Hmmm, I seem to have lost the final couple of sentences. I am not sure what happened there. Here they are:
To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound as well as humiliating. "The purchasing power of our own people" Savage contended, "must be the basis of our prosperity." Retrenchment could only worsen the Depression because "Unless the people of this country are in a position to pay for what is produced...we cannot go on producing..."
That is simple economics and I understand that, plus I understand the surplus refrigerator which went to other, overseas or foreign markets. (I produced three refrigerators, and I sold two in New Zealand and sent one to Australia and Australia paid me and with that money I bought stuff from Australia I couldn't get here.)
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Michael Joseph Savage 1872-1940
Michael Joseph Savage, the Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1935-1940 (he died in Office) was the best loved politician and statesman this country has ever had. I would like to begin the story as it is told - from the end of his life. Most of the information I have used is from 'From the Cradle to the Grave' by Barry Gustafson (Reed Methuen 1986) a thoroughly well written and researched book.
Savage was the man responsible for the introduction of old age pensions, state housing and many other so-called 'socialist' inventions into New Zealand society. I will be investigating the social and economic climate before and after Savage's two terms in Parliament to see whether socialist, communist, liberal or democrat best describes the Government and the changes made during this time.
His name is remembered where the names of many more recent (but inferior) Prime Ministers are forgotten.
-------------------------------------------------------------
'Four days after his sixty-eighth birthday and a little more than twenty-four hours after learning of Lee's defeat, Savage died at 3.15am on the morning of Wednesday, 27 March 1940...Later that morning when conference met at 10.30, Fraser announced the Prime Minister's death. One delegate recalled that 'a deep silence, broken only by the sound of subdued sobbing, filled the conference hall.' p 269
'...Savage would have been deeply moved by the unprecedented tribute from hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders of all ages who stood silently in the streets as a last gesture of respect and affection. The body lay in state in the vestibule of Parliament for two days, during which some 50,000 people filed past. (Don't forget this was then a country of 2 million people. Jude) A solemn Requiem Mass was conducted at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart...The purple and black draped train took a slow twenty-eight hours to reach Auckland. At twenty stops along the 720 kilometre route, crowds of up to 12,000 people gathered, as bands played the hymns 'Abide with Me' and 'Lead Kindly Light'. Radio bulletins described in detail Savage's last journey home to Auckland.' p 271
'It was estimated that some 200,000 Aucklanders met the train or lined the twelve kilometres from the railway station to Savage's resting place at Fort Bastion...'p 271
'...the Savage Memorial, with its large mausoleum, towering column, reflecting pool, sunken gardens, and located on one of the most beautiful sites in New Zealand was certainly the most spectacular and expensive memorials ever erected to honour a New Zealand politician.' p 271
Now then...
Many homes had a framed portait of Savage hanging up in a room. There was no compulsion for this. People loved him. I can remember my parents speaking about him in worshipful tones. Even 'til this very day, if someone makes a demeaning remark about Michael Joseph Savage it will be met with cold stares and silence, for he was a good man and the following comments will prove this true.
Savage was born in Australia of Irish immigrant parents and was the youngest of seven children. There had been eight, but the first born girl had died in infancy. The family had a small holding but floods and drought (common in Australia, it seems to be one or the other) made it impossible to take a decent living from the land. Savage's mother died when he was five (probably from exhaustion) and his elder sister Rose had to leave school to help in the house. Another brother, Joe, had been dropped as a baby and was crippled as a result of the fall.
Savage left school at fourteen also and began work. He worked at labouring jobs for low wages until in 1907 aged 35, he finally washed up in New Zealand which, in the early 1900s was looking more prosperous than Australia.
Savage's mother had died when he was a child, his crippled brother Joe died in 1891 aged 21, and Rose, his only sister died in childbirth aged 31. Another brother Hugh died of typhoid when he was 29. Savage didn't have too much time for doctors all his life as a result of these young deaths. I agree with him. Where do doctors get their vanity from? They are supposed to be providing a service, not grooming their egos. The engineer who designs a town sewage treatment plant, the plumber who fixes drains, even the man who collects the rubbish bins - these are equally as valuable as any doctor, perhaps moreso.
It seems to me that Britain exported millions of its 'excess' population either in convicts chains or as settlers, and then dumped them. Little provision was made for the welfare of settlers. It was sheer chance if they had enough teachers or doctors where they were sent. Natural disasters, famine or disease wiped out thousands, but more thousands of the 'indigent' were sent out to replace the human animals. Their own people the British sent to countries 13,000 miles away, packed like cattle into ships, yet now they bring in to their home countries immigrants of different languages, different colours, different (very different) behaviours, and they make a fuss of them and feed them and house them in luxury as though they (the British) are primitive tribes welcoming gods.
This little anecdote - make up your own mind about these people:
In later years as Prime Minister of New Zealand Michael Savage went to Britain to be present at the coronation of King George VI.
'The weeks after the coronation saw Savage attending a bewildering range of meetings and functions including a reception at the Duchess of Sutherland's, part of the booze, women and invitations to stately homes' treatment Savage said was accorded state visitors. He was greatly offended and annoyed when, after he declined the offer of the company of a high class female prostitute, British officials misinterpreted his lack of interest and his bachelor status and offered to satisfy any homosexual needs.' p 207
Savage saw much poverty and grief from the poor, and much avarice and greed from the rich in his early years. His hard labouring work for little money also made him interested in unions and he became active in the Labor Movement in Australia. When he arrived in New Zealand he continued to work with the unions, and became chairman of the Socialist Party as well as chairman of the Red Feds. He was a good speaker and, although short and somewhat shabby, with poor eyesight, he was absolutely charismatic. By 1933 he was Leader of the Opposition. The Depression starting in 1929 had seriously affected New Zealand (the birthrate dropped to below replacement, in Australia one third of young people never married) and Socialism's time had come.
'New Zealand, "one of the most fertile countries on earth", Savage argued, should be able to insulate its economy to the extent that production, employment, internal purchasing power and domestic living standards were only marginally influenced by external factors. Every man and woman who wanted to work had an inherent right to work and should be given the opportunity to work. Unemployment was not only a denial of that right but a waste of productive resources and a reduction in normal spending power through lost wages and potential consumers. To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound and potentially humiliating.
"The purchasing power of our own people' Sav
Savage was the man responsible for the introduction of old age pensions, state housing and many other so-called 'socialist' inventions into New Zealand society. I will be investigating the social and economic climate before and after Savage's two terms in Parliament to see whether socialist, communist, liberal or democrat best describes the Government and the changes made during this time.
His name is remembered where the names of many more recent (but inferior) Prime Ministers are forgotten.
-------------------------------------------------------------
'Four days after his sixty-eighth birthday and a little more than twenty-four hours after learning of Lee's defeat, Savage died at 3.15am on the morning of Wednesday, 27 March 1940...Later that morning when conference met at 10.30, Fraser announced the Prime Minister's death. One delegate recalled that 'a deep silence, broken only by the sound of subdued sobbing, filled the conference hall.' p 269
'...Savage would have been deeply moved by the unprecedented tribute from hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Zealanders of all ages who stood silently in the streets as a last gesture of respect and affection. The body lay in state in the vestibule of Parliament for two days, during which some 50,000 people filed past. (Don't forget this was then a country of 2 million people. Jude) A solemn Requiem Mass was conducted at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart...The purple and black draped train took a slow twenty-eight hours to reach Auckland. At twenty stops along the 720 kilometre route, crowds of up to 12,000 people gathered, as bands played the hymns 'Abide with Me' and 'Lead Kindly Light'. Radio bulletins described in detail Savage's last journey home to Auckland.' p 271
'It was estimated that some 200,000 Aucklanders met the train or lined the twelve kilometres from the railway station to Savage's resting place at Fort Bastion...'p 271
'...the Savage Memorial, with its large mausoleum, towering column, reflecting pool, sunken gardens, and located on one of the most beautiful sites in New Zealand was certainly the most spectacular and expensive memorials ever erected to honour a New Zealand politician.' p 271
Now then...
Many homes had a framed portait of Savage hanging up in a room. There was no compulsion for this. People loved him. I can remember my parents speaking about him in worshipful tones. Even 'til this very day, if someone makes a demeaning remark about Michael Joseph Savage it will be met with cold stares and silence, for he was a good man and the following comments will prove this true.
Savage was born in Australia of Irish immigrant parents and was the youngest of seven children. There had been eight, but the first born girl had died in infancy. The family had a small holding but floods and drought (common in Australia, it seems to be one or the other) made it impossible to take a decent living from the land. Savage's mother died when he was five (probably from exhaustion) and his elder sister Rose had to leave school to help in the house. Another brother, Joe, had been dropped as a baby and was crippled as a result of the fall.
Savage left school at fourteen also and began work. He worked at labouring jobs for low wages until in 1907 aged 35, he finally washed up in New Zealand which, in the early 1900s was looking more prosperous than Australia.
Savage's mother had died when he was a child, his crippled brother Joe died in 1891 aged 21, and Rose, his only sister died in childbirth aged 31. Another brother Hugh died of typhoid when he was 29. Savage didn't have too much time for doctors all his life as a result of these young deaths. I agree with him. Where do doctors get their vanity from? They are supposed to be providing a service, not grooming their egos. The engineer who designs a town sewage treatment plant, the plumber who fixes drains, even the man who collects the rubbish bins - these are equally as valuable as any doctor, perhaps moreso.
It seems to me that Britain exported millions of its 'excess' population either in convicts chains or as settlers, and then dumped them. Little provision was made for the welfare of settlers. It was sheer chance if they had enough teachers or doctors where they were sent. Natural disasters, famine or disease wiped out thousands, but more thousands of the 'indigent' were sent out to replace the human animals. Their own people the British sent to countries 13,000 miles away, packed like cattle into ships, yet now they bring in to their home countries immigrants of different languages, different colours, different (very different) behaviours, and they make a fuss of them and feed them and house them in luxury as though they (the British) are primitive tribes welcoming gods.
This little anecdote - make up your own mind about these people:
In later years as Prime Minister of New Zealand Michael Savage went to Britain to be present at the coronation of King George VI.
'The weeks after the coronation saw Savage attending a bewildering range of meetings and functions including a reception at the Duchess of Sutherland's, part of the booze, women and invitations to stately homes' treatment Savage said was accorded state visitors. He was greatly offended and annoyed when, after he declined the offer of the company of a high class female prostitute, British officials misinterpreted his lack of interest and his bachelor status and offered to satisfy any homosexual needs.' p 207
Savage saw much poverty and grief from the poor, and much avarice and greed from the rich in his early years. His hard labouring work for little money also made him interested in unions and he became active in the Labor Movement in Australia. When he arrived in New Zealand he continued to work with the unions, and became chairman of the Socialist Party as well as chairman of the Red Feds. He was a good speaker and, although short and somewhat shabby, with poor eyesight, he was absolutely charismatic. By 1933 he was Leader of the Opposition. The Depression starting in 1929 had seriously affected New Zealand (the birthrate dropped to below replacement, in Australia one third of young people never married) and Socialism's time had come.
'New Zealand, "one of the most fertile countries on earth", Savage argued, should be able to insulate its economy to the extent that production, employment, internal purchasing power and domestic living standards were only marginally influenced by external factors. Every man and woman who wanted to work had an inherent right to work and should be given the opportunity to work. Unemployment was not only a denial of that right but a waste of productive resources and a reduction in normal spending power through lost wages and potential consumers. To give charity to people who wanted to work was unsound and potentially humiliating.
"The purchasing power of our own people' Sav
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Excerpts from Tom Wolfe
Before I take the book 'Hooking Up' (Picador 2000) by Tom Wolfe back to the library there are some little gems I must record here so I don't lose or forget them:
______________________________________________________
'The term itself, "convergence" as used here in the digital age, was coined by a Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Another ardent Roman Catholic, Marshall McLuhan, broadcast the message throughout the intellectual world and gave the digital universe its first and most memorable name: "the global village". Thousands of dot-com dreamers are now busy amplifying the message without the faintest idea where it came from. p 68
______________________________________________________
'Since so many theories of convergence were magical assumptions about the human mind in the digital age, notions that had no neuroscientific foundation whatsoever, I wondered what was going on in neuroscience that might bear uponn the subject. This quickly led me to...Edward O Wilson.
Wilson's life is a good argument for his thesis which is that among humans, no less than among racehorses, inbred traits will trump upbringing and environment every time." p 77
______________________________________________________
"...Wilson compressed his theory into one sentence during an interview. Every human brain, he said, is born not as a blank slate waiting to be filled in by experience, but as an "exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." The negative might be developed well, or it might be developed poorly, but all you were going to get was what was on the negative at birth.
