Posts by ChrisW
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To Ian Dalziel - a tribute, though the layout isn't angled right.
Jolisa (noting you currently reside in the singular US) - for myth read math if you prefer -rainbows, how do they work?
archly they set arrows of white light aquiver
refracting drop by drop a spectral bow waveinfrared to ultraviolet and betwixt withal
Bifrost spans Asgard to Midgard infradigbut mostly they are magic
foam on particulate wavesviscerally vibrating
optickling allusionsreminding us
we are lightwe are
waterplus
dustO
this
artful
radiant
brilliance deserves
repetition here, for it weaves
the rainbow of myth and science, truth and poetry
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It's been a great month of highs and lows and the powers of two.
First round - firstly I am NZedder 100%, so much pride in the unbeaten record against the 3 of the 32 in our group.
Round of 16 - My 16 great-great-grandparents were 12 of them English and 4 German, ancestry 3 : 1 English : German. Could the English finally do it for me? Perhaps not. But wait, it's Germany 3 - 1 England, with a little illegitimacy on the side - perfect symmetry! Whoops, 3 minutes later it's 4-1, symmetry ruined. Still, there are satisfactions.
Quarter-finals – I am quarter German, yes Germany stuns Argentina and me both, 4 - 0! I am German, Deutschland uber alles! Whoops, sorry, Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit.
Semi-finals – I half believe at least half the statements 'I am German' and 'Germany will get their quota of 4 goals'. Alas no, Germany 0 - 1 Spain, shed a tear. But wait, one of those English great-great grandfathers had a Spanish great-grandfather - I am 1/128th Spanish, fully 0.78125%.
Final - finally 100% for Spain for I am Spanish, ole, ole, ole! And we win, with 1 late goal, a perfect finish to the month.
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with Chris' addition
and permission) to be put up around NZ and other places
(pix - and blog - of kiwi & US poets on poles …Thanks Ian - personally I’m not keen on pole sitting myself, but otherwise by all means and best wishes.
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Thank you! But now I have to bow to IanD's vastly awesomer one on the other thread. Who'd have thought you would find such a gem on yet more on Party Fscking Central! I wouldn't have thought of my jingle let alone put it out there if I'd seen his first.
Also - I doubt there will never be a worthy poet by the name of Bert Kilogram to raise thoughts of anachronistic references in the poetry of today.
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A thought went up my mind today that ED's short poem, however wide and deep and bold in its final assertion, is lacking the third dimension. So a suggested update for insertion as third stanza before the final one -
The brain is further than the moon,
For journey there to probe,
The one was reached now long ago,
Not yet the frontal lobe. -
The two [children] who died had later born siblings who were given the same names. Another way of remembering them perhaps?
A set of three names repeated on successive lines of a headstone caught my eye in an old cemetery a few years ago - this in Stafford, essentially a ghost town formerly gold mining on the West Coast. They died in 1877 aged 21 months, and 1881 aged 3 years, daughters of Richard John and Louisa Jane Seddon of Kumara.
The initial eye-catching part for me had been one of their given names, Youd, being the distinctive maiden name of one of my great-great-grandmothers from Lancashire. And indeed, on further enquiries, I find she and 'King Dick' RJ Seddon were second cousins.
I've found only an inaccurate single line on these daughters and their deaths in the Seddon biographies, but through the marvel of Papers Past have picked up a little more. The first Catherine drowned in a water race close to their Seddon Street home in Kumara. Three hours were allowed for the funeral procession from home to cemetery 15 km away - it would be more a brisk than funereal-paced walk even if the roads were good. From the dates and more specific ages Louisa Jane was 3-4 months pregnant with her next child when her toddler died, so the transferred names when another daughter born. How much greater then, their tragedy when she too died, not in newsworthy fashion so presumably by illness. The young Richard John Seddon was M.H.R. by then and parliament was in session, he was granted 2 weeks leave, headed home, steamer to Lyttelton but heavy rain on the Coast flooded the rivers and the coach to Hokitika was delayed for days, he didn't make it to the funeral.
I wonder what support he was for Louisa Jane when he did get home? What effects, those scars on the heart(s)?
Maps has an interesting post on current battles in the history wars in Britain, but making a point that history becomes much more accessible and meaningful through the windows of family history and genealogy – I think he’s right.
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he informed the class that there was only one word that broke the "i before e, except after c" rule, and that was "seige"
Would it be carping or carpe diem to point out that would be seize rather than siege, but then again weird etc. as well :-)
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Thanks Paul - it says something of NZ that Bill Pearson in 1951/52, while enjoying the anonymity of London, thought
It is possible for a South Islander in Auckland to feel uprooted in the indifference and hostility of the people.
to be a worthwhile observation, something new perhaps that his New Zealand readers would not think obvious. Even though he was sensitive to the perceptions of an outsider, he seems to imply (among the Pakehas of his assumed readership at least) that it would be unlikely for an Aucklander to feel similarly in say Greymouth, or a small-town North Islander in Christchurch, at that time. That seems surprising!
I thought it might instead be a knowing reference to a reputation of the big smoke of the north already well established, cf. "It is possible for a Christchurch lad in New York to feel uprooted in the indifference and hostility of the people."
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Here's young Emily with another poem:
"I cannot live with you" - good poem sevrely damaged by the visual distraction of the animated video for me.
As evidence of this, I noted the apparent success of her living apart strategy on her longevity, her years 1830-1996 according to hyperboleland.
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I've never read Emily Dickinson - I guess put off by the general downer however beautifully expressed of Simon (and Garfunkel)'s 'The Dangling Conversation' -
And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we've lost.
(Never read Robert Frost either, so that proves it :-)) But so much of interest here, thanks Jolisa.On the shrine to the dead child - this seemed especially significant to me. Death of a child was so common in centuries past, but rarely is there a physical memorial like this and the written record of that child's personality and the impact of their death on the family, preserved through the chance of their circumstances.
The youngest child of my great-great-grandparents died of that same typhoid fever at the same age a decade later in 1896, but apart from the bare sentences of death notices and cause of death, there is no record of the impact on his parents (and siblings), nothing but that premature death determining where their bare grave-site is positioned in the cemetery 2-3 km up-river from me here.
So Emily Dickinson's nephew Gib seems a fine surrogate for many other dead children, his memorial room has no doubt has been appreciated by many. And at the same time it's a useful a warning - how many years can a mountain exist?