tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34101978811144035362024-03-05T19:50:26.304+13:00ElsewomanAnne Else, writerAnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.comBlogger258125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-17588043229037402792018-10-10T23:26:00.001+13:002018-10-10T23:27:33.688+13:00These I have loved<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheybhBCgIhvu3eqlgL06wJ-y3w-fPKU94vYt9HvMKc-dGG_IENShA9RuvU5d2Qw_K3LM-pCxu64bqOQem9Il1EW7GMZ_NZ62AAHb3NKLoUCnuBPh5Vy_4kb68QvyGb_XdAgONcJ1xFefMV/s1600/ae+Harvey.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1533" data-original-width="1458" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheybhBCgIhvu3eqlgL06wJ-y3w-fPKU94vYt9HvMKc-dGG_IENShA9RuvU5d2Qw_K3LM-pCxu64bqOQem9Il1EW7GMZ_NZ62AAHb3NKLoUCnuBPh5Vy_4kb68QvyGb_XdAgONcJ1xFefMV/s200/ae+Harvey.JPG" width="190" /></a></div>
So this is the tenth day of the tenth month. Eight years ago today, in the tenth year of the new century, we launched Harvey's last book, <i>These I Have Loved: My Favourite New Zealand Poems.</i><br />
Here’s what he wrote a few days before the launch:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNAeJ347hBGA7nTVDyJzHs7-gf3K5XqgTDZpLIrLT52QcmJA3OIRBZfEoscgmhV7vdGl6gfWRNUPZ90WIdKy9aUf-qSUP7JKvlZzQrFAtIjjsT4-p0M_hxgLqQz4yj6BDfFb990w2G_S1/s1600/These+I+have+loved+front+cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="150" data-original-width="108" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwNAeJ347hBGA7nTVDyJzHs7-gf3K5XqgTDZpLIrLT52QcmJA3OIRBZfEoscgmhV7vdGl6gfWRNUPZ90WIdKy9aUf-qSUP7JKvlZzQrFAtIjjsT4-p0M_hxgLqQz4yj6BDfFb990w2G_S1/s320/These+I+have+loved+front+cover.JPG" width="229" /></a>"Tomorrow I am receiving advance copies of my new poetry
anthology... it will be
launched next Sunday by Fiona Kidman here in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Wellington</st1:place></st1:city>. Kate Camp and Vince O’Sullivan
will read a poem apiece. I am excited, indeed thrilled. It represents over five
years' work. In some respects it represents a lifetime of teaching and reading
poetry.<br />
<br />
The book has 100 <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:place></st1:country-region>
poems that I have loved - a selection of poems which (as I say in the
Introduction), 'down the years or in some cases only recently, have settled in
my mental household, comfortable and available, a satisfactory source of
reflection and contemplation. To a considerable extent they represent who I am,
or maybe, more honestly, the person I would like to be. They represent my
upbringing, my temperament, my interests, and my hopes.’<br />
As well as the poems I have linking descriptions as to why I’ve chosen them.
For example, Ruth Dallas’s ‘Milking Before Dawn’ represents an early school
lesson from 1960, a success that shaped my career. As a school-boy myself I had
three idyllic years at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Akaroa</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">District</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype w:st="on">High
School</st1:placetype></st1:place>. So for the cover I helped select an
aerial photograph of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Akaroa</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Harbour</st1:placetype></st1:place> with Onawe
peninsula. The volcanic plug on the old weathered crater was the subject of the
first <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:place></st1:country-region>
poem I was ever introduced to… With my ill-health it is likely to be my
swan-song collection. I am delighted to have compiled it."</div>
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<o:p> </o:p>And here’s a piece from Fiona Kidman’s speech at the launch:</div>
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”There’s something marvelous and exhilarating and absolutely
special about gathering with friends for the 10th day of the 10th month of the
10th year of the century. It feels like a unique moment in time. The Greek
philosopher Pythagoras saw 10 as the symbol of the universe and of expressing
the whole of human knowledge…</div>
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It does seem to me that this idea of the whole of
human knowledge rings one or two bells here as, on this 10th day, we launch a
collection of one man’s poetic human knowledge, distilled into those poems he
loves the best...100 New Zealand poems that have caught his attention, lingered
in his memory, and stayed there as lasting sentinels, totem poles if you like,
to his lifelong love of language and poetry. Or to put it another way, as a
beacon to the wider life of the mind, a way into learning and understanding
that which is important. </div>
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It’s no real surprise to those of us who love poetry that, although poetry
falls on hard times, it never dies. The voice of the poet is always with us,
the singing words that resonate in our heads, are carried like emblems of grief
and happiness, there to sustain us in good times and bad. The music of poetry
embedded in our subconscious simply never leaves us, or not the best of it,
those which we love the most…”</div>
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<i></i>AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-77486423577406584322017-10-03T15:36:00.002+13:002017-10-03T15:43:30.716+13:00A sestina on housing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KmyOEp27xWIwAdMNekUc4BN2aDVRtNAsIROgBohOuY0Zj5jMjcYsDnWu1u4Ntrtn2hhqnNjyT4XXud52uGCBx9HZjiv8l4F0AbuB5mrVBZJd7E-HjbGOgHokeT32qb-EqmhZ0k7RjMLP/s1600/houses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KmyOEp27xWIwAdMNekUc4BN2aDVRtNAsIROgBohOuY0Zj5jMjcYsDnWu1u4Ntrtn2hhqnNjyT4XXud52uGCBx9HZjiv8l4F0AbuB5mrVBZJd7E-HjbGOgHokeT32qb-EqmhZ0k7RjMLP/s1600/houses.jpg" /></a></div>
The writing group I belong to sets difficult challenges. Since I joined quite recently, we've been required to write a pantoum, a triolet, and now a sestina. In the wake of the election, mine turned out to be about housing (see the links at the end for just a few of the stories exposing what far too people are trying to cope with - not to mention the families living in cars and garages).<br />
The pattern of use for the six repeated end words is correct except for the ending, where I have only two lines instead of the usual three.<br />
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<b><i>Housing crisis<o:p></o:p></i></b></div>
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<b>Anne Else<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Desperate to escape the broken hovels</div>
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where all day long their children lived in darkness</div>
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packed into courts and lanes not far from mansions</div>
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where clever men drew landscapes bathed in sunlight</div>
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they sailed for months packed beside their neighbours</div>
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and built their new flimsy wooden houses.</div>
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No wonder we are still obsessed with houses.</div>
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We turn away from streets of broken hovels</div>
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where garages are full of extra neighbours.</div>
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We hear that no one needs to live in darkness</div>
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since landscapes here are always bathed in sunlight</div>
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and fields are filling up with brand new mansions.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Across the harbour in their warm dry mansions</div>
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the owners never venture near their houses</div>
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where cold and damp rise up despite the sunlight.</div>
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Their tenants write new histories of hovels</div>
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lighting the gas to keep away the darkness</div>
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sleeping in one room just like their neighbours.</div>
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Owners quarrel with their neighbours</div>
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danger cannot be divorced from mansions</div>
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driveway lights cannot dispel the darkness.</div>
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Hidden fissures eat into big houses</div>
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turning them into different kinds of hovels</div>
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worming the walls and letting in the sunlight.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There must be cities where the sunlight</div>
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is warm enough to go round all the neighbours</div>
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where only history books remember hovels</div>
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and families fill the few remaining mansions</div>
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where streets are lined with sound and sheltering houses</div>
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and no one lights the gas against the darkness.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Here and now the landscape fills with darkness</div>
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where coughing children play in sunlight.</div>
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The rest of us stay quietly in our houses</div>
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too scared to gather up our neighbours</div>
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and show them how precariously those mansions</div>
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perch on the shaky roofs and walls of hovels.</div>
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Houses grow warm when sunlight follows darkness.</div>
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No hovels, no more mansions, only neighbours.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/indoor-environment/health-conditions-related-to-cold-and-damp-houses/">http://www.ehinz.ac.nz/indicators/indoor-environment/health-conditions-related-to-cold-and-damp-houses/</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.habitat.org.nz/about/the_need_in_nz.html">http://www.habitat.org.nz/about/the_need_in_nz.html</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11897319">http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11897319</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/81278445/Complaints-of-despicable-mould-and-leaking-prompt-Housing-NZ-to-act">http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/81278445/Complaints-of-despicable-mould-and-leaking-prompt-Housing-NZ-to-act</a></div>