In one of the most remarkable displays of wounded Marxist chauvinism in American academic history...two of Wilson's well-known colleagues at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin, joined a group of radical activists called Science for the People to form what can only be called an 'Antiseptic Squad'.
pp 80-81
_______________________________________________________
As Freud once said "Many enemies, much honour".
p 81
_______________________________________________________
'Marx said social class determined a human being's destiny; Freud said it was the Oedipul drama within the family. Both were forces external to the newborn infant. Darwinists, Wilson foremost among them, turned that all upside down and proclaimed that the genes the infant was born with proclaimed its destiny.'
p82
_______________________________________________________
'The influence of genes was absolute. Free will among humans, no less than among ants, was an illusion. The "soul" and the "mind" were illusions too, and so was the very question of a "self."
p82
(Religions must have been arming themselves against this. Jude)
________________________________________________________
'"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.'
pp 118-119
______________________________________________________
'"Cultural genocide" was inspired, but in this entire opera bouffe of fascism racism and fascist-racist genocide, the truly high note was hit by one Susan Sonntag. In a 1967 article for Partisan Review entitled 'What's Happening to America', she wrote: "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicate autonomous populations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."
The white race is the cancer of human history? Who was this woman? Who and what? An anthropological epidemiologist? A renowned authority on the history of cultures throughout the world, a synthesiser of the magnitude of Max Weber, a Joachim Wach, a Sir James Frazer, an Arnold Toynbee?
Actually, she was just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style...Perhaps she was exceptionally hell-bent on illustrating McLuhan's line about indignation endowing the idiot with dignity...
p 120
_________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________
'The term itself, "convergence" as used here in the digital age, was coined by a Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Another ardent Roman Catholic, Marshall McLuhan, broadcast the message throughout the intellectual world and gave the digital universe its first and most memorable name: "the global village". Thousands of dot-com dreamers are now busy amplifying the message without the faintest idea where it came from. p 68
______________________________________________________
'Since so many theories of convergence were magical assumptions about the human mind in the digital age, notions that had no neuroscientific foundation whatsoever, I wondered what was going on in neuroscience that might bear uponn the subject. This quickly led me to...Edward O Wilson.
Wilson's life is a good argument for his thesis which is that among humans, no less than among racehorses, inbred traits will trump upbringing and environment every time." p 77
______________________________________________________
"...Wilson compressed his theory into one sentence during an interview. Every human brain, he said, is born not as a blank slate waiting to be filled in by experience, but as an "exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer fluid." The negative might be developed well, or it might be developed poorly, but all you were going to get was what was on the negative at birth.
In one of the most remarkable displays of wounded Marxist chauvinism in American academic history...two of Wilson's well-known colleagues at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin, joined a group of radical activists called Science for the People to form what can only be called an 'Antiseptic Squad'.
pp 80-81
_______________________________________________________
As Freud once said "Many enemies, much honour".
p 81
_______________________________________________________
'Marx said social class determined a human being's destiny; Freud said it was the Oedipul drama within the family. Both were forces external to the newborn infant. Darwinists, Wilson foremost among them, turned that all upside down and proclaimed that the genes the infant was born with proclaimed its destiny.'
p82
_______________________________________________________
'The influence of genes was absolute. Free will among humans, no less than among ants, was an illusion. The "soul" and the "mind" were illusions too, and so was the very question of a "self."
p82
(Religions must have been arming themselves against this. Jude)
________________________________________________________
'"Fascism" was, in fact, a Marxist coinage. Marxists borrowed the name of Mussolini's Italian party, the Fascisti, and applied it to Hitler's Nazis, adroitly papering over the fact that the Nazis, like Marxism's standard-bearers, the Soviet Communists, were revolutionary socialists. In fact, "Nazi" was (most annoyingly) shorthand for the National Socialist German Workers' Party.'
pp 118-119
______________________________________________________
'"Cultural genocide" was inspired, but in this entire opera bouffe of fascism racism and fascist-racist genocide, the truly high note was hit by one Susan Sonntag. In a 1967 article for Partisan Review entitled 'What's Happening to America', she wrote: "The white race is the cancer of human history; it is the white race and it alone - its ideologies and inventions - which eradicate autonomous populations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself."
The white race is the cancer of human history? Who was this woman? Who and what? An anthropological epidemiologist? A renowned authority on the history of cultures throughout the world, a synthesiser of the magnitude of Max Weber, a Joachim Wach, a Sir James Frazer, an Arnold Toynbee?
Actually, she was just another scribbler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings and lumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style...Perhaps she was exceptionally hell-bent on illustrating McLuhan's line about indignation endowing the idiot with dignity...
p 120
_________________________________________________________
New Zealand has no Constitution
I have copied this excerpt from Wikipedia so you can click on highlighted words. (Saves me a lot of time.) All it means is - New Zealand has no Constitution. The Government can create any Act it wants or rescind what it wants. The people of New Zealand have no protection against their own Government.
The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or entrenched. New Zealand's constitution is thus similar to that of the United Kingdom and Israel.
New Zealand has the Westminster system of Parliament and recognises the monarchy. It has a Governor-General who is the representative of the Queen but this now means nothing. It is a purely ceremonial position which costs the taxpayer a pretty penny.
I am glad we have the Rule of Law. No matter how many crooked wretches bend it, it still seems to spring back and often hits the crooks in the face. Hard. I am glad I was born in a country which inherited the Westminster system, rather than being born in a Muslim or African country. I am glad we have democracy. Even if it isn't the best system it is way ahead of anything else I can see in the world and I am glad I was born white, even if I am left handed and have red hair.
The constitution of New Zealand consists of a collection of statutes (Acts of Parliament), Treaties, Orders-in-Council, Letters patent, decisions of the Courts and unwritten constitutional conventions. There is no one supreme document — the New Zealand constitution is not codified or entrenched. New Zealand's constitution is thus similar to that of the United Kingdom and Israel.
New Zealand has the Westminster system of Parliament and recognises the monarchy. It has a Governor-General who is the representative of the Queen but this now means nothing. It is a purely ceremonial position which costs the taxpayer a pretty penny.
I am glad we have the Rule of Law. No matter how many crooked wretches bend it, it still seems to spring back and often hits the crooks in the face. Hard. I am glad I was born in a country which inherited the Westminster system, rather than being born in a Muslim or African country. I am glad we have democracy. Even if it isn't the best system it is way ahead of anything else I can see in the world and I am glad I was born white, even if I am left handed and have red hair.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Dodge Dart Pioneer V8 Powerflite 1960 model
Oh How I would Love one Now!
This is a little bit of Kiwiana - things that could only happen in New Zealand.
My first job was in a car sales which also ran quite a large garage and lube bay. There were probably thirty men working there, including about eight apprentices. Apart from other office tasks, I also did the car registrations which meant filling in a form in triplicate, taking it to the Post Office and getting the plates. I remember this particular car because I always had a helluva job fitting the title into the space provided.
The farmers were the only ones who could buy new cars. The were the only ones with overseas funds (export meat and dairy produce), and they loved the Dodge Dart - it had a huge boot to fit the newborn lambs in.
Of course other people could buy new cars if they had overseas funds - that basically meant a bank account in Britain - then the sterling was transferred into dollars, and there was always a mad scramble to buy foreign currency at outrageous prices as the New Zealand dollar was worth nothing, but most people couldn't afford a second hand car in the 1960s, much less buy a brand new yank tank. (Other people usually meant politicians and importers/exporters.)
Yup, the farmers would drive that monster over the paddocks during lambing. The V8 engine gave it plenty of power. Motherless lambs were packed into the back and brought home for hand feeding. No quad bikes in those days.
The farmers in New Zealand were a privileged lot, on welfare all the time. They weren't allowed to fail. Successive governments propped the agricultural system up, and it is still happening today.
Early Settlement In New Zealand
New Zealand was the last major landmass to be settled by humans. The Maori arrived about 1300AD, and the European settlement properly began in the 1840s when nearly 10,000 settlers arrived under company schemes from Britain.
Settlement was carried out efficiently, and Canterbury provides a case study in settler capitalism;...unlike Auckland, which began from Sydney, the southern settlement of Christchurch was to be a transplanted England. It was to have a college and a cathedral. Like other commercial cities in New Zealand, Christchurch had plenty of flat ground and a separate port. The scheme succeeded because of its colonists, geography, timing and planning.
Things were shifting around quite a bit in the early days (from 1840 to 1900) due to constant settler arrivals, Maori irritation at land grabs, an imbalance of male to females (which always seem to bring its own problems) and the discovery of gold. The colony was a minimally organised society between 1850 and 1880, primarily because of the lightning expansion of the frontier. Gold seekers came from California to Victoria in Australia and then to New Zealand, brought boom times, towns and gold fever. I will digress here to tell a little story:
A friend of mine married a large, very blond man named Owen and gave birth to four daughters, also very blonde. Owen has been dead for twenty years or more now, but my friend often used to tell me how his great-grandmother was the half-caste daughter of an American Indian. Investigation proved this to be true. The Indian was a huge specimen of a man who had arrived during the gold rush, stayed, married, and had three huge sons plus a daughter.
Gold brings unusual playmates to a country.
Another planned wave of migrants during 1860-1890 brought 100,000 people. The second half of the nineteenth century had a natural increase (births minus deaths) generated most of the population increase. Families were large, ten and twelve children were not unusual, and families stayed large until the depression.
New Zealand was most dependent on Britain. Seventy five per cent of its exports went to Britain and it bought at least 50 percent of its imports from Britain. New Zealand was the Empire's dairy farm. During the two World Wars exports to the UK kept New Zealand rich. But trouble was appearing in the balance of payments as early as 1925 culminating in 1939 and disappearing with the advent of WWII when Britain needed food from her little dairy farm again..
Women bore the brunt of hardship, as always, the most telling indicator coming from 109 married women who died from septic abortions between 1931 and 1935. If somebody went without, it was the woman. They were useless if they couldn't work like men as well as doing the cooking and cleaning when they were pregnant, which was pretty well constantly.
Abortion was illegal in New Zealand until well into the 1970s. A wealthy woman had no trouble. She could fly to Australia where safe, legal abortion was available. The contraceptive pill was available in 1962, but only given to married women who had one child. I estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of at least 200/300 babies per year were adopted or brought up in foster homes or orphanages during the period 1950/1960. Women were wise to avoid Catholic doctors for delivering babies as doctrine was (and I think still is) the baby's life came first if a choice had to be made between saving either.
There was a baby boom from 1945-1962 (as was to be expected) but assisted migration resumed in 1947 with Dutch and British making up the majority of the new arrivals. New Zealand's intake during this period was another 88,000 people. There were a few Greeks, Italians, Chinese, and Indians, but they lived mainly in Auckland and Wellington. New Zealand in 1970 was still very much a European country.
Britain's turning away from the Commonwealth towards Europe brought Australia and New Zealand closer together. Australians and New Zealanders are pretty much the same British stock, although huge numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia. Australia is a much richer, but much crueller country than New Zealand. It has snakes, huge spiders, huge mosquitoes, crocodiles, and a hot, dry climate. I was told when I was over there to just stamp my feet when walking and the snakes get away from the sound pretty quickly. Sound? Well, they are deaf but extremely sensitive to vibration. They don't want any trouble so they slide away. If you want to catch one, you tiptoe up behind it because the peripheral vision is not too good. You have to grab it behind the head. I was not the slightest bit interested in that sort of exercise, needless to say. When it rains in the 0utback Aussies stand on the verandahs and watch it. They can't get enough of it. Water!
New Zealand, on the other hand, is green and wet and cool with no snakes and only one poisonous spider which is hardly ever seen.
When Australia divided itself into states, it made provision for New Zealand to become a state of Australia because it was obvious even in the 19th century that New Zealand, sitting right out on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with no natural resources, would ultimately need a hand. New Zealand politicians, looking after their own skins, turned down the invitation to join, but I have recently heard it mooted again, twice in this year. So many Kiwis live in Australia already, and so many leave each year to live there and never to return here (about 34,000) and they are replaced with Somalis, Afghanis, Zimbabweans and such like, that the country is hardly likely to pick itself up and get into any sort of international running ever again. It has become a dumping ground for the United Nations leftoevers, courtesy of Helen Clark, PM, who signed up to anything Kofe Annan put forward in the hope that she would be offered a cushy seat in the UN. Didn't happen. Country is stuffed.
The funny thing is, the brown and black imports don't want to stay here either. As soon as they get the Kiwi passport, they're off elsewhere. They don't like the trapped feeling of living in such an isolated country. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere recently the net population gain for one year is about 6,000. That is after bringing in 50,000 p.a.
