Posts by ChrisW
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I trust Don McDonald has sent them a cheque for $0.05, on the basis that it's near enough, any difference from $50 is not material.
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And weather news from Gisborne - sunshine, gentle breezes, ideal wash-day conditions really, been cloudless all day. Saw a bit of snow above 500m on the hills off to the SW this morning but nothing around here yet, 12 degrees outside, the natural solar and wood-burner just ticking over has it 19 in here and 17 down the far shady end of the house.
Cancelling that smugness now in anticipation of the next front making it up this side of the island by morning, and offfering best wishes to the southerners especially east Christchurch ...
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Hard News: When the Weather is the News, in reply to st ephen,
Burning natives - sustainable? Necessary? A non-issue up north? Google turns up plenty of firewood ads but only this
appeal for a higher use for manuka/kanuka.Hey - I know the writer of that article! Wrote it for landowners in the Gisborne district in the late 1990s, picked up by Forest and Bird, good to see it doing its work still chugging along in slightly modified form, rather like me really.
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Hard News: An open thread while I'm down…, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Will was one of the leaders of the Patu Squad that day and was arrested shortly afterwards. It was the intervention of Desmond Tutu - who appeared as a witness - that saved him from what was likely to be a severe sentence.
And these things don't just happen by themselves - that intervention was organised by Will Ilolahia's defence lawyer. And one of many good stories told in memory and appreciation of Chief District Court Judge Russell Johnson at his funeral on Saturday was of that day in the legal career of the then youthful barrister - he knew he had the case won when the entire jury stood up for Bishop Desmond Tutu's arrival in court.
It was a massive funeral, in numbers and duration at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Auckland - he was deeply admired, his leadership appears to have been exceptional and will be sorely missed.Brief NZH obituary.
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Hard News: Angry and thrilled about Arie, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Hover your mouse over the "x months ago" and you'll see the precise date/time of the posting.
Yes Hilary, there's a way round it, but it's inconvenient ain't it! Hence my request for return to plain NZ time display, and see subsequent support and discussion with suggestion for option of re-setting as 'x time units ago' as a personal preference for those who might want.
Your thoughts, Russell?
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Indeed, a fine piece of television and journalism, with well-crafted understatement. Arie was enabled to present himself and his case as completely genuine and guileless. The point where he introduced himself at the door of the building's owners as "Cornelius Arie Smith-Voorkamp" brought tears to my eyes. The anger came later.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Perhaps the Plice want clarification from a Judge as to what "looting" actually is.
But their threats against TVNZ re Sunday's "Tale of two light bulbs" isn't consistent with that. Instead it brought home to me the sad fact that Ross Meurant's analysis of the October 2007 anti-"terrorist" raids applies to the Police as a whole - they are "deep in the forest" of their childhood imagination surrounded on all sides by threats both visible and invisible. This both builds their group culture and hopelessly distorts their perception and perspective.
It seems they need a judge to slap them on the face in an attempt to bring them back to reality, turn them round from their current course rushing deeper into the forest, and point them to the way out. It's encouraging the court in Arie's case shows signs of giving them this message, but I doubt the Police will get it.
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Hard News: A Century Since, in reply to linger,
I long wondered what was it that made 1911 a marvellous year
…Eh? It’s a real struggle getting to that reading of it.Well, seems the straightforward reading to me, and I would understand also to Smithyman who was a colleague of Curnow's over many years. But yes, there is the alternative reading, seeming less obvious to me given the conspicuous pair of commas making 'some child' apparently parenthetic. Perhaps a little creative ambiguity, but for essentially the same overall meaning anyway, of a future Curnow not only imagined but promoted.
Clearly that second comma of the pair was one Allen Curnow had in mind in Cromie's quote above, and after Smithyman's poking the borax, he probably thought he should have spent another day or two on it.
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Thanks for bringing the 100th birthday to attention of this Curnow fan too. It seems clear he did learn to stand upright here, so it's interesting his assertion in his youthful 30s/early 1940s that he wouldn't. And the moa perception is of its time too, the failure to adapt rather than being hunted to extinction as now recognised - indeed "The stain of blood that writes an island story" (yes, "Landfall in Unknown Seas" would be my favourite of his early poems).
I long wondered what was it that made 1911 a marvellous year (note double ell in Curnow's and Oxford's spelling). Then I found that Kendrick Smithyman had wondered too, and had the answer -
What, if anything, happened in 1911?
Somebody screwed someone, somebody else
screwed up.I guess Smithyman was not such a fan of this particular poem of Curnow's, on the evidence (from Smithyman Online)
of -MOWER: RUAPEKAPEKA
Skeleton of a motor mower on iron crutches,
its own museum piece, eyes fix on in that museumwithout walls, the paddock’s fag end. What used to be
a tractorshed keels into windbreak broken macrocarpaalong with the tractor, early Fordson, and Terraplane
without wheels or motives, a swaybacked Mack dumper,an almost toothless hayrake. It was not born in any
marvellous year, has forgotten tricks of standing upright.Luxurious man brought/brings to use his vice,
anvil, welding torch, elsewhere to other ends.Where Nature was most plain and pure wild onion,
hemlock, cow parsley, rage and rant. The mower’s bonesare chilled, as are the gods themselves who no more
with us seemly dwell. -
Hard News: Christchurch: Square Two, in reply to Ross Mason,
"Door stop"? - don't think so, no more significant than a boulder in a stream, perhaps causing a very local deflection in the flow. For the most part, I understand these volcanoes extend only a km or 2 below the surface, much shallower than the earthquake sources and faults. That is except for the narrow columns where the liquid magma flowed up through the crust to feed the volcanoes.