Posts by Kate Hannah
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Thanks Russell; a really necessary conversation. The Archives NZ/National Library merger was viewed with some suspicion within history circles - largely, I think because the National Library is a trope for how we as a nation view and access our past - I'm loathe to lose that symbolic nature, myself. But in practical terms, the sets of artifacts work together.
I'm hoping that the entitity of the National Library will continue to exist -as you indicate, the building and its accessibility to the public is a key aspect of these organisations that preserve and protect our national taonga. In particular,
the specific, important area of online access
- the Alexander Turnbull Library have, amoungst their kaitiaki a computer scientist who might happen to be my dad, whose areas of expertise include digital libraries and access thereto.
http://www.natlib.govt.nz/about-us/friends-advisors/guardians-kaitiakiSo there's good precedents there in the archives field to embrace the need for online access.
And because I'm a libraries true believer - my Friday warm fuzzy - what a librarian Marguerite Hart must have been: http://snarkmarket.com/2011/6937
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Busytown: What was lost, in reply to Lilith __,
I retweeted the fake MLK quote several times Monday. Internets hey?
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Busytown: What was lost, in reply to Jolisa,
Words to live, and write, by!
They sit over my monitor next to Kafka's 'a book must be the ice-axe for the frozen sea within us' and a real MLK quote: 'the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.' With these three fellow travellers, I try to write.
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Oh beautiful. And personal. And political. I'm glancing at the scrawled words of Toni Morrison's I keep above my computer: "make it as political as hell. And make it irrevocably beautiful."
Yesterday was so strange - like you articulate so well; trying to explain to children born in the shadow of that day how jubilation might not be the first best response - because any man's death diminishes me - but also taking the time to write an email to my dissertation supervisor, in whose office I spent all of September 12 2001 (NZ) while he desparately awaited news of his son, who worked in the World Trade Centre; his sister, who lived down the block; his childhood synagogue, also down the block. His people were safe, it turned out. But so many were not.
Thank you.
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Hard News: Kittens and puppies for happiness, in reply to SteveH,
Oh he's gorgeous! the kitteh love is pleasantly distracting on a Friday afternoon ......
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to giovanni tiso,
The University VCs have all "met" by phone conference and there are agreements in place with Auckland, Massey, Otago and Victoria for semester-long "exchanges" in which the courses completed will count towards Canterbury degrees. However, this is only in courses at those helping universities that have room - so if engineering, say, here at AK, is full, then the engineering students will not be able to come. Canterbury will be reopening from the 14th, and is largely undamaged out at the Ilam campus.
Other universities (who shall not be named) are apparently enrolling Canterbury students - thus moving the economic base from Christchurch. The whole Adelaide thing is a bit weird - but looking at my copy of the ERA report 2010, I see they have a relatively good engineering school - so for students unable to attend AK due to full classes, that might be an option? James McWha, the VC of Adelaide, while a Scots-Canadian, spent many years at Massey (and may have been VC there for a while?) I went to school with his daughter. So he is probably making the offer as a Nzer.
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It's such a fraught area - the collision of history and memory and memorialisation and the public sphere exploding the private sphere - I've interviewed a lot of people in my time as a historian. Given my areas of research interest (the Shoah, the Armenian Genocide) I've read a lot of other people's transcripts or accessed interview databases. It's a difficult balance, even when speaking of the distant past, (or of oral tradition), to ensure that the person who is being interviewed retains control. There are things they may wish to forget, to gloss over, to rewrite their part in. As an interviewer, you are aware of this - but the text of the interview belongs to the person who speaks it. When journalism and history collide, as now, perhaps some of those historian's ethics need to join with journalism's?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Jolisa,
and Robyn - I'm not clever enough to reply to both or quote ..... here at the University of Auckland we have some amazing PhD students working in indigenous architecture - off the top of my head there's a project I saw displayed last year which is a kitset fale for use in the Pacific after extreme weather events; I'm pretty sure there's a whole group working on tikanga Maori (can't macronise either - obviously need some PAS 101 lessons) architecture. The kitset fale could be our paper longhouses..... I'm going to email my counterpart in the architecture school now ......
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Jolisa,
aesthete and utopian - Oh I agree completely. A new (old) kind of neighbourhood that includes rather than excludes, is not designed as a dormitory for workers but as a locale for living and working. Where all the different ways people contribute to society count, not just the things they get paid for. (small rant: when my father-in-law was out of work last year, he went on every school trip with the grandies. THe teachers LOVED having this engaged intelligent grandparent who would spend his whole time explaining things to the kids - how does the welfare working group even pretend to understand how to value that contribution?).
I'd like to think that Christchurch can build, and rebuild, and memorialise in a spirit that saw those beautiful (destroyed) churches built orginally - the best materials, designs and people engaged in making something that will live long after they are gone.
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oh Emma. thank you. My mother died 8 and half years ago, aged 53. Breast Cancer. Her birthday is in a couple of days - one of the many days of the year that I carry a heavy weight and feel somewhat like the ancient mariner. So to read this today was perfect - the reminder of our un-aloneness in the world
What a beautiful testimony to a life.
those others - Rex, Robert. How awful. The two things that I loved the best, that I carry with me from the time of my mother's illness and her death, are: the vicar who married us (family friend, we were married six month before mum's diagnosis) who said "it's just not fucking fair" when he found out. (Not one for the swearing, you see). My favourite professor and supervisor (I was in the middle of my MA and also pregnant with second child in midst of that year of hell) who told me that he missed his father (who had died thirty years before) everyday, and spoke to him, everyday.
I was eight and half months pregnant at the funeral; I can't really remember much but my brother, dad, uncles, cousin and husband were pallbearers. My husband says it was both one of the hardest and best things he has ever done.
Thank you. I really needed to read that today.