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"Truly magical": A Lasting Tale gives everyday Australians a voice

<p>Amidst a world engulfed in fake news, endless scrolling, and the pursuit of instant gratification, Dimity Brassil firmly advocates for the significance of collecting the stories and wisdom of our elderly.</p> <p>Following the unfortunate loss of her father and sister in rapid succession, Dimity approached her 89-year-old mother, Anne, with a heartfelt request to capture her life story in her own voice. Anne graciously agreed, leading the duo to create <a href="https://www.alastingtale.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Lasting Tale</a> – a project that would later prove to empower older Australians in sharing their life stories with their loved ones, unbeknownst to Dimity at the time.</p> <p>"When my father and sister passed away, it became apparent that we had not adequately documented their histories, especially my sister, who left behind a young child," Dimity reflects.</p> <p>"I realised that we would soon forget the sound of her voice and that we hadn't captured many of her stories in her own words for her daughter to cherish."</p> <p>Motivated by this realisation, Dimity was determined to do the same for her mother, a captivating individual whose accomplishments, community work, and insightful, witty observations on life remained largely unknown to even her own children, let alone her grandchildren.</p> <p>Recently launched nationwide, A Lasting Tale now engages 40 professional journalists in recording private audio life stories for families across Australia. To date, over 1500 everyday Australians have shared their life stories for the benefit of their families.</p> <p>By utilising the app's interactive questions or availing themselves of the professional podcasting service, families can capture essential information and stories from their loved ones. These recordings can be preserved as personalised audio series, serving as cherished mementos for generations to come.</p> <p>A Lasting Tale provides a free mobile app and collaborates with retirement villages, palliative care providers, libraries, community organisations, and even runs specialised life story intergenerational programs in aged care facilities.</p> <p>One of the most interesting stories of people who have used the new service is that of Carla Lidbury, whose mum, Linda, was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed not long after the recording.</p> <p> Carla says, “When Mum was diagnosed with cancer, my sister and I knew we wanted to have her life story recorded.</p> <p>“Mum had such an amazing memory and was really visual with how she described things. I felt it was enabling us to keep a piece of mum forever.</p> <p>“Mum was an aerobics teacher in the 1980s and such fun. She had so many amazing stories to tell that would be lost after she passed, and luckily Mum was open to the experience and looking forward to it.”</p> <p>Linda passed not long after recording her story.</p> <p>Carla adds: “I didn’t listen to Mum’s audio life story until a few weeks after she passed. Wow! It was magical to hear her voice. It brought joy, I laughed, I cried.</p> <p>“There were so many emotions and happy moments when we heard it. It made me realise she wasn’t just my Mum – she was Linda, she was a person who had her adventures and career and friends. She was amazing.”</p> <p>Through this remarkable project, countless families have been given the gift of capturing the essence of their loved ones' lives, creating a lasting legacy that transcends time.</p> <p>Each recorded tale becomes a precious treasure, offering solace, laughter, and tears – a reminder that behind the roles of parents and grandparents, there are individuals with vibrant histories, remarkable adventures, and a wealth of wisdom to impart.</p> <p>A Lasting Tale reminds us to cherish and celebrate the stories that make us who we are, bridging generations and weaving a tapestry of human experiences that will endure for years to come.  </p>

Family & Pets

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Melissa Doyle draws inspiration from powerful survival tales in her new book

<p>Like millions of people around the world, Melissa Doyle's life was thrown in to disarray when the pandemic hit in March 2020. </p> <p>While being between jobs, stuck at home, and feeling like an empty nester after her eldest child left for university overseas, Melissa found herself at what she describes as "a loose end".</p> <p>While reflecting on her decades-long career and the countless inspirational stories she had heard along the way, she decided to start writing her first book, titled <em>15 Seconds of Brave</em>. </p> <p>"I wasn't quite sure what to do so I wrote a book about eight different people who have been through extraordinary experiences, some of them pretty harrowing," she told <a href="https://9now.nine.com.au/today/melissa-doyle-15-seconds-of-brave-new-book/5172dc27-f0c6-4530-97ae-a60427f75796" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>Today Extra</em></a>.</p> <p>"Some of these stories I'd held in my hand for many, many years until the time was right to do something with them and this just felt right."</p> <p>Doyle revealed the intricate detail she went into to ensure she did the stories justice, with some of the interviews even taking one whole year to properly unravel.</p> <p>From a child bride who was abducted and turned into a soldier, to people who have battled inner demons and substance abuse, Doyle revisited each one with respect and dignity.</p> <p>"We had to go really gently, a lot of these people I have interviewed previously and I have a habit of keeping in touch with them," she said.</p> <p>"I can't sit down and get them to tell the most traumatic experience of their life and walk away - I check in."</p> <p><em>15 Seconds of Brave</em> is available now at all good bookstores. </p> <p><em>Image credits: Instagram </em></p>

Books

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14 enchanting places that look straight out of a fairy tale

<p>Step right into your favourite storybook with these stunning and completely real places throughout the world.</p> <p><strong>Colmar, France</strong></p> <p>It’s easy to see why this small town in the Alsace region of France is known as “Little Venice.”</p> <p>Lining its canal – which is just begging for a lazy boat ride – are colourful buildings and cobblestone streets.</p> <p>Break out into “Little town, it’s a quiet village,” as you stroll.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CaLTF9WO28T/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CaLTF9WO28T/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Colmar - France (@colmar_tourisme)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Bibury, England</strong></p> <p>Artist William Morris deemed Bibury “the most beautiful village in England” when he visited in the 1800s, and nothing much has changed.</p> <p>The enchanting town still has the quaint homes and rustic charm that any fairy tale should start in.</p> <p>When you live in a town like this, it’s hard to be unhappy.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CclXFe_DgAz/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CclXFe_DgAz/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by English countrysides (@englishcountrysides)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Hohenschwangau Castle, Germany</strong></p> <p>This gorgeous German castle is basically the real-life version of a storybook palace.</p> <p>Crown Prince Maximilian – who would later become King Max II – built it to replace its decaying 12th-century predecessor.</p> <p>King Ludwig II grew up spending time in this beautiful castle, but still wanted to outdo it when he got older.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CJTSYI8s98t/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CJTSYI8s98t/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Castle Travellers (@castle.travellers)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany</strong></p> <div> <p>That vanity project King Ludwig II used to outshine his childhood home? This is it.</p> <p>The results were so good, in fact, that Neuschwanstein Castle was actually the inspiration for Disney’s Cinderella Castle.</p> <p>On the top of snow-covered mountains in the winter, we can imagine it as the perfect home for <em>Frozen</em>’s Queen Elsa.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CJlphhkj79M/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CJlphhkj79M/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by VOYAGED by 9GAG (@voyaged)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Manarola, Italy</strong></p> <p>taly’s Cinque Terre is made up of five picturesque villages, but Manarola is among the most dramatic.</p> <p>The brightly hued homes seem to be hanging precariously onto the cliffs, but they’ve managed to keep from crashing into the sea for almost 700 years. Could it be magic?</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc6VmELvywz/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc6VmELvywz/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Carmen Sol (@carmensol_palmbeach)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Rakotz Bridge, Germany</strong></p> <p>Passing under Rakotz Bridge in Kromlau, Germany, you just might feel like you’re on your way to sell your soul.</p> <p>So it’s fitting that it – along with other ancient bridges – are known as “devil’s bridges.”</p> <p>When reflected in the water, the structure makes a perfect circle.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CTKDcs6MjdU/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CTKDcs6MjdU/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Micha (@hobbyfotografie_micha_)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Tbilisi, Georgia</strong></p> <div class="slide-image" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 16px; font-style: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <p>In the middle of this old town sits a surprisingly new clock tower.</p> <p>Puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze gathered pieces from abandoned and ruined buildings from Tbilisi, Georgia, to build the higgledy-piggledy landmark.</p> <p>Quirky as it is, it still tells time.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccj9nGitSjP/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Ccj9nGitSjP/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Грузия - Georgia - Туры (@georgiaforyou)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Bojnice Castle, Slovakia</strong></p> <div> <p>If we had to pick a castle for our princess dreams, this would be it.</p> <p>The medieval castle has everything we’ve always wanted, from tall spires to a moat.</p> <p>We’ll stay here for our happily ever after, please.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CY5wpbVrP6C/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CY5wpbVrP6C/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by SNM - Múzeum Bojnice (@bojnicecastle)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Multnomah Falls, United States</strong></p> <div> <p>Can’t you just picture a theatrical fairy tale fight between knights on this bridge stretching dramatically over this waterfall?</p> <p>Take a road trip to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon for your own fairy tale moment.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/B9uUQGYBWK8/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B9uUQGYBWK8/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Multnomah Falls (@multnomahfalls)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Český Krumlov, Czech Republic</strong></p> <div> <p>Sprinkled with charming red brick roofs, this medieval city would make the perfect backdrop for a fairy tale.</p> <p>But the biggest draw is the castle perched on a rock by the river.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/xcCAzfE22j/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/xcCAzfE22j/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic (@cesky_krumlov)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Château de Chenonceau, France</strong></p> <div> <p>If you think Versailles is the extent of France’s palaces, you were totally off.</p> <p>This gorgeous manor stretches over the River Cher and has stunning gardens open to the public.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/COpQlQIHN8l/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/COpQlQIHN8l/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Chateau de Chenonceau Officiel (@chateau_chenonceau)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Chefchaouen, Morocco</strong></p> <p>You might assume these bright colours are just a tiny snapshot of this town, but you’ll find the same magical views throughout the twists and turns of the “blue city.”</p> <p>Beyond its walls you’ll find en epic mountains towering overhead and below, with goats grazing on its green pastures.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBF0vStnm33/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CBF0vStnm33/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by 🌍Morocco Chefchaouen (@chefchaouen_city)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Pelourinho, Brazil</strong></p> <div> <p>This historic neighborhood in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, doesn’t just have stunning architecture – the bright colours of the buildings accent its beautiful stucco work.</p> <p>It was the country’s capital between 1549 and 1763, when native cultures blended with European and African ones.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcVmGWnuGGs/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcVmGWnuGGs/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Dove Viaggi (@doveviaggi)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><strong>Ghent, Belgium</strong></p> <div> <p>In this port city, houses are nestled right next to the canal.</p> <p>It sits pretty much smack dab between Brussels and Bruges, but this slice of medieval times doesn’t come with the same droves of tourists.</p> <blockquote class="instagram-media" style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcruoFVtpFl/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"> </div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"> <div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg);"> </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style="width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"> </div> <div style="width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"> </div> </div> </div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"> </div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"> </div> </div> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;"><a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CcruoFVtpFl/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A post shared by Lucian (@lucian_ciursa_)</a></p> </div> </blockquote> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article first appeared on <a href="https://www.readersdigest.com.au/travel/destinations/14-enchanting-places-look-straight-out-fairy-tale?pages=2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reader's Digest</a>.</em></p> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div>

