Let Your Frugal Fun Freak Flag Fly

White collar conservative flashin down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me, they all assume my kind will drop and die, but I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.     Jimi Hendrix

I don’t judge others. I say if you feel good with what you’re doing, let your freak flag fly.  Sarah Jessica Parker

The above article by Liz Graham could be on-line but I was not able to find it.  Therefore, I decided to post a photo of it.  It’s an inspirational article and compliments what RUDE is all about these days.

RUDE Girl is not your typical fun junkie.  My daughter owns this title.  Here she is in the photo below, with her fiance in the photo booth, at their double denim engagement party.

When I look at this photo the apple does not fall far from the tree.  I do remember that I was always the person encouraging my friends to go out for the night disco dancing.  We were always on the dance floor, and rarely had time to buy and consume alcoholic beverages.  We would pick the venues where we could get in for free, as after all, we were student nurses not earning much money.  These were the days of ‘hospital trained’ nurses  [slaves to a health system and a story for another post].  I guess frugal has always been a way of life for me.

There is no going out disco dancing these days [the era is over] but I have not stopped dancing.  And the article above [in the blue circle] is encouraging us all, to dance our butts off in 2015.  RUDE girl needs no encouragement to dance [check out the video below if you dare] but the validation, that the activity makes us more playful and fun, is all I need to shake my bon bon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66S-2lFHuSg&x-yt-ts=1422411861&feature=player_detailpage&x-yt-cl=84924572

According to the article the sillier you are, the more authentic you are.  And get a load of this, people love fun, silly, authentic woman.   I certainly love myself more when I let my inner weirdo come out.  

I am much about encouraging myself to channel my childhood roots and unleash my creative side too [yellow circle in the article].  Growing up, I was always singing and dancing for the neighbourhood kids and staging little concerts in the backyard.  I am finding more and more that when I bring my creativity to the surface, I really do feel more inspired and vibrant.  It’s good for my psychological well being, that I no longer have adults telling me to sit down and behave myself.

At the moment I am enjoying directing and creating videos of any willing subjects.  It’s a fun, frugal and creative way to capture special moments and thoughts.  It takes a considerable amount of my time to create a modest home video.  However, it’s a wonderful experience gift to give, and there is minimal monetary cost.

Get out of your fearful rut and embrace a playful life recommends Miracles Now author Gabrielle Bernstein.

Beat The Man and embrace your frugal fun freak!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84924572&v=YCAOZQkwvBg&x-yt-ts=1422411861&feature=player_detailpage

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Citizen Rude

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library. The only entrance requirement is interest.  Lady Bird Johnson

Social media is not about the exploitation of technology but service to community.  Simon Mainwaring

What was our local municipal council thinking when it overlooked RUDE to present at its Energy and Sustainability Expo on 31 January, 2015 at the local library?  This event is being held in the city’s sustainable and award-winning library and community hub [a democratic space if you agree with the quote above].

Rude Record  presents at local workshops and festivals in cities and shires surrounding the city where we live.  It’s great to be invited to share our frugal and unique lifestyle with people in other municipalities.

Photo above:  A flyer on a board at the library in Bacchus Marsh featuring Rude Record to present at BacchChat the brainchild of the Central Highlands Libraries.

The Energy and Sustainability Expo in our own town of Melton is an opportunity for us to present and share within our own municipality the City of Melton, Melbourne, Australia.  As a ratepayer forking out approximately $AUD 1,300 per year [and ever-increasing] to the municipality, RUDE certainly has an expectation that it can and will participate in local civic events.

Feedback has it that this expo is about energy [power] savings and that’s why RUDE was not invited due to our  REcycling [REuse & REpair] focus. However, this explanation does not wash with us, when the main attraction for this ‘energy/electricity/power’ expo is a celebrity gardener!  And most of the other invited groups are not specifically focused on electricity savings.

RUDE administrates Melton Bowerbirds a 24/7 on-line Facebook group with over 60 local members.  To give our local municipal council the benefit of the doubt, it may not have considered Bowerbirds a ‘real’ group.  Melton Bowerbirds is definitely a ‘real’ group and many of its like-minded members know each other in ‘real’ life.  Some of us meet up from time to time and share our passion for REcycling.  Some of us are members of other local sustainability groups and we cross-pollinate.