New Zealand's Nuclear Free Policy and the Decline of ANZUS:
June 1984 - Nuclear free New Zealand Bill introduced and passed in Parliament.
1985 - New Zealand refused a request from the United States for a visit from the old USS Buchanan on the grounds that it could carry nuclear weapons.
The US stuck rigidly to its principle of neither confirming nor denying whether its vessels were nuclear powered or armed and NZ stated that US ships were welcome provided they were not nuclear powered or armed.
And that is where it still stands.
I don't care one way or another about nuclear power. I think we will have to have nuclear power stations eventually but whether there will be anyone smart enough left in the country to run one properly is debateable.
Half of Maori marriages have been with a European since 1960. It is common to see blond haired and blue eyed children claiming Maori heritage. This is just the way it goes. If there is money somewhere in it, they go that way. When the money dries up and it is more profitable to claim European heritage, they will go the other way.
I think the new arrivals from Somalia and Afghanistan and elsewhere are frightened of the Maoris. Black people like to play the race card but the Maoris aren't having any of that. New Zealand is their country, always was, always will be, and anyone tries to mess with that comes right up against a big, tattooed, fist. When the imports complain, they are told to behave themselves. Very amusing.
That is a very rough outline of the economic and social history of New Zealand. What happened up until 1970 is gone, finished, kaput. From 1970 onwards (we will call these the 'modern times') New Zealand has been a social laboratory.
Domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse was endemic in New Zealand. It was the hidden (and sometimes not so hidden - I have seen and experienced some dreadful things) disease of this country. Under the guise of Christianity - priests and pastors and ministers advocated the continuance of the 'Christian' way and turned their heads away from the problems they knew existed. The rates of illegitimate births were off the scale - often to under-age girls from incest, and rape, or blackmail or threats to force consent to sex were common.
Who brought these things into the open?
The Women's Movement.
Have things improved?
Yes, yes, yes!
Is the place now perfect?
Far from it, but it is better.
Will it improve further?
Quien sabe muchacha?
Settlement was carried out efficiently, and Canterbury provides a case study in settler capitalism;...unlike Auckland, which began from Sydney, the southern settlement of Christchurch was to be a transplanted England. It was to have a college and a cathedral. Like other commercial cities in New Zealand, Christchurch had plenty of flat ground and a separate port. The scheme succeeded because of its colonists, geography, timing and planning.
Things were shifting around quite a bit in the early days (from 1840 to 1900) due to constant settler arrivals, Maori irritation at land grabs, an imbalance of male to females (which always seem to bring its own problems) and the discovery of gold. The colony was a minimally organised society between 1850 and 1880, primarily because of the lightning expansion of the frontier. Gold seekers came from California to Victoria in Australia and then to New Zealand, brought boom times, towns and gold fever. I will digress here to tell a little story:
A friend of mine married a large, very blond man named Owen and gave birth to four daughters, also very blonde. Owen has been dead for twenty years or more now, but my friend often used to tell me how his great-grandmother was the half-caste daughter of an American Indian. Investigation proved this to be true. The Indian was a huge specimen of a man who had arrived during the gold rush, stayed, married, and had three huge sons plus a daughter.
Gold brings unusual playmates to a country.
Another planned wave of migrants during 1860-1890 brought 100,000 people. The second half of the nineteenth century had a natural increase (births minus deaths) generated most of the population increase. Families were large, ten and twelve children were not unusual, and families stayed large until the depression.
New Zealand was most dependent on Britain. Seventy five per cent of its exports went to Britain and it bought at least 50 percent of its imports from Britain. New Zealand was the Empire's dairy farm. During the two World Wars exports to the UK kept New Zealand rich. But trouble was appearing in the balance of payments as early as 1925 culminating in 1939 and disappearing with the advent of WWII when Britain needed food from her little dairy farm again..
Women bore the brunt of hardship, as always, the most telling indicator coming from 109 married women who died from septic abortions between 1931 and 1935. If somebody went without, it was the woman. They were useless if they couldn't work like men as well as doing the cooking and cleaning when they were pregnant, which was pretty well constantly.
Abortion was illegal in New Zealand until well into the 1970s. A wealthy woman had no trouble. She could fly to Australia where safe, legal abortion was available. The contraceptive pill was available in 1962, but only given to married women who had one child. I estimate that somewhere in the vicinity of at least 200/300 babies per year were adopted or brought up in foster homes or orphanages during the period 1950/1960. Women were wise to avoid Catholic doctors for delivering babies as doctrine was (and I think still is) the baby's life came first if a choice had to be made between saving either.
There was a baby boom from 1945-1962 (as was to be expected) but assisted migration resumed in 1947 with Dutch and British making up the majority of the new arrivals. New Zealand's intake during this period was another 88,000 people. There were a few Greeks, Italians, Chinese, and Indians, but they lived mainly in Auckland and Wellington. New Zealand in 1970 was still very much a European country.
Britain's turning away from the Commonwealth towards Europe brought Australia and New Zealand closer together. Australians and New Zealanders are pretty much the same British stock, although huge numbers of Germans emigrated to Australia. Australia is a much richer, but much crueller country than New Zealand. It has snakes, huge spiders, huge mosquitoes, crocodiles, and a hot, dry climate. I was told when I was over there to just stamp my feet when walking and the snakes get away from the sound pretty quickly. Sound? Well, they are deaf but extremely sensitive to vibration. They don't want any trouble so they slide away. If you want to catch one, you tiptoe up behind it because the peripheral vision is not too good. You have to grab it behind the head. I was not the slightest bit interested in that sort of exercise, needless to say. When it rains in the 0utback Aussies stand on the verandahs and watch it. They can't get enough of it. Water!
New Zealand, on the other hand, is green and wet and cool with no snakes and only one poisonous spider which is hardly ever seen.
When Australia divided itself into states, it made provision for New Zealand to become a state of Australia because it was obvious even in the 19th century that New Zealand, sitting right out on the edge of the Southern Ocean, with no natural resources, would ultimately need a hand. New Zealand politicians, looking after their own skins, turned down the invitation to join, but I have recently heard it mooted again, twice in this year. So many Kiwis live in Australia already, and so many leave each year to live there and never to return here (about 34,000) and they are replaced with Somalis, Afghanis, Zimbabweans and such like, that the country is hardly likely to pick itself up and get into any sort of international running ever again. It has become a dumping ground for the United Nations leftoevers, courtesy of Helen Clark, PM, who signed up to anything Kofe Annan put forward in the hope that she would be offered a cushy seat in the UN. Didn't happen. Country is stuffed.
The funny thing is, the brown and black imports don't want to stay here either. As soon as they get the Kiwi passport, they're off elsewhere. They don't like the trapped feeling of living in such an isolated country. I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere recently the net population gain for one year is about 6,000. That is after bringing in 50,000 p.a.
New Zealand's Nuclear Free Policy and the Decline of ANZUS:
June 1984 - Nuclear free New Zealand Bill introduced and passed in Parliament.
1985 - New Zealand refused a request from the United States for a visit from the old USS Buchanan on the grounds that it could carry nuclear weapons.
The US stuck rigidly to its principle of neither confirming nor denying whether its vessels were nuclear powered or armed and NZ stated that US ships were welcome provided they were not nuclear powered or armed.
And that is where it still stands.
I don't care one way or another about nuclear power. I think we will have to have nuclear power stations eventually but whether there will be anyone smart enough left in the country to run one properly is debateable.
Half of Maori marriages have been with a European since 1960. It is common to see blond haired and blue eyed children claiming Maori heritage. This is just the way it goes. If there is money somewhere in it, they go that way. When the money dries up and it is more profitable to claim European heritage, they will go the other way.
I think the new arrivals from Somalia and Afghanistan and elsewhere are frightened of the Maoris. Black people like to play the race card but the Maoris aren't having any of that. New Zealand is their country, always was, always will be, and anyone tries to mess with that comes right up against a big, tattooed, fist. When the imports complain, they are told to behave themselves. Very amusing.
That is a very rough outline of the economic and social history of New Zealand. What happened up until 1970 is gone, finished, kaput. From 1970 onwards (we will call these the 'modern times') New Zealand has been a social laboratory.
Domestic violence, alcoholism and child abuse was endemic in New Zealand. It was the hidden (and sometimes not so hidden - I have seen and experienced some dreadful things) disease of this country. Under the guise of Christianity - priests and pastors and ministers advocated the continuance of the 'Christian' way and turned their heads away from the problems they knew existed. The rates of illegitimate births were off the scale - often to under-age girls from incest, and rape, or blackmail or threats to force consent to sex were common.
Who brought these things into the open?
The Women's Movement.
Have things improved?
Yes, yes, yes!
Is the place now perfect?
Far from it, but it is better.
Will it improve further?
Quien sabe muchacha?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Isn't She Lovely?
The DUNEDIN (1876-1882) was the first ship to successfully transport a cargo of frozen meat from New Zealand to the UK. She departed February 1882 and arrived in London 98 days later.She was a full sailing ship originally made for carrying 400 passengers.
Frozen meat and dairy exports from New Zealand to Britain from then on formed the backbone of New Zealand's economy until Britain entered the EEC (European Economic Community) in 1974. New Zealand's produce was then excluded.
Farmers were being urged to diversify from sheep and dairy for several years prior to the British move but it is not easy to change well established farming practices. The farming families knew nothing other than sheep and cows. Plus there was the cost. It isn't easy to convert 400 acres into a vineyard. But most of all there is the weather. Practically all of New Zealand's arable land is coastal with the concomitant changeable and cold weather. Fruit and vegetables grow prolifically only inland. There is also a small but thriving wine industry in the areas protected from the salty winds. Very little other than sheep and cows will grow south of Christchurch. It is just too cold!
One thing New Zealand does have is a multi-million dollar fishing industry. Include salmon and mussel and oyster farms in that. Nevertheless, most of the fish go off-shore, and New Zealanders pay export prices for seafood. We have no home market.
Those who think investment of humans and capital in technology would be the path for New Zealand to follow need to live here for a year or two. About two percent of the population is capable of innovation, with another ten percent capable of working with it.
After 1970 many dairy farmers went out of dairying and into sheep, counting on the wool clip, but here we are nearly forty years later with huge dairy herds everywhere again. Some herds are 800-900 cows. (One milking is just finished and it is time to start another.) Milk in New Zealand is more expensive than petrol.
However, all things seem to even out over time and we now have Exxon and a couple of other international oil companies preparing to explore the Great South Basin where it is thought there could be the largest offshore oil field in the world. The poverty stricken south of the South Island may yet give this little country riches. This will be an exciting experience for the oil men working in the new oil fields if stories of experienced fishermen are true. They say they sail home in front of huge following seas - they fill themselves full of beer and marijuana, and are still too frightened to look behind them. They are never sure if the next giant wave will swamp them. Every family in the fishing community of Bluff has lost a family member by drowning.
The one single thing which prevents New Zealand from being anything other than what it is, is the geographical distance from other countries. We are so isolated, and this shows particularly in economics and culture. As a people we have grown in on ourselves, without fresh ideas or new blood. I remember my seafaring husband saying to me many years ago when I thought of going teaching at Pitcairn Island. "Don't do it!" he said, aghast. "The shipping company has given us orders not to sail within a certain distance of the island. If we do, the people there launch all sorts of little boats and row out to make contact. They are desperate to speak with anybody new. They go crazy with loneliness."
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The Early Settlers
New Zealand has had European settlement only for the past 150 years. There were Europeans here before that but they were transients - sealers and whalers predominantly. The Maori race has been in New Zealand probably as early as the 10th or as late as the 13th century. It is thought they came from South East Asia because the Maori language has similarities with Japanese. They never moved out of the stone age. Life for them in pre-European times was nasty, brutal and short. They practised cannibalism, probably to enhance a diet which was based on fish, birds, and the kumara (a type of sweet potato). Inter-tribal warfare was constant. A man was old at 50 if he managed to escape being clubbed to death by marauding tribes. Although some Maoris look back on pre-European times as some sort of idyllic existence, it wasn't. Far from it. I studied pre-European Maori history at University and they lived on the brink of extinction all the time - usually from each other. They were all the same people, but they had divided themselves into tribes and fought each other. There had been another race in new Zealand before the Maoris arrived. They were called Morioris but the Maoris ate most of them.