International Travel

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Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ casts Canada as a racial utopia

<p>When Hulu’s series <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> premiered in 2017, reviewers noted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/arts/television/review-the-handmaids-tale-creates-a-chilling-mans-world.html">its gripping drama and dystopian exploration</a> of rape culture and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/26/the-handmaids-tale-year-trump-misogyny-metoo">misogyny at a time when both were hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidency</a>.</p> <p>The series is adapted from Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. It has won numerous awards and was recently renewed for <a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a35130606/handmaids-tale-season-5-news-date-cast-spoilers-trailer/">a fifth season</a>. But some commentators, including writer Ellen E. Jones, have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">criticized the series for its use of colour-blind casting that created inclusivity but otherwise ignored race in storylines</a>. Others, including Noah Berlatsky, have analyzed how both the series and novel <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">erase Black people’s history</a>.</p> <p>Our research examines representations of <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/R/Race-in-Young-Adult-Speculative-Fiction">race in speculative fiction</a> and of <a href="https://www.mqup.ca/reading-between-the-borderlines-products-9780773555136.php">Canada in U.S. literature</a>, leading us to notice how Hulu’s series represents race and national difference.</p> <p>The show positions Canada as a morally superior nation that has rejected the dystopian society’s repressive and exclusionist thinking. This is especially apparent in Season 4’s focus on characters’ escape to Canada, a theme that references older abolitionist narratives. In so doing, the show obscures Canada’s history of slavery, colonialism and racism.</p> <p><iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/81PyH5TH-NQ?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> </p> <h2>Atwood’s dystopian world</h2> <p>Both the novel and show draw on U.S. history to imagine a dystopian world facing an unexplained fertility crisis. Gilead, a <a href="https://lithub.com/margaret-atwood-on-how-she-came-to-write-the-handmaids-tale">theocratic nation led by religious fundamentalists</a>, has overthrown the U.S. government. Atwood’s female narrator is an <a href="https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA206534450&amp;sid=googleScholar&amp;v=2.1&amp;it=r&amp;linkaccess=abs&amp;issn=00294047&amp;p=AONE&amp;sw=w&amp;userGroupName=anon%7Ec0791e64">educated white woman</a> forced to become a “handmaid.” Each month, a commander rapes her in a religious fertility ceremony. Babies born to handmaids are raised by commanders and their wives. The sole purpose of the handmaids is to rebuild Gilead’s population.</p> <p>Writer Priya Nair explains that Atwood’s novel draws on the historical <a href="https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/anti-blackness-handmaids-tale">oppression of Black enslaved women and applies it to fictional white women</a>. For example, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Dark-Horizons-Science-Fiction-and-the-Dystopian-Imagination/Moylan-Baccolini/p/book/9780415966146">handmaids who are disobedient</a> are beaten or hanged.</p> <p>Despite clear parallels to slavery, Atwood only obliquely references slavery when the narrator <a href="https://msmagazine.com/2017/05/02/whats-not-said-handmaids-tale/">explains that the “Children of Ham</a>” have been relocated to the Dakotas. “Children of Ham” is a Biblical phrase that was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/from-noah-s-curse-to-slavery-s-rationale.html">used historically to justify enslaving Africans</a>.</p> <p>Nair also notes that the novel focuses on white women’s oppression, while seemingly ignoring “the historical realities of an American dystopia founded on anti-Black violence.”</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433508/original/file-20211123-26-1jbixok.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="A crowd of women, of white, Black and Asian identities, seen in cloaks and bonnets." /> <span class="caption">Actors are seen at the filming of Handmaid’s Tale at Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., February 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Victoria Pickering/Flickr)</span>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></p> <p>While the novel relies on historical experiences of Black Americans, its characters are predominantly white, a feature of Gilead that Atwood maintains in the 2019 follow-up <em>The Testaments</em>. As reviewer Danielle Kurtzleben notes, in this second instalment: “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/03/755868251/the-testaments-takes-us-back-to-gilead-for-a-fast-paced-female-centered-adventur">Readers hoping to hear more about race in Gilead will be sorely disappointed</a>.”</p> <p>Atwood intentionally framed Gilead as both misogynist and racist: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">the theocracy is interested only in reproducing white babies and, therefore, only enslaving white women</a>.</p> <h2>Colour-blind casting in Hulu’s adaptation</h2> <p>In adapting the novel, Hulu relied on a diverse cast of actors. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005253/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">White actor Elisabeth Moss</a> plays June and <a href="https://blackbookmag.com/arts-culture/essay-the-handmaids-tale-star-o-t-fagbenle-on-racial-fairness-in-the-entertainment-industry/">Black British actor</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1282966/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">O-T Fagbenle</a> portrays her husband Luke. <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/samira-wiley-on-doing-right-by-her-handmaids-tale-character-her-wife-the-queer-black-community-herself-8732193">Black actor</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4148126/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Samira Wiley</a> was cast as June’s best friend Moira. Actors of colour portray characters of all class positions in Gilead’s society.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433506/original/file-20211123-25-401rkr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="A Black woman dressed glamorously in red lipstick is seen arriving at an event in front of a Hulu / Handmaid's Tale sign." /></p> <p><span class="caption">Samira Wiley, who plays Moira, arrives for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ FYC Phase 2 Event in August 2017 in Los Angeles, Calif.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></p> <p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0588005/">Executive producer Bruce Miller</a> acknowledges that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">he cast actors of colour</a> in many roles to avoid creating an all-white world, which would result in a racist TV show. The show doesn’t address race, he explained, because: “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/31/the-handmaids-tales-race-problem">It just felt like in a world where birth rates have fallen so precipitously, fertility would trump everything</a>.”</p> <p>The show then relies on colour-blind casting and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/06/16/the-handmaids-tale-proves-that-colorblind-casting-isnt-enough/">colour-blind storytelling</a>.</p> <p>In Atwood’s novel, Canada is <a href="https://the-handmaids-tale.fandom.com/wiki/Canada">the place to which handmaids escape</a>, fleeing there on the Underground Femaleroad — a term that clearly invokes <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/underground-railroad">the Underground Railroad</a>.</p> <p>In Hulu’s series, handmaids — <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5931656/?ref_=ttep_ep10">including Moira</a> — escape from Gilead to Canada where they find protection and safety, and are able to rebuild their lives. The series draws on older literary traditions that have been integral to maintaining the myth of Canada as free from racism.</p> <h2>Draws on abolitionist narratives</h2> <p>In the 1840s and 1850s, U.S. abolitionist authors intentionally represented Canada as a racial haven. By casting <a href="https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/jcs.2020-0025">Canada as morally superior</a>, abolitionists imagined what the U.S. might look like if slavery were abolished.</p> <p>Abolitionist authors like Black songwriter and poet <a href="https://southernspaces.org/2020/white-people-america-1854/">Joshua McCarter Simpson</a> and white novelist <a href="https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/harriet-beecher-stowe-life/">Harriet Beecher Stowe</a> celebrated Canada as a place that resisted racial violence and provided legal protection for Black refugees fleeing U.S. slavery.</p> <p>Some abolitionists sought to capture the nuanced accounts of Black refugees in Canada. Abolitionist editor <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">Benjamin Drew</a> published oral testimonies of Black refugees, including their experiences of racism in Ontario.</p> <p>Others, like Stowe, minimized the difficulties of the lived experiences of Black Canadians, focusing on stories of Black success in Canada. These celebratory narratives dominated representations of Canada in U.S. literature.</p> <h2>Canada as utopia?</h2> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433513/original/file-20211123-20-1n4hkjj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip" alt="A group of women in red cloaks and bonnets are seen walking by a cluster of trees outside." /></p> <p><span class="caption">Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ escape-to-Canada stories draw on historical narratives by abolitionists.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Victoria Pickering/Flickr)</span>, <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" class="license">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></p> <p><a href="https://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=4528">Literary scholar Nancy Kang</a> argues these abolitionist stories constructed an “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033673">allegory of Canadian freedom reigning triumphant over American bondage</a>.”</p> <p>Hulu’s <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> escape-to-Canada stories draw on these historical narratives. The handmaid Emily, portrayed by white actor <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0088127/">Alexis Bledel</a>, escapes Gilead dramatically, entering Canada by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8363118/?ref_=ttep_ep1">wading across a rushing river</a>, nearly losing June’s daughter. Once across, she weeps over the baby, recreating an iconic scene from Stowe’s <a href="http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/uncletom/uthp.html"><em>Uncle Tom’s Cabin</em></a>, when the enslaved Eliza escapes slave-catchers by fleeing across a river with her child.</p> <p>Later in the episode, an Asian Canadian doctor welcomes Emily to Canada, saying: “You’re safe here.”</p> <p>On some level, Hulu’s use of colour-blind casting, as Berlatsky notes, “addresses the narrative’s debt to African-American history.” But viewers are still watching an adaptation of a novel whose emotional horror is based on imagining violent, racist aspects of U.S. history <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/15/15808530/handmaids-tale-hulu-margaret-atwood-black-history-racial-erasure">as if the atrocities happened to white people</a>.</p> <h2>Myths of Canada</h2> <p>The series avoids Canada’s history of anti-Black racism, slavery and state violence against Black bodies, as detailed by gender studies and Black/African diaspora scholar <a href="https://wgsi.utoronto.ca/person/robyn-maynard/">Robyn Maynard</a> in <a href="https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/policing-black-lives"><em>Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present</em></a>. It also overlooks Canada’s colonial <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">violence toward Indigenous peoples</a>. These <a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-shameful-history-of-sterilizing-indigenous-women-107876">forms of violence</a> are intertwined with seeking control over women’s reproductive rights and sexual freedom.</p> <p>The series also overlooks Canada’s history of <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/chinese-immigration-act">racist immigration</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/auschwitz-jews-not-welcome-in-wartime-canada">and asylum</a> policies.</p> <p>Hulu’s series does explore some of the consequences of patriarchal oppression. But the show’s positioning of Canada as a racial haven obscures <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/racism">its history</a> and the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/m_blog/dont-believe-the-hype-canada-is-not-a-nation-of-cultural-tolerance">contemporary reality of racism</a> experienced by BIPOC women and communities in Canada.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167766/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/miranda-green-barteet-1254372">Miranda Green-Barteet</a>, Associate Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/western-university-882">Western University</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/alyssa-maclean-1261523">Alyssa MacLean</a>, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Writing Studies, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/western-university-882">Western University</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hulus-the-handmaids-tale-casts-canada-as-a-racial-utopia-167766">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Hulu</em></p>

