Are you information literate?

How to have fun with history is available

on http://booklocker.com/books/4809.html

If you wake up to discover that the Internet and all cell phone towers are down, could you:

• Get directions by reading a physical map
• Identify north, south, east, west visually
• Do basic arithmetic, i.e. add, subtract, multiply and divide, in your head or on paper without the help of an electronic crutch
• Source the information you use and need on a daily basis manually
• And, if the downtime for the Internet and your cell was due to some disaster, could you source basic survival information manually?

If you said no to one of the above, you should be on alert. If you could not answer two or more of the above, you are not information literate, regardless of education or profession.

Information literacy is the ability to access, extract and comprehend information effectively and efficiently. If your only skill for accessing information is to google an answer, then the rest of the pyramid collapses.

Information literacy exists within the individual not within his or her ability to manipulate and bundle key terms on the Internet.

Alternative sources include individuals such as specialists, organizations, knowledge repositories such as libraries, and physical sources such as books, maps or documents. Two important factors in accessing information is to know what is available to you, and where. The process of discovering these can be fun and the journey packed with happy surprises.

The ability to memorize or retain information is also key to information literacy. This process is called building general knowledge. General knowledge is a personal database of useful - and sometimes trivial - information which can be relied upon when technology fails to deliver the answers - or when party talk flags.

Heather Vallance is the author of How to have fun with history which explores the principles of information literacy in the context of historical research. She is also the coauthor of How to be information literate which is a textbook for tertiary level education, particularly for students with English second language skills.

District 9 as memory

I watched a rerun of District 9 last night. I knew it was a story about aliens produced in South Africa, and that it had won acclaim in science fiction circles, but nothing more. So, expecting a good dose of escape, I settled in with my happy mood popcorn.

The happy mood evaporated within seconds, and the popcorn remained untouched because I had a sudden and continued urge to throw up.

What the world perceived as science fiction, I saw as memory.

Only, in my version of the story, the aliens were humans severed from their birthright and dignity. In my memory, I can put faces and names to the prawns.

What I saw was a script writer subliminally haunted, unable to reach beyond memory into fantasy but, because his audience was ignorant of the past, his angst was perceived as genius.

Crone power

While on a visit to the Museum of London I was drawn to the archaeological remains of a woman displayed in the same room as a crystal skull.

Other visitors were drawn to the crystal skull like iron shavings to a magnet.  When released from its gaze they wandered from the room, blind to all else, including the bones of the ancient crone.

The metaphor, to me at any rate, was palpable.

Once girl power dwindles women become increasingly invisible.

Old bones, with or without flesh, are trodden underfoot in the scramble to play with something new and shiny.

But there is a reason why women of a certain age around the world have been, and continue to be, burned alive as witches. Their accusers believe they have unholy powers - and they do.

Invisibility is the essence of crone power.

When a woman has nothing more to lose she has everything to fight for.

Oh, and the burning thing?

Doesn't work.

No need to reincarnate.

Each generation of humans recreates this nifty little invisible monster over and over again for itself.

***

Witch nailed down to stop her rising.

My ancestor was killed by a watermelon

History shows that people will steal to feed themselves and their families. If pushed, they will even kill. In this world of hunger, there is no exploiter or exploited, only varying levels of very desperate individuals.

Dutch colonization of the Cape was a strategic business move by the Dutch East India Company designed to supply its ships with fresh produce on the journey between Europe and Asia. Like all big business the company wanted the most profit for the least amount of expenditure.

To this end, Europeans of different nationalities were lured with the promise of freehold land and a horizon of opportunity. To refugee Huguenots in the Netherlands it was a chance to kick start their lives in a place where they would not be murdered in their beds for their religious beliefs.

They arrived at the Cape laden with a casket of seeds and farm implements.