When the Europeans began arriving they found a land which looked not unlike Britain, from whence most of them came, and thinly populated with stone age people. I myself had a grandfather from Cavan, in Ireland, a grandfather from Berwick in Scotland, a great-grandmother from England, and another great-grandmother from Scotland - I don't know where. So I am sort of a third generation New Zealander. The settlers came by sailing ship and although there were many ships wrecked with tragic loss of life all around New Zealand's coastline, these wrecks were the exception. Hundreds of sailing ships arrived and departed New Zealand's shores each year, year after year. Many of the ships made regular voyages for years, bringing their quotas of British families to settle in this faraway land. When the settlers disembarked at their port of arrival, they then set out for their final destination, often by bullock train. New Zealand still has the little settlements on each main road, each one separated by the distance it took a bullock train to travel in one day.
My Scottish grandfather arrived in port of Dunedin with his widowed mother and his brother. Both young men (20 and 22) had been given grants of land to take up. William (my paternal grandfather) went to Winton. I know very little about how he set about building a house, buying stock, farm implements, and how he lived generally in the early days. He died when I was only three years of age so I never got to ask him. I do know that he married the daughter of a neighbour and she died after delivering six children, (I suspect from a miscarriage that turned to a haemorrhage) so he went back to the same neighbour and got another of his daughters (my grandmother) who had another six children to him. The odd thing is that the first family was two girls and four boys and so was the second family. My maternal grandparents had eleven children. All grandparents children married and had children and at one count I had 42 aunts and uncles and heaven knows how many cousins.
All my grandparents worked hard. They were working class and expected to do nothing else. But now the odd details creep in. All grandparents and my parents were staunchly Labour (left-wing) voters but ferociously in favour of private property. All had left Britain to get away from a system where they could never advance financially or own property, but all were staunch monarchists. Standing for the National Anthem (God Save the Queen), saluting the flag, and fighting for King and Country was a given, even though they lived 13,000 miles away from the home country for which they were prepared to lay down their lives. Up until 1970, when Britain dumped New Zealand in favour of the Common Market, all New Zealanders were the same. They loved a country they had left and would never return to, or a country they would never see or live in. When I was a child and went to the pictures (as we call the movies here) God Save the King (later God Save the Queen) was played before the pictures started and EVERYONE stood. When I started school the Union Jack was raised on the flagpole each morning. New Zealand was a little England. The early settlers left their homeland and crossed the sea and brought their homeland with them - every last little bit of it - except the class system. That, they left behind and that, they refused to see erected again in their new country. Egalitarianism was the new cry - everybody equal! There were to be no Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Duchesses owning vast tracts of land and being landlords to the peasants. There was to be no forelock pulling, no bowing before inbred and chinless aristrocrats, no workhouse, no enclosures, and there was to be enfranchisement (of the men at first) which meant all had a say in the building of the new country.
There was to be free education, free public libraries, and free health care. Those things which were not to be had back home these free men and women were going to build for themselves. And they did. There was to be a minimum quarter acre section for each home so the men could keep a garden to grow fresh vegetables for their rosy cheeked children. And they did. There were to be playgrounds for the children, ante-natal care for mothers-to-be, and a full fourteen days in hospital when the first child was delivered. Infant mortality was the lowest in the world. Life was good. People who mattered came to visit New Zealand from all around the world, to view for themselves this little land where everyone had everything. Up until 1969 New Zealand had world class roads, safe bridges, cheap electricity, practically no crime rate worth mentioning, very little disease (the TB hospitals had not been used for years), a reasonably good education system, an excellent health system and full employment. The Government employed one in every five people and the jobs were until 65, then retirement on a Government pension. Santa came every year, the church bells rang on Sunday, and it seemed the good life would go on forever. Then Britain joined the Common Market, the EU as it is now known, and little New Zealand had to begin searching for new markets for her sheepmeat, wool and dairy products. And the new markets were tough.
When the Europeans began arriving they found a land which looked not unlike Britain, from whence most of them came, and thinly populated with stone age people. I myself had a grandfather from Cavan, in Ireland, a grandfather from Berwick in Scotland, a great-grandmother from England, and another great-grandmother from Scotland - I don't know where. So I am sort of a third generation New Zealander. The settlers came by sailing ship and although there were many ships wrecked with tragic loss of life all around New Zealand's coastline, these wrecks were the exception. Hundreds of sailing ships arrived and departed New Zealand's shores each year, year after year. Many of the ships made regular voyages for years, bringing their quotas of British families to settle in this faraway land. When the settlers disembarked at their port of arrival, they then set out for their final destination, often by bullock train. New Zealand still has the little settlements on each main road, each one separated by the distance it took a bullock train to travel in one day.
My Scottish grandfather arrived in port of Dunedin with his widowed mother and his brother. Both young men (20 and 22) had been given grants of land to take up. William (my paternal grandfather) went to Winton. I know very little about how he set about building a house, buying stock, farm implements, and how he lived generally in the early days. He died when I was only three years of age so I never got to ask him. I do know that he married the daughter of a neighbour and she died after delivering six children, (I suspect from a miscarriage that turned to a haemorrhage) so he went back to the same neighbour and got another of his daughters (my grandmother) who had another six children to him. The odd thing is that the first family was two girls and four boys and so was the second family. My maternal grandparents had eleven children. All grandparents children married and had children and at one count I had 42 aunts and uncles and heaven knows how many cousins.
All my grandparents worked hard. They were working class and expected to do nothing else. But now the odd details creep in. All grandparents and my parents were staunchly Labour (left-wing) voters but ferociously in favour of private property. All had left Britain to get away from a system where they could never advance financially or own property, but all were staunch monarchists. Standing for the National Anthem (God Save the Queen), saluting the flag, and fighting for King and Country was a given, even though they lived 13,000 miles away from the home country for which they were prepared to lay down their lives. Up until 1970, when Britain dumped New Zealand in favour of the Common Market, all New Zealanders were the same. They loved a country they had left and would never return to, or a country they would never see or live in. When I was a child and went to the pictures (as we call the movies here) God Save the King (later God Save the Queen) was played before the pictures started and EVERYONE stood. When I started school the Union Jack was raised on the flagpole each morning. New Zealand was a little England. The early settlers left their homeland and crossed the sea and brought their homeland with them - every last little bit of it - except the class system. That, they left behind and that, they refused to see erected again in their new country. Egalitarianism was the new cry - everybody equal! There were to be no Lords and Ladies and Dukes and Duchesses owning vast tracts of land and being landlords to the peasants. There was to be no forelock pulling, no bowing before inbred and chinless aristrocrats, no workhouse, no enclosures, and there was to be enfranchisement (of the men at first) which meant all had a say in the building of the new country.
There was to be free education, free public libraries, and free health care. Those things which were not to be had back home these free men and women were going to build for themselves. And they did. There was to be a minimum quarter acre section for each home so the men could keep a garden to grow fresh vegetables for their rosy cheeked children. And they did. There were to be playgrounds for the children, ante-natal care for mothers-to-be, and a full fourteen days in hospital when the first child was delivered. Infant mortality was the lowest in the world. Life was good. People who mattered came to visit New Zealand from all around the world, to view for themselves this little land where everyone had everything. Up until 1969 New Zealand had world class roads, safe bridges, cheap electricity, practically no crime rate worth mentioning, very little disease (the TB hospitals had not been used for years), a reasonably good education system, an excellent health system and full employment. The Government employed one in every five people and the jobs were until 65, then retirement on a Government pension. Santa came every year, the church bells rang on Sunday, and it seemed the good life would go on forever. Then Britain joined the Common Market, the EU as it is now known, and little New Zealand had to begin searching for new markets for her sheepmeat, wool and dairy products. And the new markets were tough.
Monday, July 09, 2007
An Investigation of Political Ideologies
I have tried to be, for most of my adult life, responsible and well balanced, and I have taken seriously my privilege of living in a democratic society. I vote whenever a vote is called for and to the best of my ability, I vote for what I see as the public good. I have never been called upon to serve as a juror but I can assure you that if I was, I would be the most conscientious juror on the bench. I am an assiduous record keeper. My personal accounts are impeccable and I never get into debt. I do not practise civil disobedience. If the sign says not to walk on the grass, I walk on the footpath. I put my groceries into an environmentally safe re-usable bag. I have never sullied my mind by watching pornography or wanton violence. I am polite and quiet and well behaved. I have never taken drugs. I have never been in jail, or a court of law for that matter either. I have been a good girl.
I was not well-educated at school but I went to university when I was older and got a Bachelor's degree in English. I then went to Teacher Training College and got a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. I have always been a great reader (one is never alone when one has a good book) and I married and have a batch of daughters.
However, as the Greeks said an unexamined life was not worth living, I have decided at this late stage to do some examining, to see whether my exemplary record of obedience and yea-saying is going to reward me with a crown of virtue - or even a pat on the back - from those authorities who have made all the rules for me to follow.
To do this examining has meant quite a lot of peripheral reading because when I dipped into the meanings of words like 'democracy' and 'public good' and 'civil disobedience' - not to mention the host of other words which appeared to be connected to these terms - I found that I had actually fallen into an area called 'Philosophy' and I wasn't sure at all if I should be there. Not only was it called philosophy, but there were sub-terms called 'ethics' and 'morals' and 'logic' and I thought 'Oh boy! Why weren't we taught things like this at school, when my brain was young and fresh and absorbent?'
At school we spent ages studying the feudal agricultural system in medieval England and nothing, it now seems, about the world we actually lived in. In my defense, I thought I knew what was going on for most of my life, but now it appears I missed practically everything. I wasn't even a cog in the machine. I think I was a very insignificant spare part stored away somewhere just in case. Of course I can blame quite a lot of my ignorance on the fact that it is common here in New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Shroud. Nobody really knows anything.
Let me re-phrase that. They used to know nothing, and then the internet came along!
There are certain salient facts you need to know about New Zealand before I can really get down to the task of sorting out political ideologies in my mind.
1. New Zealand is not a Pacific island with hula dancing women and an idyllic lifestyle. It is three islands in the edge of the Southern Ocean, which is COLD.
2. New Zealand is the windiest place in the world and Wellington is the windiest place in New Zealand. When I say wind, I mean at best a cold, uncomfortable, stiff breeze and at worst gale force winds when you just stay at home.
3. New Zealand has 4 million people but until 1990 it had 3 million people, two thirds of which lived in the top half of the North Island. Of the 1 million people who lived in the South Island, one third of these lived in Christchurch. Things haven't changed much since 1990. One can travel for miles here on marvellous country roads without seeing another car.
4. New Zealand is a primary producer - beef, dairy products, (for some reason milk here is dearer than petrol) sheepmeat and fruit. It is in competition with all other countries who produce such goods but is much further away. Nobody really wants New Zealand goods. There is also something about transport costs here which I must look into.
5. It is said that we have a Labour (cf Socialist) government here in New Zealand. I can remember many successive National (cf Republican or Conservative) governments which were absolutely no different to what we have now. Even now, National agrees with Labour on most issues and votes along with them.
6. New Zealand's favourite building materials are corrugated iron and number 8 wire. I kid you not.
7. Last but not least, (as I must finish this post and get on to the next one which begins to specifically detail the rise and why of political ideologies in New Zealand) a little story dating back to 1967.
I was staying in Wellington with Andrew and Marie Rogers. Andrew was 40, an ex merchant seaman with one eye (lost the other in a fight) who had been around the block more than once. He grew up in the Gorbals in Glasgow, at the time one of the roughest places in Scotland. Food was short, jobs were scarce, living conditions were harsh, and education was a luxury. Andrew liked New Zealand and decided to stay here, married Marie, and had been working for two or three years as a chef. One day Andrew said to me "You know Jude, there is something wrong with this country. I don't know what it is. People have everything - telephones, washing machines, schools with sports fields, playgrounds for children, good health care, everything is free - but there is something terribly wrong here and I can't work out what it is. The Gorbals was a terrible place to live but I would almost rather be back there than here. People in the Gorbals seemed to be happier and better people."
I had not been out of New Zealand at that time but when I did begin to travel I saw what Andrew meant. The odd thing is, things are even worse now than they were in 1967. This fact requires investigation as well.
Please bear with me anyone who reads this blog. I am trying to work things out for myself and I may make statements which, as I progress, I have to refute or re-phrase. I intend analysing different political ideologies ONLY in connection with New Zealand, as then I can give a first-hand (albeit personal) opinion. Let's see then, how it goes aye?
I was not well-educated at school but I went to university when I was older and got a Bachelor's degree in English. I then went to Teacher Training College and got a Diploma in Secondary Teaching. I have always been a great reader (one is never alone when one has a good book) and I married and have a batch of daughters.
However, as the Greeks said an unexamined life was not worth living, I have decided at this late stage to do some examining, to see whether my exemplary record of obedience and yea-saying is going to reward me with a crown of virtue - or even a pat on the back - from those authorities who have made all the rules for me to follow.