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-86724641522781529422017-09-02T13:52:00.001+12:002017-09-02T14:30:09.638+12:00How Princess Diana saved my mother's life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLAGrX16bD1IfOa8HmyPMZIe-v65-Map7e_55YhRMOgWDTicbldKUsRGHWOlnvGwmlaewdVSgcn8GtI8fi9YKDe1j5Pk-b44nRdf5OwY-wJsqyw9K3uQlNvAH4lHVpywvZXXtS0Vv0y3Z7/s1600/2+diana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="145" data-original-width="347" height="166" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLAGrX16bD1IfOa8HmyPMZIe-v65-Map7e_55YhRMOgWDTicbldKUsRGHWOlnvGwmlaewdVSgcn8GtI8fi9YKDe1j5Pk-b44nRdf5OwY-wJsqyw9K3uQlNvAH4lHVpywvZXXtS0Vv0y3Z7/s400/2+diana.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Yes, I do know exactly where I was and what I was doing when the news of Diana's death reached New Zealand. For the last month we've been seeing endless footage of her, and her charitable work has featured prominently. But few people know that even in death, she managed to perform one last gracious service. This seems a fitting time to tell the true story of how Princess Diana saved my mother's life.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">I<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">t’s hard to think of what to give my mother. When I was young she had a weekly women’s magazine order – the <i>New Zealand Woman’s Weekly</i>, of course, as well as the English <i>Woman’s Weekly</i> and the glamorous US <i>Ladies’ Home Journal</i> – along with comics for me. So for a few years I give her magazine subs for Christmas, until she says they’re full of stars she’s never heard of. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> When I lived at home, I never saw her reading books; but one day she tells me that when she was alone all day, wanting to keep up with me, she secretly read my English schoolbooks. Then she started in on Dad’s collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> I buy her Catherine Cookson romances, where deprived but determined girls break free of their past. At first she loves them, but after the fifth one she says they do all seem a bit the same. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So I track down classics from her youth </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">– </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Forever Amber, Precious Bane</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">. And memoirs of women she knows </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">– </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Aunt Daisy, Cookson herself, the illegitimate laundry-hand turned rich and famous author. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Her favourite is the story of an ordinary 1950s housewife: </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Journey from Stranger's Rest</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">, by Dorothy Alice Ford. When you’re reading something good, she says, you forget everything else.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> At ninety, she falls. The doctors say she’s got the hip of a seventy-year-old. They patch her up and send her home, telling her she must get moving. I fly up to Auckland to spell off my sister. Mum lies there with her awkward catheter, resisting all my ploys, refusing to get out of bed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> On the third day the phone rings. It’s her grand-daughter Rebecca: “Princess Diana’s been in a car accident.” Soon she calls again: “Diana’s dead!” My mother hauls herself up, teeters into the living room and turns on the television. She eats her dinner in front of it on a tray. Next morning she gets dressed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> For her ninety-first birthday, I bring her <i>Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words</i>. Mum can’t wait. For the first time in our lives, we sit across from each other at the table, reading. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AhzJp3ajNb9nzw-dWfJ9mz21HjHckE_dUA-DaWXHRdl59xB2lG1A_SzWNmc29hkpnrKTOcrYDrK4q1j_z8vJlsFRBVsHF3x4EvXAWaLyFw3TU1zNTAqydqK_UXSVcnjBQ7qkD1wC4OVn/s1600/1995.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2AhzJp3ajNb9nzw-dWfJ9mz21HjHckE_dUA-DaWXHRdl59xB2lG1A_SzWNmc29hkpnrKTOcrYDrK4q1j_z8vJlsFRBVsHF3x4EvXAWaLyFw3TU1zNTAqydqK_UXSVcnjBQ7qkD1wC4OVn/s400/1995.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>My mother, Frances Ryda Matthews, in 1995 when she was 88, </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>with me and my sister Susan</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-89994825196722884472017-02-12T22:45:00.001+13:002017-02-12T22:45:52.980+13:00Who will prevail?<span style="font-family: inherit;">My last post here was on 6 November, and I know why there have been none since. Three days later, on 9 November, Donald Trump won the US presidential election with 306 electoral college votes, compared with 232 for Hillary Clinton - a shift of 100 votes from the 2012 election, when Barack Obama won with 332 to Mitt Romney's 206. But Clinton won 2.8 million more popular votes than Trump, reflecting the greater support for her in the states with most people.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">You can tell I'm retreating into the numbers here, to avoid fronting up to the reality of Trump's victory; but I think I need to write about it in order to be able to write about anything else. I see it as one of those rare historical tipping points (like the assassination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand in 1914, or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour) that are not inevitable, but once they take place have a vast impact on the world's future. But we can't yet know what that impact will be.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The future is even murkier than usual because Trump is the first President never to have held either public or military office. As his first weeks in office have very clearly revealed, this means he has no real understanding of what is involved in heading a nation within the constraints of a democratic system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He knows that Obama resorted to executive orders when Congress and the Senate blocked his initiatives, so that is how he is now putting his campaign slogans into practice. His orders appear to be worded with little grasp of the complex realities of government, let alone of whether they clash with the Constitution he has just sworn to uphold.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Apart from golf (cue Bill English's canny mention of Bob Charles), the one area where he does have experience and can claim expertise is in business. (Exactly how successful he has been in terms of making more money out of the money he inherited is unclear, and it's made more opaque by his refusal to release his tax returns as all previous Presidential candidates have done - apparently it's not actually a legal requirement.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So it makes perfect sense that his only genuine guiding principle seems to be freeing up business, including the finance sector, to make as much money as possible. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Though he's paid lip service to making companies keep jobs in the US, this is unlikely to mean much in practice. Judging by his advisers and his nominees, we're likely to see wide-ranging attacks on employee protections, from anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws to minimum wages and benefits for the unemployed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the name of freedom and growth, he is intent on cutting the taxes paid by big businesses and those who run them, massively reducing the funds available for public services. He's reportedly preparing a budget requiring drastic cuts to these services, and he is appointing people who believe in shifting as large a share of them as possible to private enterprise and religious groups. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
His campaign rhetoric repeatedly attacked Hillary Clinton for being in thrall to Wall Street. But as <span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/12/not-draining-swamp-trump-money-mens-best-friend">Will Hutton</a> points out, this charge fits him perfectly: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: inherit; text-indent: 36pt;">"Goldman
Sachs’ number two, Gary Cohn, is to be Trump’s chief economic adviser; his
Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, was 20 years at Goldman Sachs before running
OneWest Bank, which made a fortune by improperly foreclosing on mortgages in
ethnic minority communities after the financial crisis...</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333; text-indent: 36pt;"> Cohn has promised to attack 'all aspects of<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span style="background: white; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); color: #005689; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 36pt; touch-action: manipulation; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;"><a data-link-name="in body link" href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dodd-frank-financial-regulatory-reform-bill.asp" style="border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); cursor: pointer; text-indent: 36pt; touch-action: manipulation; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out;" title="">Dodd-Frank</a>'</span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; text-indent: 36pt;">, the partially effective regulatory framework that Obama
laboriously passed into law in 2010, in the teeth of Republican and Wall Street
opposition… [Trump is calling] Dodd-Franks a 'disaster' on which he aims to do 'a big number'. There is only one end: to regulate the links in the financial
network so they have even less oversight than they do now."</span></span></blockquote>
The consequences of this election are likely to be even worse than those of 2008's Great Financial Crisis for ordinary Americans, including many of those who voted for this president and many more of the disaffected, disillusioned 45 percent who didn't vote at all.<br />
<br />
The consequences for the planet we must all live on are even more serious, because they are almost certain to be irreversible. The president <span style="text-indent: 36pt;">and his henchmen seem prepared not only to permit but to actively encourage more harm to an already perilously endangered environment. He is already removing regulations designed to stop fossil fuel corporations causing damage, and his nominee for head of the Environmental Protection Agency has a record of opposing environmental protection.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="text-indent: 36pt;"><br /></span></div>
There are two clear signs of hope: the huge surge of opposition and resistance, led by women of all races, creeds and classes; and the checks and balances built into the US system, which have already resulted in firm judicial rulings against the president's chaotic immigration edict. But right now, no one can say who will prevail.AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-49405771183275265412016-11-06T23:34:00.000+13:002016-11-06T23:44:38.826+13:00How We Survive<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvKfVYX6Q329ucLax3evZB51d7p716eQA2INkuqu2zsfcn0g5AaD6TDmL2RMsdnWJ2q8O5-NjAcRAKwSk9OKEFCsYEtS5afdq8WnVqTg4D8jY_bgEgQ9aLyHAJknZ2eCi8Y98biZ-Yesz/s1600/feminist+poetry+show.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvKfVYX6Q329ucLax3evZB51d7p716eQA2INkuqu2zsfcn0g5AaD6TDmL2RMsdnWJ2q8O5-NjAcRAKwSk9OKEFCsYEtS5afdq8WnVqTg4D8jY_bgEgQ9aLyHAJknZ2eCi8Y98biZ-Yesz/s400/feminist+poetry+show.jpg" width="282" /></a></div>
Last week I saw this event ad on Facebook. The idea of a
feminist poetry slam was irresistible, and I reckoned the two women performing would
be well worth hearing.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Carrie Rudzinski</b> was judged fourth best in the world at the
2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam. She's performed her work across <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region>,
<st1:country-region w:st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region> and in almost all 50 of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region>.
