Veronika Wild

Historic British Child Immunisation Poster from the 1950s issued by Glaxo Laboratories Ltd., Greenford, Middlesex; designer unknown.  -Image from the Antikbar Original Vintage Posters collection What short collective memories people have. I have just been going back over old posts to label them before Google disappears them forever and came across one from 2011 when we were utterly distraught because our newborn granddaughter had caught Whooping Cough in the hospital. She had to be resuscitated at least three times while there and twice more after being allowed to go home, where she had to remain on an oxygen monitor. I also had to have the ‘Grandma Booster’ before I was allowed to hold her for the first time. Until I was revaccinated against Tetanus prior to helping out with a penguin rescue (after an oil spill), I had no idea that even the vaccinations we had had as children, could become less effective over time. Now I was reminded again, so make sure you are up to da...

The Carillon, Canberra  Had an impromptu trip to Canberra last week. Although I had originally said no, because I still wasn't in great shape, I dragged myself out of bed at 4.30 a.m. and caught the 6.25 a.m. flight out of Hobart and arrived in Canberra just in time for morning tea on Grandparents' Day. While I was resting on a bench, another grandma doing the same remarked how shocked she was that the children weren't doing more writing exercises and rote learning of tables and so on, as we were doing in Grade 2 (does anyone remember getting pen licences?), and were instead building mini shelters and, in one granddaughter's case, writing about foxes. I tried to explain that many schools now teach through hands-on projects alongside the basics, on the assumption that children learn and remember more by doing and learn to write and research at the same time. In the course of her exposition about the fox, my littlest granddaughter had really come out of her shell too, ha...

-Image courtesy of Naturewatch Foundation By the time you read this, World Animal Day  may be over, but some events continue throughout October and that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider some of the campaigns which are currently underway, or get ideas for next year. In fact, why wait? Let’s make every day World Animal Day as the Naturewatch Foundation would like us to do. The date chosen is for the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals. The first World Animal Day was organised by Heinrich Zimmermann in 1925. Since 2003 it has been hosted by UK-based Animal Welfare Organisation, Naturewatch Foundation, which has almost 100 ambassadors in 70 countries around the world and 50 million people who now celebrate or participate in World Animal Day. This year’s theme is about seeing the world through their eyes. Animals are in dire need all over the world, but many previous campaigns are starting to bear fruit. For instance, more and more countries are banning ...