taken my mother to an early morning medical appointment and while we’re waiting I tell her about a phone interview I’m doing in a couple of hours with the star of a new production of Antony and Cleopatra. I take out the phone to search for a picture of the actress to show mum and without thinking go into social media and post, “I’m interviewing Cleopatra at 11am!” I console myself with the knowledge that later I only checked to see how many likes the post had on my iPad. The challenge didn’t mention iPads right? Day two: After my poor showing yesterday I buckle down to the challenge. My phone charges in the kitchen overnight and normally as I make a cup of tea in the morning I look at the phone, seeing if any messages came in overnight, checking the weather forecast on the app. Instead I ignore my phone and listen to the weather forecast on the radio. At work I force myself to leave the phone in my bag; it’s there if anyone rings but it isn’t tempting me to check it. I hear the ping of a social media private message, and I start to open my handbag then stop myself. I’ll wait until I’m home to read it on my iPad. Day three: I want to check on a friend who has been in hospital so I send her a message. I tell her about the challenge, adding I understand the irony of telling her via this message. She wishes me the best with the challenge. The phone stays on my desk after we’ve finished the conversation, just a tool - or so I think. There’s a point when I face a work hurdle and feel pressured. Without even thinking I grab my phone, typing in the passcode. I’m surprised at my reaction, it was automatic, I don’t even know what I wanted the phone

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for. I’m like a smoker, lighting up over a drink, not even aware of the action. Maybe I am addicted. I quickly put it in my bag and leave it there for the rest of the day. Day four: In the morning I go to a café with a book, wanting to just sit and read over a coffee, but the novel isn’t holding my attention. I look at the phone in my bag. I look away, don’t give in I tell myself. I go back to my book but I can’t focus. So, I give in and look at Twitter. A comedian I follow is in a new show and there’s a link at the bottom of the tweet; within a few minutes I’ve bought myself a ticket and had a conversation with him, all because of the phone. I tell myself if I hadn’t bought the ticket then I might have missed out. Day five: I manage better today, I put the phone down and don’t touch it. I’m at home so I can use other devices to communicate and stay in touch with the world. I even go for a long walk and leave the phone behind. And after five days of more careful use the battery is still charged. Am I addicted? I don’t know but I don’t think I could give the phone up permanently.

Kaila Valentine Day one: Last night I switched off my mobile data and Wi-Fi, rendering my smartphone about as

smart as the Motorola flip phone I pestered my parents for 15 years ago. Today I plan to take my 4-monthold daughter to a baby music class across town. I strap my kid into the car and attempt the 20-minute drive without using my Maps app. I head for the sea but the one-way streets don’t lend themselves to general direction driving and I find myself pushed in the opposite direction. I remember how it feels to be lost. I think about the days a trip to a new location meant consulting a dogeared street directory, navigating the grid reference system, tracing a finger over a train line or bus route and jotting down directions. I persevere and make it to the session on time. Day two: In the small hours of the morning I sit with the comforting weight of my feeding child in my arms. We are washed in golden lamplight not bathed in the blue light of my phone. Just the two of us. There is infinite space in the room tonight without the babble of the virtual crowd. I breathe my daughter deep into my lungs. I watch her heavy lids settle closed and stroke her cheek; feeling the rhythmic pull of her jaw under satin skin. There is only here and now. A feeling of regret begins to rise as I wonder how many perfect moments I have sacrificed when, in an idle moment, I felt for my phone. Day three: Today I didn’t communicate with another adult for eight and a half hours. My partner left for work. I sat my daughter on my knee while I ate my breakfast. I dragged her bouncer into the bathroom so she could see me while I showered. I put her down for a nap. I fed her. I sang her silly songs. I held her to the mirror so she could giggle at her reflection. I soothed her when

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she was distressed. I blew raspberries on the soles of her feet. I lay her down on the grass and watched her stare at the leaves of the fig tree stirring in the breeze. To be a mother is to know that joy and isolation can coexist. Where usually my day would be punctuated by virtual reminders that I am not alone - an email, a post, a tag, a comment - there were ellipses, in which the tiny world of my daughter and I expanded. Day four: Not long after my daughter was born I set up a messenger group to share photos of her with interstate relatives. I felt that the private messenger group would respect my daughter’s right to privacy while also providing a way for my family to feel connected to the new addition. My family adore the almost daily pictures and videos I send but I wonder how many times I have met my daughter’s glorious, wide smile with the back of my smartphone. A four-day break from posting to the group has prompted some of its members to plead for new photos. I wonder whether I have created a situation where people expect daily status updates not unlike those you might find on a regular social media page. I feel that despite my best intentions I have turned my daughter into ‘content’. Day five: My smartphone sabbatical has turned my head to beautiful experiences, the heady and delightful moments where I felt deeply connected to my child, a new street to travel down and a stranger’s smile I might have missed, but there’s one roll of toilet paper left at my place and my smartphone would never have let that happen. I have reached for my phone every morning for the past five days. Out of habit I turned to it for the weather, to check appointments

in my calendar, to make lunch dates and to add toilet paper to my shopping list app. I love my smartphone. It helps me stay organised, it keeps me informed and it makes me feel connected and social even on days I can’t make it through the front door. My smartphone is a handy tool for my modern life but I need to know when to put it down. I want to spend less time viewing my life through a lens. I want to lift the veil and take in the little moments like being lost or holding my child or feeling grass on my skin. Without the screen, it’s remarkable just how big those small perfect moments can be.

Kasia Lewieniec Day one: When I find out about the challenge I am away from home. I am on a two-week trip, visiting family and friends with my 1.5-year old toddler. I look at my phone, which I have been using mostly in hiding for the last six months. It’s a cliché by now, but I really don’t want my daughter to see me with my phone constantly in my hand, aimed at her face, asking for a smile or some funny face I will then share with family and friends. She’s asleep now. I take my phone out. I try to analyse it, separate it into imaginable parts. I don’t even have social media on it any more. One night I just decided to get rid of them, for the sake of my