TV

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$30 ALDI buy sparks viral debate over old wives' tale

<div class="post_body_wrapper"> <div class="post_body"> <div class="body_text redactor-styles redactor-in"> <p>A woman has accidentally sparked a passionate debate on social media after sharing a controversial "gift idea" from ALDI - a cheap set of knives.</p> <p>Angela Joyce Frost took to Facebook group Aldi Mums to share her excitement over a bargain set of knives she purchased for $30.</p> <p>She posted a photo of the Crofton six-piece knife set with sharpener and wrote: "Brought this knife block set at Aldi today. So impressed how nice it is for only $29.99! Great for a gift idea."</p> <p>The shopper said she thought it would make for a perfect housewarming gift, however the suggestion quickly divided critics.</p> <p>"Bite me if you like, but you don't give knives as gifts, they cut the friendship or bond. (old wives tale)," one ALDI fan wrote.</p> <p>The conversation instantly shifted to be around the legitimacy of the old superstition, with critics clashing in the comments section.</p> <p>"Don't give knives as presents. Bad luck. You will cut the connection," another Aldi fan wrote.</p> <p>"Yes! I was just going to say the same. Twice, people have given our family lovely knives and both times the friendship got cut off," another claimed, with a fourth agreeing: "Well this explains the demise of a 6 year relationship after some $400 knives."</p> <p>These anecdotes weren't enough to satisfy some skeptics though, with one critic writing: "Good to see superstitions and old wives tales are alive and well in 2021".</p> <p>"A good friend gifted us a knife set and we are still happily married after 12 years/17 years together!" another Facebook user stated.</p> <p>"I gave my husband a set of knives years ago when we were just dating... when does this bad connection happen? He'd be keen to know," another wrote, followed by laughing emojis.</p> <p>A third asked: "What kind of sorcery do you believe in if giving a gift causes doom and gloom?"</p> <p>But there was a third group of people who believed they had found a solution to the knife-giving fallout. "No, if you put a coin with it, it removes the spell," one critic explained in the viral thread.</p> <p>"My dad wouldn't even give me his good butcher knife. I had to give him $1.00," another agreed, with a third weighing in: "If you give knives as a gift you have to give a coin with it. Its [sic] meant to stop the bad luck. Another old wives tale."</p> <p>Needless to say, the superstition had some users concerned.</p> <p>"My husband just gave me a set of Japanese chef knives for our 6 year wedding anniversary."</p> </div> </div> </div>

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The Wind in the Willows — a tale of wanderlust, male bonding, and timeless delight

<p>Like several classics penned during the golden age of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows was written with a particular child in mind.</p> <p>Alastair Grahame was four years old when his father Kenneth — then a secretary at the Bank of England — began inventing bedtime stories about the reckless ruffian, Mr Toad, and his long-suffering friends: Badger, Rat, and Mole.</p> <p>Alastair, born premature and partially blind, was nicknamed “Mouse”. Small, squinty, and beset by health problems, he was bullied at school. His rapture in the fantastic was later confirmed by his nurse, who recalled hearing Kenneth “up in the night-nursery, telling Master Mouse some ditty or other about a toad”.</p> <p>The Wind in the Willows evolved from Alastair’s bedtime tales into a series of letters Grahame later sent his son while on holiday in Littlehampton. In the story, a quartet of anthropomorphised male animals wander freely in a pastoral land of leisure and pleasure — closely resembling the waterside haven of Cookham Dean where Grahame himself grew up.</p> <p>In peaceful retreat from “The Wide World”, Rat, Mole, Badger, and Toad spend their days chatting, philosophising, pottering, and ruminating on the latest fashions and fads. But when the daredevil, Toad, takes up motoring, he becomes entranced by wild fantasies of the road. His concerned friends must intervene to restrain his whims, teaching him “to be a sensible toad”.</p> <p>Unlike Toad’s recuperative ending, however, Alastair’s story did not end happily. In the spring of 1920, while a student at Oxford, he downed a glass of port before taking a late night stroll. The next morning, railway workers found his decapitated body on tracks near the university. An inquest determined his death a likely suicide but out of respect for his father, it was recorded as an accident.</p> <p>Kenneth Grahame, by all accounts, never recovered from the loss of his only child. He became increasingly reclusive, eventually abandoning writing altogether.</p> <p>In his will, he gifted the original manuscript of Willows to the Bodleian Library, along with the copyrights and all his royalties. Upon his death in 1932, he was buried in Oxford next to his first reader, Mouse.</p> <p>A ‘gay manifesto’?<br />Biographical readings are a staple in children’s literature, and the criticism surrounding The Wind in the Willows is no exception. First published in 1908 — the same year as Anne of Green Gables and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz — the novel was initially titled The Mole and the Water-Rat. After back and forth correspondence with Grahame, his publisher Sir Algernon Methuen wrote to say he had settled on The Wind in the Willows because of its “charming and wet sound”.</p> <p>Today, one of the mysteries surrounding the novel is the meaning of the title. The word “willows” does not appear anywhere in the book; the single form “willow” appears just twice.</p> <p>When Willows was first released in Britain it was marketed as an allegory — “a fantastic and whimsical satire upon life”, featuring a cast of woodland and riverside creatures who were closer to an Edwardian gentlemen’s club than a crowd of animals. Indeed, the adventures structuring the novel are the meanderings of old English chaps nostalgic for another time.</p> <p>The four friends, though different in disposition, are bound by their “divine discontent and longing”.</p> <p>Restless enough to be easily bewitched, they are rich enough to fill their days with long picnics and strolls. Most chapters are sequenced in chronological order, but the action revolves around different types of wandering – pottering around the garden, messing about in boats, rambling along country lanes.</p> <p>With the exception of a brief encounter with a jailer’s daughter, an overweight barge woman, and a careless mother hedgehog, there are no women in Willows. And excluding a pair of young hedgehogs and a group of field mice, all male, there are no children either.</p> <p>Given the novel’s strong homosocial subtext and absence of female characters, the story is often read as an escapist fantasy from Grahame’s unhappy marriage to Elspeth Thomson. Peter Hunt, an eminent scholar of Willows, describes the couple’s relationship as “sexually arid” and suggests Grahame’s sudden resignation from the bank in 1908 was due to bullying on the basis of his sexuality.</p> <p>Indeed, Hunt ventures to call the book “a gay manifesto”, reading it as a gay allegory heavy with suppressed desire and latent homoeroticism. In one scene, for example, Mole and Rat “shake off their garments” and “tumble in-between the sheets in great joy and contentment”.</p> <p>Earlier, while sharing a bed in the open air, Mole “reaches out from under his blanket, feels for the Rat’s paw in the darkness, and gives it a squeeze.” “I’ll do whatever you like, Ratty,” he whispers.</p> <p>For this reason, and others, some critics suggest that Willows is not a children’s book at all, but a novel for adults that can be enjoyed by children.</p> <p>Conservatism<br />Whether we read Willows as a simple animal story or a social satire, the narrative reinforces the status quo. Badger, for instance, resembles a gruff headmaster whose paternal concern for his friends extends to an earnest attempt to reform the inebriate Toad.</p> <p>Toad is a recognisable type of schoolboy, charming and impulsive but wildly arrogant and lacking self-control. In the end, he is punished for his foolish behaviour and forced to forgo his flamboyant egotism in humble resignation at Toad Hall. Similarly, Mole and Ratty are afflicted by wanderlust, but inevitably retreat to their cosy, subterranean homes. All of Grahame’s animals return to their “proper” place.</p> <p>This return to civility and quiet domesticity exemplifies a criticism often levelled at children’s literature: that such stories are more about the fears and desires of adults than those of children. (Alice in Wonderland, for instance, emphasises the importance of curiosity and imagination, but is also an attempt to socialise children into responsible citizenship.)</p> <p>Willows is a story about homecoming and friendship, but also a psychodrama about uncontrolled behaviour and addiction in Edwardian England.</p> <p>Creatures of habit<br />Perhaps the most famous scene in Willows — now also a popular ride at Disneyland — is Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. In the novel, the incautious Toad, who is oddly large enough to drive a human-sized car, is frequently in trouble with the law and even imprisoned due to his addiction to joyriding.</p> <p>At times delusional, the self-proclaimed “terror of the highway” writes off several vehicles before spiralling into a cycle of car theft, dangerous driving, and disorderly behaviour.</p> <p>Eventually, Toad’s motorcar mania becomes so unmanageable that his exasperated friends are forced to stage “a mission of mercy” – a “work of rescue” that contemporary readers might recognise as an intervention. This subtext of addiction underpins the arc of recovery, and is crucial for understanding the novel’s key themes: the limits of friendship, the loss of pastoral security, and the temptations of city life.</p> <p>Interestingly, in Badger’s attempt to help Toad break the cycle of withdrawal and recovery, and in Toad’s temporary abatement and relapse, the text points to another form of addiction: to alcohol.</p> <p>When Toad is banished to his country retreat — a typical “cure” for upper-class alcoholism at the time — Badger stresses he will remain in enforced confinement “until the poison has worked itself out of his system” and his “violent paroxysms” have passed.</p> <p>Again, the biographical foundation of the work is clear. Grahame’s father, Cunningham, was an alcoholic whose heavy drinking resulted, like Toad’s intoxication, in social exile, financial strain, and the loss of the family home.</p> <p>In The Wind in the Willows, Grahame employs animals to render all the ups and downs of human experience. In doing so, he captures the conflict and consonance between freedom and captivity, tradition and modernity.</p> <p class="p1"><em>Written by Kate Cantrell. This article first appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-the-wind-in-the-willows-a-tale-of-wanderlust-male-bonding-and-timeless-delight-151091">The Conversation</a>.</em></p>

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Royal bridesmaid reveals real truth behind Prince Frederik and Princess Mary’s “fairy-tale” meeting