To do this examining has meant quite a lot of peripheral reading because when I dipped into the meanings of words like 'democracy' and 'public good' and 'civil disobedience' - not to mention the host of other words which appeared to be connected to these terms - I found that I had actually fallen into an area called 'Philosophy' and I wasn't sure at all if I should be there. Not only was it called philosophy, but there were sub-terms called 'ethics' and 'morals' and 'logic' and I thought 'Oh boy! Why weren't we taught things like this at school, when my brain was young and fresh and absorbent?'
At school we spent ages studying the feudal agricultural system in medieval England and nothing, it now seems, about the world we actually lived in. In my defense, I thought I knew what was going on for most of my life, but now it appears I missed practically everything. I wasn't even a cog in the machine. I think I was a very insignificant spare part stored away somewhere just in case. Of course I can blame quite a lot of my ignorance on the fact that it is common here in New Zealand, the Land of the Long White Shroud. Nobody really knows anything.
Let me re-phrase that. They used to know nothing, and then the internet came along!
There are certain salient facts you need to know about New Zealand before I can really get down to the task of sorting out political ideologies in my mind.
1. New Zealand is not a Pacific island with hula dancing women and an idyllic lifestyle. It is three islands in the edge of the Southern Ocean, which is COLD.
2. New Zealand is the windiest place in the world and Wellington is the windiest place in New Zealand. When I say wind, I mean at best a cold, uncomfortable, stiff breeze and at worst gale force winds when you just stay at home.
3. New Zealand has 4 million people but until 1990 it had 3 million people, two thirds of which lived in the top half of the North Island. Of the 1 million people who lived in the South Island, one third of these lived in Christchurch. Things haven't changed much since 1990. One can travel for miles here on marvellous country roads without seeing another car.
4. New Zealand is a primary producer - beef, dairy products, (for some reason milk here is dearer than petrol) sheepmeat and fruit. It is in competition with all other countries who produce such goods but is much further away. Nobody really wants New Zealand goods. There is also something about transport costs here which I must look into.
5. It is said that we have a Labour (cf Socialist) government here in New Zealand. I can remember many successive National (cf Republican or Conservative) governments which were absolutely no different to what we have now. Even now, National agrees with Labour on most issues and votes along with them.
6. New Zealand's favourite building materials are corrugated iron and number 8 wire. I kid you not.
7. Last but not least, (as I must finish this post and get on to the next one which begins to specifically detail the rise and why of political ideologies in New Zealand) a little story dating back to 1967.
I was staying in Wellington with Andrew and Marie Rogers. Andrew was 40, an ex merchant seaman with one eye (lost the other in a fight) who had been around the block more than once. He grew up in the Gorbals in Glasgow, at the time one of the roughest places in Scotland. Food was short, jobs were scarce, living conditions were harsh, and education was a luxury. Andrew liked New Zealand and decided to stay here, married Marie, and had been working for two or three years as a chef. One day Andrew said to me "You know Jude, there is something wrong with this country. I don't know what it is. People have everything - telephones, washing machines, schools with sports fields, playgrounds for children, good health care, everything is free - but there is something terribly wrong here and I can't work out what it is. The Gorbals was a terrible place to live but I would almost rather be back there than here. People in the Gorbals seemed to be happier and better people."
I had not been out of New Zealand at that time but when I did begin to travel I saw what Andrew meant. The odd thing is, things are even worse now than they were in 1967. This fact requires investigation as well.
Please bear with me anyone who reads this blog. I am trying to work things out for myself and I may make statements which, as I progress, I have to refute or re-phrase. I intend analysing different political ideologies ONLY in connection with New Zealand, as then I can give a first-hand (albeit personal) opinion. Let's see then, how it goes aye?
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Totalitarianism
Now why, I asked myself, would anyone in their right mind want to inflict totalitarianism (via any ideological or religious system) onto humanity? It has been proven by the USSR, China and Korea, to deaden human creativity and intellect. Although I must admit, all Russians I have met - who were brought up under Socialism - were well versed in opera, ballet, classic literature, history - albeit a bit slanted but then isn't ours? - and politics. Not so now that they havc a steady diet of Western rubbish, but there is a reason for that and it has to do with what I see as treasonous actions by Russian traitors. Russians don't miss standing in line to buy brown synthetic suits, but they do miss the cheap power which gave them warmth in their flats - if they were lucky enough to get one. Sometimes I think the Russian State would have had a perfectly happy population if they had just arranged massive imports of the latest blue denim jeans from USA for their young people.
Look at all the left-wing proponents throughout the world. In history even. All they want, it seems, is to reduce all people to the same level - economically, intellectually, and even (as I have noticed lately) racially. They don't really want diversity or multiculturalism, although these are cried on their banners. They want everyone to be brown, poor, and stupid. Then, it appears, we will all be happy. Because we are the same people in a global village there will be no more wars, no more competition. Eveyone will be happy, well fed, and have a job. There will no longer be rich and poor, (we will all be poor) sick and healthy, (baffled about how they will fix that - make a law against being sick?) weak and strong, (we will all be weak) clever and stupid (we will all be stupid), and marching in formation to enriching and fulfilling work each day. Heaven knows what sort of work we will be marching to! Possibly, as George Orwell predicted, the more literary of us will be re-writing history. (Vale, Cordus!)
What about religion? Christianity won't be much of a problem, (bend your neck to the yoke, render unto Caesar etc) but Jews and Muslims - now there's a problem. One lot wants time off to pray five times a day with obligatory washing, half of them can't work because of the clothes they wear, another lot won't work on Friday, all the holy days they are half stunned with hunger from fasting, some won't work with others...I suppose the Christians will have to pull double their weight but hang on, will there even be religion? Will the State permit it?
Have the left-wing proponents of the uni-race global village thought this whole plan through properly?
Do they really think millions of people are going to give up their languages, customs, identities and religions to become some sort of mono-man?
Valerie Morse (who burnt the New Zealand flag on ANZAC day - if my father had been there he would have re-arranged her teeth for her) has been sucking at the public tit for a long time. The woman is a professional agitator who spends her spare time doing university degrees at the taxpayers' expense. She applies for, and gets grants. I suspect a lot of agitators do the same. They seem to have an enormous amount of spare time on their hands to travel, print off their little agitprop leaflets and tracts, socialise with other agitators, and just generally agitate. It's a living I guess.
I suspect the proponents of a future socialist heaven think their natural talents for leadership and ideological guidance for the masses will propel them into leadership positions so they will never have to be bound by their own totalitarian philosophies. Poor silly creatures. Those who don't know about history are bound to repeat it. They are hoist by their own petards.
So my conclusion about all this left-wing nonsense of freedom for all is that they will (if we don't do something about it) have us end up in chains. If people like Valerie Morse and her kind think they will somehow be exempt, I can assure them (and probably will as we pass each other on the way to the cornfield with our sickles) they will not.
Look at all the left-wing proponents throughout the world. In history even. All they want, it seems, is to reduce all people to the same level - economically, intellectually, and even (as I have noticed lately) racially. They don't really want diversity or multiculturalism, although these are cried on their banners. They want everyone to be brown, poor, and stupid. Then, it appears, we will all be happy. Because we are the same people in a global village there will be no more wars, no more competition. Eveyone will be happy, well fed, and have a job. There will no longer be rich and poor, (we will all be poor) sick and healthy, (baffled about how they will fix that - make a law against being sick?) weak and strong, (we will all be weak) clever and stupid (we will all be stupid), and marching in formation to enriching and fulfilling work each day. Heaven knows what sort of work we will be marching to! Possibly, as George Orwell predicted, the more literary of us will be re-writing history. (Vale, Cordus!)
What about religion? Christianity won't be much of a problem, (bend your neck to the yoke, render unto Caesar etc) but Jews and Muslims - now there's a problem. One lot wants time off to pray five times a day with obligatory washing, half of them can't work because of the clothes they wear, another lot won't work on Friday, all the holy days they are half stunned with hunger from fasting, some won't work with others...I suppose the Christians will have to pull double their weight but hang on, will there even be religion? Will the State permit it?
Have the left-wing proponents of the uni-race global village thought this whole plan through properly?
Do they really think millions of people are going to give up their languages, customs, identities and religions to become some sort of mono-man?
Valerie Morse (who burnt the New Zealand flag on ANZAC day - if my father had been there he would have re-arranged her teeth for her) has been sucking at the public tit for a long time. The woman is a professional agitator who spends her spare time doing university degrees at the taxpayers' expense. She applies for, and gets grants. I suspect a lot of agitators do the same. They seem to have an enormous amount of spare time on their hands to travel, print off their little agitprop leaflets and tracts, socialise with other agitators, and just generally agitate. It's a living I guess.
I suspect the proponents of a future socialist heaven think their natural talents for leadership and ideological guidance for the masses will propel them into leadership positions so they will never have to be bound by their own totalitarian philosophies. Poor silly creatures. Those who don't know about history are bound to repeat it. They are hoist by their own petards.
So my conclusion about all this left-wing nonsense of freedom for all is that they will (if we don't do something about it) have us end up in chains. If people like Valerie Morse and her kind think they will somehow be exempt, I can assure them (and probably will as we pass each other on the way to the cornfield with our sickles) they will not.
Freedom of Speech
A.D. 25 TACITUS Annals IV
Next year, a completely novel type of charge was levelled against the historian Cremutius Cordus: that in his Annals he had eulogised Marcus Brutus and referred to Gaius Cassius as the last of the Romans.
...
(Cordus was on a trumped up charge of treason, brought by dependents of Sejanus, the man who was a favourite of Tiberius, and gave a speech in the senate in his defence - some excerpts are below in quote marks.)(Jude)
...
'The poems of Furius Bibaculus and Catullus are literally packed with insults aimed at Julius Caesar and Augustus, and they are still read today. Both rulers, however, tolerated these writings and let them alone, showing moderation, or perhaps I should say statesmanship. People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be some truth in those which provoke anger.'
'I am saying nothing about the Greeks. Not only did they enjoy a freedom of speech without fear of punishment, but one might even call it a licence. In the case of objection, words were met with words.'
'Surely my speeches are not therefore inciting people to civil war? It is seventy years since Brutus and Cassius died; yet their statues are still to be seen. Not even their conqueror banned these.'
'Posterity gives each man his due; if I am condemned there will be people who will remember me just as Brutus and Cassius are remembered.'
After his speech Cordus left the Senate and starved himself to death. Even so, by senatorial decree, the aediles were instructed to burn his books. These survived underground, however, and were republished.
The episode leaves one amazed at the stupidity of those who believe that the political leaders of one generation can starve the next of memories. On the contrary, if you take action against writers it enhances their standing. Foreign monarchs and those who imitate their cruelty only succeed in glorifying the reputation of those whom they try to suppress, and in bringing dishonour upon themselves. (Tacitus)
A.D. 2007 JUDE (post on blog)
There has been a law passed named 'Holocaust Denial' and anyone who denies that the Holocaust took place can now be jailed. I think this law is active in Austria but am not sure where else. One old guy named David Irving was jailed in Austria, I read it in the BBC news some weeks ago.
For fifty years I have never doubted that the Holocaust took place. I don't think anyone I have spoken to doubted what they saw as a fact. Now, however, I have heard murmurs asking the question - Why pass a law? Will things get to the stage where I could be jailed for asking why it was necessary to pass a law?
People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
Socialism/Communism/Fascism
I have not, for most of my life, been a particularly political creature. I did not have the time. I worked (mostly full-time) and raised three children. However, in my autumn years I now have the leisure in which to view the world, historically, politically, and economically (economics are SO boring). I read left wing blogs and right wing blogs and have come to the conclusion that I am a centrist, with no ideological or religious beliefs that can fire me up whatsoever.
(It is generally accepted that most young people are inclined to the left but that as they grow older and wiser, they incline more to the right. I was too busy to incline either way when young, and now I am too old and too lazy.)
Fascism seems to me to be a good thing - patriotism, nationalism and a policy of independence - which I have noticed all countries aspire to or practise, but the Germans, the best known Fascists in the modern world, have been punished for being Fascists for the last 62 years.
Socialism seems to me to be a good thing. I live in a socialist country. We have a pretty good welfare system (which originated in Germany) which I think is a good thing in a country which is only good at growing grass and is situated on the edge of the Southern Ocean. If we didn't have a welfare system I think most of us would have to move or starve to death. However, the national flag is flown at all important ceremonies (and burnt this past ANZAC day by one Valerie Morse, a woman with a strong American accent) and patriotism and nationalism is called into play whenever it suits the politicians.