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

sleep, reading, and conversation in the dark. There is the alarm. And the clock. WhatsApp and Viber. Google maps. Gmail. Could I do without them for five days? Day two: It’s going to be a thought experiment. A five-day long what if... Every morning I take a photo of my daughter and send it to one WhatsApp and one Viber group. It’s the grandparents on both sides, two aunties (my sisters-in-law) and the dad, who by the time we get up had already been working for three hours. I don’t like this habit, this commitment. Because of it I find myself doing what I want to avoid following my toddler and trying to get a good shot. Then choosing the photo I think looks best. Editing. Making our morning reality seem a bit better. Cropping out the mess. Without this morning photo though I would feel guilty. My mum tells me it’s the one thing she looks forward to when she gets up. She lives three hours away by plane and only sees her (only) grandchild a few times a year. And then there is my husband. Thank you for the pics, he wrote to me the other day. My dad and I love them. They brighten up our morning. I don’t want to feel guilty. So I put up with this annoying morning ritual. But I do wonder sometimes when will I stop? Day three: One of my best friends sends an SOS message on a WhatsApp group we have with two more friends (we all live in different countries). SOS. Save Our Souls. Save My Day. Save Me Now. The deadline to hand in a chapter of her PhD is getting nearer. Her feverish toddler is asleep so she’s trying to write, but she’s stuck. Her house is a mess. Her husband is working late. And she still has to sort out

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

something for dinner. The precious moments when she could get some work done are slipping through her fingers like sand. Anxiety kicks in. She panics. Struggles to breathe properly. Manages to send out that message. And here we are, the three of us, responding immediately, giving her ideas on how to help herself. There’s anything from crying, having some chocolate, going for a walk, to screaming something off the balcony into the rain. A few hours later she replies: “Thank you for being there for me. I made some pancakes and got better.” We were there, with our phones at hand, connected. A leash? An umbilical cord? A life-line? Day four: I watch my parents interact with their phones. Their frustration when someone doesn’t pick up, whatever the reason, is like a monster. Two people brought up in times when you had to order international calls and then wait until further notice at home, praying the person you are trying to reach won’t be mad if they get wakened in the middle of the night. And now here they are, shouting at their smartphones because the other one doesn’t answer. Rushing to the phone as soon as it beeps. Smartphone slaves. I watch them and my awareness grows. Day five: Of course there were days when I was being consumed too. Panicking when the battery was running low. Checking for updates every five minutes. Scrolling up and down the river of Instagram perfection. Pinning yet another gorgeous looking baby room. First thing in the morning and last thing at night. Then something changed perhaps it was my daughter or maybe I noticed how my energy, focus,

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and creativity all started to suffer. We started putting the phones in a special basket as soon as we got home in order to keep them out of sight. I deleted the apps that turned into energy and time vampires. We no longer use our phones as alarm clocks. They don’t even make it to the bedroom. Suddenly all that is left of our smartphones are some practical solutions, mindful connection with people we care for and a camera. My phone is a tool I control, not the other way around.

Hannah Emadian Day one: I awoke leisurely. The sun pouring across my face through the thin curtains, it felt like a Sunday. As I stretched life into my body, I heard the sounds of morning rituals being performed outside the bedroom walls. They were hurried movements. Midweek movements. And I realised it was Wednesday. And I realised I was late. Silence descended upon the apartment. Sitting up in bed, I heard a steady, confident ‘tick, tick, tick’. The kitchen clock. My thoughts immediately turned to my smartphone, arrogantly off, and out of reach. The challenge had only just begun and already I was affected. Day two: Having negotiated alarms with my partner, I awoke

confident in my ability to function as a complete, disconnected individual. I logged onto my computer for work. And I logged onto social media - just in case there were important messages I was missing. I systematically checked distracting platforms that I usually wouldn’t - just in case. Without the constant buzz of my smartphone, I felt like I’d missed countless emails, but they were still there, silently piling up. I had felt confident that today my productivity would benefit, but I ended my work day drowning in a rising sea of unanswered communication. Day three: Unexpectedly, today the loss was first felt whilst food shopping. Frozen blankly in the aisles, I could not recall how to make lasagne. “Think!” I screamed to myself. And, where previously I’d have plugged into my surrogate brain, I engaged my own. In the evening I walked across town to attend an event alone. Through a series of handwritten notes and mistimed emails, my partner and I arranged to meet. After 35 minutes waiting in the cold, dark evening, ‘start walking’ time arrived. Passing the gallery where my friends were, I hung around peering through windows. Out of contact… and at the wrong venue! The walk was anxiety-filled was my partner OK? Would he know I was OK? During a two-mile city walk, I passed not a single payphone. Finding my partner home safe with a broken-down car, tonight I felt dramatically disconnected. Day four: Leaving a note on the table with my exact whereabouts for the day, I left home feeling far less liberated than I’d expected. I had not communicated with anyone for days. As soon as I left the house, I was guaranteed to be spending that time

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alone, and a lot of very boring arranging was required to meet anyone. I was bogged down with a constant fear that someone may be trying to contact me, or was worriedly trying to locate me. Without my phone in my pocket, I rushed everywhere and panicked when others didn’t reply to my emails instantly. I had not gracefully departed the smartphone life. I had placed myself in solitary confinement, where I was clawing at the corners, waiting for my sentence to end. Day five: Today, the snow came and everything else was cancelled. I stepped outside to a barrage of snowballs and friendly faces. In the park I threw myself into the snow without the fear of damaged technology. For the past five days, I have gathered no images, heard no music, checked no facts, read no news, and spoken to no one that has not stood before me. I have felt fearful, disconnected, unintelligent, and anxious. I have been late, missed social events, been locked out of the house. But, I have enjoyed relying on my (poor, neglected) memory; remaining present, rather than retreating to the comfort of a personal, digital space.

Nicki Braithwaite Day one: Because my phone is not near my bed as usual, I don’t know what ungodly time my cats are

waking me to feed them. Microwave clock confirms that it’s 2.30am. I feel my eyes are drawn up to the high shelf with the phone on, but I leave it. I cave in later in the morning and can’t help clearing the notifications. Back on the high shelf, away from temptation. I will have to find more resolve. Out later I see people in the street scrolling, clutching, talking, and listening. Everyone appears to rely on this appendage that flashes, beeps, and chirps at them. In the evening, out with my book club, I mention the experiment. They seem to dismiss it as a folly, especially my friend next to me who is anxiously waiting for a work email and won’t relax until she receives it. We end the night passing round their phones with cute puppy photos. Day two: A friend has decided that he will show solidarity with me by leaving his phone outside his room at night. It is well documented that smartphone usage before bed makes the mind active and it takes longer to fall into the deep sleep required to rejuvenate the body. Let’s hope it works for both of us. Later I have a doctor’s appointment at a surgery that I have not visited before. I look it up on Google Maps on my computer beforehand. As I walk down the street I am unsure and anxious wishing I had my phone to just check my location. Surgery found, I am filling in forms and wish again I could access my phone to look up contact phone numbers of my GP and next of kin. In the waiting room people are talking and texting despite multiple signs asking for phones to be switched off in the waiting room. Day three: I am cleaning through cupboards and I find an old Filofax cover. An old school way where we