<p>Princess Mary and her husband Prince Frederik shook the world when it was revealed they met by chance at a Sydney pub during the 2000 Olympics.</p> <p>However, a bridesmaid of Mary Donaldson, now the Crown Princess of Denmark, has revealed her friend’s seemingly “random” meeting with the royal isn’t quite the fairy tale we all thought it was.</p> <p>Amber Petty says Mary actually met her then-future hubby at an exclusive private dinner party with a group of royals who were in Australia for the Olympics.</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.29117259552044px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7837423/new-project-4.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/ed2d81a67624464ba5a05c216e300897" /></p> <p>“I’m sorry to break everybody’s hearts, but it’s not always about randomly bumping into princes in pubs,” Petty told Seven’s<em> Sunrise.</em></p> <p>“It wasn’t just a random meeting.</p> <p>“It was an organised small dinner during the Olympics and Mary happened to be invited and most of the guests happened to be royals.”</p> <p>“That’s really the truth... it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.29117259552044px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7837422/new-project-5.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/7ca75598d75242d69269ddb542432dd4" /></p> <p><em>Mary Elizabeth Donaldson's bridesmaids, sisters Jane Alison Stephens, Patricia Anne Bailey and friend Amber Petty.</em></p> <p>Petty went on to say that Mary and Frederik were seated close together and quickly developed a “really lovely connection.”</p> <p>“I think they were sitting across from each other, which is obviously the perfect position to be talking and bonding with someone,” she said.</p> <p>“It was a very civilised, lovely dinner and it was the start of what would become a very big chapter for both of them.”</p> <p>Amber Petty is still relatively to the Princess and has just released her memoir, called<span> </span><em>This Is Not A Love Song.</em></p>

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“Anything but a fairy tale”: Duchess Meghan wants to set the record straight about life in the royal family

<p>The Duchess of Sussex wants the biography on her and Prince Harry’s life to be released sooner rather than later because she hopes the book would clear the air on why the couple chose to leave the royal family.</p> <p>According to an insider, the upcoming book titled<span> </span><em>Finding Freedom: Harry, Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family</em><span> </span>by journalists Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand is expected to be released around the world online on August 11, with the hard copy on sale from August 20.</p> <p>But Meghan seemingly wants an earlier release date, with a friend explaining: “If Meghan had it her way, the book would be released tomorrow instead of three months from now.</p> <p>“She said the book will finally set the record straight and show the world why they were left with no other choice than to leave the royal life.”</p> <p>Meghan wants readers to understand that despite joining the royal family, her life hasn’t been a fairy tale like many assume.  </p> <p>She also wants people to see “the genuine person that she is” and hopes to “shatter this image of being a demanding diva,” added the insider.</p> <p>Meghan and Harry sent shockwaves throughout the world in January when they announced their departure from the royal family, and instead, chose to become financially independent, splitting their time between the United Kingdom and North America.</p> <p>While the pair have wealthy friends and a high-flying lifestyle, the insider revealed that Meghan “desperately wants to shatter this image of being a demanding diva who was rude to royal staffers and others on her quest for fame and power.</p> <p>“She said the book will help give her and Harry a clean slate. Meghan seems to think the readers will finally understand the monumental anguish and turmoil she had to endure with a stuff upper lip.</p> <p>“Meghan said people need to see her vulnerable side, something the book does in great detail.”</p> <p>Her friend added: “I think [Meghan] wants people to feel sorry for her, or at least have compassion for her and all she’s been through, which has been anything but a fairy tale.”</p>

Beauty & Style

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Fairy tale castle

<p><em>Justine Tyerman out-stays her welcome in a medieval Swiss castle.</em></p> <p>I sat in a window seat at Chillon Castle’s great banquet hall, visualising the scene 600 years ago – dukes, duchesses and guests in their finery, tables laden with food and huge logs blazing in massive open fireplaces.</p> <p>Feasts at the medieval castle on the shore of Switzerland’s sparkling Lake Geneva were legendary events held over several days. The quantity of food prepared was astonishing. According to an account written in 1420, for every day of the banquet, 10 or so cooks prepared 100 piglets, 60 fat pigs, 200 kid goats, 200 lambs, 2000 head of poultry and 6000 eggs. Added to this was game killed while hunting - deer, hares, partridges, pheasants, and other wild birds. For non-meat-eaters, there was a variety of fish including dolphins, salmon, trout and carp.</p> <p>Chillon, built on a rocky outcrop surrounded by water, is the absolute epitome of a fairy-tale castle with a moat, drawbridge, turrets, ramparts with arrow slits, vaults, courtyards, spiral stone staircases, chambers and great halls.</p> <p>I lost track of time as I explored the entire castle, starting in the basement which resembled a Gothic cathedral with its magnificent stone arches.</p> <p>The earliest official mention of Chillon was in 1150 when the Counts of Savoy controlled the region. The Bernese took over the castle in 1536 when they conquered the Vaud region, and for the next 260 years, Chillon served as a fortress, arsenal and prison.</p> <p>In 1803, the castle became the property of the Canton of Vaud. A major restoration campaign was launched at the end of the 19th century and is ongoing today.</p> <p>Lord Byron, during his visit to the castle in 1816, was inspired to write The Prisoner of Chillon, a poem about François Bonivard, who was arrested in 1530 by the Savoyard Army and imprisoned in the basement. Byron inscribed his name in stone near where Bonivard was chained to a pillar for six years.</p> <p>Upstairs, I delved into the private chambers of the nobles.</p> <p>The Camera Domini was reserved for the Duke of Savoy. Remnants of murals on the walls showed animals and lush vegetation while lilies and crosses decorated the ceiling.</p> <p>When the duke wanted a bath, a wooden tub was placed in his chamber lined with a sheet to protect his regal rear end from splinters. A huge fireplace kept the room warm in winter.</p> <p>A spiral staircase, built around 1336, allowed the duke access to the ramparts above and his private chapel below. The 14th century paintings there were among few religious artworks to escape the Reformation.</p> <p>Another bedroom used by the Bernese rulers had running water and a stone stove fed with wood from an antechamber.</p> <p>The castle had a number of communal latrines which seemed to be a popular spot for selfies!</p> <p>The keep, the inner stronghold of the castle, dates back to the 11th century. Near the centre of the fortress, it was symbol of power and the place of last refuge when defending the castle. The keep was also used as an observation post, residence, storehouse, prison and powder-house. For safety, the door of the keep was high up and could only be reached by a ladder or drawbridge.</p> <p>To further disadvantage and slow down invaders, the keep was accessed by a right-turning, clockwise spiral staircase making it easier for right-handed defenders of the castle to wield their swords while descending and difficult for attackers approaching from below. Clever!</p> <p>The castle’s impressive weapons’ collection of swords, crossbows, muskets and pikes was on display in the keep.</p> <p>During restoration of the keep in the 20th century, stairs were added to provide access to the top of the tower where the 360-degree panorama on this pristine autumn day was breath-taking. The paddle steamer that had dropped me off at the castle jetty earlier in the day was churning across the satin lake against a backdrop of snow-capped alps.</p> <p>I drifted back in time to an era when sentries were stationed in the tower to guard the castle. The view of the lake and the alps would have been as magnificent then as it is now.</p> <p>Eventually, a staff member tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to leave. The castle was about to close for the day. As the sun began to set, I crossed the drawbridge and set off to walk along the lake-edge pathway back to Montreux. Little did I know what lay in store for me on the waterfront...</p> <p>See also Justine’s earlier stories in her series about Switzerland: <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/travel/international-travel/the-slow-coach">Part 1</a> | <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/travel/international-travel/in-the-company-of-mountain-gods">Part 2</a> | <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/travel/international-travel/a-side-trip-on-the-bear-trek">Part 3</a> | <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/travel/international-travel/flying-by-train">Part 4</a></p> <p><em>Justine Tyerman was a guest of <span><a href="https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-nz/">Switzerland Tourism</a></span> and travelled courtesy of <span><a href="https://www.myswitzerland.com/en-nz/planning/transport-accommodation/tickets-public-transportation/">Swiss Travel Pass</a>.</span></em></p>

International Travel

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A tale of 2 rivers: is it safer to swim in the Yarra in Victoria or the Nepean in NSW?