Communism seems to have been a good thing - to the Russians I know who lived under it. They call themselves Socialists but most of them also practise traits recognised as Fascist i.e. patriotism (they love Mother Russia), nationalism (they think Russians are the best people in the world), and they would love to have a policy of national independence. However, during their 'socialist' period, young Russians would sell State secrets for a pair of blue denim jeans.
Religion seems to be a good thing to those frightened people who hope for eternal life, but a bad thing for those who see it as hypocritical indoctrination of a belief system used for control of minds. I mean, if one believes in angels and devils (as religions tell you to), why shouldn't one believe in fairies and leprechauns? (Because religions tell you not to.)
Fascism, Socialism and Communism are not compatible with 'open' and 'democratic' societies. They are (or must become) totalitarian. Theocracies are in their very essence totalitarian. I think these ideologies descend into totalitarianism because there are flaws, (often nonsensical), in all of these systems and people must be discouraged from questioning these flaws. Totalitarianism demands the entire subservience of the individual to the State, which will tell you what to think and what to say. If you do not say and do what the State, or the religious person wants you to say and do, you will be jailed, or killed, to protect the system.
People lose interest in things which are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
The one thing a democratic society has which sets it apart from all other idealogies is freedom of speech. When someone interferes with that freedom of speech and puts someone in jail for saying something outside the accepted political or religious line, I (and many like me) sit up and take notice. Words must be met with words! If I was living in a totalitarian society, I would expect such occurrences, but I do not. I live in a democracy - or do I?
Vale Cordus - you are remembered.
Next year, a completely novel type of charge was levelled against the historian Cremutius Cordus: that in his Annals he had eulogised Marcus Brutus and referred to Gaius Cassius as the last of the Romans.
...
(Cordus was on a trumped up charge of treason, brought by dependents of Sejanus, the man who was a favourite of Tiberius, and gave a speech in the senate in his defence - some excerpts are below in quote marks.)(Jude)
...
'The poems of Furius Bibaculus and Catullus are literally packed with insults aimed at Julius Caesar and Augustus, and they are still read today. Both rulers, however, tolerated these writings and let them alone, showing moderation, or perhaps I should say statesmanship. People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be some truth in those which provoke anger.'
'I am saying nothing about the Greeks. Not only did they enjoy a freedom of speech without fear of punishment, but one might even call it a licence. In the case of objection, words were met with words.'
'Surely my speeches are not therefore inciting people to civil war? It is seventy years since Brutus and Cassius died; yet their statues are still to be seen. Not even their conqueror banned these.'
'Posterity gives each man his due; if I am condemned there will be people who will remember me just as Brutus and Cassius are remembered.'
After his speech Cordus left the Senate and starved himself to death. Even so, by senatorial decree, the aediles were instructed to burn his books. These survived underground, however, and were republished.
The episode leaves one amazed at the stupidity of those who believe that the political leaders of one generation can starve the next of memories. On the contrary, if you take action against writers it enhances their standing. Foreign monarchs and those who imitate their cruelty only succeed in glorifying the reputation of those whom they try to suppress, and in bringing dishonour upon themselves. (Tacitus)
A.D. 2007 JUDE (post on blog)
There has been a law passed named 'Holocaust Denial' and anyone who denies that the Holocaust took place can now be jailed. I think this law is active in Austria but am not sure where else. One old guy named David Irving was jailed in Austria, I read it in the BBC news some weeks ago.
For fifty years I have never doubted that the Holocaust took place. I don't think anyone I have spoken to doubted what they saw as a fact. Now, however, I have heard murmurs asking the question - Why pass a law? Will things get to the stage where I could be jailed for asking why it was necessary to pass a law?
People lose interest in things that are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
Socialism/Communism/Fascism
I have not, for most of my life, been a particularly political creature. I did not have the time. I worked (mostly full-time) and raised three children. However, in my autumn years I now have the leisure in which to view the world, historically, politically, and economically (economics are SO boring). I read left wing blogs and right wing blogs and have come to the conclusion that I am a centrist, with no ideological or religious beliefs that can fire me up whatsoever.
(It is generally accepted that most young people are inclined to the left but that as they grow older and wiser, they incline more to the right. I was too busy to incline either way when young, and now I am too old and too lazy.)
Fascism seems to me to be a good thing - patriotism, nationalism and a policy of independence - which I have noticed all countries aspire to or practise, but the Germans, the best known Fascists in the modern world, have been punished for being Fascists for the last 62 years.
Socialism seems to me to be a good thing. I live in a socialist country. We have a pretty good welfare system (which originated in Germany) which I think is a good thing in a country which is only good at growing grass and is situated on the edge of the Southern Ocean. If we didn't have a welfare system I think most of us would have to move or starve to death. However, the national flag is flown at all important ceremonies (and burnt this past ANZAC day by one Valerie Morse, a woman with a strong American accent) and patriotism and nationalism is called into play whenever it suits the politicians.
Communism seems to have been a good thing - to the Russians I know who lived under it. They call themselves Socialists but most of them also practise traits recognised as Fascist i.e. patriotism (they love Mother Russia), nationalism (they think Russians are the best people in the world), and they would love to have a policy of national independence. However, during their 'socialist' period, young Russians would sell State secrets for a pair of blue denim jeans.
Religion seems to be a good thing to those frightened people who hope for eternal life, but a bad thing for those who see it as hypocritical indoctrination of a belief system used for control of minds. I mean, if one believes in angels and devils (as religions tell you to), why shouldn't one believe in fairies and leprechauns? (Because religions tell you not to.)
Fascism, Socialism and Communism are not compatible with 'open' and 'democratic' societies. They are (or must become) totalitarian. Theocracies are in their very essence totalitarian. I think these ideologies descend into totalitarianism because there are flaws, (often nonsensical), in all of these systems and people must be discouraged from questioning these flaws. Totalitarianism demands the entire subservience of the individual to the State, which will tell you what to think and what to say. If you do not say and do what the State, or the religious person wants you to say and do, you will be jailed, or killed, to protect the system.
People lose interest in things which are ignored, but think there must be something in things which provoke anger.
The one thing a democratic society has which sets it apart from all other idealogies is freedom of speech. When someone interferes with that freedom of speech and puts someone in jail for saying something outside the accepted political or religious line, I (and many like me) sit up and take notice. Words must be met with words! If I was living in a totalitarian society, I would expect such occurrences, but I do not. I live in a democracy - or do I?
Vale Cordus - you are remembered.
Friday, March 16, 2007
To Erp
My daughter and her 'boyfriend' - they seem to quite like each other but both are past the silly 'falling in love' stage I think. (I hope.) If they decide to marry it will be an economic decision although she is dead keen to have children, which is, nowadays, not an positive economic decision. It is a 'wait and see' situation. He is at present, oddly enough, (Sat 17 Mar) in Texas for a work conference.
Clarissa, the daughter in Australia has been very quiet lately. I know what is going on. She has been hoping for a daughter for the last three births and has gone to ground pending a scan to establish the gender of the foetus. Peculiar, isn't it? I come from a family of three daughters, had only daughters myself, and they in turn have had only sons. David, her husband, comes from a family of four daughters and two sons, so daughters were in the ascendancy there also.
Yes, send me the URL for the book discussion. I very much love books and that extends to other book lovers. There does seem to be a dichotomy between what men and women will read with absorption. Anthony Trollope and Arnold Bennett - and William Thackeray and probably many others - wrote wonderful books from the female perspective. I don't include Flaubert and Tolstoy in this category, because although they wrote about women it was from a male perspective. I don't see any male authors doing even that now and I don't know any males who read such books with an enjoyment similar to that of women. The same goes for female authors like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The hair stands up on my head when I hear such books referred to as 'chick lit'.
In celebration of St Patrick's Day, I am reading a couple of books by Flan O'Brien. Not only are the rich different, the Irish are also.
A couple of earthquakes here this week but not where I live. No damage as is usually the case for New Zealand (nickname 'The Shaky Isles'). We are earthquake aware. When in the most romantic of situations if a Kiwi is asked 'Did the earth move for you?' they will immediately look to see if the centre light is still swinging. No breathy sighs of 'yes'. More likely a leap to stand under a doorway and away from windows. (Doorways are reinforced.) It doesn't matter how much one fears flying, an earthquake can make the most craven anti-flying coward want to take to the air.
A little bit of interest. After the Napier earthquake in the 1930s (can't remember the exact date) the city was largely rebuilt and thanks to some wise city managers, it was re-built in Art Deco style. It is now a pretty city with many historic, artistic buildings. Gisborne, the city in which I was born, is a terrible place for earthquakes. It has a hellish island called White Island offshore which grumbles and spurts volcanically all the time but which is known as a safety valve for the East Coast. A drive along the Desert Road in the middle of the North Island takes you past two active volcanoes. Coming in to Taupo, for miles fissures in the ground have steam coming out of them and Rotorua has hot pools, some of them boiling so you can cook in them, and mud pools burping great hot bubbles. The place stinks of sulphur.
I am still watching everything I eat and yesterday moved the buttons OUT on a favourite jacket of mine. I haven't worn it for months, you know, thinking well, when I lose weight it will fit me again. I have given up on that idea. If I want to wear that jacket, I HAD to make it bigger. How bloody depressing. The thing I need is exercise and I haven't got the energy. You were right Erp, blast it!
Otherwise, a week during which not much happened. The weather is changeable as we slide into winter - and we won't slide out again until the end of the year. Bless my electric blanket, my sheepskin boots and legwarmers, my featherdown duvet, my cossack hat, etc.etc.etc.
From Jude
Clarissa, the daughter in Australia has been very quiet lately. I know what is going on. She has been hoping for a daughter for the last three births and has gone to ground pending a scan to establish the gender of the foetus. Peculiar, isn't it? I come from a family of three daughters, had only daughters myself, and they in turn have had only sons. David, her husband, comes from a family of four daughters and two sons, so daughters were in the ascendancy there also.
Yes, send me the URL for the book discussion. I very much love books and that extends to other book lovers. There does seem to be a dichotomy between what men and women will read with absorption. Anthony Trollope and Arnold Bennett - and William Thackeray and probably many others - wrote wonderful books from the female perspective. I don't include Flaubert and Tolstoy in this category, because although they wrote about women it was from a male perspective. I don't see any male authors doing even that now and I don't know any males who read such books with an enjoyment similar to that of women. The same goes for female authors like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The hair stands up on my head when I hear such books referred to as 'chick lit'.
In celebration of St Patrick's Day, I am reading a couple of books by Flan O'Brien. Not only are the rich different, the Irish are also.
A couple of earthquakes here this week but not where I live. No damage as is usually the case for New Zealand (nickname 'The Shaky Isles'). We are earthquake aware. When in the most romantic of situations if a Kiwi is asked 'Did the earth move for you?' they will immediately look to see if the centre light is still swinging. No breathy sighs of 'yes'. More likely a leap to stand under a doorway and away from windows. (Doorways are reinforced.) It doesn't matter how much one fears flying, an earthquake can make the most craven anti-flying coward want to take to the air.
A little bit of interest. After the Napier earthquake in the 1930s (can't remember the exact date) the city was largely rebuilt and thanks to some wise city managers, it was re-built in Art Deco style. It is now a pretty city with many historic, artistic buildings. Gisborne, the city in which I was born, is a terrible place for earthquakes. It has a hellish island called White Island offshore which grumbles and spurts volcanically all the time but which is known as a safety valve for the East Coast. A drive along the Desert Road in the middle of the North Island takes you past two active volcanoes. Coming in to Taupo, for miles fissures in the ground have steam coming out of them and Rotorua has hot pools, some of them boiling so you can cook in them, and mud pools burping great hot bubbles. The place stinks of sulphur.
I am still watching everything I eat and yesterday moved the buttons OUT on a favourite jacket of mine. I haven't worn it for months, you know, thinking well, when I lose weight it will fit me again. I have given up on that idea. If I want to wear that jacket, I HAD to make it bigger. How bloody depressing. The thing I need is exercise and I haven't got the energy. You were right Erp, blast it!
Otherwise, a week during which not much happened. The weather is changeable as we slide into winter - and we won't slide out again until the end of the year. Bless my electric blanket, my sheepskin boots and legwarmers, my featherdown duvet, my cossack hat, etc.etc.etc.
From Jude
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Letter to Erp - again
Dear Erp:
The weather has deteriorated here and is now like winter. We had hardly any summer. It has rained heavily the past three days and the termperature is cool but I don't mind. I am a cold weather person.
