Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Some of the saddest stories I've read are by those who were severely physically disabled and also non-verbal. Very vulnerable and a universal assumption that they were also intellectually impaired. I've been to two conference presentations by such people relating their experience of institutionalisation. Very powerful.
A little incident my mother described more than once, which I guess was some indication of how it had affected her. During WW2 when she'd just started work at Templeton (she'd wanted to train as a midwife) she'd been given the task of dealing with a group of the kind of people you describe. They'd just arrived from a home at Nelson that had been closed due to the demands of the war, and she had only a "trusty" older male patient to help her make them comfortable for the night on mattresses laid on the floor. She happened to catch the eye of one who would have been only a boy, just as the older guy said that the best way to deal with them would be to "exterminate them with a flamethrower." While he might not have understood the precise meaning, she could tell that he certainly got the sentiment.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
But could the residents have readily left? From the account of the family member in the Spectrum Care book trying to get her older brother out in the 1980s was not possible.She talks about being only allowed to take him out for a short time and the distress of both of them when she had to take him back.
Good question, though as you might have noticed I mentioned in my earlier post about an inmate who left to work as a shepherd. That went on all the time, some actually moved out when they were deemed able to, while others worked during the day and continued to live at Kimberley.
There was a lot of industry in Levin then, and also a horticultural research station over the road. One of their best prospects got a tractor driving job there. A lot was expected of him, possibly because of his movie star good looks, but he took the corner off their new brick office block on his first day.
Because Levin accomodated/was a dumping ground for everyone from newborn babies to the elderly, naturally the rules varied. Obviously bedridden endocephalics who required intensive care weren't about to scarper. It was also the place where NZ's last congenital hypothyroid cretin ended her days.
Accomodation ranged from hospital wards through dormitories, to the privileges of having your own room.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I'm not sure what era you are talking about . . .
I left at the end of 1965. My father worked there until his retirement in about 1978. My memories are from the 50s and 60s.
Have you read the deinstitutionalisation study by the Donald Beasley Institute. Different perspectives all fascinating: staff, patients and families.
I've read the material that's on line. You're right, it's certainly fascinating and informative, and gives something of the human perspective. There's also Anne Hunt's The Lost Years, about which the less said . . .
It's a pity that your interest in the place developed when it did. In the mid-60s you could have wandered in and had a look for yourself, it was pretty open. The biggest risk was getting mistaken for one of theirs and put in line for a bath. It happened to me and my siblings more than once.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
While there are some great support systems in place, the future doesn’t look rosy just at the moment. Could be worse, of course, but certainly not something to get smug about in NZ.
All the best with that Rob. While it was what my folks did that put me into early contact with people who are different, being involved in raising someone with a supposed disability was a significant part of my later life. For another family member it's a lifelong thing. Fate's funny like that.
One thing I'm certain of, the importance of personality over so-called intellect can't be underestimated. It's absolutely vital for everyone to have the chance to be themselves.
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There was a ghetto of disabled people at Levin for many decades - up to 800 at its height in the early 1970s from small children upwards. It was called the Kimberley Hospital later Centre and it took until 2006 to close it. I drive past it often and think of those who had no identity or choice in their lives to the extent they had no clothes of their own and were called after the name of their dormitory.
They were called villas when I grew up there. As a kid I'd read about the likes of Maria Callas living in a "villa" on the riviera and I'd think, gee, I wonder if she gets to share the place with the likes of Bobby and Phyllis, and Gordon with his big bald lightbulb-shaped head. Or Ronald the Downs guy who always wore a cowboy suit with a pair of cap guns. Because there was a time when they had names, and their own clothes, and sometimes rather a lot more. In a society that had always marginalised such people (isn't it remarkable how we built vast "lunatic asylums" such as Seacliff so early in our colonial history), it was the only home they had.
My parents didn't really want to be psych nurses, but when the state was able to "manpower" you into doing what it deemed best you didn't argue. That's how I ended up being born in Levin, and spending the first seventeen years of my life in a staff house there. It's still standing, you may think nice thoughts on my behalf next time you drive by.
As an initiative of then health minister Mabel Howard, Levin was conceived as a humanitarian innovation, against substantial opposition. In the context of its time, and certainly compared to conditions at Templeton, where most of the initial inmates were drawn from, it probably was. By the 70s it had fallen under the control of empire-building bureaucrats who moved away from the long-held policy of engagement with the wider world, and who had never soiled their hands by hosing down a rubber bedsheet, let alone deal with such occupational niceties as tapeworm outbreaks, which I understand were once common at Templeton.