<p>Cooling off with a swim in the river is a popular summer pastime in Australia, particularly for people who live a long distance from the beach.</p> <p>But urban waterways often have poor water quality, and <a href="https://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/bathing/annapolis.pdf">swimming in contaminated water</a> can pose health risks. Water-borne pathogens, if ingested, can cause <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/guidelines-managing-risks-recreational-water">infectious diseases</a> such as gastrointestinal illness.</p> <p>In <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1755-1315/344/1/012016/meta">our recently published research</a> we compared a popular NSW river, the Nepean River in western Sydney, with the upper reaches of Victoria’s iconic Yarra River (from Kew in Melbourne to Launching Place in the Yarra Ranges).</p> <p>We investigated how safe these rivers were for swimming, based on levels of faecal bacteria. We also assessed what information is available to inform people of the rivers’ suitability for swimming.</p> <p>While the water quality is generally better in the Nepean River, NSW doesn’t provide guidance on whether it’s safe for swimming. So in this regard, Victoria’s Yarra River could be considered safer.</p> <p><strong>What contaminates our rivers?</strong></p> <p>Both the Nepean River and the Yarra River are exposed to many potential sources of contamination, such as faecal wastes from farm livestock, wildlife, and domestic animals, and pollution from urban streams and sewage.</p> <p>We calculated flows in the Nepean River can contain <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-of-us-are-drinking-recycled-sewage-water-than-most-people-realise-92420">up to 30%</a> treated sewage. However, the NSW Environment Protection Authority highly regulates the sewage to protect river water quality.</p> <p>Heavy rain reduces water quality as the rain mobilises pollutants and carries them into waterways.</p> <p><strong>Water quality: Victoria versus New South Wales</strong></p> <p>We generally use the presence of E. coli bacteria as <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/rwqc2012.pdf">an indicator of pollution</a> from animal and human faecal wastes in rivers. It also indicates the risk of swimmers contracting a water-borne disease. If people swim in water with highly elevated E.coli numbers, they have a greater chance of getting sick.</p> <p>NSW doesn’t have guidelines which stipulate safe levels of E.coli in freshwater rivers. But Victorian guidelines recommend E.coli in freshwater rivers and lakes used for swimming doesn’t exceed <a href="https://yarraandbay.vic.gov.au/weeklywatersamples?type=yarra&amp;site=290400">260 organisms per 100mL</a>.</p> <p>It was simple to get advice on water quality for swimming at four locations on the Yarra River on the “<a href="https://yarraandbay.vic.gov.au/yarra-watch">Yarrawatch</a>” website.</p> <p>Swimming is prohibited in the lower, highly urbanised parts of the Yarra, but Yarrawatch provides daily updates on the safety of swimming in its cleaner freshwater reaches. Yarrawatch also documents the actual <a href="https://yarraandbay.vic.gov.au/weeklywatersamples?type=yarra&amp;site=290400">bacteria concentrations</a>from weekly samples collected during the swimming season, which inform the safety recommendations.</p> <p>At the time we published this article all sites on the Yarra were “poor”, meaning not suitable for swimming.</p> <p>There was no similar information publicly available for swimmers in the Nepean River, so we obtained water quality data from NSW Government agencies.</p> <p>The Nepean River E. coli bacteria results showed river water quality was generally very good, particularly at the sites upstream of urban and agricultural development.</p> <p>We also compared bacteria results according to rainfall. After heavy rain in the previous week, the E. coli bacteria levels spiked. The Nepean River at Penrith Weir, a very popular swimming spot, often recorded hazardous E.coli results after more than 40mm of rain in a week.</p> <p><strong>Swimmers need advice</strong></p> <p>Our biggest concern is Nepean River users are not given any advice on water quality. Up-to-date guidance is important to enable people to make an informed choice about whether or not they should swim.</p> <p>For example, very young children have poorly developed immune systems and may be <a href="https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/health-daily-care/health-concerns/pool-hygiene">more susceptible</a> to getting sick from water-borne pathogens. Their parents and caregivers should be warned if E. coli levels are high at a particular swimming spot.</p> <p>In contrast, visitors to any coastal or harbour swimming beach in eastern Sydney can look up the NSW Government <a href="https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/topics/water/beaches/beachwatch-water-quality-program">Beachwatch</a> advice. This guidance is updated daily based on regular testing of faecal bacteria and other factors, including rainfall.</p> <p>But in western Sydney, swimmers and other river users have no such guidance. The decision to go swimming in the Nepean River can therefore be a gamble.</p> <p>Faecal bacterial data is actually collected in the Nepean and other rivers by NSW government agencies. Yet they don’t make the results freely available to the public.</p> <p>The NSW government is failing in its duty of care in this regard. It must issue health warnings when it detects hazardous bacterial results in the river.</p> <p>So which river has the best water quality for swimming, the Nepean or the the Yarra? While the Yarra water quality may be poorer, authorities at least offer advice to river users to guide safe swimming.</p> <p>If you intend to swim in the Nepean, avoid swimming after rain. If you’re unsure, wait at least a few days, preferably a week, after significant rainfall.</p> <p><em>Written by Ian Wright, Jason Reynolds, Katherine Morrison and Michelle Ryan. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tale-of-2-rivers-is-it-safer-to-swim-in-the-yarra-in-victoria-or-the-nepean-in-nsw-130791">The Conversation.</a></em></p>

Cruising

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Tales of wombat "heroes" are unfortunately not true

<p>If you’ve been following the bushfire crisis on social media and elsewhere, you may have seen reports of <a href="https://www.unilad.co.uk/animals/wombats-share-their-burrows-with-animals-displaced-in-bushfires/">benevolent wombats</a> herding other animals to shelter into their fire-proof burrows.</p> <p>These stories went quickly viral – probably reflecting the appetite for good news after the horrors of the bushfire crisis. However the accounts are not entirely accurate.</p> <p>Wombats do not heroically round up helpless animals during a bushfire and lead them to safety. But wombats do help other animals in a different way – even if it’s not their intention.</p> <p><strong>Accidental heroes</strong></p> <p>Wombats can emerge as accidental heroes during a bushfire, by providing a safe refuge underground for other wildlife.</p> <p>Wombat warrens – networks of interconnecting burrows – are large and complex, and considerably shielded from the above-ground environment. Small mammals are known to <a href="https://media.australianmuseum.net.au/media/dd/Uploads/Documents/38347/ams370_vXVIII_05_LowRes.ffb19ac.pdf">use wombat burrows</a> to survive an inferno.</p> <p><a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1017/S0952836902001620">One study</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_hairy-nosed_wombat">southern hairy-nosed wombat</a>, for instance, found warrens with 28 entrances and nearly 90 metres of tunnels.</p> <p>What’s more, temperatures deep within burrows are very stable compared to surface temperatures, with daily temperature fluctuations of less than <a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1017/S0952836902001620">1℃, compared to 24℃</a> on the surface.</p> <p>This thermal buffering would help a great deal during intense fires, and you can understand why other species would want access to these safe havens.</p> <p><strong>The wombat sharehouse</strong></p> <p>By placing camera traps outside 34 wombat burrows, <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/am/am15052">a 2015 study</a> showed a surprising variety of animals using southern hairy-nosed wombat burrows. Researchers observed ten other species, six of which used them on multiple occasions.</p> <p>The intruders ranged from rock wallabies and <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2784/21961179">bettongs</a> to skinks and birds. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_penguin">Little penguins</a> were recorded using burrows 27 times, while the <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/16751/21955343">black-footed rock wallaby</a> was observed using wombat burrows more often than wombats – nearly 2,000 visits in eight weeks! They were even observed using the burrows to specifically avoid birds of prey.</p> <p>But wombats aren’t alone in providing real estate for other species. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinifex_hopping_mouse">Hopping mice</a>, <a href="https://bie.ala.org.au/species/urn:lsid:biodiversity.org.au:afd.taxon:0d4c9c0c-51d3-44e0-a365-fe0f8b791c66">echidnas</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eremiascincus">sand swimming skinks</a>, <a href="https://www.ridgeandvalleyreptiles.com/nephrurus-milli.html">barking geckoes</a> and numerous invertebrates <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140196308001821">were found</a> using the warrens of bettongs and bilbies in arid Australia.</p> <p><strong>Anybody home?</strong></p> <p>It’s also important to recognise wombats don’t have “a burrow”. Rather, they have <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/wr/wr07067">multiple burrows</a> within their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_range">home range</a>. In fact, a 2012 study tracked one wombat to <a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00881.x">14 different burrows</a>.</p> <p>While wombats are often regarded as quite sedentary, <a href="https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00881.x?casa_token=SiuOr4VY07oAAAAA%3AQNnJyBxVubXbqq27P9j_Z6-fqIsTD0NE1rdU9OGlifTq2v53Ti6eJWPCAc77wljbRgYCzinXHVRiWv_Jyw">another study</a> found the average home range size of common wombats is 172 hectares.</p> <p>They spend <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/zo/ZO02061">a few nights</a> sleeping in one burrow, before moving onto another.</p> <p>Since each wombat has multiple burrows, many can be vacant within a home range, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320707001048">abandoned burrows</a> are common in some areas. <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/wr/Fulltext/WR07067">A 2007 study</a> showed that even among “active” burrows (those with signs of recent use), only one in three are actually occupied by a wombat at any given time.</p> <p>This means, at times, other species may not need to share burrows with wombats at all. It’s vacant real estate.</p> <p>So how might a wombat react to an uninvited guest? This is difficult to know, and likely depends on who’s visiting. Wombats prefer not to share burrows with other wombats, although burrow sharing <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/zo/ZO02061">can be common</a> when wombat populations are very high in one place.</p> <p>In her book <a href="https://www.publish.csiro.au/book/6088/">Wombats</a>, Barbara Triggs recalls a fox being chased from a burrow by an angry wombat. Meanwhile, the crushed skulls of foxes and dogs in wombat burrows suggest not all intruders are welcome.</p> <p>That a suite of species use wombat burrows suggests wombats may not notice or care about squatters – so long as they don’t pose a threat. But more research is needed on the fascinating interactions that take place in wombat burrows, particularly during fire.</p> <p><strong>The battle is not over</strong></p> <p>While empirical studies are needed, the available evidence suggests wombats may well provide an important refuge for other wildlife during fire.</p> <p>In any case, it’s important to recognise that surviving fire is only <a href="https://theconversation.com/animal-response-to-a-bushfire-is-astounding-these-are-the-tricks-they-use-to-survive-129327">half the battle</a>.</p> <p>Wombats and their house guests face a medley of challenges post-fire – not least avoiding predators in a barren landscape and eking out a living in a landscape with scarce food.</p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/dale-nimmo-15432">Dale Nimmo</a>, Associate professor/ARC DECRA fellow, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-sturt-university-849">Charles Sturt University</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tales-of-wombat-heroes-have-gone-viral-unfortunately-theyre-not-true-129891">original article</a>.</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Fairy tale romance: The heartwarming story of how MKR's Manu Feildel met his wife