Currently a guest lecturer teaching Spoken Word at Manukau Institute of
Technology's Faculty of Creative Arts, she's also programme director for the
Rising Voices Youth Poetry Movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b> Olivia Hall</b> has been performing poetry since 2013. In 2015
she was Matariki Slam Champion, Capital Slam Champion and placed third at the National
Slam Finals. She's one of the organisers for <st1:city w:st="on">Wellington</st1:city>'s
acclaimed Poetry in Motion, and is currently completing her Honours degree in
Sociology at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Victoria</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">University</st1:placename></st1:place>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Back in August, simply advertising their feminist show on
Facebook had brought trouble, as <a href="http://95bfm.com/assets/sm/upload/y5/9u/5q/nn/Olivia%20Hall.mp3">Olivia explained to 95bfm</a>. They didn’t expect
the trolling they got, but they simply deleted these comments. It seems the
trolls took revenge by denouncing their event page as “abusive”, because
Facebook suddenly took it down. But both Wellington shows were sellouts, and now they were back with the latest version.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got there at opening time to be sure of getting a good
seat near the back. I thought I might have to leave early because of (a) intolerably
loud music, or (b) not being able to hear the words (despite my hearing aids), but it was fine. I was 40 years older than anyone else there - but that was
okay, because it made me invisible. I’d thought it would be like the old days,
with no men – not banned, just staying well away. I was completely wrong. Most of
those there were young male/female couples.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The show is billed as “a biting and honest narrative on what
it is to be a woman living and surviving in 2016. Addressing everything from
rape culture to body image to heartbreak to {Queen J.K.'s] Hermione as a feminist role model, this show carries a switchblade and a hallelujah.” All true. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They had me (and the other couple of hundred
people) from the opening lines. I was smitten with sisterly empathy, admiration,
and envy for their hard-won confidence, talent, honesty and passion, and their
ability to put feminist truth, love and strength into such shining words.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I was smitten with sadness, too. Forty-five years after feminism
(or as Carrie and Olivia call it, common sense) first found me, women are still
having to speak out on the same deadly stuff.<br />
And when it comes to “body-shaming” (so perfectly demonstrated
by Trump), its dominating, destructive power has not diminished, it has only
grown stronger – so much so that in a recent poll of US teenage girls, 42
percent said Trump’s disparaging remarks about women had negatively affected
the way they thought about their own bodies. Olivia’s poems on her hard-fought battle
to defeat such feelings made me cry, in sorrow and in rage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "arial";">Olivia Hall: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na9_mu2BvlE">"A Letter to 15-year-old Fat Me" </a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irYcZjwLwPQ">"The Skinny List"</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="background-color: white;">I'd like to post different kinds of poems too, but these are the only ones I could find on YouTube.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-5386021021368551502016-10-30T16:18:00.002+13:002016-10-30T16:18:30.457+13:00Finders, KeepersAs readers of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/anne.else.5">my Facebook page</a> will know, last weekend the results of the New Zealand Heritage writing competition, run by the Canterbury Society of Authors and Christchurch City Council, were announced. The theme for the Short Prose section was "hidden histories", and the piece I wrote, "Finders, Keepers", was the winning entry.<br />
I've had a lot of queries about where to find it. The organisers have told me that they hope to get the winning entries up on the <a href="https://nzsacanterbury.wordpress.com/">NZSA Canterbury website</a> soon, but in the meantime I can go ahead and post mine on my blog. So here you are.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-NZ;">Finders, Keepers<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">My
mother tells me what she knows</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Each time my mother tells me what she knows about the
family I came from, she speaks in her story-telling voice. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I learn these fragments by heart, word for
word.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">The
lady who had you was so plump that at first no one noticed she was pregnant. When
her mother found out, she took her to the home in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Auckland</st1:place></st1:city> run by Doctor Smale. He was the
doctor seeing me because I couldn’t have children.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Some
of this sounds wrong for telling a child. Perhaps she adds details as I get
older. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">He’d
promised he would find me a lovely little girl. That’s how we got you. We
brought you home when you were only two weeks old. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">This isn’t quite the same as the story I used to ask
for so often at bedtime, about Mum and Dad going to the hospital to look at all
the babies and choosing me. </span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I knew it was true because when I was five, they went back
to the hospital and came home with my baby sister. </span><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">But
I don’t want to say anything to stop Mum talking.</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">The
doctor’s nurse saw the name on the card. It was a family she had known in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Christchurch</st1:place></st1:city>. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Your
grandmother was a very clever woman who wrote books. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Names<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I
was named <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Frances</st1:place></st1:country-region>
after my mother and her grandmother. Mum is always called by her second name,
Ryda, and I’m always called by mine, Anne. She calls me <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Frances</st1:place></st1:country-region> only
when she’s cross because I’m reading and don’t hear her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">_________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">My
sister is having problems with her first pregnancy. Mum and Dad hand over her adoption
papers, in case knowing her original surname can help. Because they always
treat us exactly the same, I get mine too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I
have a surname, but no first name: I am ‘unnamed female H.’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">When
I phone Social Welfare I have my story ready. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I have two boys, but my
sister’s just had a baby girl. She’s promised that if you can tell me my birth
mother’s first name, she’ll give it to her daughter as her second name.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">The
helpful woman I speak to probably doesn’t believe a word of this. But we both
know she’s allowed to pass on any non-identifying information. A week later she
phones me back. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">There’s almost nothing
on your file, but your mother’s name was Mary, and her middle initial was R. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">___________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Marie
Rose H. of <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Christchurch</st1:place></st1:city>
turns out not to be my mother, though when she writes back she says she wishes
she was. So I take a new tack, and hunt for the clever grandmother who wrote
books. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">A
friend finds her in the Alexander Turnbull Library. In 1939 and 1943, the <i>Bay of Plenty Times </i>published
collections of poems to raise money for soldiers’ parcels. The author was
Kathleen H.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">In
the 1943 electoral roll, a new entry appears at the same address as Kathleen: Mary
Rylana. Her foreign-sounding middle name echoes my mother’s: Frances Ryda. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">By
1954 she’s gone, but I find a marriage certificate. She has married a man with
an unusual surname, and her new address is in the same electorate. At Christmas
I send a letter and a photo, and she replies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Seven
years after my birth, Mary had a daughter (another daughter) and named her Ann.
Ann named her own daughter Ana, and she named her son Patrick. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Now
Ann’s Patrick is at school and my Patrick has moved to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sydney</st1:place></st1:city>. The next year he turns eighteen, and
in October he dies there. My mother isn’t able to come down for the funeral. Mary
asks me if I would like her to come and I say yes, so she does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">What
Kathleen knew<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Kathleen is the only child of a prosperous <st1:place w:st="on">Tewkesbury</st1:place> brewer and his wife Jane. She’s thirty when the first world war begins.
It’s still going when George H., a tea plantation manager in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ceylon</st1:place></st1:country-region> who’s close
to forty, reads one of her poems and begins writing to her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">After the war he comes to <st1:country-region w:st="on">England</st1:country-region>
to meet her, then she sails to <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Colombo</st1:city></st1:place>
and marries him on the dock. A photo shows her sitting up on a dais with him, wearing
a wreath of marigolds and a confident memsahib’s half-smile.. She looks
intelligent and strong-minded, used to running things the right way. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Although the man’s social credentials are impeccable,
it’s much too late for a hasty marriage.
And of course it’s completely out of the question for Mary to keep me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">The rule is that she must never know my new name – it
has to be a complete break. Kathleen has other ideas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Somehow she persuades the doctor, or maybe the lawyer,
to tell her who is adopting me. Perhaps she feels she must know, in order to be
sure she has made the right decision. However she manages it, she finds out my
new name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">For seventeen years she never once speaks of me to her
daughter, but she reads the <i>Herald</i>.
In December 1962 she comes to Mary with the paper.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">You’d
better see this. The girl’s come dux.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Maker
unknown<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I’m staying in Mary’s spare room. She opens the
wardrobe and shows me two carefully shrouded Victorian cotton dresses. They come
from Kathleen’s mother Jane’s family in <st1:place w:st="on">Tewkesbury</st1:place>.
Kathleen carried them with her on the ship to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ceylon</st1:place></st1:country-region> and then on to Tauranga. Now
Mary doesn’t know what to do with them. They’re rare survivals, I say. Would
she like to give them to Te Papa?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">The curator lays them out and explains how she can
date them back to the early 1800s. The checked one has an unusual waist: you
can let it out to allow discreetly for a pregnant stomach. She thinks they would
almost certainly have been made by a local dressmaker. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">They go off to join the crowded racks of dresses, running
up to the 1960s, listed in the catalogue as Maker: Unknown. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">___________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">My mother sews all her own clothes, as well as mine
and my sister’s, on the ornate Singer treadle machine my grandmother gave her
when she got married. Though she never
uses dressmakers, I know about them because down the road in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mount</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Eden</st1:placename></st1:place>
shops, not far from our flat above the grocer’s shop on the corner of <st1:street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on">Valley Road</st1:address></st1:street>, two
large and imposing women run a drapery and dressmaking business. Mum sends me
there to buy Sylko thread and what I hear as Cruel needles. Every few weeks, if
I pick a time when the dressmakers aren’t too busy and ask nicely, they give me
leftover scraps of cotton, wool and satin to make dolls’ clothes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I don’t make my first proper dress until I’m fifteen,
struggling stubbornly with a striped cotton shirtwaister. Two years later, with
the school ball looming up, I fearlessly tackle the mandatory bell-skirted
brocade dress. Sandra Coney and I stand out for choosing the same deep crimson,
instead of the usual wishy-washy pastels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">After I turn eighteen and get engaged, my mother comes
tentatively into my room with the <i>Woman’s
Weekly</i>. She’s used to me turning up my teenage nose at her ideas, but she wants to show me a photo of a simply
cut wedding dress with a draped obi sash at the back, made from a Vogue pattern.
She’s so happy when I say I love it, then buy yards of white linen and spend
weeks making it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">A year after the wedding, I cut it up to make a shirt,
but I keep the short lace mantilla I made to go with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">___________________________________________________<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">Between us my mother and I sewed hundreds of clothes.