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

kept all our appointments and contacts. This makes me contemplate what will be next, how will humans evolve as we quickly adapt to new technologies? I see my friend’s phone on charge and I wonder if my phone needs charging. I reach and switch it on. The phone is on and I can’t see any notifications. What, no one has tried to contact me for three days? I have a deep feeling of being unloved for a minute and then they flood in, the beeps and chirps of the emails, the relatives in England with their Whatsapp posts and so on. It’s so noisy. One thing I have enjoyed, the quiet. I banish the phone once again. Day four: Driving around I realise I have a huge reliance on Google Maps. I am visiting a gallery for an artist talk and get caught up in oneway streets and no right turns. As a result I am a bit late but at least I won’t have to worry about my phone beeping or going off during the talk because it is safely on a high shelf in my house. My mother emailed me today asking when I will be contactable by phone again. The tone of the email indicates that she is finding this forced separation hard. I reassure her there is only one more day to go. Day five: Today I am at work. I am a supervisor in a public art gallery and work with volunteer staff. Part of me thinks maybe I should have my phone on in case they need to contact me. Instead I print their phone numbers and head off. It is an extremely hot day and the air conditioning in the office is broken. I quickly do tasks required of me on the computer before it gets prohibitively hotter and then I head down to the cool of the gallery’s climate control. Now I am at a bit of a loss as

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

to what to do, as I can’t spend time on social media apps. So I spend the rest of the day having wonderful conversations with all my volunteers and the café staff and get to know them a little bit better. On a change of shift one of my volunteers has not arrived. I contemplate ringing her and then she rushes in “You got my text Nicki?”. I explain what I have been doing and there is interest but some of the volunteers think that for work I should be contactable. They are probably right.

Beatrice Murch Day one: I left my phone plugged in downstairs charging the night before so that I wouldn’t take it to bed with me. That way I wouldn’t look at it first thing in the morning. I wouldn’t distract myself. I made it until 9am when the alarm went off, my daily reminder to take my meds. Being a stay-athome-mum to a young boy who is just starting preschool, the act of leaving my phone at home enabled me to break out of my shell a bit at school drop-off and pick-up - and actually talk to the other parents. We’ve got a WhatsApp group for our class, but putting faces to usernames is a very good thing. I can be pretty social online, but trying to make small talk in real life is some-

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what of a challenge. Talking to two other mothers at the end of the day is good practice for me, even if challenging. As an immigrant to Argentina, there’s a cultural and language barrier that is still difficult to break, even after a decade of living here. Daily practice makes it easier and making new friends is a challenge no matter where or what age you are. Day two: Leaving my cell phone at home for two hours riddled me with anxiety, fear, and guilt. What if there was a problem at my son’s school? What if they needed me urgently? If they called my husband at work? Would he be mad at me for putting this ‘experiment’ over the welfare of our son? The feeling in the pit of my stomach carried the weight of a bowling ball. Immediately upon getting home, I checked my phone and was relieved to see there were no calls, no important messages. Besides the anxiety, fear and guilt of someone possibly needing me and not being able to get in touch, the actual experience of leaving my cell phone at home was a good one. I wrote down the address of where I needed to go on a piece of paper and put it in my wallet. I sent a message to the woman I was meeting from my computer before leaving. I took the subway to the correct station, relying on my memory, not Google Maps. I read a book! In Spanish! - on the subway ride to and from my errand across town. I haven’t finished a book in about two years. I still have the same book I started when my son was born on my bedside table. Day three: Today provoked less guilt, but I was still anxious during lunch. While I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with my dear friend

and enjoying a scrumptious lunch, a nagging feeling never left the back of my head. What if my son’s school needed to get in touch with me? I was gone for two hours. Nothing bad happened. There were no calls when I got back home. No urgent missed messages. When did we get so fearful? Why? All the stats say that life overall is better, healthier, safer, and less violent than ever, but we are filled with fear and worry. We need instant gratification and reassurance that everything is OK. Day four: The guilt and anxiety lifted as I left the house today with my husband and my son. I just felt naked. I didn’t need my phone, I’d figured out our meal plan for the week and printed out a shopping list. My two most important people were with me. But how would I know exactly how many steps I’d taken today? I’d become so used to outsourcing so many things to collect data to know and better understand what I’m doing. But in all honesty, the data is serving the big data more than me. I’d become so very blind to see only the benefits of tech, that it’s only from taking a forced break that I can see its limitations. Like being an immigrant. Once you get an outside view, things have a way of becoming a bit clearer. It doesn’t matter if I get 9,856 steps instead of 10,489. Day five: The overwhelming urge to see who had contacted me overnight was down to a minimum. It’s going to be OK if I don’t respond immediately. Things can wait, it’s Sunday, it’s raining, not much is going on. I opened up my recipe book to make my son, husband, and me waffles for breakfast instead of looking it up online. My two-and-a-half year old son said,

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“Thank you Mummy” when I gave him his plate to take to the table and my heart melted. Taking my son to the playground in the afternoon made me slightly anxious, but it was unlikely my husband needed to get in touch with me. I talked with other parents at the park, asking for the time when I needed to have more than a guesstimate. I was fully present while he was chasing and playing with the older boys who tolerated his playful joyful attitude. I just had to smile, he was so happy.

Anika Baset Day one: I leave my phone at home today, sitting on my bedside table. As I leave the apartment, I immediately notice the sounds that are ordinarily muffled by my morning Spotify playlists. Hearing my own footsteps surprises me, a clip clop that signifies my physical presence in the world. Day two: The phone leaves my apartment today because of dinner plans made with a perfect stranger I met at the cinema last Sunday. Upon further reflection, I realise the whole thing only came about because neither of us were looking down at our phones, even though both of us were at the movies alone. I decided to talk to the living, breathing human being next

to me and asked what prompted the choice of that particular film on that particular day. The conversation that ensued was so wonderful it simply had to continue. I planned to use my phone to send one text but what wishful thinking this was. I failed spectacularly at the challenge today. Upon reflection, I turned to my phone every time any slightly unpleasant feeling surfaced. I was bored so scrolled my social media feed for an interesting news article. I was frustrated so I sent a text message with aggressive punctuation describing the situation to close friends. At the end of the day, I realise how much scattered my concentration feels compared to yesterday. Back on the bandwagon tomorrow! Day three: I wake up to a message from a friend in Italy. We converse for a while, as the day is beginning for me and winding down for them. I take a moment to pause after our exchange (‘Good night!’ ‘Good morning!’) and reflect on how incredible this is, instant communication with someone on the other side of the world, possible at every minute of the day. What a time to be alive, truly. Day four: Perfectly timed to this challenge, I had planned a solo overnight hiking trip for this weekend. I take my phone to guide me to the National Park but from that point on it is as good as dead, lacking the signal to be able to carry out its many functions. In the spirit of this challenge, I decide not to take any photos of this trip. In doing so, I notice a wave of disappointment that this means no hashtag wanderlust Facebook status about a girl and her tent, conquering the wild à la Cheryl Strayed. Along the trail, I catch snippets of conversations