RUDE also administrates a very tight-knit ‘nest’ of interstate and international members at Facebook group Bowerbirds Journal.  Our local municipal council probably has little, if any idea of the amount of exposure across the globe that our city gets, as a result of this group.  And yes, members have also met up, and will continue to meet up as a result of this group.

The quote by Simon Mainwaring above, strikes a cord with RUDE in relation to this post because Melton Bowerbirds and Bowerbirds Journal are social media on-line forums, that are unique platforms for a like-minded community from across the globe, to engage in the vast area of sustainability.

RUDE is extremely proud of Bowerbirds Journal because of its members willingness to participate by sharing, inspiring and posting regularly.  One of the followers of Bowerbirds Journal crocheted a bowerbird.  Her beautiful creation is the front cover photo for the group.  And her son, for a school project showcased RUDE Girl as a committed citizen in her community.  I [Karen] have not met this woman or her son but each day I am grateful for their goodwill and friendship.  We hope to meet face to face in 2015.

Above photo courtesy of Maretta Bertram

Good news is that the Mayor of our city is focusing her new term on a return to grassroots community involvement and sustainability.  She went into bat for us, along with some Bowerbirds from across the two groups, who sent emails of support to the municipal officers organising the expo.  Melton Bowerbirds and RUDE will now be attending this event.  YEY!!

Thank you also to a Bowerbird from Brisbane, for introducing RUDE to the term greenwashing.  We have since payed this knowledge forward to our city’s Mayor who was not aware of the term either.

In keeping with this expo’s energy/power theme, RUDE’S presentation focus is on emPOWERment.  That is the power and energy that can be harnessed from people in the community to do more with less.  We will have a stall promoting Melton Bowerbirds and Rude Record will be presenting in the Balum Balum Room at 11.10am

Beat The Man by engaging the power of the people, and using social media for community good!

Graphic above is courtesy of Maretta Bertram and her son

Rude Remedy

Of all the home remedies, a good wife is best.

Kin Hubbard

RUDE is all about the joy of a simple and frugal lifestyle.  We believe there is no need to rush off to the general practitioner [GP] for every little ailment that we may experience.

Creative thinking is what RUDE employs to all matter of things, including our medical and health care.  How can we avoid going to the GP at the first sign of a cough or a touch of conjunctivitis?  How can we frugally manage treatment of our ailments?  If we lived in a small populated rural area, had coryza, would we travel by car for a GP appointment hundreds of miles away, only to be told we needed strict bed rest and tender loving care?!!

Photo Source:  Trust Medical, UK

I [Karen] recently experienced a sore eye socket and some minor associated conjunctivitis.  Rather than rush off to the GP for a diagnosis and a script for antibiotic ointment, I decided to try saline washes and cold tea compresses.  I did not use camomile tea like in this article, choosing to try Twinnings Lady Grey.

Twinnings Lady Grey tea contains blue cornflower petals [and citrus peels] and I decided to give it a try as an eye wash.  Within two days the conjunctivitis had cleared and within 3 days the soreness had gone.  Read here about how cornflower has been used medicinally on the eyes.

Beat The Man and if appropriate, try those rude remedies in your pantry! 

And, it you are wondering, Twinnings of London’s Lady Grey tea makes a delicious brew.  The 125g packets would normally cost $7.99 AUD at the supermarket.  We stocked up and bought bulk packets at $1.89 AUD!

A Rude Director

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you’re a director. Everything after that you’re just negotiating your budget and your fee.

James Cameron

“In reality, everyone has something to say, but they’re not picking and choosing which things work and which things don’t matter, so they bury their message under everyone else.”

Spencer Lum / Photographer

Photo above:  RUDE GIRL’S ‘new to her’ JVC Camcorder GZHM870BAA bought off Ebay

Apparently these days everyone is shooting videos due to smart phone technology.  You see some evidence of this fact when the nightly news on television uses amateur footage of events. 

RUDE GIRL [Karen] embraced this medium for a bit of frugal fun about a year ago.  Roughly about the same time this blog was created.  At that point I was using my 10-year-old Sony camera.  It had its limitations but it captured some of my antics for a Marching Girls Facebook Group that I administrate.  I have posted one or two of those earlier videos on my blog as an example of backyard frugal fun Aussie style. 