I have had a problem lately with fatigue which is why I haven't been doing much - I have been either sleeping or resting the better part of twelve hours out of every twenty four. It annoys me. I hate growing old. I went to the doctor and complained but the man has so many genuinely sick people I didn't get much sympathy. It is my heart you see, working too hard now. Childhood illnesses (including rheumatic fever) are creeping back up on me. 'Live with it', he said, 'rest all you want. There is nothing else to be done.' The fatigue is not there all the time, but one day in the future it will be. Just now it is several days on, several days off.
I am wearing out Erp. I just hope I don't outlast my brain.
Did I tell you that my daughter in Australia is expecting another baby? There will be 14 months between Asher and number five. I hope her leg holds up.
About the reading group - I wouldn't mind discussion about a good book, but I really can't be bothered with the male preoccupation with immortality. Ninety nine per cent of them aren't worth it - even if it does exist in the after life. As for living for 200 or more years, I couldn't think of anything worse, unless one could stop ageing. Surely then would begin the battle with boredom. And just think - mothers would be here as well. They are here far too long as it is!
I still haven't got around to putting my photo on the blog - the mere thought of even attempting it the past few days has been enough to send me somewhere warm and soft for a nap.
Have you heard the furore about the film '300'? I got the two books, one is a comic book and one is called 300 the Art of the Film sent to me a couple of months ago to review. I tossed off the review and said they were suitable for 12 - 18 year old males (of the more bloodthirsty type) now I read everywhere how sensitive feelings are being hurt. Is there anything nowadays that doesn't offend somebody? Then it is a three day wonder and something else takes its place. Everybody everywhere is being offended about something all the time it seems.
I have the dentist on Friday.
Some snippets you may enjoy:
Reverend William Spooner. Warden of New College, Oxford University, 1903 - 1924.
His habitual transposition of sounds - metaphasis - made him famous in his own lifetime and gave the world the word - spoonerism.
He was an albino.
Among the more famous utterances attributed to him:
'Which of us has not felt in his heart, a half warmed fish?'
To a delinquent undergraduate:
'You have hissed my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. You will leave Oxford on the next town drain.'
PALINDROMES:
The Greeks often put on fountains:
Nispon animimata mi monan opsin - wash the sin as well as the face.
The weather has deteriorated here and is now like winter. We had hardly any summer. It has rained heavily the past three days and the termperature is cool but I don't mind. I am a cold weather person.
I have had a problem lately with fatigue which is why I haven't been doing much - I have been either sleeping or resting the better part of twelve hours out of every twenty four. It annoys me. I hate growing old. I went to the doctor and complained but the man has so many genuinely sick people I didn't get much sympathy. It is my heart you see, working too hard now. Childhood illnesses (including rheumatic fever) are creeping back up on me. 'Live with it', he said, 'rest all you want. There is nothing else to be done.' The fatigue is not there all the time, but one day in the future it will be. Just now it is several days on, several days off.
I am wearing out Erp. I just hope I don't outlast my brain.
Did I tell you that my daughter in Australia is expecting another baby? There will be 14 months between Asher and number five. I hope her leg holds up.
About the reading group - I wouldn't mind discussion about a good book, but I really can't be bothered with the male preoccupation with immortality. Ninety nine per cent of them aren't worth it - even if it does exist in the after life. As for living for 200 or more years, I couldn't think of anything worse, unless one could stop ageing. Surely then would begin the battle with boredom. And just think - mothers would be here as well. They are here far too long as it is!
I still haven't got around to putting my photo on the blog - the mere thought of even attempting it the past few days has been enough to send me somewhere warm and soft for a nap.
Have you heard the furore about the film '300'? I got the two books, one is a comic book and one is called 300 the Art of the Film sent to me a couple of months ago to review. I tossed off the review and said they were suitable for 12 - 18 year old males (of the more bloodthirsty type) now I read everywhere how sensitive feelings are being hurt. Is there anything nowadays that doesn't offend somebody? Then it is a three day wonder and something else takes its place. Everybody everywhere is being offended about something all the time it seems.
I have the dentist on Friday.
Some snippets you may enjoy:
Reverend William Spooner. Warden of New College, Oxford University, 1903 - 1924.
His habitual transposition of sounds - metaphasis - made him famous in his own lifetime and gave the world the word - spoonerism.
He was an albino.
Among the more famous utterances attributed to him:
'Which of us has not felt in his heart, a half warmed fish?'
To a delinquent undergraduate:
'You have hissed my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. You will leave Oxford on the next town drain.'
PALINDROMES:
The Greeks often put on fountains:
Nispon animimata mi monan opsin - wash the sin as well as the face.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Friday, February 09, 2007
Letter to Erp 3
Dear Erp:
As usual I have been busy with nothing much to show for my industry. I am always up early, about 6am but generally boot up and spend a couple of hours reading the news before breakfast. So there you are, eight ante meridien before I even eat. This morning I made bread. This is an every weekend task, done while I listen to a radio programme which consists of elderly songs, most of which I know so I can sing along and kick out my little feet while kneading. I haven't forgotten about posting a photo on my blog, but have to wait for my daughter to arrive this week and show me what to do. I am not sure I have the thingy on the computer which takes the thingy from the digital camera so need her to show me.
I think I was telling you about my Catholic schooling but did not manage to finish as I had a visitor. Where did I get up to? I think it was about Standard One, as it was called in those days, where the seven years olds went, and this was quite important. Seven was the end of babyhood in a Catholic school. Seven was the attainment of the age of reason, we were told, the age at which we knew the difference between right and wrong, and we agreed, as it seemed to us that we did know the difference. This was the year in which we made our First Confession and celebrated our First Communion. I had difficulty with confession. Finding enough sins was a problem, so I usually ended up confessing to returning library books late or fighting with my sisters. Neither was true.
We girls dressed up in white dresses and veils, white shoes and socks, to make a First Communion, and afterwards there was a feast. Just as well. We had been fasting since 6pm the night before (not even a glass of water) and after the main even it was getting on for 11am. I took religion very seriously up until I was about sixteen. I believed everything I was told. I really quite enjoyed going to the Basilica and enjoyed being pious and pure but I had a nervous condition about going to hell (which we had described to us in detail by each teacher we had), and it led me to have nightmares from which I awoke screaming, although the tense situation at home could have contributed. My father was a drunkard and subject to uncontrollable rages from which we often had to run out of the house. As I was the eldest, my stupid mother would often confide to me her fears of what he would do, and this, combined with hell, at times became unbearable.
After dear old Sister Hoffbar I can remember only three nuns who taught me. Sister Borgia (yes, indeed, believe it or not), Sister Ambrose, and Sister Gertrude. Fine women every one of them, and also the women who sowed the seeds of feminism in my soul. I would stand in front of god and argue that these women genuinely loved children and had not a scrap of envy (no matter what men say) for women who married. They had made a choice and to my eyes they never regretted it.
The priests, now there was a different story. There were four in St Mary's parish, all Irishmen. One of them, Father Keyes, who was a young man when I left school, is still tottering down to the hospital to give Extreme Unction to the dying. Father Gaffey was a wild one, eventually sent back to Ireland for re-programming. Father Mee was a fat, dark haired and dark eyed little man who made no impression on me at all, but Father McCarthy was a priest who was of equal value to the nuns. He drove a Volkswagon van and on most occasions this was full of 11, 12 and 13 year old girls as we tore away for an afternoon of tennis or to netball at another school. This man spent most of his free time as a coach for tennis and netball for the whole girls' school. His behaviour with the girls was beyond reproach. Father McCarthy was a stocky, sandy haired, sportsman type, no drinking or smoking, just mad about sports, sort of stern in his manner (I never heard him laugh and his smile was brief), a moral man who gave real hellfire and brimstone sermons where he turned almost purple with rage in the pulpit. Then he would turn up for tennis or netball coaching and we girls would run to meet him so pleased to see him and he seemed pleased to see us as well. As a coach he never criticised and only praised, he had no favourites, and he worked as we did, running up and down the court as referee, and swinging the tennis racquet although he would have been pushing fifty at that time. I have a pretty good serve and backhand thanks to him.
Now the funny thing is, this very good, this excellent man, was given a trip to Japan as the Catholic Church sometimes does to reward its hard working members. While he was there, Father McCarthy was involved in a traffic accident in which he received head injuries. The head injuries affected his behaviour and he was, as they say 'never the same again'. He became bad tempered, critical and unapproachable and died an unhappy and angry man.
Why do you do these sorts of things god?
Father Gaffey, who smoked, drank, and gambled on the horses, and who liked women too much is also dead but was not really missed by anyone except perhaps Sister Ambrose, who, poor woman, blushed bright red whenever he came into the classroom and we horrible girls sniggered and had no pity for her. Sister Ambrose had three classes in one room for two years. It was really too much for her. When her father died she spent short periods during the day for about three days in the stationery room crying. Us horrible girls got annoyed about that. She showed her feet of clay and we didn't like it, but only because we had thought she was perfect.
By the time I was in my last year at Primary School I was twelve years of age and in Standard 6. I was a clever girl and had been designated for the teaching profession. In those days streaming was usual, with the dumb girls going into Home Economics, where they spent a lot of time doing art, crafts, cooking, dressmaking, and a minimum of lower level English and maths. Thus they were prepared for the factories and shops and eventually, for marriage. Commercial was the middle stream and the girls did shorthand, typing, book keeping, and middle level English and maths. Thus they were prepared for the office and eventually, for marriage. Academic was the top stream and the girls did languages, maths and science. Thus we were prepared for teaching and eventually for the Dominican Order. Unfortunately, towards the end of the year it appeared there was trouble at home. My father's drinking had reached epic proportions, my mother had got somehow into debt, she left the city taking the two younger girls and I was put with people I had never met before, to stay and complete the end of year scholarship examinations. The man of the house where I had been dumped told his wife (in front of me) to get rid of me. I went to another family. I would not do the exams but sat at the desk staring at the papers. I was eventually put on an aeroplane (a DC3) for a seven hour flight to Gisborne. I vomited all the way and eventually had to be carried off as I could not walk. I was totally deaf for three days after the flight. I stayed with four different families for the five weeks we were there. At one I had tonsillitis, at another I had sunstroke. Later I had septicaemia. During the six weeks school holidays I had stayed with six different families. When we returned home I was in a health decline which eventually led to being bedridden for three months and which ruined my education.
I was one of those children who generally do not survive a working class upbringing. I had pneumonia when I was 8 years of age because I was a child who needed warmth and comfort at night and my grandmother had been taken away. By the time I was twelve I had dysmenorrhoea from a lack of calcium, nightmares, bitten fingernails, and was descending into a state of nervousness which has remained with me all my life. I could hardly be taken anywhere as I got motion sickness. (Not that this stopped my parents, who would push me into the back of the car and carry me into the house and put me on the bed to recover when we got home.)
My father died in 1992. The minister called to gather information about his life for his sermon. I could not think of one good thing to say so stayed quiet. So did my mother and my then husband. "Surely," expostulated the minister, "the man can't have been so bad that nobody can think of one good thing to say about him!" Well, maybe the minister was asking the wrong people. I don't know. All I can say is that men need to consider such things as it is a terrible indictment on one to have those nearest you feel only relief at your death.
As usual I have been busy with nothing much to show for my industry. I am always up early, about 6am but generally boot up and spend a couple of hours reading the news before breakfast. So there you are, eight ante meridien before I even eat. This morning I made bread. This is an every weekend task, done while I listen to a radio programme which consists of elderly songs, most of which I know so I can sing along and kick out my little feet while kneading. I haven't forgotten about posting a photo on my blog, but have to wait for my daughter to arrive this week and show me what to do. I am not sure I have the thingy on the computer which takes the thingy from the digital camera so need her to show me.
I think I was telling you about my Catholic schooling but did not manage to finish as I had a visitor. Where did I get up to? I think it was about Standard One, as it was called in those days, where the seven years olds went, and this was quite important. Seven was the end of babyhood in a Catholic school. Seven was the attainment of the age of reason, we were told, the age at which we knew the difference between right and wrong, and we agreed, as it seemed to us that we did know the difference. This was the year in which we made our First Confession and celebrated our First Communion. I had difficulty with confession. Finding enough sins was a problem, so I usually ended up confessing to returning library books late or fighting with my sisters. Neither was true.
We girls dressed up in white dresses and veils, white shoes and socks, to make a First Communion, and afterwards there was a feast. Just as well. We had been fasting since 6pm the night before (not even a glass of water) and after the main even it was getting on for 11am. I took religion very seriously up until I was about sixteen. I believed everything I was told. I really quite enjoyed going to the Basilica and enjoyed being pious and pure but I had a nervous condition about going to hell (which we had described to us in detail by each teacher we had), and it led me to have nightmares from which I awoke screaming, although the tense situation at home could have contributed. My father was a drunkard and subject to uncontrollable rages from which we often had to run out of the house. As I was the eldest, my stupid mother would often confide to me her fears of what he would do, and this, combined with hell, at times became unbearable.