Womankind’s smartphone challenge

of fellow hikers about the lack of phone reception. I hear “Oh shit! I forgot to call Mum to tell her to pick up the kids on Monday!” from a 40-something man and “Babe these photos are amazing. I’ll upload and tag you in them the minute we get back to reception!” from two young friends. I chuckle to myself: if you do something and don’t post about it on social media, did it really happen? Day five: I wake up to the sound of waves hitting the shore, after a restless night of being mindfully aware of the delinquent possums trying to break into my tent. I eat my breakfast watching ribbons of sunlight appear over the dancing, turquoise water. After taking it all in, I am compelled to break my no photo rule. A friend once beautifully said that he thought of photographs as moments of presence. My photos don’t even come close to capturing what my eyes are seeing but I hope they will serve to remind me of the perfect serenity I feel in this moment. After I return to civilisation, I shoot off a series of “Home safe” text messages to my loved ones. As I reflect on this challenge, I realise the last five days have helped me recognise the role smartphones can play in fostering meaning, through song, dance, photography and lightning-fast human connection. As with any tool, however, it is ultimately up to us to decide to use it that way.

A technique for fostering creativity, as well as letting go of unwanted negativity, Morning Pages is a morning ritual of handwriting three pages of notes to the self. Inspired by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way, your morning pages can be full of grumpy, whining, or petty details about your life; whatever springs to mind. Cameron describes it as a consciousness clearing exercise before the day begins. Why not try Morning Pages for the coming quarter, and each time you complete your three pages of notes, tick the box on the following page.

Morning pages

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Testing times of pregnancy

Editorial by Elizabeth Oliver Sydney, Australia

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Medicine

Testing times of pregnancy By Elizabeth Oliver

A lot of women are spending a lot of their pregnancy waiting for scans.

Some women say their first pregnancy was like starting a business or planning a wedding. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently.” As I watch a woman journey from pre-conception through to the terrible twos, it seems to me that few things can compare with the physical, intellectual, and emotional learning curve, and the sheer volume of information that she seems to assimilate in that time. At the first doctor’s visit they sit wide-eyed and a little shy. They are slightly surprised to find themselves pregnant, a little unbelieving really. “What do you know about being pregnant?” I ask. “Not much.” “Alright then.” So we talk supplements, exercise, the importance of avoiding cat litter and soft cheeses, and the two big

Artwork: Aida Novoa & Carlos Egan

secret symptoms nobody mentions - extreme fatigue and constipation. We talk about bleeding and what to do if it happens. We map out the pregnancy. “And remember, ignore us, and your mother-in-law, as much as possible.” Chuckle. She’s relaxing now, and it’s starting to seem real. Then I take a deep breath and dive into what can only be described as the prenatal screening minefield. Around ten to twelve weeks, a blood test and scan can be done looking mostly for signs of Down’s Syndrome, but also some rarer conditions. The trouble with any test is that if you look, you often find something. The nasal bone isn’t quite “right”. This arm is a little short. “You know what, let’s just repeat the scan next week,” says the radiologist, in that slightly high-pitched voice that commits the mother to a week of agonised wondering. What many women are not told is that for the vast majority of detected ‘defects’, there is nothing that can be done except watch, wait, and re-scan. And then wait and re-scan. A lot of women are spending a lot of their pregnancy waiting on scans. If the defect is persistent the next step is to perform amniocentesis to confirm the abnormality, a procedure which itself carries a risk of miscarriage, and then decide whether to terminate. Whatever their position on abortion, many doctors and mothers are becoming decidedly uneasy about the role of prenatal screening in our lives.

Medicine

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Testing times of pregnancy

Women often don’t know that they don’t ‘need’ these scans. Before ordering any test, a doctor must ask herself: will this test result change the management of this patient? Neglecting this question leaves patients in a terrible fix - now we have this abnormal result. What do we do with it? Prenatal screening is the only area where this principle is now routinely abandoned. I discuss two scenarios with the woman: decline the test because you wouldn’t terminate an abnormal pregnancy anyway; choose to have the test because you would terminate a Down’s pregnancy. (She is starting to look wide-eyed again - she just wanted advice about vitamins.) But immediately after this test became available, a third group emerged - women who choose the test because, understandably, “I just want to be sure.” This route is a dangerous one to choose without fully understanding the test, as for many women it only raises more questions. A pregnant patient’s mother attended with her, and laughed at my spiel. “When I was your age we got pregnant, went to the doctor, had one scan, and had a baby six months later.” Women often don’t know that they don’t ‘need’ these scans, and when a doctor offers, it seems like poor parenting to refuse. And there is the crunch. A doctor is compelled to offer all available medical care. A patient, on receiving this offer from a trusted adviser, is compelled to accept. I always request women make a

dedicated appointment to discuss the testing in detail, so they can make an informed acceptance, or refusal. But that doesn’t always happen. The test is provided by a small number of private companies and costs hundreds of dollars, a big expense for lower-income women. This means that babies born with ‘abnormalities’ are more likely to be born into lower-income families. Take your pick of which dystopian novel that resembles. Women are already bombarded by competition for the money they will spend to ensure a healthy baby - the right supplements, the right attitude, the right obstetrician, the right encapsulated placenta, the right sleep consultant, not to mention the strangely powerful competition that arises among women them-

selves regarding whose baby was sleeping through the night by the age of eighteen minutes. No doubt this primal insistence on perfection has a purpose - it protects the infant, fights for the best food and environment, ensures an unceasingly watchful guardian. But the irony is not lost on me - in our determination to safeguard the perfect baby, we threaten both baby and mother. And the bottom line makes me uneasy - multinational corporations competing to cash in on the fear and trembling that comes with a profoundly fragile and mysterious process. I like to think I wouldn’t have the test, that it wouldn’t change the management of my pregnancy, so why put myself through it? Then I think, “But I’d just like to be sure…”.

Seneca

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“There is no easy way from the Earth to the stars.”