All of them have disappeared. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-NZ" style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";">I wear the bedjacket and shawl she knitted for me; the
ecru lace cloth she crocheted to go in my villa lives in a box, along with the
lace edging she tatted for her mother’s nightdress when she was seven, and my mantilla,
decayed into holes. On top are the loose delicate folds of Kathleen’s blue
dress.</span><span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-20548159772161201442016-08-08T16:22:00.002+12:002016-08-08T16:49:07.421+12:00Drawing in progress<div>
When I was young I drew and painted all the time. My father was a commercial artist for some years, and he provided me with good paper, pencils and paints. Later he bought me expensive American how-to-draw books. </div>
<div>
His pictures hung on our walls. Most of them were copies of other artists' work, including well-known Old Masters such as <i>The Blue Boy</i>. He greatly admired Norman Rockwell too, and his copy of Rockwell's indignant small boy fishing up a boot was hung to form a hinged cover for the hatch that allowed us to use the telephone belonging to the grocer's shop on the other side of our living room wall. My sister has it on her wall now (I have Dad's English cottage).</div>
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In 1958 I went to Auckland Girls' Grammar, rather than Epsom, because I wanted to take art as a full subject. My ambition was to be a commercial artist like my father, and my dream job was to draw the illustrations for the romantic short stories in my mother's English magazines. This is the closest I can find to the ones I remember (no colour then, just black and white).<br />
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We had an excellent art teacher, but she quickly wrote me off as completely ignorant and untalented. Thanks to my parents buying me a steady supply of books, many of them "too old" for me but read avidly all the same, as well as being able to use the outstanding library at Normal Intermediate School, I had read very widely by the time I started secondary school; but until I encountered the prints of Old Masters and impressionists that lined the school walls, I had never seen a single piece of art that our teacher would have considered good (I don't think the beautiful, tissue-paper covered Edmund Dulac illustrations in my old book of fairy tales would have counted).<br />
So at the end of my third form year I agreed to drop art and pick up Latin instead. I didn't draw or paint again for ten years. When I plucked up the courage to go to an evening class, the teacher held up a painting I had done at home as an example of what to avoid. I didn't try again till the 1990s, when I took some enormously enjoyable painting classes at Wellington's Inverlochy House.</div>
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This year I've been going to drawing classes (about ten sessions so far), run by Rosemary Stokell in Karori. The winter Arts and Crafts Centre exhibition went up in July, and we were all urged to put at least one drawing in, I managed two, and much to my surprise and pleasure, one of them was highly commended and then sold.</div>
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My drawings, like almost all my writing, are strictly non-fictional. Because I spend so much time dealing with words, it's immensely satisfying and refreshing to work on something wordless. This time, I want to keep going. </div>
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<i>My hat between Harvey's hats</i></div>
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(I foolishly didn't photograph these other two before I framed them)</div>
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AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-26004974550774997682016-05-24T15:05:00.001+12:002021-10-18T12:00:09.808+13:00Diana Bridge: A fine poet honours HarveyLast week I went to the Unity Books launch of two poetry books elegantly published by Cold Hub Press: Michael Jackson's <i>Walking to Pencarrow, </i>and a collection of new and selected poems by Diana Bridge.<br />
Harvey and Diana had a strong bond. She lives close by, and visited him here in his last years. When she phoned to invite me to the launch, she told me that the new book included her poem for Harvey. So I went, and wore my Chinese jacket in her honour.<br />
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<o:p> </o:p>But I hadn't quite realised how significant an evening it would be. In her speech, Diana said how pleased she was that, as Harvey's widow, I was there. Then she read the book's title poem, "In the Supplementary Garden". It was the poem in memory of Harvey.</div>
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I should have remembered it from six years ago. In May 2010, Mark Pirie had put together an issue of <i>Broadsheet: new New Zealand poetry </i>(No.5),<i> </i>which featured an interview with Harvey (by email, because of his declining health) and six poems by him, along with poems by Mark himself and another five friends of Harvey's: Fiona Kidman, Ian Wedde, Paul Hill, Michael O'Leary - and Diana Bridge, who contributed "In the Supplementary Garden". </div>
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I was deeply moved that she chose it as the title poem for this collection, adding his name on the page, and as her reading for the launch. It's so strikingly appropriate for him, as poet, gardener, and friend, "nearing the end of his journey". He died seven months after it was first published.<br />
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IN THE SUPPLEMENTARY GARDEN<br />
<i>i.m. Harvey McQueen</i><br />
<br />
1.<br />
<br />
In the Supplementary Garden, light spills down<br />
on an excess of contrast, leaves are every shape in the pack,<br />
their greens spiked here and there with ox-blood, amethyst<br />
and a radiant shade of lime. Barks are crazy-paved<br />
or smooth as parquet. There are no rules <span lang="EN-AU">– </span><br />
<br />
except for spontaneity. With each twist of the path, we fall<br />
as though into a new movement, and yet throughout<br />
a garden that has charmed the eye of generations,<br />
one mode prevails. Distant gazebo and pavilion<br />
roofs are transformed into fans. Above our heads<br />
<br />
a prow of shadowed wood is breasting the pale wave of the sky <span lang="EN-AU">– </span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">see that and, like the Immortals, you could soar anywhere.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">Each tree and upright stone set at the water's edge</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">has grown a shimmering twin. We watch each pair</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">break into halves </span> <span lang="EN-AU">– and instantly re-form into</span><br />
<br />
a glimmering whole in a wondrous conversion of things.<br />
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2.<br />
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<span lang="EN-AU">Slabs of rock, their faces ground and grooved as any sage</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">nearing the end of his journey, have made an amphitheatre</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">of the pool. Plants coat its rocky lip; they trail over it</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">like children's hands that reach for water, stopping</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">just short of the surface. A mat of lotuses that lies</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-AU">as langorous as a woman on her side is starting its slow</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">slide into openwork. As smoothly as a corps de ballet</span><br />
<span lang="EN-AU">flowers glide apart</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-AU" style="font-size: 12pt;">– </span>they'd have us think forever.<br />
We want it to go on, this sunlit comedy, knowing it can't,<br />
that the curtain must come down on all performance.<br />
<br />
The afternoon has deepened, burnished as though by elegy.<br />
A last butterfly of light plays on the pavilion floor, coaxing<br />
its worn diagonals into harmony with the pleated lines<br />
of the roof. It is that numinous, if unattested, time when patterns<br />
of earth and sky combine, when black and white draw close<br />
<br />
and then entwine, enacting the same spiral of conjunction<br />
figured on a symbol from who knows how old a past.<br />
It would take words as hand-picked and artless as the trees<br />
in this old garden to convey the presence of that fullness<br />
in this fading. Nearer still to evening, you find a way to tell me:<br />
<br />
It's acceptable – it may be better, even – that it doesn't last.</div>
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(Author's Note from Broadsheet: In 1979, before it had been restored, I visited the Humble Administrator's Garden in Suzhou, of which the Supplementary Garden forms part. Coming across photographs of it 30 years later in Maggie Keswick's influential introduction in English, The Chinese Garden, became the catalyst to writing. I offer the poem that resulted to Harvey, a maker of both actual and literary gardens.) <br />
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<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Diana</st1:placename> </st1:place>has published five books of poetry with Auckland University Press. In 2010 she received the Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for her distinguished contribution to <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region> poetry. Her essay “An attachment to <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>” won the Landfall Essay Competition for 2014. She has a PhD in Chinese classical poetry from the Australian National University, has studied and researched Chinese language, literature and art history and early Indian art history, and is the first foreigner to have taught in the Chinese department at Hong Kong University. In 2015 she was invited to take up a residency at the Writers' and Artists' Colony at Yaddo in upstate <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>, the first New Zealander since Janet Frame to go there. She also won the 2015 Sara Broome Poetry Prize.</div>
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IN THE SUPPLEMENTARY GARDEN has selected poems from Diana's five previous books, along with 23 new poems, the last of which is the title poem. Poems chosen by Robert McLean, with a superb introduction by Janet Hughes.<br />
Cold Hub Press, $39.95.</div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-12117977882881117982016-04-26T00:09:00.001+12:002016-04-26T01:22:34.055+12:00Anzac Day 2016, Tinui<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This morning I went to Tinui for the Anzac Day service, 100 years after the first service was held there in 1916.<br />
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Tinui is now a small <span lang="EN">farming community 30 minutes east of Masterton, with fewer than 25 permanent residents. In 1914 the community had
2000 people, and 36 of them – 35 men and one woman – would be killed in World
War I. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN">The Anzac forces landed
in Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. In 1916, this date was officially named as Anzac Day. </span><span lang="EN">To
commemorate the seven Tinui men who died on Gallipoli, on 25 April 1916 the Reverend Basil
Ashcroft held a morning service in the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd.</span><br />
<span lang="EN"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN">The </span>Wairarapa Archive office holds a
service sheet showing that this took place at 7.30 am, making it the earliest
known recorded Anzac Day commemoration in the world. A second service was held
that afternoon in the Tinui hall, which had room for the much larger numbers
who came to it. This morning it was held outside the hall built much later.<br />
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That first Anzac Day fell on the Tuesday after Easter, so it was already a school
holiday. <span lang="EN">Anzac Day became a <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region> public holiday in 1920, several years
before <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
and the dawn </span>ceremony was officially introduced nationwide only in 1939.<br />
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After the early service, Rev. Ashford led a group of 10 men, 7 women and 24 children, including the local Scout troop, up Tinui Taipo, more than 1097 metres above sea level, to set up a
large wooden memorial cross. Also known
as <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">Mount</st1:placetype> <st1:placename w:st="on">Maunsell</st1:placename></st1:place>, it was part of what was then Tinui
Station, owned by the Maunsell family. Their son had served at Gallipoli, and
they were strongly involved in the memorial project. It’s said that the barren
landscape setting for the cross resembled Chunuk Bair. Today's memorial service sheet told us that once the cross was in place, those who had made the climb wrote their names on a piece of paper which was buried in a bottle at the foot of the cross.<br />
<br />
This is the <span style="color: #333333;">only known cross dedicated to Anzac losses during World War One. Because it was put up on the morning of that first Anzac Day in 1916, it has a good claim to be the first such memorial in the world. Heritage New Zealand says that the unveiling of the cross so soon after Gallipoli was:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333;">"...t</span><span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; font-family: "proximanova"; mso-ansi-language: EN;">he result of the impact that the Anzac campaign had on the
small community at Tinui. The memorial was conceived as both a tangible
demonstration of the Tinui area’s respect for those involved in the campaign,
and more specifically, to [commemorate] those who died.”</span></span></blockquote>
In 1965 a locally made aluminium cross was set up to replace the wooden one,
which had rotted. The original cross was put under the stage at the Tinui hall,
but it later disappeared. In 2011, the Tinui Cross received a Heritage New Zealand Category 1 registration.<br />
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Since Tinui’s historical significance became better known,
the numbers attending its Anzac Day service have grown. On the 100<sup>th</sup>