When you can maintain your humanity and passion for reform in the face of such things then you deserve to be remembered. Instead we've chosen the narrative that tends to flatter our own vanity, and we forget that there were people with intentions not unlike our own, whose real reforms were reversed and largely lost. Humanitarian reforms do suffer reversals, it could happen again.
I'd like to say something brief about Brian. My mother was fond of him when he was a little boy at Templeton. He grew up at Levin with no known family, and in his early 20s he went out into the world to work as a shepherd about 40 minutes drive away in the Manawatu. He lived alone in a hut on the farm where he worked, as shepherds often do, and he seemed to get a kick out of having visitors. He'd come to our birthday parties with his tape recorder which provided a huge amount of fun, as no-one else had such a wonderful thing. Unfortunately Brian suffered from a congenital condition that affected his appearance, by his mid-20s he'd grown to resemble Clive James. It was a shock when he killed himself, as he'd always been stolidly cheerful. As my mother said, the tragedy was that he would have known what was happening to him.
It's still a cruel world out there, and we do have a near-forgotten history of caring for the vulnerable. It'd be good if we'd taken the trouble to learn from it, rather than congratulating ourselves on being the first humanitarians in our history. As they say, just sayin'.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
. . . why cant people enter at their own risk? Sign a waver? .
It's been mooted more than once, and instantly rejected on we-know-best safety grounds. In the meantime the lurking sense of philistinism, of which the wanton destruction that Ian described is a disturbing symptom, shows no sign of lifting.
This argument for CERA to return the City Art Gallery as a cultural centre is starting to make a lot of sense. Without concerted backing, though, it seems likely to be almost instinctively rejected. The insecurity of those - or should it be he - who are empowered to make such decisions can seem astounding at times.
Further to what Ian said, there really seems to be a huge amount of wastage in the demolition process. While people were lucky to escape with their lives from structures such as the recently demolished DTZ building, like most large buildings the policy appears to be to destroy without attempting to salvage the contents. While there are no doubt practical reasons for this, a hell of a lot of stuff has been trashed.
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In the case of apples it's bears!
Yes! And as this superb saga recounts, more than a little historical help from horses. Not to mention the truth about Johnny Appleseed (it was all about cider, bugger keeping the doctor away).
Right through until the early 2000s, supermarket tomatoes were almost all horrible. They were basically intended not to ripen, so they’d stay “fresh” through the long supermarket supply chains.
There was a particularly vile variety that seemed to stay firm and red forever. If you left it too long, when you sliced it you'd find the seeds in a fairly advanced stage of germination. How did that happen?
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Trust me the article is much more a failure of journalism than a representation of Steve Tanksley's ignorance. He really is very smart and has a deep knowledge of both the science and the industry.
Thanks for that Bart. Having Googled Tanksley, all I can say is he's certainly been very poorly served by that piece. While he probably has better things to do than set the record straight, others have put their oars in.
Does leaving the tomato on a bit of disembodied vine help in the process of ripening?
In my very humble and subjective experience, picking a hard green tomato and waiting for it to ripen results in an underflavoured fruit. If you pick it once the faintest blush of colour shows it's no different from leaving the fruit to fully ripen on the vine. It seems to be true, and I'm kind of curious as to why.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Rich Lock,
I'm reasonably confident that you could ask any backyard cultivator which has more taste: homegrown or supermarket, and they'd point to the homegrown.
There are a few blah old-school tomato varieties that persist in seed catalogs and remain mysteriously popular. The prison-grown seedlings that the Christchurch City Council distribute to their tenants would seem to be drawn from that gene pool. Probably a lapsed commercial variety named something like "Don't Frighten The Chooks."
Supermarket tomatoes have improved out of sight thanks to improved breeding. There were some abominations around in the 70s, and those pale orange imposters from Queensland seem to have finally vanished. The premium price commanded by vine-ripened "trusses" can't all be due to Nigella having told people they're better. And unless you carefully remove the fruit before you pay, they've found a way to sell you the stalks.
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Hard News: Science: it's complicated, in reply to Bart Janssen,
The relationship between yield and flavour is nothing new. The fewer fruit you have the more flavour you get in those fruit.
Not my experience. Tigerella, a 1930s hybrid, produces as well as many commercial varieties, with a superior flavour demonstrated by blind testing. Occasionally it's resurrected for commercial purposes, but it suffers from a thicker skin than most consumers prefer. Oxheart is another heavy yielder with a flavour everybody loves. The remarkable variety of fruit size and shape makes it a farmer's market favourite, but probably counts against it being a commercial variety.