Seneca

Illustration: Monica Barengo

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Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos

Letters from Iceland

Guðrún Jónsdóttir

Letters from Iceland:

Guðrún Jónsdóttir On October 24, 1975, we did not go to work. We did not do any housework. We did not cook. We did not look after children. I was 21 years old. I was standing in a sea of women at the biggest demonstration in Iceland’s history. We went on to the streets to protest wage discrepancy and unfair employment practices. We demonstrated how important women were for the economy and society. Honestly, we had no idea how this whole thing had set off. And it felt normal. I thought, “Wow, I’m not alone, we all feel this way”. I realised that we could find ways to channel this power. And I realised that I would never return to feeling like I was the problem. I discovered that it was society that had to change. My husband took our oneyear-old daughter to work with him and his employer scolded him. My partner, of course, stood by my side, explaining to his boss that it was either our daughter and him at work that day or nobody. The 1975 Icelandic women’s strike put my life on another trajectory. It was my wake-up call. For many years I had this tension building inside me. I was irate at how few opportunities women had in Iceland and how they suffocated in the confines of the home.

Illustration: Yidan Guo

I remember listening to one of the major speakers at the protest, one of my mother’s best friends. She didn’t have any formal education but was standing firm like a pillar, ready to fight, an ordinary working woman performing an impromptu speech. It then dawned on me that everything is possible in life. Before 1975 the political agenda did not include women’s rights and women in the media were objectified or invisible; all these things drove me up the wall. And, if I spoke out, I got a puzzled stare, “Is this really necessary?’’ I was born in 1954 and raised by my mother, a working-class housewife with six children. I wanted to become a biologist but in 1990 I went to Norway with my family to do further studies in biology - and it was here the activist in me surfaced and I became a social worker instead. We stayed for six years. I became the executive director of the women’s movement in Norway. My colleagues were often surprised when I candidly talked to Parliamentarians about what needed to be done. But I’d learnt from the small Icelandic microcosm that no one could intimidate me. And this, I think, is not unique to me. All Icelandic women are like this. For six years I worked as a coordinator for the Icelandic Women’s

Alliance, lobbying to change policies and legislation. I also raised awareness against prostitution and trafficking, and we’ve managed to implement the so-called ‘Swedish model’ where it is forbidden to ‘buy’ a prostitute in Iceland but the women are not criminalised - and we’ve managed to close down strip clubs, which are nothing other than dens of prostitution in disguise. We define prostitution as “violence against women” and therefore men who buy prostitutes should be held responsible; it’s as simple as that. There is nothing more demeaning to a woman than selling her body. The myth of the ‘happy prostitute’ is ridiculous. Over many years of working with victims of trafficking, abused women, and women in prostitution, not once have I encountered a ‘happy prostitute’. For example, one woman came to us as a prostitute, seeking help. Her background was tragic; she was raped by family members as a child. She became a drug addict and fell into prostitution. She told us horrendous tales of torture by her buyers that will stay with me forever. She managed to get out of drugs, and just when we thought we’d helped her get back on track, she took her own life. Her loss has been heavy on my conscience ever since. I feel that because she lost her voice I have to be twice as loud as before.

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Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos

Letters from Iceland

Nanna Gunnarsdóttir

Letters from Iceland:

Nanna Gunnarsdóttir In Icelandic we have the saying: “Vits er þörf, þeim er víða ratar, dælt er heima hvað”, which more or less translates to: “Those who remain homebound are bound to remain ignorant”. I think this outlook on travel is rich in Icelandic culture. We are isolated, sometimes only 50 people can populate a tiny fjord village, and we want to know what lies beyond. I grew up in Reykjavík but I too wanted to learn what lies beyond. I have been to every continent of the world except Antarctica. At age 18 I went to Barcelona and met musicians. In Buenos Aires, I learnt to dance the tango. In Hemsedal, I worked at a ski resort and spent my free time snowboarding. In Tallinn, I attended seminars at a drama school. In London, I studied and worked. In São Paulo I lived with a Brazilian host family. I come from a long line of large families. My mother had five siblings. My dad had five too. I grew up in the centre of Reykjavík where there was a strong sense of community. It was a peaceful childhood - playing on the streets, returning home by a certain time because there were no cell phones back then. Traffic was minimal and crime was zero. As a typical Icelandic kid, I developed a strong connection to the weather. I learnt how dependent we are

Illustration: Yidan Guo

on its moods, because you know, weather in Iceland is kind of crazy. One morning it can be sunny and beautiful and by afternoon it’s freezing cold. In winter it’s nearly impossible to make plans to drive somewhere, even a week in advance; suddenly a snow storm strikes and all the roads are closed. In England, I started learning physical theatre. Physical theatre is about being present and learning to inhabit your body more consciously. It is much more spontaneous than just having a script and reciting words. I also love immersive theatre, and in Reykjavík I have established a poetry brothel. It resembles the first poetry brothel, which is located in New York. It’s a Moulin Rouge type of bohemian bordello where artists come together, poets, actors, musicians and so forth, to create a world of escapism and to sell their poetry. Mind you, the poetry brothel has nothing to do with prostitution. I am against prostitution. When someone has paid access to your body they can do horrible things both to it and to your soul. Since 2012, I have been in a relationship with my English boyfriend, Owen. We met at a Eurovision party. But I don’t plan on getting married. I mean, I am not religious, so marriage doesn’t have any religious meaning for me.

Nor am I sure it has any meaning at all. A wedding to me is just a great big party where you invite all your friends and family to come and have a great time. If I want to, I can always throw a big party without the getting married bit. I also don’t plan on having kids. My viewpoint is kind of unusual, because, you know, in Iceland most people have kids. And most people are married or have been married a couple of times. There are a lot of single parents or combined families, where both have children from former relationships. But I simply don’t have the desire to have children. I lack the maternal instinct. Since I was age 16, I’ve had people telling me I will change my mind when I meet the right one. Well, I’m age 32, have met the right one, and still don’t want kids. Our world is already overpopulated. Do I need to bring another child into this world? If I want to have a child in the future, I can sidestep pregnancy and adopt one that needs a home. To be honest pregnancy also creeps me out in a way. So, my next plan is to go to India for the first time on an adventure tour, the rickshaw race. I will be travelling from the north part of India to the south in a rickshaw. I suppose life for me is a grand adventure, a big, fat journey, and the freer I am, the better.