anniversary of that first commemoration, 3000 people were there, including <span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN;">94 descendants of the
Ashcroft family. Basil Ashcroft's great-grandson, Lieutenant Colonel Aaron
Mikkelsen, gave the main address at the service. Twelve-year-old Linda Morgan, whose
relative is named on the Tinui war memorial as killed in World War 2, was the
bugler who played the Last Post.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN;"> <i> (<span style="font-size: x-small;">Douglas Maclachlan)</span></i></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN;"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN" style="color: #333333; mso-ansi-language: EN;">And h</span>ere's the hymn by Shirley Murray that we sang this year, to the tune of Abide with Me:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Honour the dead, our
country’s fighting brave,<br />
honour our children
left in foreign grave,<br />
where poppies blow
and sorrow seeds her flowers,<br />
honour the crosses
marked forever ours. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Weep for the places
ravaged with our blood,<br />
weep for the young
bones buried in the mud,<br />
weep for the powers
of violence and greed,<br />
weep for the deals
done in the name of need. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Honour the brave
whose conscience was their call,<br />
answered no bugle,
went against the wall,<br />
suffered in prisons
of contempt and shame,<br />
branded as cowards, in
our country’s name. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Weep for the waste
of all that might have been,<br />
weep for the cost
that war has made obscene,<br />
weep for the homes
that ache with human pain,<br />
weep that we ever
sanction war again. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Honour the dream for
which our nation bled,<br />
held now in trust to
justify the dead,<br />
honour their vision
on this solemn day:<br />
peace known in
freedom, peace the only way.</blockquote>
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<i>(<span style="font-size: x-small;">Douglas Maclachlan)</span></i><br />
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AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-38795487804769357272016-04-13T23:59:00.001+12:002016-04-14T00:11:14.291+12:00Changing lives; A History of New Zealand Women<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've recently finished reading <i>A History of New Zealand Women,</i> by Barbara Brookes (Bridget Williams Books). Rumour has it that the first print-run has already sold out.<br />
I'm reviewing it for the <i>Women's Studies Newsletter</i>, so I'll post that review later. For now, I want to write about what Barbara says in her introduction about her own life; but first I want to say a little about some aspects of mine.<br />
<br />
I was born in 1945 and brought up in Auckland. I was lucky - I was in the zone for Auckland Girls' Grammar, and wanted to go there because it offered full art as a subject. My father had previously been a commercial artist, and I wanted to be one too - I dreamed of becoming an illustrator for the English women's magazines my mother read.<br />
The only problem was that I didn't know the difference between commercial art and art. Until I went to Auckland Girls', where the walls were covered with good reproductions, I'd never been to an art gallery or even seen a really good picture. So art was the only subject where I did badly, and at the end of the third form I was persuaded to drop it and pick up Latin instead. I went on to make the most of the academic stream I was in, and ended up dux.<br />
Both my parents had had to leave school at twelve, but they were happy to take the school's advice and let me go on to university. With both a national scholarship and a Lissie Rathbone (for English and history), my fees were paid, I had my own pocket money, and I could live at home.<br />
Though I never thought about marriage and motherhood, I had only the vaguest idea about my future, involving copying my beloved French teacher and somehow getting a scholarship overseas, preferably to England or Paris. In due course I graduated with first class honours in English in 1968 (the only member of my all-female year to do so), and was given a junior lectureship.<br />
But by then, as well as being female, I had married (at 19) and had a baby (at 20). No one on the "proper" staff took the slightest interest in me, or ever talked to me about my academic future. I think they simply assumed I didn't have one. In 1971, as Barbara points out, only 1 percent of women had degrees or other higher qualifications.<br />
I was eager to have another child, and took what I thought was a year off to do that, then found I couldn't come back - all the junior lectureships had gone to the lauded clutch of first-class men who graduated the year after me. So of course I did the only thing I could think of, and went off to teachers' college, as my teachers at school had all along wanted me to do. But it seemed so circular and pointless - bright girls became teachers and taught other bright girls, who became teachers in their turn... I finally received my PhD in 2006, on my 61st birthday.<br />
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Barbara Brookes is ten years younger than me. She too was initially destined for teaching, but her trajectory as an adult was completely different from mine. At Otago University she found supportive mentors and could embark on feminist research. A recent article in the University of Otago magazine explains how, with Professor Erik Olssen’s encouragement, she won a scholarship to Bryn Mawr in Philadelphia, where she completed an MA.<br />
To research her ground-breaking doctorate on abortion in England during the inter-war period, in 1980 she went to London, where she found a very active feminist history group. Receiving her PhD on her 27th birthday in 1982, she took up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Otago. In 1983 she was offered a full-time job in the history department. As she explains in her introduction to <i>A History of New Zealand Women</i>, she is in fact a living example of the dramatic changes that her book outlines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Born in 1955, I benefited from educational opportunities that eventually [when she was 17] took me to university on a teaching studentship. Long-term factors - such as state initiatives in education and the erosion of the breadwinner wage - underpinned a raft of new ideas generated by feminism in the 1970s that encouraged me to be independent and academically ambitious. Effective contraception, in the form of the contraceptive pill, meant that I believed I could plan to have children at a time that suited me. That time came after I had completed my PhD and secured a academic job. I married at the age of thirty in 1986 and had my first child [of three] at thirty-three. (pp.1-2)</blockquote>
And the rest, as they say, is history - only in this case, an invaluable trove of papers, articles and books centering on women-focused history, culminating in this satisfyingly massive new book.<br />
Her career has, however, been far from typical. She was an early example of the contemporary women she describes who, having 'opted for traditionally male professions are currently transforming them' (p. 481). Yet it's vitally important not to lose sight of the fact that the majority of women continue to be found in jobs remarkably similar to the ones Barbara describes them doing back in the 1980s: sales, teaching, nursing, lowly office work, plus the lowest paid and least secure of all - cleaning and caregiving. And, of course, all that unpaid cleaning and caring work at home as well, perhaps now more invisible and subservient to what policy-makers persist in calling "work" than it has ever been.<br />
So when Barbara ends by saying, 'We now rely on them [younger women] to imagine a future where the challenges of both respect for diversity and a commitment to equality can be met' (p.483), she has to be read as referring not only to a once unimaginably diverse array of cultures, ethnicities, genders, sexualities and family forms, but also to the kind of equality among women themselves that is now so glaringly lacking. <br />
<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-4306856334709609422016-01-18T22:46:00.001+13:002016-01-19T23:12:51.176+13:00Goodbye Kirk'sOne of the worst things about getting older is seeing pieces of your personal history disappear. I don't mean that I'm forgetting my own past, or at any rate the bits of it that make up my memories - so far, that hasn't happened. I mean the way that places, people, even objects that figure in that past vanish over time.<br />
Most of the cafes and restaurants and pubs where Harvey and I courted and celebrated our anniversaries have long gone. The Pate Shop. The Buttery. Pierre's. The Romney Arms. The Mexican Cantina. The Roxburgh. Ma Maison. But some of the shops we went to (Harvey was one of those rare men who genuinely liked shopping) were still here, especially Kirkcaldie and Stains. We acquired the only new sofa we ever owned from its furniture department on the second floor.<br />
Harvey particularly liked their menswear section, and bought most of his clothes there. They made him merino suits and summer trousers. They supplied his beautiful Thornpruf tweed jacket, his Summit pyjamas and his deerskin slippers. They stocked the warm Viyella shirts I found for him when he first became ill, and when he was too frail to shop for himself, they let me take home several pairs of corduroy trousers for him to try on.<br />
And it was there that he found the classic double-breasted navy blazer he bought to wear to Amy and Tom's wedding. It became his favourite jacket - he wore it to the launches of his last two books, and we dressed him in it after he died.<br />
So I felt very sad when Kirk's closed on Saturday. Another piece of the remembered jigsaw of our Wellington life together has been lost.<br />
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At our wedding in 1985 - Harvey had got his suit earlier from Vance Vivian (it was of course a very elegant beige, not pink, the photo colour has faded) but his wedding shirt and tie came from Kirk's.<br />
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-72290533808710802382015-11-25T21:26:00.000+13:002015-11-25T21:26:10.587+13:00Eating alone in a foreign cityI haven't posted here for a long time, and my life is not currently conducive to writing anything new. So instead I thought I would post the story I wrote (based on four blog posts on Something Else to Eat) about eating alone in a foreign city. I read this as a short piece for the Food History Symposium last weekend. No pictures - just words.<br />
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<b>Eating alone in a foreign city</b></div>
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When I travel abroad now, I inevitably spend some time on my
own – a few days, a week - in unfamiliar cities. I really don’t mind during the
day, and mostly I really enjoy myself. In many ways it’s easier being able to
do exactly what I choose, without having to negotiate with anyone else. But in
the evening there is always the problem of dinner.</div>
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For me, going out to eat every
night in a strange city is a tricky business. As a woman alone, with poor night
vision and a dim sense of direction, I don’t like to stray too far from my hotel
after dark, and I need well-lit streets with plenty of people around.</div>
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I could of course use taxis, but
that would require a special destination worth the effort. On my own, that’s
not what I’m after. I’m not chasing Michelin stars or tracking down the nasty
bits. I want a modest menu featuring local dishes that are appealing and
interesting without being utterly unfamiliar. At least two courses, not too
expensive, and preferably eaten alongside at least some local people, rather
than solely other foreign tourists. </div>
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But other things matter too. One problem with the kind of travel where I’m
not staying in houses of any kind, with kitchens, is that it’s always necessary
to go out for dinner. After a while,
that can seem like a chore rather than a pleasure. The right place to go will
be somewhere I can return to over
several nights. I want a small sense of comfort, of being accepted, so that I
can feel at least a little known and at home.</div>
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In <st1:city w:st="on">Barcelona</st1:city> the nearby streets were a little
too smart. I ate well enough, more than once at the bright theatre restaurant
with the marvellous name of El Glop. It served simple, filling Catalan dishes
such as sausage and beans, the waiters dealt efficiently and for the most part
kindly with me, and I enjoyed my toasted bread, main course and glass of wine
each night. But it was simply food.</div>
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In <st1:state w:st="on">Madrid</st1:state> everything changed. By then I had got
my bearings a little better with Spanish food in general; and I was very pleased
to find that unlike <st1:city w:st="on">Barcelona</st1:city>,
many of the local restaurants served a well-priced menu of the day at night,
not just at lunchtime. So the first afternoon, I tried searching on the net for
well-reviewed restaurants near my hotel. </div>
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One stood out straight away: La
Sanabresa. It seemed to be only a few minutes’ walk away, straight up the main
street and down a side lane with the memorable name of Calle Amor de Dios - Love
of God Street. But just to be sure, I set off to find it in daylight. It was plain and unpretentious, and the menu in
the window looked promising – it seemed to be the nearest thing I’d found to
Spanish home cooking. </div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">I
went back at exactly 8.30, when it opened for dinner. In my experience, no
waiter or maitre d’ looks pleased to see a lone diner, but in a still fairly
empty restaurant they usually seat you without any fuss. And I know better than to commandeer one of
the romantic little window tables clearly designed for couples. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">In <st1:place w:st="on">Lyon</st1:place> once, the proprietor of an almost empty restaurant
told me bluntly that he had no tables for one.