<p>Maybe it’s his French accent or his talent in the kitchen, but Manu Feildel is no stranger to women fawning over him.</p> <p>But despite the popularity, when the<span> </span><em>My Kitchen Rules</em><span> </span>judge met his now-wife Clarissa Weerasena at Sydney’s Ivy night club in 2011, she reacted differently.</p> <p>Speaking to<span> </span><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nowtolove.com.au/aww" target="_blank"><em>The Australian Women’s Weekly</em></a><span> </span>in 2016, Clarissa revealed that she had no idea who the iconic chef was.</p> <p>“He comes up to me and says, ‘Your friend says that you can cook better than me,’ and I said, ‘I probably can’,” she recounted. “I thought, who the hell are you?”</p> <p>Speaking about the hilarious first encounter, Manu told<em><span> </span></em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.nowtolove.com.au/tvweek" target="_blank"><em>TV WEEK</em></a><span> </span>his version of events. “We met in a lift going to a nightclub in Sydney. She didn’t know who I was.”</p> <p>He then said: “We didn’t see each other for three months after that, then we caught up for a drink. I was nervous. Because three months had passed. We didn’t see each other for another three months, then had some lunch. The rest is history.”</p> <p>But what sealed the deal was Clarissa’s knowledge in the kitchen. The chef is known to love sauce accompanying meals and after tasting one of her creations, he knew he had found the one.</p> <p>“Clarissa ticked all the boxes – and that was the biggest box. I was like, thank God! She loves eating and she loves cooking – she’s perfect!” He told the<span> </span><em>Australian Women’s Weekly</em>.</p> <p>Madly in love, the<span> </span><em>Australia’s Got Talent</em><span> </span>judge asked Clarissa to marry him in 2013, and the couple then welcomed their daughter Charlee in 2015.</p> <p>Before Clarissa, Manu was in a 12-year relationship with Ronnie Moreshead whom he shares a son Jonti with.</p> <p>After being engaged for four long years, the couple tied the knot in 2018 in what Manu describes as a “beautiful intimate ceremony”.</p> <p>He took to Instagram to share the happy news.</p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/BehblRUF_Xc/" data-instgrm-version="12"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BehblRUF_Xc/" target="_blank">I’ve often said don’t believe what you read in the press but now you hear it from the horses mouth, yes it’s true I am married! Last week I married the love of my life Clarissa in a beautiful intimate ceremony. We had a wonderful day surrounded by family and friends and lots of love and laughter. Thanks to @theelandra @blueskyphotographyqld @onedaybridal @linneys_jewellery</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/manufeildelofficial/" target="_blank"> Manu Feildel</a> (@manufeildelofficial) on Jan 28, 2018 at 9:54pm PST</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>“I’ve often said don’t believe what you read in the press but now you hear it from the horses mouth, yes it’s true I am married!” he wrote.</p> <p>“Last week I married the love of my life Clarissa in a beautiful intimate ceremony. We had a wonderful day surrounded by family and friends and lots of love and laughter.”</p> <p>And they’re still going strong, as only recently, Manu shared a photo of the duo celebrating his 46th birthday.</p> <blockquote style="background: #FFF; border: 0; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: 0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width: 540px; min-width: 326px; padding: 0; width: calc(100% - 2px);" class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvd1bjtnL_n/" data-instgrm-version="12"> <div style="padding: 16px;"> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #f4f4f4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div> </div> </div> <div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display: block; height: 50px; margin: 0 auto 12px; width: 50px;"></div> <div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style="color: #3897f0; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: 550; line-height: 18px;">View this post on Instagram</div> </div> <p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bvd1bjtnL_n/" target="_blank">Happy B’day to me!!! 46 year young and going strong. Best wife, best son, best daughter, best life.</a></p> <p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" rel="noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/manufeildelofficial/" target="_blank"> Manu Feildel</a> (@manufeildelofficial) on Mar 26, 2019 at 2:16am PDT</p> </div> </blockquote> <p>“Happy B’day to me!!! 46 year young and going strong. Best wife, best son, best daughter, best life,” he gushed.</p>

Relationships

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Inside the story: 99 versions of the same tale in The Drover's Wives

<p>Ryan O'Neill’s recent book <em><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40910479-the-drover-s-wives">The Drover’s Wives</a> </em>joins a rich corpus of Australian literary works inspired by Henry Lawson’s short story, <em><a href="http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DrovWife.shtml">The Drover’s Wife</a> </em>(first published in The Bulletin in 1892).</p> <p>But O’Neill’s approach differs from that of other authors, by offering not one reinterpretation – as in Frank Moorhouse’s <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C203158">satirical take</a> and Barbara Jefferis’ <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C62079">feminist retelling</a>, for example – but 99 different versions of the story.</p> <p>His book envisages the Lawson story in various forms, including: as a tweet, a school English essay, an Amazon book review, a limerick, a computer game, a gossip column, and even a sporting commentary.</p> <p>O’Neill’s book is dedicated to both Henry Lawson and French novelist Raymond Queneau. The latter was a founding member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo">Oulipo</a> (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), a mostly French assortment of experimental writers, mathematicians and scientists, founded in 1960.</p> <p>O’Neill attempts Queneau’s method of literary variations on a theme in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319790.Exercises_in_Style"><em>Exercises In Style</em></a> (first published in French in 1947), but with an Australian context.</p> <p>Lawson’s <em>The Drover’s Wife</em> provides the central narrative of O’Neill’s test. In the story, the titular wife of the absent drover spends a sleepless night keeping watch for a snake that had earlier alarmed her children. She passes the time reminiscing on hardships she has faced in the bush before. As daylight nears, the snake appears, and she clubs it to death.</p> <p>As with <em>Exercises In Style</em>, the original narrative in O'Neill’s book is of secondary importance to the telling and the myriad ways these tellings transform the tale.</p> <p>O’Neill’s experiment highlights the fact all writing is constrained by certain rules. It’s easier to play the game when you know these rules (and bend them, too).</p> <p>By taking a text so familiar as its starting point, O'Neill’s tweaks show the conventions of 99 different forms of writing, while shining new light on Lawson’s classic in the process.</p> <p><strong>Narrative techniques</strong></p> <p>The fourth reinterpretation in <em>The Drover’s Wives</em> – a “Year 8 English Essay” – begins with the prompt: “What narrative techniques does Lawson use to shape the reader’s perception of the drover’s wife?” With some substitution, we might re-render the question: “What narrative techniques does O’Neill use to shape the reader’s perception of The Drover’s Wife?” Let me count the ways …</p> <p>Among the most interesting rewrites is a version of the poem where the story is reduced to only onomatopoeia (words that <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/onomatopoeia-in-literature-definition-examples-quiz.html">look like the sound they make</a>): the snake is represented by “slithers, sizzles and snaps”.</p> <p>In another version, he experiments with “spoonerisms” – a display of shining wit where the initial syllables of two or more words are transposed. Instead of a “small herd of grass eaters”, O’Neill renders the drover’s flock as a “small herd of ass greeters”.</p> <p>He even includes a tanka, a Japanese poetic form similar to haiku:</p> <blockquote> <p>A snake approaches.<br />The woman and children run<br />And hide in the house.<br />Through the long night she watches –<br />Shedding memories like scales<br />And the snake burns with the dawn.</p> </blockquote> <p>O’Neill departs from the methods originally proposed by Queneau’s book by progressing into more contemporary territory (using PowerPoint lecture slides; a 1980s computer game; emojis; tweets; an Amazon book review; a reality TV show; a meme; a spam e-mail; and internet comments).</p> <p>He also uses forms specific to an Australian cultural context (an RSCPA report; a letter to the Daily Telegraph; Ocker; and Bush Ballad).</p> <p><strong>Techniques of transformation</strong></p> <p>A useful way to illustrate the impact of each technique employed by O’Neill is to examine its effect on the opening paragraph in Lawson’s original, used to establish the scene:</p> <blockquote> <p>The two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with slit slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, veranda included.</p> </blockquote> <p>In O’Neill’s text:</p> <ul> <li> <p>the Monosyllabic chapter re-renders the opening with single syllable words: “They lived in the bush in a shack with two rooms, miles and miles from the main road […] ”</p> </li> <li> <p>the Yoked Sentence chapter, requiring each sentence to begin with the last word of the previous sentence, opens: “The drover’s wife and her four children lived in an isolated house deep in the bush. Bush was all around, and the nearest neighbour was miles away. Away to the north somewhere, the drover […]”</p> </li> <li> <p>in the Lipogram chapter, which requires the conscious omission of one or more letters, the omission of the letter E renders the exposition differently: “A bush cabin in an outlying part of Australia marks a distant location for our story”.</p> </li> </ul> <p>The opening paragraph is likewise transformed by the use of rhyme in various other chapters.</p> <p>One that takes the form of a 1950s <em>Children’s Book</em> begins: “There was once a bush farm that the sun rose over, and on that little farm lived the wife of a drover.”</p> <p>In the Elizabethan Drama chapter, the chorus does the expositional work, beginning their prologue: “A household, poor but rich in dignity / In fair Australia where we lay our scene / Bush all around in stretches to infinity / No indoor plumbing, just an old latrine.”</p> <p>As is common, the opening lines of the limerick chapter introduce not the house, but the central character of the poem: “There once was the wife of a drover, Who met with a snake, and moreover …”.</p> <p>In the 1980s Computer Game chapter, the new level of interactivity is made apparent with a shift to second person narration: “You are in a large kitchen by a two-room house”.</p> <p>A similar technique is used to achieve the tone in the Cosmo Quiz chapter, which parodies the conventions of a glossy magazine quiz: ten multiple choice questions to show you whether you’re a time traveller’s wife, a Stepford wife or a drover’s wife.</p> <p>How do these various narrative techniques shape perception of Lawson’s original story? On their own, each may heighten or enhance a latent quality that lies in waiting. For instance, the Cosmo Quiz reveals the gender dynamics, satirising the protagonist’s apparent absent agency.</p> <p>Taken as a whole, the book functions equally as a playful and experimental collection of brief narratives, and an illustrative compendium of writing techniques.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112407/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em>Written by <span>Dave Drayton, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Technology Sydney</span>. Republished with permission of </em><a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-99-versions-of-the-same-tale-in-the-drovers-wives-112407"><em>The Conversation</em></a><em>. </em></p>

Books

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How fairy tales have stood the test of time

<p>The Brothers Grimm have been dead more than 150 years, but they <a href="https://blog.calm.com/relax/lost-grimm-fairy-tale-is-first-ai-bedtime-story">recently released a new story</a> with a little help from artificial intelligence.</p> <p><em>The Princess and the Fox</em> was created after a group of writers, artists and developers used a program inspired by predictive text on phones to scan the collected stories of the Brothers Grimm to suggest words and similar phrases. Human writers then took over, to help shape the AI’s algorithmic suggestions into the latest Grimm fairy tale.</p> <p>The new tale tells the story of a talking fox who helps a lowly miller’s son rescue a beautiful princess from the fate of having to marry a horrible prince she does not love.</p> <p>But here’s the thing, the Brothers Grimm didn’t actually write their fairy tales in the first place. They collected them – from friends, servants, workers and family members. Fairy tales, of course, have always been retold. They come alive in the telling – whether that’s a child listening to an audio book in the car, watching Snow White and the Huntsman on DVD or singing along to Shrek The Musical in the theatre.</p> <p>The Grimms’ fairy stories were first published in 1812 and have never gone out of print. The Grimm Brothers were involved in the struggle for German independence. As part of the case for nationhood, they wanted to prove that Germans, as a distinct people, had their own folklore. They were political campaigners too, and among the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6ttingen_Seven">Göttingen Seven</a> who refused to take an oath of loyalty to the new King of Hanover when he rejected a more liberal constitution. They lost their jobs as a result and Jakob Grimm – like many characters in the fairy tales – had to go into exile.</p> <p>Since then Grimms’ Fairy Tales have been translated into a hundred languages and retold again and again. They have inspired thousands of other works, from Angela Carter’s <em>The Bloody Chamber</em> to The Simpsons’ <em>Treehouse of Horror</em>.</p> <p>Jakob Grimm wasn’t just a collector of folk tales either. He was also a philologist (someone who studies language) and lexicographer whose work is still influential today. As well as being a master storyteller, the ideas he developed are still being researched in universities. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law">Grimm’s Law</a>, named after Jakob Grimm, looks at how sounds change as they pass from one language to another – “P” tends to become “F”, while “G” becomes “W” and so on.</p> <p><strong>Happily ever after</strong></p> <p>The Grimms’ fairy stories are still passed down through generations. And even though the cast of princesses and swineherds seem a very long way away from the world most of us inhabit, the stories are still a crucial part of our cultural heritage. The stories the brothers found in Northern Germany at the beginning of the 19th-century now belong to everyone.</p> <p>As a child growing up in Oxford <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Ganz">my father</a> – a refugee from Germany and, like Jakob, a philologist – used to tell me the Grimm’s story of <em>The Frog Prince</em> on our Sunday walks in the grounds of Blenheim Palace.</p> <p>In my father’s version of the tale, the princess first met the frog by the lake – in reality built by Capability Brown for the first Duke of Marlborough – when she dropped her favourite plaything, a golden ball, into the water. When they lived happily ever after, the couple commemorated their meeting by putting golden balls on the top of Blenheim Palace. Now when I think of the story I think of Blenheim Palace, and I hear the splash of the frog in the lake, just as I thought I heard it long ago as a child.</p> <p>This is exactly what stories can do, they fold all of their tellers and places together – and therein lies their mystery and their magic – once a story exists, it changes how we experience the world. And that will be the only test of “the new Grimm’s tale”, <em>The Princess and the Fox</em> – whether it will be retold and come to life in the telling.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97042/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em>Written by <span>Adam Ganz, Reader Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway</span>. Republished with permission of <span><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-fairy-tales-have-stood-the-test-of-time-97042">The Conversation</a></span>.</em></p>