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Letters from Iceland

Helga Dögg

Interview: Stav Dimitropoulos

Letters from Iceland:

Helga Dögg I spent much of my childhood in the offices of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association because my mother was the chairwoman between 1980 and 1985. She always worked full time, juggling three daughters, a husband, and a career. She was the manager of a large rescue association and a businesswoman. Seeing her busy all the time was normal for me but my friends with ‘at-home mums’ found it a bit strange. My father was always supportive. They shared roles within the home; for example, my father, who worked as a dentist, would take care of the evening meals three days a week and was always home when she was at work. A lot has changed since then in Iceland; now we have a good daycare system and so most women work outside the home. Iceland is probably one of the best places to grow up or raise a child in the world, especially in my time. In winter we played with snow. We built snow houses and snowmen and went skiing and skating on the pond. Icelandic nature is beautiful, but harsh. You can drink fresh water from the mountain springs but you have to be careful not to fall off the mountainside. It’s often windy. When I left home, I studied comparative literature and then a master’s degree in business. I met my husband on vacation in Spain

Illustration: Yidan Guo

when I was age 22. We had grown up in the same neighbourhood, just a couple of blocks away, but hadn’t met each other until that day in Spain. A year later, we moved to England. He was studying for his master’s degree so I enrolled in a one-year exchange program at the University College London. I loved London because in so many ways it’s similar to Iceland. English people have a sense of humour similar to our own, but in other ways life is vastly different. There is a class system in England; the working class inhabits a different universe to the middle class it seems. Before this I’d only seen such class divide in movies. Most of our friends were not locals but international students. I remember a situation once: a friend of ours from Canada started chit-chatting to a girl who worked in the campus kitchen. When he returned to our table, a preppy English guy who was lunching with us was appalled that the guy was talking to “the help”. I never imagined anything like this happening in Iceland, but it showed me how some of the upper class in England relate to the lower class. We got married late, after nine years of being together. I was age 31. By that time we’d already had a second child. But this is not unusual in Iceland. Couples don’t necessarily

get married before having children. My eldest son is age 16, my daughter is 13, and my youngest boy is 7. When I first became a mother I thought I understood what life was all about. I thought I knew it all but I was wrong. Motherhood is a visceral experience. I learned to be more patient and to forgive and to acquire the humility to put my ego aside. Having a second child was planned; we wanted our firstborn to have a sibling; but the third was a bit of a surprise. I have been an executive board member of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association for probably four years now. My day job is in the male-dominated information technology sector. Older men just don’t understand what the fuss is all about, what we are fighting for. “Don’t you have a home, don’t you have it all?” they ask. Older Icelandic men still think that boys should be boys and girls should be housewives. I would lie if I claimed there is no patriarchy in Iceland. When the financial crisis hit in 2008, I discovered that those responsible for the banking crisis were mostly men. Women govern in different ways to men. Women take less risks. Therefore, both men and women should be at the table finding solutions. The world needs both perspectives.

Photo: Aurora Borealis, by Michael Nolan

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Editorial by Clive Hamilton Canberra, Australia

Environment

Photography: Michael Nolan and Johann Ragnarsso

Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding. Yet in the face of these facts we carry on as usual.

Welcome to the Anthropocene By Clive Hamilton

After 200,000 years of modern humans on a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth, what does it mean to have arrived at this point in history, the Anthropocene? The change has come upon us with disorienting speed. It is the kind of shift that typically takes two or three or four generations to sink in. Our best scientists tell us insistently that a calamity is unfolding, that the lifesupport systems of the Earth are being damaged in ways that threaten our survival. Yet in the face of these facts we carry on as usual. Most citizens ignore or downplay the warnings; many of our intellectuals indulge in wishful thinking; and some influential voices declare that nothing at all is happening, that the scientists are deceiving us. Yet the evidence tells us that so powerful have humans become that we have entered a new and dangerous

geological epoch, defined by the fact that the human imprint on the global environment has now become so large and active that it rivals some of the great forces of Nature in its impact on the functioning of the Earth system. This bizarre situation, in which we have become potent enough to change the course of the Earth yet seem unable to regulate ourselves, contradicts every modern belief about the kind of creature the human being is. So for some it is absurd to suggest that humankind could break out of the boundaries of history and inscribe itself as a geological force in deep time. Humans are too puny to change the climate, they insist, so it is outlandish to suggest we could change the Geological Time Scale. Others assign the Earth and its evolution to the divine realm so that it is not merely impertinence

to suggest that humans can overrule the Almighty but blasphemy. Many intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities do not concede that Earth scientists have anything to say that could impinge on their understanding of the world, because the ‘world’ consists only of humans engaging with humans, with nature no more than a passive backdrop to draw on as we please. The ‘humans-only’ orientation of the social sciences and humanities is reinforced in ‘mediatised’ societies where total absorption in representations of reality derived from various forms of media encourages us to view the ecological crisis as a spectacle that takes place outside the bubble of our existence. It is true that grasping the scale of what is happening requires not only breaking the bubble but also making the cognitive leap to Earth

Welcome to the Anthropocene

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Environment

Yet the evidence tells us that so powerful have humans become that we have entered a new and dangerous geological epoch.

System thinking. It is one thing to accept that human influence has spread across the landscape, the oceans, and the atmosphere, but quite another to make the jump to understanding that human activities are disrupting the functioning of the Earth as a complex, dynamic, ever-evolving totality comprised of myriad interlocking processes. But consider this astounding fact. With knowledge of the cycles that govern Earth’s rotation, including its tilt and wobble, paleoclimatologists are able to predict with reasonable certainty that

Photo: Johann Ragnarsso

the next ice age is due in 50,000 years’ time. Yet because carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for millennia, global warming from human activity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is expected to suppress that ice age and quite possibly the following one, expected (other things being equal) in 130,000 years. If human activity occurring over a century or two can irreversibly transform the global climate for tens of thousands of years, we are prompted to rethink history and social analysis as a purely intra-human affair.

How should we understand the disquieting fact that a mass of scientific evidence about the Anthropocene, an unfolding event of colossal proportions, has been insufficient to induce a reasoned and fitting response? For many, the accumulation of facts about ecological disruption seems to have a narcotising effect, all too apparent in popular attitudes to the crisis of the Earth System, and especially among opinion makers and political leaders. A few have opened themselves to the full meaning of the Anthropocene, crossing a threshold by way of a gradual but

Environment

ever-more disturbing process of evidence-assimilation or, in some cases, after a realisation that breaks over them suddenly and with great force in response to an event or piece of information in itself quite small. In German, Erlebnis can simply mean an event or occurrence in the course of life, the type of personal experience that was the hallmark of nineteenth-century Romanticism’s appeal to feeling. But it can also refer to an intense disruptive episode, one that makes an indelible impression, changing a life course, the kind of experience not so much integrated into a life but which relegates the old life to the past and inaugurates a new sensibility, “something unforgettable and irreplaceable, something whose meaning cannot be exhausted by conceptual determination.” Such a realisation is not only a powerful emotional event but also one saturated with meaning. The subject often has the inexplicable feeling that the event has some purpose that asks to be understood. It is as if some force has intervened, creating a rupture that has meaning beyond the personal, a universal truth. And so beyond the science as such, the few alert to the plight of the Earth sense that something unfathomably great is taking place, “suffused with what is coming”, conscious that we face a struggle between ruin and the possibility of some kind of salvation. So today the greatest tragedy is the absence of a sense of the tragedy. The indifference of most to the Earth System’s disturbance may be attributed to a failure of reason or psychological weaknesses; but these seem inadequate to explain why

