Jane in the WORLD

“what will you do with your wild and precious life?”

Letter from New York #16

I feel lucky to have a magazine shop as my neighbour. It means I can get my regular fix of Harpers, Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Economist, Tricycle, Orion, Ms. Magazine, Newsweek and any other magazine I choose. When it’s not busy, the men in the shop love to have a dance and a talk and when I walked in the other night wearing my olive green 40s style wool hat that Josh had bought me they said, ‘you must have English blood as you look so jauntily English’. Of course I reminded them that I was Australian, although my mother was born in England.In fact I had just come from a wonderful English café called ‘Tea and Sympathy’ just a short walk away.  I’d walked past there many times and had seen the menu that promised, among other offerings, real English tea and baked beans on toast and apricot crumble with lashings of cream. This time I walked past it on a soggy, windy day and felt forlorn.  Josh had gone to Chicago to perform for a few days and so I backtracked and decided I’d cheer myself up with a pot of tea – another very English trait, I realize. The place was cozy and, a few minutes later, an English waitress delivered me my own Royal Doulton teapot and teacup and delicious sardines on toast.  At another table a group of young people were having an intense conversation about US and UK politics.  It was only at Occupy Wall Street that I’d encountered this level of passion about politics and I wished I could go over and join them.It had been an incredibly busy week at work where we were developing new proposals for our Center for Microfinance Leadership and for our micro-health insurance for women in developing countries.  I’d also had a meeting with a woman who had helped convene a Gender and Finance conference.  She talked to me about companies that were keen to design products that would help address the high incidence of maternal mortality in developing countries. There seems to be more and more interest from companies in designing products that will have social impact while other companies are seeking to invest in companies that serve the billions of people in Asia and Africa by providing insurance for poor and low income people as a way to give them a safety net to escape poverty.  Companies are witnessing the rapid rise of the middle class in Asian and African countries and are keen to make themselves necessary and relevant to people’s lives, and connected through mobile phone technology in particular.This last week I also spent time with an Australian nun who is part of my dinner group and we talked about having a side event during the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women next year; an event that would focus on the critical role that positive interventions, such as Girls Savings programs, have for young women in terms of eradicating poverty. That’s the great thing about being in New York, things get organized quickly.  Another colleague talked to me about the potential to piggy back on the great work that NGOs such as Marie Stopes International are doing in developing countries, such as co-branded health clinics being located next to factories in order to provide women with easy access to health information and services.  There is the potential to collaborate on providing micro-health insurance and microfinance to women using these health channels so that there is a more integrated approach to women’s basic needs in relation to education, health, safety, work and shelter.This week is Thanksgiving and everyone has a story about whose coming to dinner. There will be a convergence of families, and turkeys, and there is the annual ‘Pardoning the Thanksgiving Turkey at the White House’.  I must admit that I’d not believed something like this really did happen until I saw it on the television series, ‘West Wing’. And yet it’s a solemn annual event. Last year the President was joined by his daughters, Sasha and Malia, and they pardoned a turkey called ‘Apple’, and his understudy, ‘Cider’, who were then granted the ultimate reprieve of living out the remainder of their days at Mount Vernon, home of the nation’s first President, George Washington.

The spirit of Thanksgiving here in the US is one of being thankful for what we have and being generous to those who have little or less. It’s a tradition of families and friends spending time together eating, talking and relaxing.  And shopping. Apparently Thanksgiving Friday is one of the biggest consumer days of the year here in New York and so the Stop Shopping Occupy Movement has really got its work cut out for it in terms of denting consumerism by reminding people that you can change the world by shopping less!

I’m excited to have a break. The pace is relentless here and so swimming in the sea in Sarasota will be good for our spirits and much as our bodies.  Josh returns home tomorrow night and has promised me my first banjo lesson so I’ve been singing songs in anticipation of choosing one to learn.  The other day I got into a taxi and the driver immediately pegged me as being Australian, not English.  He told me that he and his wife had just seen the movie ‘Australia’ and had loved it. He said that the word ‘billabong’ was so dreamy and he’d never heard it before he saw the movie. “Haven’t you ever heard the song ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”, I asked, knowing the answer even as I asked the question. “No”, he said and so I sang him the song and he said “That should be your National Anthem, that’s such a great song.”  “A lot of Australians would agree with you”, I laughed. “I’d like to meet an Aborigine”, he said, “and to have them take me to their country.” “Well, I hope you get off the beaten track and go to somewhere like The Kimberley when you get to Australia”, I said and I told him that being there is like surrendering to some greater spirit, with its outback magic and strong Aboriginal kinship.

And then there is the feeling of driving across the desert under a night sky, windows wound down, head tilted toward the moon feeling as if you are free and connected to land, sea, stars, sky in such a profound way that all else falls away. And as I type this I miss Australia so much it hurts and yet here I am simultaneously loving New York and all the worlds it opens for me.  “What does ‘off the beaten track’ mean?” asked the taxi driver as I was leaving the cab.  “It means entering the Never Never”, I said as I closed the door and headed into the night.

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