World Book Day

Two stories for World Book Day.

Doris Lessing

Last December, Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. In her acceptance speech she described a childhood in Africa which was not totally unlike mine, living in a house without electricity but full of books. She describes life in Zimbabwe today where children clamour for books and knowledge. "Please send us books, please send us books," while we in the developed world don't make the most of what we have and libraries are underused.**

As a result of her very moving speech, and in recognition of her prize, HarperCollins, the publishing house, has announced the donation of 10,000 books to Book Aid International for schools in Zimbabwe.

BookAid helping to make poverty history

Channel Four recently listed BookAid as the top way to help Make Poverty History on their website. As they say education whether formal or informal, can help people out of poverty, but nearly a million cannot read a book. In Africa few people own books and school text books are often shared between six pupils.

Providing books, information and so knowledge, to people in need helps them realise their potential and contribute to their communities.

**One disagreement with Doris Lessing

She said: "How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by this internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc."

I'm afraid I can't agree with that. The internet has opened up horizons we never knew existed a handful of years ago. We are communicating in ways that once couldn't have been understood, and where there is communication and exchange of ideas, there is education and understanding as we learn about each other.

Like anything, the internet may not be used to its full potential, or in trivial ways, or it may be used in unpleasant and disturbing ways, but on the whole, on balance, I will have to agree to differ with Doris Lessing.

Pause for thought

Yesterday I walked into a room where the radio was playing and I caught part of an item called "Pause for Thought" which did make me do just that.

I have finally tracked down what it was all about. The speaker, Baroness Julia Neuberger, was talking about the high profile that some missing children receive compared to others.

I quote the first paragraph, the rest can be found here for the remainder of the week.

The horrors we hear from the children’s home in Jersey have been multiplying day by day. With its shackles and cellars, this may be the worst example of child abuse and cruelty we have heard about in recent years, but it brings out issues we should have been thinking about anyway. Children do make the news. We still hear constantly about Madeleine McCann, and the names of Sarah Payne, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman are engraved on the nation’s heart. But what about nine year old Shannon Matthews, who disappeared two weeks ago after leaving her primary school? The nation seems to have lost interest in her.

In essence, she was asking why the public and media seem less interested in Shannon Matthews. Is it because she isn't quite so pretty, not shy and timid, somehow less worthy? Is it because her parents aren't doctors, are less well-off, less able to manipulate the media?

So children with less ‘voice’, children experiencing appalling treatment, the child who disappears from a poor family, with little media experience …. They get a worse deal by far than the others. What does that say about our attitude to children? And particularly about our attitude to disadvantaged children?

It certainly has made me think. It was two weeks ago that Shannon Matthews disappeared, but there are very few pictures of her around, nothing like the media cover of the other young girls mentioned above. I haven't even been able to find a good quality image.

And if the less advantaged children in this country don't have a voice, how about the much less advantaged in the developing world?

Lottery luck

I tend not to be successful in lotteries but this week I have been extremely fortunate to win a beautiful photo from The Green Fingered Photographer.

Mark shows a series of photos on a theme, one each Wednesday for a month. If you choose your favourite by commenting on the blog, your name is added to the pot. And I've been the lucky person this month, winning "Woodland Walk".

Do pop over to his blog where you will see lovely photography from someone interested in nature and the environment.

A nice cup of tea

Photo from Flickr user rprice84. Creative Commons licence.

I can't manage without a cup of tea first thing in the morning. After that I'm set up for the day and turn to decaffeinated coffee, and usually Fairtrade if I can find it. I've noticed in England a much larger range is now available, though less so with tea it seems.

Tea was first planted in Malawi in 1878 and commercial production started in 1880, so Malawi was something of a pioneer for Africa, but times have changed and growers are not managing to realise the prices that the Kenyan market does.

There are various initiatives which are hoping to reverse this trend:

• Development of identifiable brands associated with Malawi.
• Processing of green tea for the East Asian market.
• Charity auctions where the proceeds are donated to AIDS orphans and other good causes.
• Production of "sustainable" teas such as Malawi Garden Tea whose production directly supports the growers, their families, and the local community of the Kawalazi tea plantation in Malawi.
• Tourism such as Traidcraft's Meet the People Tours and tea estates, such as Satemwa and Lujeri Lodge, which provide guesthouses for hire.

Something new (to me anyway) I noticed on the Satema site - white tea. Anyone for a cuppa?

Main source: Inter Press Service

Welcome to my world

A challenge from NicoleB to post a picture of my world. Because I live in two places I'm posting two very different pictures reflecting the two very different worlds where I live.

The first is of Cheyne Court in Winchester's Cathdral Close, representing all the lovely buildings which can be found in former capital of England.

The second shows the peace and tranquility of a rural landscape in the heart of France.

Learning French

There has been something of an excited debate following a post on the Language Log, with comments on Heideas and Language Hat, plus further post on Dadge.

Briefly, a study was being conducted to compare how learners of French as a second language were learning the gender of words. In order to compare their progress against native speakers of French, they tested 17 adults and 42 teenagers with a list of 93 masculine and 50 feminine nouns.

To the researcher's amazement, the native speakers were not only far from 100% correct, there was considerable disagreement between adults and teenagers.

Most commenters have expressed surprise at the low agreement between adults and teenagers, but most also point out that among these particular words some are especially difficult or formal words that adults might be more likely to use.

A further point is that oasis and primeur, although originally feminine, do now have common masculine forms. Oasis is a drink and primeur is used as "en primeur", first of the crop more often than the feminine form, a news scoop.

The two words that the teenagers knew best were "cible", target, and "victime" which one commenter thought could be significant. Another though pointed out that "La Cible" is a television programme.

I have been finding the discussions fascinating, especially because I seriously thought French children were so well drilled in their language that it would be inconceivable that there should be errors of this sort. Additionally I had no idea that the gender of a word could change over time as is apparently the case.

I have always thought that people who learn a language by assimilation, and are prepared to have a go, end up much more fluent even if not always grammatically correct, whereas people like me hesitate while making sure verb endings and noun genders are correct. Clearly it has largely been a waste of my time learning grammar because even French people get it wrong! See, Miss Howcroft!