I came to realise very quickly that this medium is an incredibly powerful way to convey a story, hobby and/or interest.  I also came to realise that this medium offered me a creative freedom I had never experienced before.

I am well suited to interview style video making because I like to ask questions, and have a curiosity about what people think and feel.  I enjoy videoing RUDE’S lifestyle journey and interests.   I must say some people are not interested in sharing things about themselves on video, and have told me so.  That’s absolutely fine, as there are many more people who are only too pleased that I am keen to record their unexamined lives. 

And I have found making digital videos is easy.  Anyone can do it.  However, to create and edit digital videos with your computer is not so easy.  You have to have a good imagination and the gift of the gab, especially if you are shooting and interviewing without a script and/or storyboard.  You have to be very good at multitasking, directing others with confidence and purpose, and proficient in editing programs like Windows Movie Maker and Pinnacle Studio.

Maybe that’s why a lot of bloggers RUDE follows do not use video, preferring to use photographs.  Or maybe these bloggers simply do not have the time to devote time to creating a visual reference in video format.

The passage below is from the book Online Video by Andrew Shalat which pretty much explains the attraction of video for RUDE.

“Each of us now has the individual power to coerce, comment upon and finally change the world through our ability to publish video online……..and as people, we are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.  We’re members of a community.  And as members of a community, we have this primordial need to share our experiences, to make shapes on the wall, to tell how the hunt went, how the sunset looks, or how the birthday party sounded.  As people we have the innate need to tell a story.  Sometimes it’s our own story, and sometimes it’s a story about someone or something else.  We’re at a rare moment in our history when we are able to create complex and sophisticated stories and publish them around the world….and we don’t even have to change out of our pajamas to do so.  We’re not just reporters; we’re all potential filmmakers.”

In his book Andrew Shalat wants us to Beat The Man at his own game, break the rules, be dangerous and start videoing.

So for now, from RUDE, that’s a wrap!

“I didn’t throw it away”

 

 

Agatha Lee of the blog Green issues by Agy decided to start a blog train to get people thinking about why they didn’t throw certain items away.

What makes us keep items and hold on to them for so long?

She has suggested it might help unlock the reasons why we throw some and why we keep some!

NB ~ This blog train post by RUDE contains two videos.  Here is the first which is very rude, as I was practising with my new camcorder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ee0GUQH10mw

My father’s legacy lives on with me taking videos and also in his very rude [roughly made] Super 8 movies of me and my sister marching with eight other girls [a team].  These movies are now shared with over 750 members on my Facebook Group at Marching Girls, and on my Youtube Channel far and wide.  The film footage he recorded is rare and has given joy to many girls who marched in Australia and New Zealand in the 60s and 70s.

It was expensive to convert Super 8 film to video back in the 1980s.  I knew in the back of my mind that I had to preserve my father’s efforts and my marching girl’s story.  But at the time I did it mainly for a Christmas gift to give to my siblings and parents.  I had no idea that years’ later I would be sharing his movies in a digital format across the globe.

Photo above: 

This is Laverton, 1969. I am in my last year at primary school.  I have won my very first Best Leader sash.  This photo is a snapshot from a Super 8 movie my father recorded.

I was elated to win the green sash which is truly evident on my face. And it was not just this individual recognition but an overall feeling of what was achievable beyond the school classroom.  I think in this snapshot photo from Super 8 film, my father captured the very essence of me.  It took me 40 years to get back to this kind of joy.

Photo below:  My first Marching Girl Leader sash that I have kept all these years.

Beat The Man and march to the sound of your own drum!  And don’t forget tomorrow to hop on the next train carriage with Jan Candace at http://www.refabdiaries.com/

Video link below:

And for anyone interested, here I am as recorded on Super 8 film by my father in 1973.  I was the Leader of Jacana Corvettes.  This was taken at the State Championships in Melbourne,  just before I won Australian Champion Junior Leader from a field of over 30 other Leaders in Tasmania in 1973.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUfuxbxVKM1DCsw1SdO4sO_A&v=yhlD4d9MmNE&feature=player_detailpage