Posts by Kate Hannah
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DCBCauchi,
Love it! yes, let's work together to protect our taonga!
By my desk I have, on a faded yellow post-it, the line from that tortured soul Kakfa: a book must be an ice-axe for the frozen sea within us. On the other side of my office, on the shelves, I have various ice-axes. Sebald's Austerlitz, Erdrich's The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. All of Potok. Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just. (It's my work office, so my books here are my genocide texts - because that's how I roll). Their physical presence is a talisman to me, a reminder of what I am writing and why. "Books are created from holy letters. Just as angels are, according to some. Viewed from this perspectives - through a window of kabbalah if you like - an angel is nothing but a book given heavenly form...given wings, to use a common metaphor." (Zimler, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon)
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to George Darroch,
NOOOO! that's terrible. In Richard Zimler's The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, there is a beautiful description of the Jewish scribe/bookseller family's treatment of books - all of the books they encounter are treated as if they are holy - and a disposed of book is buried with ritual and mourning. That's how I feel about books. I'll read them on my ipad but a book I love will need to be repurchased as a paper edition - for marginalia, for inscription, for the smell of the paper and the feel of the book in my hands.
Given most of my adult life has involved tracking down obscure texts in order to read them and write about them (a task much easier now thanks to digitisation) I am horrified that creating digital libraries seems to now replace books rather than complement them!
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to Islander,
LOVE Joan Aiken. Fortunately for my children my parents kept every book they ever purchased.... so my wee ones started with Arabel and Mortimer and moved onto Dido & the Wolves etc..... I loved her in the 70s and 80s & they love her now. Books have lives longer than ours, if we would only let them stay on shelves for people to find.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to BenWilson,
yes - over the holidays we made much use of this as the kids tracked down (online) and requested books and xbox games from all over the super city - $5 to borrow an xbox game for 2 weeks - pretty good in that first rainy week of the school hols .....
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to BenWilson,
my office is just across the road, so if you do come in and find a gem, just email....
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to DCBCauchi,
re the access to databases - absolutely! It's one of the major benefits - and one I have frequently shared - a great way to make new friends is to find them stuff they need on databases .....
Re libraries - we have a long family history of librarianism - and I am a passionate relocator of books back to their correct shelf, (I obviously have too much time on my hands.) One of my major peeves, as you id DB, is the value system for books - older books are housed in the basement or got rid of - even if they are classics and amazing etc. All of Chaim Potok's oeuvre, for example, is in the basement at Auckland City Library, where noone can serendipitously stumble upon them; only those that seek can find. That's the joy of a library - in Robert Sullivan's words that adorn that exact library "....people who saved the words of our ancestors for one and all..."
Not much use if a book-mad kid can't stumble upon something that speaks to them across time.
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to BenWilson,
initial.lastname@auckland.ac.nz
I (romantically again) like to think that NZ academics have failed in this respect less spectacularly than US ones - and given we have so few public intellectuals here, in a way they have even more responsibility to do this ....
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Hard News: Occupy: Don't call it a protest, in reply to BenWilson,
Oh and Ben, next time you want a book from the UoA library, just holler. I recall only too well when I first moved here and was no longer a University employee or student (which I had been all my life - first through parents and then on own) and had no access to academic library. I paid the access fees when I was a consultant, and now, having returned to fold, so to speak, have access once more - happy to get the odd book out for you.
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Response to no -one in particular - but to emphasise that one cannot actually major in History at AUT. Paul Moon teaches in Te Ara Poutama, which is the Faculty of Maori (not sure how to macronise here - feel free to teach me learned peeps) Development.
It's a bugbear of mine.
Suffice to say that he's no more qualified that Dame Anne Salmond to comment on economics - except that Dame Anne didn't claim, in her orginal article, expert status of any kind, apart from maybe, wisdom gleaned from years of observation of society. I'd love to be at the show Russell, but have left it a) too late and b) have to feed children at that hour. Will watch with interest. I'm always proud of my academics when they participate in the public discourse on issues that they are both expert on or passionate about - and I always appreciate particularly when they distinguish between the two - expertise and passion.
I romantically love the words of both the Universities Act - "critic and conscience of society" and Chomsky - "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies."
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Hard News: Dropping the Bomber, in reply to Russell Brown,
And that's why you're in charge. Thanks. I have mixed emotions re the panel (I'm a mum, I often drive children places between 4-5, my parents always listened to Nat rad in car, they always voted labour, ummm apple, [green] tree?) I also have mixed emotions re Bomber for personal reasons related to a friend. However, in my NZ, people get to rant on public radio. Chomsky said "it is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth & expose lies." Bomber, despite his faults, attempts to do that.