Thinking some more

I recently had a copy of the awesome Tim Minchin's book 'Storm' from the library, and discovered that I was several years late to the party, and here it in animated form on Youtube. You can't beat someone with wit and panache dealing it out to people who spout crap.


In other news, this photograph:

from the Guardian's 20 photos of the week (13th December), has been on my desktop.
It had this caption:
"In a photograph by Siegfried Modola, a regular contributor to 20 photographs, a man holds a girl as she tries to escape an arranged marriage in Baringo County, Kenya. As Pokot tradition dictates, the future husband arrived at the girl’s family home with the last settled dowry of livestock and a group of men to collect her. She was unaware of the marriage arrangements that her father had made as her family said she might have run away from home."

It was a combination of the desperation of the girl and the determination on the face of the man that struck me so forcefully. It summed up so much of what I have been reading over the last year, on websites and blogs and in the news, about the struggles that women continue to face in the world, particularly about rape culture and rape as a weapon of conflict, violence against women in general and street harassment, and here is a young girl who does not even own her own life, and is being carried off to be traded for livestock. The Guardian (again) mused over the idea that women had 'won' in 2014, but as this witty video by Phoebe Greenwood points out, despite all the attention that 'women's issues' received in the media, things are not all they appear to be. And I am reminded that no matter how far women think we have come, there is so far still to go. 


And this, that popped up on Upworthy and just makes you go 'wow':
How Wolves Change Rivers from Sustainable Human on Vimeo.