I’ve had an interesting, if somewhat curious end to my day, one with a conversation with a lovely blog follower whom I actually got to meet in person, and who quite remarkably knew of the religion of Coonyites. This is the first person, beyond my childhood who I’ve met that has heard of this religion, which leaves it remarkable trademark scars on young lives living in a modern world… and we realised we had very similar childhoods in an odd sort of way. I’d only four out my father had been brought up by a Coonyite Stepmother about 12 years ago, having thought he was always Anglican! Anyway, I knew little of the religions history, so have googled it (of course, and you know I love Mr Google) so I am including a very brief history lesson for you on it as well. This one’s for you Leanne, not that you needed educating on it!!
Wikipedia says: ‘The Cooneyites are a Protestant sect which split from the nameless church commonly known as Two by Twos; the church was originally called “the Tramps” or “the Go-Preachers” founded by William Irvine, often referred to today as “The Truth” or, confusingly, “Cooneyites”. References to the term “Cooneyites” prior to 1928 refer to the group described under Two by Twos. After that time, followers who were expelled from the Two by Twos along with Edward Cooney are called “Cooneyites”. In some areas, the Two by Two church, which has gone under various labels, has continued to be labeled as “Cooneyite” by outsiders up to the present. Both the Cooneyites and the Two by Twos reject the term “Cooneyite”.‘
Following this, I spend a lovely half hour on a balcony with a group of Aboriginal Australians from the Kimberley’s, and we shared stories, and anecdotes about life, about dementia and very briefly about each other. On the farm where I grew up, we had a couple of Aborigines working for us when I was young, one I remember knowing as Sam, and who I thought was about 7 feet tall, with incredibly white teeth. I told them the story of when I was a little kid, and after my very first trip to the dentist, I went out and asked Sam how he managed to make his teeth so white, as I was keen to get mine looking as white as his. Without blinking, he said he used charcoal to clean them, and that was the reason for them gleaming so brilliantly. After six weeks of being very disciplined about using charcoal after the toothpaste twice a day to white my teeth, I could see no difference.
When I (very disappointedly) mentioned this to Sam, he laughed so hard he doubled up with laughter… of course, he was joking! These lovely new friends of mine saw this as particularly funny as well… It was a relaxed, amusing and delightful way to end my day, with new friends and stories about life; in fact, it was exactly what I needed as it has been a particularly tough one today!
Wow-so cool Kate-strange things certainly do happend online!Hopefully one day i can meet you and we can compare stories about our Dementia and our journeys with it-everyones stories are interesting, and everyones journeys with illnesses are unique and different. How awesome to meet a new friend though!I love being able to communicate my ideas with someone else who has been through it. Best Sam
Life is like that, and the older you get, the more it happens, so getting old is lots of fun, apart from the old body leetting us down!!!
True!!The body part is no good!!
What a wonderful story Kate –
the parallels between us always stun me.
My daughter is studying primary school teaching and this semester focus on the original Australians. Our incredibly fascinating and relevant history.
We sat and watched 3 documentaries conducted by Ray Martin directly related to the attitudes towards the aboriginal people.
After that a friend of mine came over and i began to google aged care support for our indigenous population and discussed this quite avidly for hours this afternoon, regarding the differences I would instigate to respect the elders, compared to the anglosaxon community.
Keep smiling darling.x
Thanks girlfriend… and keep shining as you do xxx
Glad you were able to finish the day on a good note ….. sorry it was so hard 😦
thanks girlfriend… xx
Hi Kate. It’s funny how you were talking about Sam using charcoal to clean his teeth and he said it was a joke. Well my mum was from a poor family and she did used to use Soot from up the chimney to clean her teeth. I must say she had a lovely set of teeth and died four years ago aged 84 and still never had a filling in her teeth so it couldn’t have done her much harm. Keep up with your interesting stories.
I told you about the festival we set up well there was a person there who wrote about it I am sending you this
http://www.garykerr.net/dementia-festival-a-beautiful-oxymoron/. I think he was quite shocked how well we set it up. I must say we amazed ourselves as none of us had done anything like this before xxxxx
Well done Lesley… how amazing, to find that people with dementia can still live and achieve great things… extraordinary really! 😉 xx
Been thinking about you for days. Wish you’d been laughing with me at Jean-Paul Bell & hearing young researchers explain their work on music & the brain in 15 mins flat!
Thank you for sticking it out at the Summit. I haven’t yet caught up.
Hugs & kisses from us both doll. 💋💋❤❤
Hugs and kisses to you too… I have not yet done a summary of the Summit, and may not, as there are a few things (unrelated to the summit) that have BURNT me out. DAI may be the only advocacy I ever do again, and the Southern DAG’s of course. Huge hugs xox
May you continue to have an ‘interesting life’ my friend. Some that is a Maoist curse: just another capitalist rumour me thinks!
hahaha, quite likely! x