Books

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The tell-tale sign the Queen could be ready to step down from the throne

<p>She ascended the throne at just 25, and now at the age of 92 rumours are swirling that the Queen could be preparing to step down from the throne and make way for Prince Charles.</p> <p>Speculation has surrounded the monarch ever since she pulled out of a royal event at the last minute due to ill health in June, and the British government performed a dress rehearsal for the Queen’s death a few weeks ago.</p> <p>And now this week, it was revealed two of the Queen’s senior aides are set to leave the palace – Sally Osman, the Director of Royal Communications, and Steve Kingstone, the Queen’s Media Secretary making a departure.</p> <p>As part of the Queen’s trusted inner public relations circle, the pair have been working over time to manage the royals’ image in the wake of Meghan Markle’s family causing numerous international headlines in the lead up to her wedding to Prince Harry.</p> <p>Their swift departure however has aroused further speculation the Queen could be stepping down to allow her son to take the throne, reports the <em><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/987536/the-queen-news-prince-charles-buckingham-palace-camilla-royal-news">Express</a></span>.</strong></em></p>

Caring

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Vietnam War: Tales from my time entertaining the troops

<p><em><strong>Over60 community writer John Strange toured South Vietnam in 1965 with Australian entertainment group “The Beaumarks”. Here, he shares a few tales of his time entertaining the Australian troops.</strong></em></p> <p align="center"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Rex to Dang Dung</span></p> <p>I was a 20 year old when I first went to Vietnam in 1965 and was pretty much a stereotype of a young bloke at that age. Wide eyed at the wonders of the world and full of adventure and bravado.</p> <p>The first gig we had was working on the roof of the Rex Hotel BOQ for the Yanks in downtown Saigon. We had been housed in a villa at Dang Dung (the street name district 1) with another Australian band, The Rajahs. It was about three or four miles from the Rex in Saigon's suburbs.</p> <p>We would usually get to the gig under our own steam depending on what we had been up to during the day but getting home was a different matter. A curfew at midnight meant everyone had to be off the streets so it was essential we all got home after the gig. Maybe a quick “Bud” and then downstairs to the street to round up three motorized cyclos.</p> <p>Motorized cyclos in those days had a well-worn seat similar to a two-seater lounge chair with a two-stroke motor scooter behind and a driver perched on top. Sitting in the seat out front, always felt dangerous as it seemed you were being propelled through the traffic out in the open with no protection, taking your life into your own hands. And you were!</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img width="500" height="333" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7816572/cyclo_500x333.jpg" alt="Cyclo"/></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em>A cyclo in Vietnam. Image credit: John Strange</em></p> <p>At this point in time, inflation had not hit Vietnam and the normal cost of a motorized cyclo ride between the Rex and Dang Dung was the equivalent of about 20 to 30 cents.</p> <p>We would round up three cyclos and offer the first one to reach Dang Dung the equivalent of $5, and the others would be paid nothing. This would normally take quite a bit of broken English, some French, some Vietnamese and a lot of sign language to get the message across, but the thought of a $5 fare at the end of the night usually had the desired effect. A bloody good quick ride home was assured for us all.</p> <p>We would hop aboard with two in each cyclo and take off. The ride never ceased to be exhilarating to say the least and possibly the best ride I've ever had in anything at any cost. You had to hang on for grim death for fear of hitting something or falling out as the driver swerved in and out of any traffic, pushbikes, pedestrians, motor bikes, horse drawn carts, cars, taxis, other cyclos or anything else that was on the street and in the way. White knuckles and wind swept hair were the norm and quite often a scream, a yell to the other participants or a whoopee of sheer terror or excitement would add to the overall effect.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><img width="500" height="338" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7816571/dang-dung-john-1965-saigon_500x338.jpg" alt="Dang Dung John 1965 Saigon"/><br /></em></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em>Dang Dung John in Saigon, 1965. Image credit: John Strange</em></p> <p>We usually arrived at the villa with almost a dead heat and all would just about fall out of the cycloes laughing at the release of making it home alive. Most times the drivers were well rewarded for the ride of a lifetime and everyone ended the trip very happy.</p> <p>In 1965, the war was not the only dangerous thing in Saigon! </p> <p align="center"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Vietnam Christmas - 1965</span></p> <p>In this day and age I feel I could be addicted to Vietnam. I log onto Vietnam sites of a day and I’m always looking for new sites or checking updates. I read books and keep my eye out for things pertaining to the war, and love conversing with Vets and other entertainers who were there, and understand. People who were involved <em>just know</em> and there is an understanding and kinship. It seems like I’m thinking about Vietnam, and my time there, constantly.</p> <p>It may have been triggered off by my first Christmas there and my first Christmas away from my family and home, and the feeling it gave to be able to give back to the people that were there for all of us.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em><img width="500" height="695" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7816570/christmas-day-menu-2_500x695.jpg" alt="Christmas Day Menu 2"/><br /></em></p> <p><em>Christmas Day Menu. Image credit: John Strange</em></p> <p>We were the first official Australian entertainers to go to Vietnam to entertain our armed forces and were sponsored by the RSL (Returned Soldiers League). I travelled as a young bloke of 20, and was overwhelmed by the adventure, the excitement and the experience of not only entertaining our own troops, but performing for Americans as well. It never occurred to me that my parents were horrified at the thought of their son going into a war zone or that I would be in any danger.</p> <p>I had my 21st birthday in Saigon and I had a great time. We worked a club on the eve of my birthday and invited a whole bunch of people home to the villa where we stayed downtown, in one of the suburbs. We had a great party, champagne and the works. No official stuff, just a good slap-up party. Slept most of the next day then got up, and did it all again. So, in reality, I had two 21st birthdays, and for me, they were really great and a lot of fun.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img width="500" height="350" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7816569/christmas-lunch-menu-bien-hoa-1965_500x350.jpg" alt="Christmas Lunch Menu Bien Hoa 1965"/></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em>Christmas Lunch Menu at Bien Hoa, 1965. Image credit: John Strange</em></p> <p>It wasn’t until quite sometime later in my life that it dawned on me that I had robbed my parents of my 21st. I know now, as a parent, that one of my life’s goals is to be with my daughter on her 21st birthday. I wonder what my parents were thinking on December 11, 1965 while I was in Saigon having a great time. It’s something that I can never give back to them.</p> <p>I woke up on the morning of Christmas Day, 1965, and I felt pretty terrible. It was my first Christmas away from my parents and home, and I felt very very melancholy.</p> <p>“What in the bloody hell am I doing here?” was on my mind. It was the little boy coming out in me and it didn’t feel too good. It was the first realisation I had of what I had taken on and what I was doing, and at that point in time, it left me in the doldrums.</p> <p>There were three shows organized for that day: two at Bien Hoa and one at Vung Tau. Three shows in a day is normally a tough call, but this day looked like being the toughest and I felt unsure.</p> <p>As I showered, shaved and had some breakfast, things were pretty quite in the villa and maybe the other guys had similar thoughts and feelings. I had all my things ready to go when the Aussie military blokes arrived (Pick-Up as we called it) to escort us to Bien Hoa.</p> <p>The first Aussie bloke I bumped into as he came into the house, immediately shook my hand and thanked me. I was taken aback when he said, “Thanks for giving up your Christmas to be here with us.” That continued all day. All these guys coming up and thanking me and shaking my hand.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img width="500" height="318" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7816568/lynn-fletcher_500x318.jpg" alt="Lynn Fletcher"/></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em>Our band “The Beaumarks” backing Lynn Fletcher at Bien Hoa Christmas Day. Image credit: John Strange</em></p> <p>We had three great shows with Don Lane, Lucky Starr, Lynn Fletcher and a bunch of others. Everything went great especially when we joined the officers and served the enlisted men Christmas lunch. We learnt that it is an Australian military Christmas tradition and we had a great time joining in.</p> <p>It turned out to be a fantastic day and the best Christmas I’ve ever had. From being down in the dumps first thing in the morning, to being on top of the world for the rest of the day, was just great.</p>

Retirement Life

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What Call the Midwife and fairy tales have in common