For most of the intelligentsia, it is as if the projections of Earth scientists are so preposterous they can safely be ignored.

we find ourselves on the edge of the abyss. How can we understand the miserable failure of contemporary thinking to come to grips with what now confronts us? A few years after the second atomic bomb was dropped, Kazuo Ishiguro wrote a novel about the people of Nagasaki, a novel in which the bomb is never mentioned yet whose shadow falls over everyone. Anthropocene’s shadow too falls over all of us. Yet the bookshops are regularly replenished with tomes about world futures from our leading intellectuals of left and right in which the ecological crisis is barely mentioned. They write about the

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Welcome to the Anthropocene

rise of China, clashing civilisations, and machines that take over the world, composed and put forward as if climate scientists do not exist. They prognosticate about a future from which the dominant facts have been expunged, futurologists trapped in an obsolete past. It is the great silence. At a dinner party one of Europe’s most eminent psychoanalysts held forth ardently on every topic but fell mute when climate change was raised. He had nothing to say. For most of the intelligentsia, it is as if the projections of Earth scientists are so preposterous they can safely be ignored. Perhaps the intellectual surrender is so complete because the forces we hoped would make the world a more civilised place - personal freedoms, democracy, material advance, technological power - are in truth paving the way to its destruction. The powers we most trusted have betrayed us; that which we believed would save us now threatens to devour us. For some, the tension is resolved by rejecting the evidence, which is to say, by discarding the Enlightenment. For others, the response is to denigrate calls to heed the danger as a loss of faith in humanity, as if anguish for the Earth were a romantic illusion or superstitious regression. Yet the Earth scientists continue to haunt us, following us around like wailing apparitions while we hurry on with our lives, turning round occasionally with irritation to hold up the crucifix of Progress. From the book Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene by Clive Hamilton, published by Allen & Unwin.

I am here, by Daphne Wu

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Womankind Photographers’ Award XIV

womankind Photographers’ Award XIV Womankind received an unprecedented number of entries to Photographers’ Award XIV, on animals, which demonstrates how much we care about the many ‘non-humans’ who share this planet with us. Photographers were asked to focus on animals in the wild, as well as domesticated animals, and many entries were simply breathtaking.

WINNER The winning photograph is I am here by Daphne Wu. The photograph was taken at the 2017 Golden Eagle Hunting Festival competition in Mongolia. Here “a young eagle huntress showcases her eagle and looks on tentatively while surrounded by several of her fellow male competitors,” notes Wu. “To become an eagle hunter,” continues Wu, “a successful hunter must capture a female golden eagle and build a symbiotic relationship of trust and communication that takes years to master.”

SECOND PLACE In close second place is Grace Costa’s exquisite photograph titled Gerry, of a horse in an enclosure.

THIRD PLACE Photographer Emily Ellis takes out third place for her joyful portrait Girl and her falcon.

FOURTH PLACE Photographer Rachelle Mackintosh’s beautiful photograph White magic captures a Caribou stag at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve in Whitehorse, northwest Canada. “It was a tropical -28 degrees,” states Mackintosh, “but definitely worth it to see such a magnificent creature.”

FINALISTS Finalists in the Photographers’ Award XIV include Laura George’s stunning portrait of a grey wolf in Alaska titled Connection, captured on a holiday with her father for his 73rd birthday. “We looked at each other for a moment even after I lowered my camera,” describes George. “It was a highlight for me.” Other finalists include the moving photograph of life in captivity, titled Sentience by photographer Cecilia Rogers. The photograph, Unbelievabubble by Ginni Leonard features orphan chimpanzees Kaza (left) and Davido (right), both aged 4, blowing bubbles at the Ape Action Africa in Cameroon, West Africa. Rescued from the pet trade in different areas across Cameroon the chimps were raised at the sanctuary. “Part of my job was creating joyful activities for them to enrich their days, and bubbles were one of their favourites,” notes Leonard. “The way the rainbow of colours reflected off the curved edge, the way the bubbles popped… Davido figured out that if he was extremely gentle and patient, the bubble would land gently on his hand, allowing him to pop it in his own time. Kaza was much more reckless. She didn’t care about the colour or the pop… she wanted to eat them.” Photographer Wendy Moore shares a moment in her favourite place where the skies are swarming with dragonflies. “I visit often with my camera and love to sit and watch them,” she reveals, aptly titling her photograph Restfulness. And from Sitka, Alaska, photographer Bethany Goodrich’s beautiful photograph of salmon is worthy of a painting. Titled Alaskan salmon, Goodrich laid on her side beside a pebbly river bed for hours waiting for this photograph. She was admiring pink salmon (also known as ‘humpy salmon’) spawn and pass away. “The waters literally come alive with zombie fish. They stop eating and their bodies change shape and start to deteriorate,” she describes. Here, the humpy salmon photographed meets the end of his life beside her, beautifully captured one last time beneath the Alaskan September sun.

Gerry, by Grace Costa

Girl and her falcon, by Emily Ellis

White magic, by Rachelle Mackintosh

Connection, by Laura George

Womankind Photographers’ Award XIV

Sentience, by Cecilia Rogers

Unbelievabubble, by Ginni Leonard

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Alaskan salmon, by Bethany Goodrich

Restfulness, by Wendy Moore

Womankind Photographers’ Award XIV

William Blake

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“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to us as it is - infinite.”

William Blake

Illustration: Monica Barengo

Books

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Books

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” Cicero

Catrin Welz-Stein

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A Woman’s Crusade: Alice Paul and the Battle for the Ballot By Mary Walton

Alice Paul began her life as a studious girl from a Quaker family in New Jersey. In 1907, a scholarship took her to England, where she developed a passionate devotion to the suffrage movement. Upon her return to the United States, Alice became the leader of the militant wing of the American suffrage movement. Calling themselves “Silent Sentinels”, she and her followers were the first protesters to picket

the White House. Here is the inspiring story of the young woman whose dedication to women’s rights made that long-held dream a reality.

Questions of Travel William Morris in Iceland By Lavinia Greenlaw

The great Victorian designer and decorative artist William Morris was fascinated by Iceland and wrote a book documenting his travels. He gets caught up with questions of travel, noting his reaction to the idea of leaving or arriving, to hurry and delay, what it means to dread a place you’ve never been to or to encounter the actuality of a long-held vision. Lavinia Greenlaw follows in his footsteps, and interposes his prose

with her own questions of travel. The result is a new and composite work that brilliantly explores our conflicted reasons for not staying at home.

