Posts by Hilary Stace
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I reckon Te Papa should do an exhibition of history through t-shirts.
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My sister spent a year in the US as a teenager in the 1960s and brought me back a pair of jeans. Children's jeans were rare in NZ and I was the only girl I knew with a pair. Girls generally wore dresses and boys shorts all year round, and even female teachers were forbidden to wear trousers until several years later.
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Islander - thanks for that information, particularly re silk. I went to a silk factory in China in the 1970s and it didn't look like much fun. But I still bought some silk as I really like it.
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Question for people who like opshop clothes: do you worry about them carrying some karmic essence of the last owner, or is that part of the attraction? I understand that can be a comforting part of clothes inherited from friends or relatives, but I'm uneasy about those from the unknown.
Also, is is just me who worries about the sorrow and misery that might be sewn into clothes from exploited and unhappy workers? Come to that the animals killed for the boot leather or the silk worms plunged into boiling water and the factory workers who have to pull them out with bare hands. (Or am I being a bit obsessive?)
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The first ever pair of boots I could afford to buy were Robin-Hood- green knee highs with black laces. The soles were repaired many times until the boots finally fell to pieces. More recently I have cherished a pair of square-toed red ankle boots which the nice shoe repairers at the railway station have now told me are beyond hope. I do a lot of walking and my shoes have to be comfortable, and I hate having to say goodbye to them.
In the green boot days I also used to make all my own clothes and memorable from that time was a full length black wool coat with scarlet lining and a 4-ply chevron-striped twin set. (A twinset was a sleeveless knitted top and matching cardigan usually in pastel colours, which mine was not. There were twinset and pearl girls, with camel hair coats. Not me, though. I think they grew up to be the blonde-bobbed-and-turned-up-collars-of-Fendalton)
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Was the partner..um.. touched? (Priest and all that)
I'm not sure how these things work but apparently it was when Pope John Paul 2 visited NZ and had big outdoor masses and a few select people got communion from/with? him personally.
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And as a postscript I should mention that my partner was once blessed by the Pope.
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I think it is less about status and more about values and where you feel comfortable. My mother, born 1917. was a keen sociologist and told us stories based on her awareness of where she and her family 'fitted', and her delight that the grandchildren of the family's maid and the town doctor married, as that would not happen in the Waimate she grew up in. Her father was the local lawyer and she was well aware there were more and less desirable families and children to play with (which she resisted to a certain extent). But it was also about religion with the Catholics as an easily identifiable 'other' - which they still were when I grew up.
At boarding school - which was already for the wealthy elite - the hierarchies were also strong with the Canterbury landed families top and those in 'trade' at the bottom. She belonged to the middle group, the professions. It was the depression, and although she noticed girls leaving before they had finished school, she didn't realise its impact till later. (And my father who had been at Christs College, was asked as a Canterbury university student to join the troops attacking the protesting workers.)
She felt 'other' because she was good at academic study and went on to university. (Where she had Popper and some other significant intellectuals as lecturers). The importance of education and learning is where my values come from. I feel comfortable in messy houses like mine full of books, and uneasy in (very tidy) houses without bookshelves. Our first degree was just that - a first degree - barely noticed. Post grad study was where you really started (and why I am still studying decades later not sure how to start on real life).
My loneliest experience was being a beneficiary and a single parent in a decile 10 suburb in the early 1990s. But I'm still in that suburb, and a book-lined-house owner, because two important people in my life died.
So status and class alone do not sufficiently explain the complexity, diversity and dynamics of how we live.
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Graeme, saw you on last night's Court Report. I love that programme; it makes the law seem really exciting and, well, just.
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17 this morning. Would probably be different another time and place.
I am sensing a slightly apologetic tone in the reporting by those with higher scores. Please don't. Tony Attwood claims we are all on one continuum, but some are clustered nearer one end. And Temple Grandin says we would still be living in caves if it hadn't been for the talents and inventions of those with AS.
My favourite current expression is 'a touch of autism' (as in a light pat on the arm).