Public Address | Cafe | Up Front: To the Letter

Emma Hart

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 21:10:54 +1300

I mean, it’s nice having the physical artifact, but it’s the information I want.

Both is nice, physical and electronic. One of the seemingly-oddest things I ever did was copy out a long, fraught conversation that had happened over DM onto a piece of paper, with a pen, at three…

nzlemming

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 19:11:21 +1300

I mean, it's nice having the physical artifact, but it's the information I want.

nzlemming

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 19:10:38 +1300

Scan 'em to a hard drive in an open format. Slowly working through 40 odd years of photographs "Just in case".

Bart Janssen

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 17:16:26 +1300

Our building is about to be renovated. I say "about to" bearing in mind that it has been planned for at least 20 years. As a result we are being decanted (project management speak for moved) out of our labs and offices to a new lab and office space while…

nzlemming

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 11:47:14 +1300

Haining Street was where the unfortunate Joe Kum Yung met his end at the hand of the white supremacist Lionel Terry.

Yes.

Joe Wylie

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 01:28:09 +1300

It was pretty much Wellington’s Chinatown up until the 60’s
Haining Street was where the unfortunate Joe Kum Yung met his end at the hand of the white supremacist Lionel Terry.

nzlemming

Thu, 21 Nov 2013 00:19:05 +1300

Sorry, curiosity has gotten the better of me – that and the mention of opium dens and a street name that could easily be either Chinese or English. Wellington or Jiaxing?

Wellington. It was pretty much Wellington's Chinatown up until the 60's, I believe. See this google search for some references.

Rich Lock

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:46:44 +1300

My grandfather was in the British Army for WW2, and was evacuated from Dunkirk the same day that my grandmother was giving birth to my dad. He told me about it in detail once when I was around 10-11. I always meant to get him on film talking about it,…

Rich Lock

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 23:37:21 +1300

For those who are interested, the 'mutiny' is quite well detailed in John McLeod's book 'myth and reality – the New Zealand soldier in WW2'.

From the relevant section of the book, the text of a letter given to a Major A. S. Playle in Hamilton reads as follows:

"Sir,…

Geoff Lealand

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:53:19 +1300

I will really have to find it now. I loaned it to Les Cleveland, the war historian, years ago but I am sure he returned it. Unfortunately paper things tend to disappear into some mysterious dark hole in our house but I will begin a search for it this weekend.…

Paul Brown

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:56:09 +1300

My father kept a diary of the years he was in North Africa and Italy in WW2, but his longhand is very hard to read. He did not get leave with the second Echelon but I remember that he sympathised with the 'mutiny'.
We do have 3 fantastic photo albums…

Ben Austin

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:29:05 +1300

Geoff, I would also like to read any links you care to share on the topic

Joe Wylie

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 21:07:01 +1300

… the manifesto my father penned, explaining why he and his fellow soldiers were refusing to return to the war in the North Africa, when troops from the Second Echelon were home on leave in NZ.
He actually wrote it? Fascinating stuff. My father was part of the Second Echelon.…

Deborah

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:56:03 +1300

I would like to read that, Geoff. Is it available anywhere? And I'd like to read more about the whole thing.

Geoff Lealand

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:40:12 +1300

One of the most valuable documents in my family history is the manifesto my father penned, explaining why he and his fellow soldiers were refusing to return to the war in the North Africa, when troops from the Second Echelon were home on leave in NZ. He and his pals…

Isabel Hitchings

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:30:23 +1300

Oh, the dignity and courage in that letter!

I recently uncovered a stash of letters written to me, by assorted friends, when I'd gone home from university one summer. It was quite hilarious to read four different accounts of the same scandals.

Islander

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:02:43 +1300

I burn diarytype stuff each NY bonfire.
Nobody will ever troll through my head stuff.
Not even my writing notes.

Moz

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 19:47:17 +1300

I'm a bit at the other end of the scale – I think there's private stuff that I will destroy so no-one else reads, and stuff that can be published. Either once I'm dead, or when I get round to it. There's a lot of value in reading ancestral tales,…

Paul Brown

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 19:11:30 +1300

We have just been cleaning out the family home after mum went into care. We found all the letters I had sent home while I was sailing round the world in the 70s. Some of them up to 10 pages long. I think I only rang home about once a…

Chris Waugh

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:13:13 +1300

the opium dens on Haining St.

Sorry, curiosity has gotten the better of me – that and the mention of opium dens and a street name that could easily be either Chinese or English. Wellington or Jiaxing?

John Russell

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:57:08 +1300

...lulled him into a false sense of security by planting things in the garden right up to the time we left.

Right, as the yoof would say, In The Feels.

Emma Hart

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:32:04 +1300

How Shakespearean

Oh, and this. Because yeah, every time I think about the "second-best bed" thing, but it seems a bit wanky to be all, "See? Just like Shakespeare!"

nzlemming

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:28:46 +1300

I sometimes feel that an interest in genealogy for some people is motivated by a desire to find some interesting or important relative in their past, so they can then bask in the reflected glory.

Yeah, nah. I mean, there are those who go looking for that, but sometimes it's…

Emma Hart

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 16:08:07 +1300

They were the love letters between my Nana and Grand-dad, Mary Matches and Tame Rakakino Mira.

Aw, that's fabulous. Though I can also understand not wanting to read them. I have one letter from my mother's first husband to her (it was undiscovered in a tin of old photographs), and…

Islander

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 15:48:39 +1300

I am my whanau's whakapapa person – but the real expert is my mother (who remembers cousin relationships when nobody else can even remember the cousins...)

Some years ago, as part of my duties as trustee/sole executrix, I was given a wonderfully fragrant(as in lavender) bundle of letters. The date…

Danielle

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:59:59 +1300

People history, as opposed to stuff that gets taught in school.

It's ALL people history, really. Just depends on how well it's taught and what they emphasise.

Lilith __

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:41:46 +1300

we had neighbours who used to boast how they were descended from Robert the Bruce

If you figure out how many generations that is, you can work out how many thousand descendants he probably has, and also what vanishingly-small percentage of his DNA your neighbours are likely to have. Even…

Geoff Lealand

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:35:30 +1300

so Nanna calls her daughter and son-in-law "Mum and Dad". It was obviously standard at the time, and now, creepy as fuck

As New Zealand males used to refer to their wives as "Mother"?

A great post. I sometimes feel that an interest in genealogy for some people is motivated…

James Butler

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:11:33 +1300

He left his wife his “bed with the yellow curtains in the back house chamber”. You have to specify that your wife gets a bed?

How Shakespearean

Emma Hart

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:49:02 +1300

Doing genealogy with/for my mum has made me aware of so many stories of people I barely knew.

I think genealogy really plays into the human compulsion to make stories. You have a few pieces of information – so, an Irish woman marries a man born in America but living…

Deborah

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:38:36 +1300

I think I covered my tracks pretty well and had lulled him into a false sense of security by planting things in the garden right up to the time we left.

A whole story in just one short sentence.

nzlemming

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:30:36 +1300

I love that sort of history. People history, as opposed to stuff that gets taught in school. Doing genealogy with/for my mum has made me aware of so many stories of people I barely knew. And I wonder how many 21st century women are still writing/posting the same sort of…

Public Address

Wed, 20 Nov 2013 13:30:36 +1300

Discussion from blog post.