Of course not, I said, in my perfectly presentable French, but there are
plenty of tables for two, and I am a widow. But if I give you one of those, he
said, a couple might arrive and want it.
I was so taken aback at this rare burst of rudeness and rejection that I
turned and walked out. Too late, I realised what I should have said: </span>“J’espère, Monsieur, que lorsque votre
femme sera veuve, elle ne tombera jamais sur un restaurateur comme vous.” I<span style="color: #333333;"> hope, monsieur, that when your wife becomes a widow, she
never comes across a restaurant owner like you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">No
such shocks at La Sanabresa. With a wave
of his hand, the magnificently moustached waiter invited me to sit where I
liked. The table I chose was wedged neatly between two larger tables, and I
could sit with my back to the wall looking out into the room and observing everyone
else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">To my
great pleasure, all the entrees were vegetables. I chose the garlic mushrooms,
the meatballs, and the flan. Then I
turned to the wine list and asked for a glass of rioja. The waiter (who had very little English) held
up his hand, and pointed to the words I had missed: the 11 euro menu included not only three
courses and bread, but also half a bottle of wine. Tinto, blanco? Tinto, definitely. He looked approving, and dashed away to see
to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">Just
as well I had arrived on time. By now the restaurant was rapidly filling up
with locals – mostly groups of friends, with a sprinkling of couples and a few
other solitary diners. The mushrooms
were excellent, the meatballs a little bland but still interesting, and the
flan – which turned out to be my favourite crème caramel – was perfect: rich,
smooth and darkly sauced. And the wine
was perfectly drinkable. Everyone, including me, seemed to enjoy their dinners
immensely. By the time I left, I’d
worked out what I was going to have next time, partly on the basis of what I’d
seen arrive at the neighbouring tables.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">Again
I made sure to arrive promptly, and the waiter ushered me straight to the same
table. He seemed pleased to see me. I
knew very well that as a passing tourist, even a returning one, I was just a
tiny blip on the steady radar of his regulars. And yet I wanted him to like me,
to approve of my choices, to appreciate me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">One
thing I think he really did appreciate was my decisiveness – no confused tourist
dithering. Grilled asparagus, grilled
dorado with salad, bianco. Dessert was more of a dilemma. Should it be the flan
again, since it was so good? Or (in the interests of research) should I try the
torta de queso, cheesecake, which I envisaged as some rustic Spanish
version? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">The cheesecake turned out to be a mistake - a small slice
of some spongy, creamy confection topped with raspberry glaze, obviously bought
in. I should have asked if it was casero (the equivalent of French maison). To
offset this disappointment, I had to buy two little shortbreads from the
still-open bakery on the way home, to munch in my room with Lady Grey
tea. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">Because that's what happens on holiday by yourself -
every small success or good decision is magnified, and so is every small
mistake. Wrong: Bypassing the hake with
green sauce for what turned out to be a rather boring cod and orange salad in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Cordoba</st1:place></st1:city>. Right: Finding a
sublime custard tart, served with a beautiful big glass mug of excellent black
tea, to pass the time while entirely avoiding the ugly concrete complex for the
cult of Our Lady of Fatima.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">On the third night I was feeling slightly off-colour, so
something fairly plain was called for: thin crisp eggplant fritters with lemon,
and roast pork with mashed potato - always my favourite comfort food, and <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Harvey</st1:place></st1:city>'s too. For dessert, no mucking around – the flan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">At the next table, two young Japanese (yes, there were
some – they read Tripadvisor too) were having trouble with the menu. So I
offered to help, and the waiter thanked me. At the end I splashed out on a
small decaf espresso, and asked him if I could take his photo. He took the
camera from me, handed it to the Japanese couple and bent down beside me so
they could take us both. In my fragmentary Spanish I managed to tell him (I
think) that I would come for one more night, and then I had to leave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">On my last night I had roasted red peppers with garlic
and flakes of tuna, excellent cod in tomato sauce, and house made tiramisu. But
the main courses I had been ordering from the 11 euro menu had migrated to the
13 euro one - still a great deal. Perhaps this was because it was Friday, which
seemed to be family date night: there were more tables for two or four, filled
with middle aged couples and small family groups. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333;">My waiter dealt with them all with his usual speed and
aplomb. </span>And I learnt his name – Joaquín. He proudly brought over a
laminated copy of a 2003 piece by the restaurant critic for the <i>New York Times. </i>It praised the
restaurant handsomely, and paid special tribute to him and his moustache. <span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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I told him
my name too, and when I stood up to go we shook hands. He came with me to the
door, I managed to say "Adios, mi amigo”, and he embraced me. I turned for
home (well, the hotel) feeling pleasurably sad. <span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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Then he came
rushing out after me, saying "Sorry!" I had forgotten my scarf. Real life endings
are never quite like the movies. <span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-36717813815094655892015-09-19T09:10:00.001+12:002015-11-02T15:59:37.730+13:00For Suffrage Day<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's Suffrage Day in NZ but here in Barcelona it's still the day before. I want to mark it with a post related to what I saw in Vienna. Gustav Klimt had a long relationship (no one knows if it was sexual or not, but it seems likely it wasn't) with a remarkable woman, Emilie <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Louise Flöge.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Emilie and her sister Pauline ran Vienna's leading haute couture salon. They included loose, flowing dresses in the Secession style worn by many women in Klimt's paintings. The one below is of Emilie, and the second photo of her shows her in feminist reform dress. (Sorry the pictures here are too small, Blogger on iPad won't let me enlarge them - I'll fix it when I get home.). The shop had to close after the Nazis removed most of the sisters' wealthy customers. The other sister, Helene, was married to Klimt's brother.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;">The Leopold Museum has a touching display of Klimt's postcards to Emilie over many years. "The Kiss" is said to show her and Klimt - which would explain the woman's apparent reluctance to be kissed at all. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">You can buy Kiss umbrellas, bags, mugs and cushion covers. </span><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">When the Vienna Museum held a Klimt kitsch contest in 2012, they awarded the prize to a plastic egg that opened to show miniature “Kiss” figures which rotated to the tune of Elvis’s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” </span></div>
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AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-52268647156251932472015-09-14T08:38:00.001+12:002015-09-14T08:43:46.363+12:00That's historyIf Harvey had still been alive, he would have turned 81 today. Here in Vienna I keep thinking of him as I enjoy yet another new experience that he would have loved, from the delightfully enthusiastic concert of Vienna's Greatest Hits last night (think The Merry Widow, etc), complete with excellent singers and ballet dancers, to the free Amaretto my friend Ulrike and I were given just now to end our Italian dinner round the corner.<div><br></div><div><br><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbx3ntyAeFBwrgvvSCDxkfqYF09Nn48V4UXCQyHMizKLWhvhZ8dswQ5_kMUIeZpd93hpteLF0sTluVdh8gdWL4w4BH5ZiRW555b92WOwETyw8inafdLZUyT4sSzykUPc1lUZSXebD4qQDx/s640/blogger-image-1882126863.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbx3ntyAeFBwrgvvSCDxkfqYF09Nn48V4UXCQyHMizKLWhvhZ8dswQ5_kMUIeZpd93hpteLF0sTluVdh8gdWL4w4BH5ZiRW555b92WOwETyw8inafdLZUyT4sSzykUPc1lUZSXebD4qQDx/s640/blogger-image-1882126863.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br><div>I think he would have liked seeing Sigmund Freud's house, too. Freud lived at Berggasse19 for 47 years, <span class="ft" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">from 1891 to 1938. This photo of him in his study was taken there jin 1937.</span></div><div><span class="ft" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span class="ft" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLr7IHxElRk8VJ79lFnA_4maEnea2LFJL-0ycoQkitmosnYN9g2oOCiLLIgfUKGRYkbzcljXFmmLDvTb6Nu2MbBwG732RMRp7UxOSkLDwgBvlYuzP3wRzw4kjZMLT4GfZItTYKpknKtffb/s640/blogger-image--813040902.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLr7IHxElRk8VJ79lFnA_4maEnea2LFJL-0ycoQkitmosnYN9g2oOCiLLIgfUKGRYkbzcljXFmmLDvTb6Nu2MbBwG732RMRp7UxOSkLDwgBvlYuzP3wRzw4kjZMLT4GfZItTYKpknKtffb/s640/blogger-image--813040902.jpg"></a></div><br></span></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">Sometimes history seizes you by the </span></font><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">throat. I put up a post on Facebook recently showing my first coffee and cake in Vienna. I had it at an attractive old place I found near our hotel, Cafe Eiles. Later, wanting a photo of the interior with its faded tapestry banquettes and round marble-topped tables, I looked it up on the Internet.</span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;"> There's been a cafe on this site ever since the building went up in 1840. Cafe Eiles itself dates back to 1901. Eiles means rope. </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">On 23 July 1934, the illegal Nazi party held its last meeting in the cafe before launching the failed putsch against the Austrian government. </span></div><div><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> Less than four years later, on 4 June 1938, Sigmund Freud left his house after he managed to raise (with the help of friends such as Marie Bonaparte) the very large sum of money demanded by the Nazis for letting him, his wife and his daughter Anna leave for refuge in </span><span style="font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">London. His apartment was turned into a crowded holding pen for other prominent Jews. He died less than 16 months later on 23 September 1939, aged 83. Four of his five sisters later died in the concentration camps in 1942.</span></div><div><span class="ft"><br></span></div><li class="_JWg _fXg mod" data-md="78" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px 24px 24px; border: 0px; list-style: none; clear: both; line-height: 1.2; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: Roboto-Regular, HelveticaNeue, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="_Pre"></div></li></div></div>AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-23175634435231829442015-09-01T17:40:00.000+12:002015-09-01T17:40:26.192+12:00Looking ahead to Suffrage DayI'll be out of New Zealand for Suffrage Day this year. I'll ask my house-sitting son to mark it with a bunch of white camellias from the garden. <br />
You can now <a href="http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/womens-suffrage/petition">look up the original suffrage petition online</a> to see if any of your forebears signed it.<br />