They thought, because there was no precedent for thinking otherwise, that they were moving to a secure, settled colony. In reality, they were dumped onto ox wagons and taken into the wilderness, to the base of a line of mountains which separated Dutch East India Company land from a group of very angry indigenous people who had been barred from roaming the Cape Peninsula at will.

The Huguenots were, in essence, the first line of defence for the Company, the expendable cannon fodder which would take the brunt of the anger and buy time for the Company's employees to build additional and layered levels of protection.

The Huguenots were not the first group of Europeans to find themselves in this position. Mercenary Germans and even Company employees, freed from their employment bonds, had preceded them. The difference was that the Huguenots were farmers and craftsmen with a smattering of military men - very few military men - in the mix.

Our family had one of the few military trained men in the mix. He had been an Army officer in Paris, so the story goes, and he was part of an underground movement which gave safe passage out of France to Huguenots.

Whether he was discovered, or whether he thought it was time to go, is lost in time, but he and his family migrated to Holland along the same escape system, and from there to their uncertain fate in the wilds of Africa.

The family arrived at the Cape and were taken to a patch of tenacious shrub and grass where they were unloaded and left to their own devices.

I have often tried to imagine how they felt as the truth of their situation dawned on them.

An alien world filled with the forlorn sound of night predators with only the flimsy walls of a makeshift shack between.

What little food they had was rationed as they scrambled to figure out how to reach the Dutch East India Company which lay at a distance across miles of sand and foliage - as they tore out scrub with bare hands and pitifully inadequate implements to expose a patch of land for seed.

And the desperation of knowing that that seed was their sole source of food and income.

Six months into the nightmare, my ancestors had a patch of green watermelon to show for their efforts. They guarded it with life and limb, and, so, when a Khoi made his way into the patch and asked for an unripe melon, the head of the household said no.

During the ensuing argument, the Khoi picked up a watermelon and threw it with some force at my ancestor's chest. The impact ruptured an artery.

A crazy way to die - in a food fight between two hungry people.

The difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage

Disclaimer: This post is not written as an indictment against the many, many wonderful men on this planet.

Growing up we called them pale males, the vanguard of brut ignorance which ruled our daily lives by bullying, intimidating and, mostly, throwing very public tantrums.

For a brief, very brief, moment in time we seemed to shed these dinosaurs and be on track to prove that our species was better than its inheritance suggested.

But, like all horror movies, we missed the few lurking in the shadows and they have come back to haunt us with renewed energy.

I am older now, a wee bit wiser, and I know that things happen in cycles which are dominated by bad behavior interspersed with wispy spirals of rationality.

I know that we will survive this too, but so much poorer - not only materially but also intellectually.

Heritage is a reminder of what we can be both for the good and the bad. These reminders are embedded in books, documents, artifacts and traditions. When we lose these we lose the memory of how to rejoice in each other, and how to protect ourselves from each other. We lose our civility.

Pale males are hot-wired to cling to the past, but disrespect heritage.

Heritage is a reflection of what they never can be.

The past means something very different to them.

The past is always about what they've lost, or what they perceive is about to be lost to their way of life. And they are easily affronted - quick to use force.

In the end they lose the past anyway.

The tragedy is that in the process of losing what was never real they destroy everything else.

This is the difference between them and us.

This is the difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage - preserving the future.

The Transvaal Irish and Irish American Brigades

There were 2 brigades which were combined just before deployment to Zandspruit - the Transvaal Irish Brigade under John McBride who represented the growing Irish nationalism of the time, and the Irish American Brigade which was a Clan na Gael New Movement styled brigade of just under 300 men. This is the brigade which was placed under John Blake whose Irish heritage is near nonexistent.... read further.

The Anglo Boer War a dress rehearsal

In today's Tumblr post in Blogging Golden Nemesis, I explore the growing momentum of the Anglo American alliance and its impact on the Cape Colony, and the Anglo Boer War as rehearsal:
http://goldennemesis.tumblr.com/post/7583418127/the-anglo-boer-war-a-dress-rehearsal