<p><em><strong>Rebecca-Anne C. Do Rozario is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University.</strong></em></p> <p><em>Call the Midwife</em> has returned for its seventh season, taking the BBC period drama through to London’s East End circa 1963. The series follows the lives of midwives and nuns at their headquarters, Nonnatus House. Portrayals of childbirth on screen are not unusual today, but rarely are the women who labour, especially working class ones, so candidly celebrated - and presented as the chief protagonists of the story.</p> <p>In this new season’s first episode, a frightened, unmarried woman delivers a breech baby in a dingy tenement. She is brave, midwife Trixie Franklin tells her. This plotline echoes the show’s very first episode in 2012, when Trixie tells new midwife Jenny Worth that women giving birth in appalling conditions of poverty are heroines. In turn, Jenny passes this insight on to a mother who has miscarried, along with the Epsom salts to dry up her milk.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><iframe width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fWfAD0hVPLA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p> <p>The series centres on women’s acts of bravery. The desperate teacher who aborted her baby with a wire coathanger, facing potential criminal charges while she lies in hospital recovering from the subsequent hysterectomy. The young woman who delivers what appears to be a stillborn child in a caravan in the midst of a freezing winter. A grandmother who runs through the streets to bring an unconscious baby to the doctor.</p> <p><em>Call the Midwife</em> is a ratings success. Nostalgic and sentimental it may be, but it is also frank about enemas, bleeding, and inverted nipples. Each episode’s happy ending provides consolation and hope, earned through fear and hardship.</p> <p style="text-align: center;"><img width="500" height="369" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7268667/call-the-midwife-intext_500x369.jpg" alt="Call The Midwife Intext"/></p> <p>This kind of storytelling is rooted in a much older narrative form: the fairy tale. With a reputation for being saccharine and frivolous, fairy tales nonetheless frankly discuss motherhood and the suffering that leads to a “happily ever after”. The plight of a barren woman is a constant theme. In fairy tales, a woman’s labour can result in the birth of pigs, manifesting the lurid superstitions haunting early modern procreation. Those born with malformed or monstrous bodies feature not merely as villains, but also as long-suffering heroes, whose strength of character is rewarded.</p> <p>Giambattista Basile’s <em>The Tale of Tales</em> (1634-36) was the first European publication of a full fairy-tale collection, an earthy offering with many tales recounting physical experiences of pregnancy and birth. In <em>The Myrtle</em>, a peasant’s persistent pleas to give birth, even to a myrtle branch, are literally answered. Her belly swells, the midwife indeed delivering her of a branch, which she lovingly plants in a pot. Largely set in close urban quarters, Basile’s tales cheerfully narrate all manner of bodily functions and physical transformations.</p> <p>In late 17th-century France, the term “fairy tale” was itself coined by Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy and Henriette-Julie de Murat, aristocratic women of the court of Louis XIV. They were part of a thriving fairy-tale scene dominated by women writers, recounting in subversive fashion the cooperation of women in bearing and raising children.</p> <p>In Murat’s <em>The Pig King</em>, a queen is cursed to bear a pig. Murat describes the stages of the Queen’s unfortunate pregnancy and the act of a friendly fairy, posing as midwife, who delivers the baby pig. The fairy arranges for the court be told the Queen miscarried, thus preserving her reputation, while the baby is placed in a stable.</p> <p>Fairies, more powerful and majestic than kings, often perform as midwives, fertility specialists, and child carers in the French tales. Pregnancies are visible, pregnant women active. In d’Aulnoy’s <em>The Beneficent Frog</em>, a heavily pregnant queen dresses herself as Diana and drives a chariot, determined to rejoin her husband at their besieged castle. Though her intentions go awry, she meets a fairy-midwife to see her through a difficult childbirth. Pregnancy and childbirth become not simply an aside to the action, but part of the heroic journey.</p> <p>Disability, too, is represented in the tales. D’Aulnoy’s <em>The Golden Branch</em> has two heroes born with birth defects. The prince is hunchbacked with crooked legs, the princess gets about in a bowl, her legs broken. Just as <em>Call the Midwife</em> has dealt with the effects of Thalidomide and childhood polio, d’Aulnoy grappled with prejudice and mobility issues – the princess, for instance, improvising a pulley to reach the top of a tower as she can’t manage the stairs.</p> <p>Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, discovering the market for children’s books, began to redact such descriptions of pregnancy and birth as inappropriate. Their Rapunzel in 1812 shows the signs of pregnancy after the prince’s visits to her tower, but in 1857, she has twins out of nowhere. Yet, despite this, stories are still told today in which women’s experience of motherhood is central, such as Danielle Wood’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22401556-mothers-grimm?from_search=true" target="_blank">Mothers Grimm</a></strong></span> and Margo Lanagan’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2662169-tender-morsels?from_search=true" target="_blank">Tender Morsels</a></strong></span>.</p> <p><em>Call the Midwife</em> is part of a larger narrative tradition in which heroism is rooted in women’s experience of reproductive health. In a world in which women’s reproductive rights are still debated, such storytelling is crucial.</p> <p><em>Written by Rebecca-Anne C Do Rozario. Republished with permission of <a href="http://www.theconversation.com" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Conversation</span></strong></a>.</em><img width="1" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90460/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation"/></p>

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4 tell-tale signs your taxi driver is trying to scam you

<p>Do a quick check before you load your bags in the boot.</p> <p><strong>1. They weren’t waiting at a designated rank</strong></p> <p>In many airports, train stations or popular tourist sites around the world, people will approach you and ask if you need a taxi. They might sound legit and even have a printed card or flyer with their details on it, but be skeptical. They could just be opportunistic drivers who prey on unsuspecting tourists. To be certain you are in a genuine taxi, always get one from a designated rank.</p> <p><strong>2. There’s no meter in the taxi</strong></p> <p>Meters for calculating the fare are now found in taxis all over the world, so look out for it as soon as your cab pulls up. Even if you have agreed on a set fare (as is common in many places for standard trips from the airport) there should still be a meter inside, albeit turned off. Once the cab starts, make sure the meter is turned on and ticking over at a reasonable speed.</p> <p><strong>3. The driver seems unsure of your destination</strong></p> <p>In most cities, official taxi drivers have to go through training and be familiar with the common destinations in the city. This should include airports, train stations, cruise ports, major hotels and popular tourist sites. Before your journey begins, make sure your driver knows where you are going. It is a good idea to write down the name and address of your hotel so you can show them – they should be able to look it up on GPS or an old fashioned map. Don't start the journey if you don’t feel confident about where you’re headed.</p> <p><strong>4. Safety features are non-existent</strong></p> <p>No seatbelt? Then no go. Even though many people seem happy to drive around foreign countries without the standard safety features they have in their own cars at home, we don’t recommend it. Some major foreign cities have shocking road statistics, so you don’t want to put yourself in danger. Authorised taxis should always have seat belts.</p> <p><a href="http://www.oversixty.com.au/travel/travel-insurance/?utm_source=over60&amp;utm_campaign=travel-insurance&amp;utm_medium=in-article-banner&amp;utm_content=travel-insurance" target="_blank"><img src="http://media.oversixty.com.au/images/banners/Travel-Insurance_Website_GIF_468x602.gif" alt="Over60 Travel Insurance"/></a></p>

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6 tell-tale signs your bag has been tampered with

<p>Hmm…did it look like that when you packed it?</p> <p><strong>1. The lock is broken</strong></p> <p>First thing’s first – if the lock has been broken or is completely missing, it’s likely someone has been in your bag. Some customs or security departments do have the power to open bags, but they usually have a special tool and don’t damage the lock itself.</p> <p><strong>2. The zipper is broken</strong></p> <p>If they can’t get in the lock, enterprising thieves will go in through the zipper. Do a quick check all the way round and see that all the teeth are still correctly meshed together.</p> <p><strong>3. The zippers are in the wrong spot</strong></p> <p>It’s a good rule of thumb to always zip your bag up in a way that the zippers are at the same point, say at the very end on the left hand side. That way you will be able to see if they have been moved, which could mean the bag has been opened. A little movement can be caused by handling, but if the zip tabs are in a completely different spot you could have trouble.</p> <p><strong>4. Combination locks are set to 000</strong></p> <p>Just about all combination locks come with a standard factory setting that puts the open/lock combination at 000. If you see your lock is set back to 000 (and you didn’t do it) it could be a sign that someone has tried to open it. Thieves hope that you have been too lazy to change the setting and have just kept the original combination.</p> <p><strong>5. The bag has been cut</strong></p> <p>As a final resort, thieves can slit open a soft sided suitcase to get inside. They will likely cut in an inconspicuous place or along a seam, so it might not be immediately obvious. Feel along the seams and slide your hands over all the pockets to see they are intact.</p> <p><strong>6. The bag feels lighter</strong></p> <p>If a thief has been very good, you might not notice they have gotten inside your bag. But once you pick it up, the proof could be in the weight. If your bag feels noticeably lighter or you can feel things sliding around inside in an unusual way, it could be a sign that it’s been tampered with.</p> <p>Have you ever had an issue with bag tampering?</p>

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What we know about the next season of “The Handmaid’s Tale”

<p>If, after its recent bagful of Emmys this year (Best Supporting Actress, Best Lead Actress, Best Guest Actress, Best Director, Best Drama Series, Outstanding Writing, Outstanding Cinematography, Outstanding Production Design), you still haven’t watched Hulu’s compelling series <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em>, now is as good a time as any.</p> <p>Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 classic, the series follows the life of Offred, a woman, who, due to her fertility, is conscripted into being a “handmaid” – a woman who lives with one of society’s leaders and is forced into sexual servitude in an effort to become pregnant.</p> <p>In case you were wondering – yes, it’s dark. The series is heavy, and the dystopian society of Gilead, which stands precariously upon the smouldering ruins of what was recently the USA seems like a chilling preview of what follows a Trump presidency.</p> <p>But the show is graced by powerhouse performances from lead Elisabeth Moss (Offred), Alexis Bledel (Ofglen/Ofsteven), Ann Dowd (Aunt Lydia), and Samira Wiley (Moira), which ground the story with such moving humanity that it feels like each episode is a special, important message from beyond a veil.</p> <p>Once you’ve finished with the first season’s ten episodes, you’ll no doubt be hungry for more. Happily, Hulu have commissioned a second season, and here’s everything we know about it so far:</p> <ul> <li>Production of the second season began in September of this year, which means we shouldn’t expect to see it on screens any earlier than mid-2018, though it could take longer.</li> <li>There will be 13 episodes of the next season.</li> <li>We don’t know every cast member who will return for the second season, but both Elisabeth Moss and Alexis Bledel are confirmed to be back.</li> <li>The first season ended in the same way the book does, so into the unknown we march as the producers and writers work with Atwood to craft brand new story to tell about Gilead.</li> <li>According to showrunner Bruce Miller, we will see more of Gilead/the world at large: “The world can get a lot bigger,” he said, when asked about the next season.</li> <li>We will meet Offred’s mother. According to Miller, “we’ve been talking about her from day one of Season 1.”</li> <li>The season premiere will be completely unexpected. Moss told <em>EW</em>, “There is literally no way that anyone can guess what happens. You can try, but you won’t do it.”</li> </ul> <p>What do you think will happen to Offred in season two? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.</p>

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