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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 19 FEBRUARY 2023 10 ALMANAC My essentials RACHEL BALDACCHINO 40, educator, writer, researcher I coordinate migrant and refugee education initiatives within the Department for Inclusion and Access to Learning at the University of Malta, and am an active member of Moviment Graffitti. I also research, study and write about literature, particularly the literary legacy of pacifist movements in early twentieth century Europe. 1 4 5 1. Book 2. Film 3. Internet/TV 4. Music 5. Place PODCASTS have improved the way I think and learn. Amongst my favourites is Cree journalist Connie Walker's investigative pod- cast Missing and Murdered (2016 - 2018), which forms part of a wider movement in the US and Canada to raise awareness of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) through the dissemination of information, mobilising peo- ple in marches and protests against institutional racism, building databases of the missing and conducting do- mestic violence training and information sessions for the police. THE music I listen to comes from my friend Francesca Mangion who archives cultur- al sources in a most inspiring, meticulous manner. She re- cently gave me Silvia Tarozzi and Deborah Walker's treasure of an album, Canti di guerra, di lavoro e d'amore (Unseen Worlds, 2022). Tarozzi and Walker are rigorous string players. This is their contem- porary classical reinterpreta- tion of mondine protest songs from 1930s rural Emilia. Mon- dine were women who worked the rice fields of Northern Italy and sang about work, love, op- pression, violence and the need for political awareness. I will go to any public library and linger, not necessarily to read or write but simply for quiet time. In the past, librar- ies were viewed as male spac- es so I do not take for granted my presence, as a Southern Mediterranean woman, in a library. I visit the local library in Qala, where I live. I go to the children's library in Rabat, Gozo to look at picture books. I am not often proud of where taxpayers' money ends up but local libraries give me hope, I see a lot of what democracy can look like in them. THE Moomin cartoon books of Finnish author, painter and illustrator Tove Jansson (1914- 2001) are what I will read over and over again. The Moom- ins are a family of hippo-like trolls from the Nordic Valley of Moomin. They have many friends in curious abodes across the valley where they explore, love, connect, clash, rebel, fail and seek comfort. I continue to return to any- thing that Jansson has drawn or written, from short stories to comics, memoirs and paint- ings, because of her tact and agility with humour and craft and because she keeps the child in me curious and alive. LAST year I came across My Survival as an Aboriginal (1979), the first documenta- ry directed by an Indigenous woman, Essie Coffey (1941- 1998), a Muruwari filmmaker and co-founder of the West- ern Aboriginal Legal Service. It documents the history of the displaced communities of Brewarrina in New South Wales and has stayed with me because of Coffey's captivating presence. I loved watching her teach the children of Brewar- rina reserve how to hunt and cook porcupines and echidnas, quench thirst with eucalyptus leaves and to always suspect the education they receive in school. 3 2