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Back in 1993, when the country (very ambivalently and sometimes disgracefully badly marked the centenary of women's suffrage, there was a slew of cartoons, some of them openly misogynist but others wryly commenting on how far equality still had to go. My favourite, by a veteran male cartoonist, showed a harassed looking woman trying to go out the door while her husband whined from his armchair: "So that's it, is it? I have to get my own dinner every flaming suffrage centenary!"</div>
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-73230677610078861062015-08-02T23:00:00.000+12:002015-08-02T23:29:36.327+12:00The winter of our discontentIt's far too long since I posted here. Partly it's because, while I think of Harvey a great deal, the acute feelings of loss have diminished. But also I have my son staying with me, so I'm not actually living alone, and that makes a big difference - someone completely familiar to cook for and have dinner with and talk to and watch TV with (fortunately we have quite similar tastes, on the whole).<br />
The other thing getting in the way of posting is my general feeling of angry impotence in relation to what's going on in New Zealand. Just one example: last week the front page of the <i>DomPost</i> featured a photo of a young child's teeth savagely eroded by sugary drink.<br />
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The accompanying story detailed the extraordinary damage these drinks are doing, resulting not only in bad health but also in extremely costly hospital care. Rob Beaglehole, principal dental officer for Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, faced with the huge increase in such cases, said that junk food advertising has "huge sway over children's diet":<br />
"Our kids are watching their sporting heroes slugging back bottles of sports drinks containing three days' worth of a child's daily recommended amount of sugar. If we want to protect our kids and address this health crisis, the first step needs to be restricting advertising of junk food directly to our children."<br />
Carrick Graham (if you don't know who he is, read <i>Dirty Politics</i> and the <i>Metro</i> article mentioned below) had the gall to comment, "What do you say to the parents of the babies that you have to extract teeth from? Why aren't they held responsible?" Beaglehole replied, "I say to the parents please don't give your child any more sugary drinks. They say 'but the All Blacks drink them...'" (Just like runner John Walker for FreshUp - "It's got to be good for you".)<br />
Taxes are another effective way to cut consumption. Yet earlier this month, Health Minister Jonathan Coleman ruled out taxing sugar-laden products, saying exercise and education should be the focus in efforts to reduce obesity. He now says that over the next two months, he plans to recommend "a set of actions to address the nation's sugar problem".<br />
Beaglehole said the minister should look to introduce measures to tackle the marketing of sugary drinks and junk food, in the same way tobacco and alcohol were treated.Yet so far the government has adamantly refused even to consider any such measures. (They've also refused to take effective steps on the price and availability of alcohol.)<br />
On the second page there was an article about Labour's data on the steady decline in health funding in real terms, amounting to a cut of $1.7 billion since 2010. In response, Jonathan Coleman said - this deserves bold type:<br />
<b>"We want to move funding away from expensive hospitals and into communities so we have early intervention, we have preventative measures so we keep people out of hospitals, and prevent them from getting really unwell in the first place."</b><br />
<b> </b>If that's so, Minister, why not start with taking the steps all the experts are calling for to prevent further expensive damage to children's teeth? And why all the stalling over an even bigger and more expensive cause of ill-health in children - cold, damp, rotten rental housing? <br />
We've heard the awful reports on killer state houses, but private ones are even worse. As Rebecca Macfie's recent <i>Listener</i> article makes clear, people rent these houses not because they don't think damp matters (they do), or because these houses are cheap (they aren't), but because they have no choice - they must have somewhere to live and they have to take whatever they can find. The government pays accommodation supplements for 60% of rental housing, so it's directly subsidising hundreds of landlords providing dangerously bad housing.<br />
Every day, there's clear new evidence that the current government is much more concerned with not upsetting its big business supporters than with minor issues like children's health. As Professor Doug Sellman, head of the National Addiction Centre, said in a <a href="http://www.metromag.co.nz/current-affairs/carrick-graham-without-apologies/">recent article</a> in <i>Metro</i>:<br />
"Current economic models are
not sufficiently accounting for the harm to ordinary people from certain big
businesses – ‘addictionogenic’ big businesses... They’re headed up by people who hide behind the mantra
we so often hear: ‘It’s all about individual responsibility.’ However, they
know very well how risky their products are to ordinary people, how much harm
is being caused, and how deviously clever their marketing and government
lobbying is to maintain their grip on the <st1:country-region w:st="on">New Zealand</st1:country-region> population and their
profit flow." (To see what he's talking about, go and see "Merchants of Doubt", showing in the film festival.)<br />
So far it looks very much as if, despite the best efforts of the best qualified people, children will go on suffering and this government will go on letting them suffer, for the sake of protecting profits. It's going to be a long winter.AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-52436702917070664552015-04-28T23:35:00.001+12:002015-05-01T16:21:36.921+12:00After Anzac Day<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don't know who wrote the speech delivered by John Key at Gallipoli on Saturday, but they did a superb job. Steadily focused on what happened there 100 years ago, recognising that it was an invasion ending in defeat, thanking the Turks for their generous friendship. Carefully avoiding the foolish, false cliches that have persisted in surfacing all too often in recent weeks, such as the claim that the First World War was about "fighting for our freedom". And above all, stressing that:</span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;">I didn't go to the parade through Wellington last Friday. To me it seemed too much like boys' obsessive war games - look, real uniforms and trucks! (Or at least meticulous recreations of them.) I saw it as far too likely to conjure up the jaunty enthusiasm of those early weeks, when men were waved off to war by oblivious crowds convinced they would be triumphing home by Christmas. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;">But it's always more complicated than it seems, and that certainly wasn't true for everyone watching last Friday, any more than it mulst have been back in 1915. A friend who was there told me what she saw: a middle aged woman with tears in her eyes as the young volunteers marched past in their stiff, scratchy khaki. "My great-uncle was only eighteen," she was saying. "He must have looked just like that."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;">Harvey was born in 1934. He grew up convinced that he, too, would have to go off overseas, like the two waves of men before him, to fight and quite possibly die at his country's bidding - if not in battle, then in the long aftermath of war, as his apparently strong stepfather had done at the age of 59. From the few stories Dick had told him, he knew only too well what a shambles war usually was. When Suez erupted, he thought, "this is it." But he was lucky, he lived out his 76 years in peace. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;">When the commemoration came at 10 am on Saturday on the radio, I thought of the mothers. Unlike me, they lost their sons - and sometimes their daughters - alongside so many others, and supposedly for good cause. But I don't think that would have made it any less searing a loss. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: inherit;"><i> August 1914</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;"> What in our lives is burnt</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> In the fire of this?</span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> The heart's dear granary?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> The much we shall miss?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> Three lives hath one life –</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> The gold, the honey gone –</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> Iron are our lives</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Molten <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">right through our youth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> A burnt space through ripe fields,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> A fair mouth’s broken tooth.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: inherit;"> Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918</span><br />
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AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-55794343306138920212015-03-18T23:50:00.001+13:002015-03-30T15:28:21.285+13:00Ireland's best loved<div style="margin: 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #333333; font-family: Lato, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20px;">Seamus Heaney's "While all the others were away at mass" has been chosen as Ireland's best loved poem in a poll. From Clearances III - In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984, it recalls a morning he shared with his mother, peeling potatoes. </span></div>
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Harvey loved Heaney's work and he would have thoroughly approved of this choice. I'm posting this as a belated tribute for St Patrick's Day, in memory of my two mothers. One was connected with Ireland by birth and one by marriage.</div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When all the others were away at Mass<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />They broke the silence, let fall one by one<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Cold comforts set between us, things to share<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So while the parish priest at her bedside<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />And some were responding and some crying<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />I remembered her head bent towards my head,<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Never closer the whole rest of our lives.</span></div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-36481009521533205752015-03-13T12:26:00.001+13:002015-03-13T12:27:50.998+13:00Feminists: Why are we still here?Recently I was asked to contribute to "Why are we still here?", a <a href="http://www.commonwealthwriters.org/feminists-still-here/">Commonwealth Writers blog about feminism </a>for International Women's Day on 8 March.<br />
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My post went up on the day itself, with a new one going up every day since. More will go up over the next week, including:<br />
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<strong>Maori academic Ella Henry on </strong><b>indigenous women’s rights, and the need for women to re-politicise their personal lives.</b><br />
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Right now you can read:<br />
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- Poet and playwright <strong>Sitawa Namwalie </strong>on the incremental fight against deep-rooted gender equality in Kenya<br />
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- <strong>Urvashi Butalia</strong>, founder of India’s Zubaan Books, on the changing landscape of feminist publishing and its relevance today<br />
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- Writer and academic <strong>Martine Delvaux</strong> on the importance of feminist writing in countering the erasure of women in Canada<br />