Books

Independent People By Halldór Laxness

From the Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic author, Halldór Laxness, the magnificent novel Independent People is set in the early twentieth century. The

book’s protagonist, Bjartur, is an ordinary sheep farmer. Having spent eighteen years in humiliating servitude, Bjartur wants nothing more than to raise his flocks unbeholden to any man. But Bjartur’s spirited daughter wants to live unbeholden to him. What ensues is a battle of wills that is by turns harsh and touching, elemental in its emotional intensity and intimate in its homely detail.

H is for Hawk By Helen Macdonald

As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became

obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge. H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk’s taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.

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What’s on

What’s on F E ST I VA L

MELBOURNE MUSEUM

G U G G E N H E I M B I L BAO M U S E U M

R e y k j a v í k , Icelan d

M e lbourne , Austra lia

Bilba o, Spa in

Reykjavík Arts Festival

Vikings: Beyond the Legend

Chagall The Breakthrough Years, 1911–1919

1 - 17 JUNE 2018

UNTIL 26 AUGUST 2018

1 JUNE – 2 SEPTEMBER 2018

The Reykjavik Arts Festival is a biennial multidisciplinary festival with exhibitions and performances of contemporary and classical works in major cultural venues and unconventional spaces throughout the city. Since its inception in 1970, Reykjavík Arts Festival has invited hundreds of artists from all parts of the globe to perform or exhibit at the festival. Through this activity, the festival has helped to create a vast network of connections between national and international artists, been a catalyst for the creation of new works, and a major force in the development of cultural diversity in Iceland.

V I C TO R I A A N D A L B E R T M U S E U M

Lo nd o n, E n glan d

Fashioned From Nature UNTIL 27 JAN 2019

The first UK exhibition to explore the complex relationship between

The world’s biggest collection of Viking artefacts will be exhibited at The Melbourne Museum, featuring over 500 artefacts from one of history’s most fascinating civilisations. The exhibition will explore the domestic life, rituals, and beliefs of the Viking people with an abundance of rare treasures, including the skeletal remains of a Viking ship, Viking swords dating from 700-1100, and one of Thor’s hammer pendants.

fashion and nature from 1600 to the present day. This exhibition will present fashionable dress alongside natural history specimens, innovative new fabrics and dyeing processes, inviting visitors to think about the materials of fashion and the sources of their clothes.

In 1911, a decisive rupture took place in the early work of the young Marc Chagall as a result of the contrast between life in his native Belarus and the new life that welcomed him in the French capital. Between 1911 and 1914, he worked in urban Paris, creating a set of works that combine his memories of life within the Hasidic community of Vitebsk with icons of the modern metropolis. Reminiscences of popular Russian art combine with the more advanced stylistic experiments of the avantgarde, including Picasso, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, and Jacques Lipchitz. This exhibition presents a selection of works from the period of Marc Chagall’s greatest artistic and personal change, also a time of great political upheaval.

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J AC Q U E M A R T - A N D R É MUSEUM

Pa r i s, F ran ce

Mary Cassatt An American Impressionist in Paris UNTIL 23 JULY 2018

Considered during her lifetime as the greatest American artist, Cassatt lived in France for more than sixty years. She was the only

What’s on

American painter to have exhibited her work with the Impressionists in Paris. She was spotted by Degas in the 1874 Salon, and subsequently exhibited her works alongside those of the group. This monographic exhibition will enable visitors to rediscover Mary Cassatt through fifty major works, comprising oils, pastels, drawings, and engravings, which, complemented by various documentary sources, will convey her modernist approach - that of an American woman in Paris.

M U S E U M O F LO N D O N

A R T G A L L E RY O F

Lo nd o n , E n glan d

S O U T H A U ST R A L I A

Ade la ide , Austra lia

Votes For Women Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces From the Musée d’Orsay

UNTIL 6 JANUARY 2019

British political activist Emmeline Pankhurst’s hunger strike medal and a banner embroidered with the names of 80 hunger strikers at Holloway prison are just a couple of the objects

VA N C O U V E R O P E R A

Va nc o uv er, C an ad a

The Russian White Nights UNTIL 6 MAY

UNTIL 29 JULY 2018

that will go on display at the Museum of London as part of the year-long Votes for Women exhibition.

Under the banner of the Russian White Nights, the second annual Vancouver Opera Festival celebrates Russian composers. Taking place over nine days, this year’s festival features a classic Russian opera, Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, a much anticipated opera premiere, The Overcoat - a musical tailoring, and a series of instrumental and vocal chamber music concerts. The largest opera company in Western Canada, Vancouver Opera presents exciting traditional and innovative productions of established repertoire, newer operas and less frequently produced works by master composers.

More than 65 Impressionist masterpieces from the renowned collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris feature in a major exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The exhibition charts the revolution of colour that lies at the very heart of Impressionism and includes master works by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Morisot, Pissarro, and Cézanne, among many others. From the dark tones of Manet’s Spanish-influenced paintings, to the rich green and blue hues of the French countryside as painted by Cézanne, Monet, and Pissarro, to the rosy pigments of Renoir’s and Morisot’s female figures, the exhibition traces the development of colour in the Impressionists’ radical reshaping of painting in the nineteenth century.

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Documentaries

Documentaries

Solutions to the food and ecological crisis facing us today Ecofeminist Dr Shiva Vandana, a food and agriculture activist, describes how industrial farming is causing climate change, water pollution, water waste, and is destroying biodiversity, farmers, and public health. She calls for a more holistic approach to food, where growers and consumers forge closer ties.

Inside Job Before the turn of the century, Iceland was one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. In 2000 Iceland’s government deregulated its three largest banks, resulting in soaring debt and a bubble unlike any witnessed before. Inside Job is a documentary about the 2007 financial crisis.

Do the Math

Women in Red Stockings

Climatologist James Hansen wanted to investigate how much carbon in the atmosphere is too much. His team found that a carbon value over 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth has adapted. Carbon levels in the atmosphere today have reached 395 parts per million.

A documentary about the Red Stocking movement in Iceland 1970-1980, including the famous Women’s Day Off in 1975, where 90 per cent of women in Iceland refused to work, cook, clean, and look after children. The documentary tells the story of one of the most successful movements in Icelandic history.

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“Each wave of the women’s struggle makes people think. Each wave is one of a series. And each time a new wave comes up, some people wake up” Women in Red Stockings

Inside Job Solutions to the food and ecological crisis facing us today

Do the Math

Women in Red Stockings

Documentaries

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The World by Henry Vaughan

I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv’n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world And all her train were hurl’d.

The World

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