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- Film activist <strong>Marian Evans</strong> on the deficit of complex female protagonists in New Zealand’s film industry<br />
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- Trinidadian activist and artist <strong>Ellen O’Malley Camps</strong> on carnival theatre, working in a maximum security prison and fifty years of feminist activism.AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-89775202473315559452015-03-03T15:12:00.000+13:002015-03-03T15:12:32.855+13:00Thirty years onSummer and some other things got in the way of blogging for a couple of months. For the first time I embarked on the revival of our Christmas-with-friends tradition by myself, and on the whole it went very well, though I felt - wistful, I think, best describes it, for past times and the beloved company I no longer have. Then I went away to stay with various friends in various lovely places, spent a lot of time eating (and cooking) and basking in warm shade with a book, and by the time I got home I felt very relaxed indeed.<br />
This Monday it was thirty years since Harvey and I married in our garden, on 2 March 1985, and had a joyful party at home afterwards.<br />
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Without him, it didn't feel right saying to people that it was our wedding anniversary (though dear Ali remembered and phoned me). Celebration didn't seem in order either. Instead I marked it by walking down to his plaque in the cemetery rose garden with a friend and leaving a spray of white lilies given to me by my neighbour. Then we went home for a glass of wine.<br />
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-85075187344074575042014-12-20T23:16:00.000+13:002014-12-20T23:17:55.385+13:00Another year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I see that I haven't posted here since I was in New York. I do seem to have been exceptionally occupied since I got back, but I think it's more than that. I don't know what I want to write, and I think that's because I don't know where I am at the moment, in terms of learning to live alone - or perhaps simply how to live. Like Scrooge, I need to change my way.<br />
At the moment I have plenty of things to do, at least during the day, including bits of writing; but I don't have a major piece of writing on hand. People keep asking me what I'm going to write next (now that <i>The Colour of Food</i> is out in print), or worse, what I'm actually writing now, and I have no answer. So I brush them off politely, and go and do the next thing on my list instead.<br />
Almost every day, there's another warm response to the memoir - in a letter, an email, a phone call, or a chance encounter with someone I haven't seen for a while. So I'm getting plenty of encouragement to embark on something.But what? I don't write fiction - I can't make things up, or transform experience into something new. And I don't yet seem to have any coherent idea to build on. I'm toying with the idea of writing pieces on this blog, just to play around with some very vague ideas. In the meantime, I'm hoping to be as happy and as I can over Christmas and New Year, and I hope the same for you too.<br />
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-18507806644512242122014-10-23T11:21:00.001+13:002014-10-23T11:37:44.562+13:00The Crusader Bible - seeing others in our own imageYesterday I saw one of the great treasures of the Morgan Library: the Crusader Bible. I was lucky - the exhibition opened on 17 October. It isn't really a bible at all, because originally there was no text, just 283 incredibly detailed, gold-laden images of successive scenes from the Old Testament. The book is thought to have been originally made around 1250 for King Louis IX of France, who later became St Louis. He commissioned the glorious Sainte Chapelle In Paris.<br />
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But like other rulers of our own time, he was also obsessed with waging war in the East, mounting seven crusades, the last of which killed him. (In those days rulers did at least lead their own troops, and knew at first hand what carnage ensued, though that didn't put them off doing it over and over again.) </div>
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The Crusader Bible was designed to shore up Louis' reputation as a Christian crusader against the infidel, I.e. the Muslims. So every Old Testament story is shown in contemporary terms, with the Israelites depicted as Crusaders endlessly battling the Philistines, etc, etc. this makes it a remarkable record of 13th century life. </div>
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This book has had almost as eventful a history as the Sarajevo Haggadah (discussed recently on National Radio, and the subject of Geraldine Brooks' extraordinary novel, People of the Book). Over the centuries it travelled from <span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">France to Italy, Poland, Persia, Egypt, England, and finally New York. Various owners added captions and wrote notes in the margins. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">It's about to be rebound, and this means the library has been able, for the first time, to put 40 of the pictures on display. My favourites - a welcome relief from men fighting each other - were the ones showing the story of Ruth. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;">But looking at all of them again, I was struck by how each ideology and each side involved in violent conflict has confidently portrayed alien "others" in their own image, only an utterly mistaken or evil version, needing to be either wiped out or shown the right path, regardless of the deep cultural and historical gulfs between them. </span></div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-24581576094510505112014-10-17T16:55:00.001+13:002014-10-17T16:55:20.900+13:00Memories at the MetToday I got up the courage to tackle the Metropolitan Museum. The queue wasn't too bad, only about 10 minutes' wait (I knew better than to try checking my coat), and I had a somewhat limited but sensible plan: head straight for he Impressionists (the purple bits on the map).<div><br></div><div>I had already had a goodly sample of other periods: medieval art at the Cloisters, Old Masters at the Frick, and Expressionism at the Neue Galerie, with MOMA to come next week. (Cubism at the Met opens to the public then too.) So as one does at giant museums, I strode purposefully past assorted wonders until I got to Degas in Room 810, with only a couple of stops to check I was going the right way.</div><div><br></div><div>It's not only the marvellously rich, warm, human paintings themselves - It's the associations they have. So there was one of Monet's many studies of Rouen Cathedral, this time bathed in midday sun. Harvey and I saw the cathedral in Rouen in 1999. We'd seen a group of these paintings before then, I think in Paris.</div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/rouen-cathedral-portal-in-the-sun">http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/rouen-cathedral-portal-in-the-</a></div><div><br></div><div>There were Giverny paintings too - one of the earlier water lily pictures, two very late almost abstract ones, and a path bordered with irises. Plus a vase of chrysanthemums. Thanks to our English friends who brought their car across to join us in Rouen, we managed to get to Giverny on the last day it was open, when the summer flowers had gone but the water lilies were still there - and swathes of chrysanthemums. </div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysanthemums_(Monet).JPG">http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chrysanthemums_(Monet).JPG</a></div><div><br></div><div><a href="http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/path-through-the-irises-01-1917#supersized-artistPaintings-212188">http://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/path-through-the-irises-01-1917#supersized-artistPaintings-212188</a></div><div><br></div><div>I am so fortunate to have seen all this, and to have shared so much of it with Harvey. He had been to the Met himself earlier, and I know he went to see these paintings. Such pleasure.</div>AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-38678103901838182832014-09-12T15:39:00.000+12:002014-09-15T17:34:32.371+12:00A book in the hand without Harvey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The print edition of my memoir has arrived. I <a href="http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/20148769/the-colour-of-food-anne-else-memoir">talked to Kathryn Ryan </a>about it on Monday, and yesterday it was launched with a lunchtime talk at Unity. It was the first time I'd ever had a lengthy queue form for me to sign books.<br />
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And next Wednesday (Heaven help me) I'm going to be simultaneously cooking and talking about my book on Good Morning at 9am. Live. For seven minutes. I just need to get through without (a) burning or dropping something, which happens frequently in my own kitchen, or (b) forgetting the name of my book. If the leaders of political parties can manage this (though some have definitely been better at it than others), surely I can.<br />
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I ought to be feeling really happy about all this - and of course I am. But not entirely, and I know why. I hadn't even thought about it beforehand, but this is the first book I've had published without Harvey at my side. Of course the e-book came out last year, but somehow that wasn't quite the same. Having the memoir in print suddenly brought home to me the fact that for every other book either he or I published, we were there to cheer each other on.<br />
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But in another sense he is here, because he figures so largely in the book. So I just have to hang on to that and be grateful that I had him by my side for all those years. Still - I do wish he could have been here to welcome me home next week from my TV cooking session, regardless of how it goes, with a wide, warm grin, a large gin and tonic and a good dinner.<br />
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<br />AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3410197881114403536.post-76362559845246408992014-08-16T23:13:00.001+12:002014-08-16T23:19:36.655+12:00More on reading<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); text-align: left;">"It’s a common and easy enough distinction, this separation of books into those we read because we want to and those we read because we have to, and it serves as a useful marketing trope for publishers, especially when they are trying to get readers to take this book rather than that one to the beach. But it’s a flawed and pernicious division. This linking of pleasure and guilt is intended as an enticement, not as an admonition: reading for guilty pleasure is like letting one’s diet slide for a day—naughty but relatively harmless. The distinction partakes of a debased cultural Puritanism, which insists that the only fun to be had with a book is the frivolous kind, or that it’s necessarily a pleasure to read something accessible and easy. Associating pleasure and guilt in this way presumes an anterior, scolding authority—one which insists that reading must be work."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"> But of course, most of the time it isn't. This is from a fine <i>New Yorker</i> piece by Rebecca Mead, who wrote a splendid book about reading <i>Middlemarch</i>. You can find it at </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/pleasure-of-reading" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/pleasure-of-reading</a></div>
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I was thinking about this distinction at the book fair today. There were scores of copies of recent mass market best sellers, from Philippa Gregory to Stephen King, but there were also plenty of copies of the "classics" of every era - books that people have so consistently responded to that they have embedded themselves in the life of readers in English everywhere.</div>
AnneEhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00869114756713316204noreply@blogger.com0