After dear old Sister Hoffbar I can remember only three nuns who taught me. Sister Borgia (yes, indeed, believe it or not), Sister Ambrose, and Sister Gertrude. Fine women every one of them, and also the women who sowed the seeds of feminism in my soul. I would stand in front of god and argue that these women genuinely loved children and had not a scrap of envy (no matter what men say) for women who married. They had made a choice and to my eyes they never regretted it.
The priests, now there was a different story. There were four in St Mary's parish, all Irishmen. One of them, Father Keyes, who was a young man when I left school, is still tottering down to the hospital to give Extreme Unction to the dying. Father Gaffey was a wild one, eventually sent back to Ireland for re-programming. Father Mee was a fat, dark haired and dark eyed little man who made no impression on me at all, but Father McCarthy was a priest who was of equal value to the nuns. He drove a Volkswagon van and on most occasions this was full of 11, 12 and 13 year old girls as we tore away for an afternoon of tennis or to netball at another school. This man spent most of his free time as a coach for tennis and netball for the whole girls' school. His behaviour with the girls was beyond reproach. Father McCarthy was a stocky, sandy haired, sportsman type, no drinking or smoking, just mad about sports, sort of stern in his manner (I never heard him laugh and his smile was brief), a moral man who gave real hellfire and brimstone sermons where he turned almost purple with rage in the pulpit. Then he would turn up for tennis or netball coaching and we girls would run to meet him so pleased to see him and he seemed pleased to see us as well. As a coach he never criticised and only praised, he had no favourites, and he worked as we did, running up and down the court as referee, and swinging the tennis racquet although he would have been pushing fifty at that time. I have a pretty good serve and backhand thanks to him.
Now the funny thing is, this very good, this excellent man, was given a trip to Japan as the Catholic Church sometimes does to reward its hard working members. While he was there, Father McCarthy was involved in a traffic accident in which he received head injuries. The head injuries affected his behaviour and he was, as they say 'never the same again'. He became bad tempered, critical and unapproachable and died an unhappy and angry man.
Why do you do these sorts of things god?
Father Gaffey, who smoked, drank, and gambled on the horses, and who liked women too much is also dead but was not really missed by anyone except perhaps Sister Ambrose, who, poor woman, blushed bright red whenever he came into the classroom and we horrible girls sniggered and had no pity for her. Sister Ambrose had three classes in one room for two years. It was really too much for her. When her father died she spent short periods during the day for about three days in the stationery room crying. Us horrible girls got annoyed about that. She showed her feet of clay and we didn't like it, but only because we had thought she was perfect.
By the time I was in my last year at Primary School I was twelve years of age and in Standard 6. I was a clever girl and had been designated for the teaching profession. In those days streaming was usual, with the dumb girls going into Home Economics, where they spent a lot of time doing art, crafts, cooking, dressmaking, and a minimum of lower level English and maths. Thus they were prepared for the factories and shops and eventually, for marriage. Commercial was the middle stream and the girls did shorthand, typing, book keeping, and middle level English and maths. Thus they were prepared for the office and eventually, for marriage. Academic was the top stream and the girls did languages, maths and science. Thus we were prepared for teaching and eventually for the Dominican Order. Unfortunately, towards the end of the year it appeared there was trouble at home. My father's drinking had reached epic proportions, my mother had got somehow into debt, she left the city taking the two younger girls and I was put with people I had never met before, to stay and complete the end of year scholarship examinations. The man of the house where I had been dumped told his wife (in front of me) to get rid of me. I went to another family. I would not do the exams but sat at the desk staring at the papers. I was eventually put on an aeroplane (a DC3) for a seven hour flight to Gisborne. I vomited all the way and eventually had to be carried off as I could not walk. I was totally deaf for three days after the flight. I stayed with four different families for the five weeks we were there. At one I had tonsillitis, at another I had sunstroke. Later I had septicaemia. During the six weeks school holidays I had stayed with six different families. When we returned home I was in a health decline which eventually led to being bedridden for three months and which ruined my education.
I was one of those children who generally do not survive a working class upbringing. I had pneumonia when I was 8 years of age because I was a child who needed warmth and comfort at night and my grandmother had been taken away. By the time I was twelve I had dysmenorrhoea from a lack of calcium, nightmares, bitten fingernails, and was descending into a state of nervousness which has remained with me all my life. I could hardly be taken anywhere as I got motion sickness. (Not that this stopped my parents, who would push me into the back of the car and carry me into the house and put me on the bed to recover when we got home.)
My father died in 1992. The minister called to gather information about his life for his sermon. I could not think of one good thing to say so stayed quiet. So did my mother and my then husband. "Surely," expostulated the minister, "the man can't have been so bad that nobody can think of one good thing to say about him!" Well, maybe the minister was asking the wrong people. I don't know. All I can say is that men need to consider such things as it is a terrible indictment on one to have those nearest you feel only relief at your death.
Snippets 2
Kingsley William Amis (1922-1995)
(One of the 'Angry Young Men' Amis was a working class only child smart enough to get a university education.)
However bright, the Lefty as defined by Amis was moved primarily not by ideas but by feelings and emotions. He or she typically started out as a young person who had an 'unfocussed dissatisfaction with the way things are', that is, with the way authority in the shape of employers or parents seemed to stand in the way his or her freedom just for the sake of being obstructive.
In stage two of the Lefty's development, the young man finds himself not getting on very far in a competitive world and when he asks himself why, he finds a blissfully satisfying answer. Which is that it's not his fault for being lazy or stupid or anything else - it's all the fault of the system that holds him back. So from now on the system must be opposed.
Amis knew all about his version of the Lefty from having been one himself.
...soon after his novel The Anti-Death League was published in 1966, Amis described its theme as being that 'what causes most unhappiness and feelings of revolt is the inescapable condition of human life...'
He had used to think, Amis went on, 'that human beings could be made significantly happier by transforming their outward lives'. Now he thought differently. 'Their real enemies are not
capitalism but death, not landlords but cancer, not warmingering but the power to kill people.'
p 281
In November it was the Observer's turn to be berated for implying that the Isralis had carried out the massacres of the Palestinians in Beirut and quoting two sources to back their case - 'Yassar Arafat and the PLO's man in New York.' The next year Amis invented a name for this kind of thinking: seditious neutrality'.
p 345
(from Kingsley Amis a Biography by Eric Jacobs)
Sport, as I have discovered, fosters international hostility and leads the audience, no doubt from boredom, to assault and do grevious bodily harm while watching it. The fact that audiences at the National Theatre rarely break bottles over one another's heads, and that Opera fans seldom knee one another in the groin during long intervals at Convent Garden, convinces me that the theatre is safer than sport. p 21 Clinging to the Wreckage by John Mortimer
(One of the 'Angry Young Men' Amis was a working class only child smart enough to get a university education.)
However bright, the Lefty as defined by Amis was moved primarily not by ideas but by feelings and emotions. He or she typically started out as a young person who had an 'unfocussed dissatisfaction with the way things are', that is, with the way authority in the shape of employers or parents seemed to stand in the way his or her freedom just for the sake of being obstructive.
In stage two of the Lefty's development, the young man finds himself not getting on very far in a competitive world and when he asks himself why, he finds a blissfully satisfying answer. Which is that it's not his fault for being lazy or stupid or anything else - it's all the fault of the system that holds him back. So from now on the system must be opposed.
Amis knew all about his version of the Lefty from having been one himself.
...soon after his novel The Anti-Death League was published in 1966, Amis described its theme as being that 'what causes most unhappiness and feelings of revolt is the inescapable condition of human life...'
He had used to think, Amis went on, 'that human beings could be made significantly happier by transforming their outward lives'. Now he thought differently. 'Their real enemies are not
capitalism but death, not landlords but cancer, not warmingering but the power to kill people.'
p 281
In November it was the Observer's turn to be berated for implying that the Isralis had carried out the massacres of the Palestinians in Beirut and quoting two sources to back their case - 'Yassar Arafat and the PLO's man in New York.' The next year Amis invented a name for this kind of thinking: seditious neutrality'.
p 345
(from Kingsley Amis a Biography by Eric Jacobs)
Sport, as I have discovered, fosters international hostility and leads the audience, no doubt from boredom, to assault and do grevious bodily harm while watching it. The fact that audiences at the National Theatre rarely break bottles over one another's heads, and that Opera fans seldom knee one another in the groin during long intervals at Convent Garden, convinces me that the theatre is safer than sport. p 21 Clinging to the Wreckage by John Mortimer
Friday, February 02, 2007
Snippets
It seems strange to relate now, but in 1960 Lady Chatterley's Lover (D H Lawrence) was a book at the centre of an indecency trial at the Old Bailey in London.
Gerald Gardiner (Harrow, Magdalene College Oxford, later Lord Chancellor in a Labour Government was the Defence. Mervyn Griffith-Jones (Eton, Trinity Hall Cambridge, later a judge) was for the Prosecution.
Gardiner examined a long string of witnesses, comparatively few of whom were re-examined by Griffith-Jones & etc.
Quite early on in the proceedings Griffith-Jones asked his now famous question: 'Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?' The enquiry has now passed into history together with the equally well remembered comment (attributed to a peer during the subsequent debate in the House of Lords): 'I should not object to my wife or my daughter reading the book, but I have the strongest objection to it being read by my gamekeeper.'
_______________________________________________________________
Some 2006 news headlines:
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
Is There a Ring of Debris Around Uranus?
Miners Refuse to Work After Death
War Dims Hope for Peace
Red Tape Holds up New Bridges
____________________________________________________________
Palindrome:
The noon sex alert relaxes no one. HT.
(James Thurber)
_____________________________________________________________
During the 1930s Thurber was somewhat alienated from several of his writer friends who were adopting extremely left-wing views. Thurber grasped at once the fear and hatred of humour felt by Marxists as perhaps their ideology's greatest enemy. He expresses an aspect of what was happening round him in one of his letters to his friend and collaborator E B White:
This is one of the greatest menaces there is: people with intelligence deciding that the point is to become grim grey and intense and unhappy and tiresome because the world and many of its people are in a bad way. It's a form of egotism, a supreme form. I've toyed with it myself and understand it a little. It's as dangerous as toying with a drug.
______________________________________________________________
When in 1861 Isaac Singer, inventor of the Singer sewing machine came to Paris, he was in several respects the prototype of the Henry James American exploring Europe - many times a millionaire, interested in the arts, anxious to widen his horizons.
In one point, however, Singer was very unlike a Jamesian hero. So far from being an innocent, corrupted by the bad Old World, he had fathered sixteen illegitimate children back home, and soon after arrival in Paris he seduced an upper-middle-class French girl thirty years his junior, whom he subsequently married, producing six more, legitimate children.
____________________________________________________________
'Of that Ilk' simply means that the surname is the same as that of the estate. For example - Sir Iain Moncrieffe of that Ilk.
______________________________________________________________________
careen - to lay a ship on its side.
career - a path through life.
_____________________________________________________________________
Maundy Gregory (1877-1941) was one of the touts used as a go-between for those who wished to purchase an honour and swell the Liberal (or rather the Lloyd George) Party fund.
There can be no doubt whatever, that the methods employed by Lloyd George when Prime Minister, passed all bounds in the scandalous and utterly cynical manner in which honours (ranging from viscounties downwards) were hawked round literally for sale: sometimes to men of the most dubious reputation.
___________________________________________________________________
Gerald Gardiner (Harrow, Magdalene College Oxford, later Lord Chancellor in a Labour Government was the Defence. Mervyn Griffith-Jones (Eton, Trinity Hall Cambridge, later a judge) was for the Prosecution.
Gardiner examined a long string of witnesses, comparatively few of whom were re-examined by Griffith-Jones & etc.
Quite early on in the proceedings Griffith-Jones asked his now famous question: 'Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?' The enquiry has now passed into history together with the equally well remembered comment (attributed to a peer during the subsequent debate in the House of Lords): 'I should not object to my wife or my daughter reading the book, but I have the strongest objection to it being read by my gamekeeper.'
_______________________________________________________________
Some 2006 news headlines:
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
Is There a Ring of Debris Around Uranus?
Miners Refuse to Work After Death
War Dims Hope for Peace
Red Tape Holds up New Bridges
____________________________________________________________
Palindrome:
The noon sex alert relaxes no one. HT.
(James Thurber)
_____________________________________________________________
During the 1930s Thurber was somewhat alienated from several of his writer friends who were adopting extremely left-wing views. Thurber grasped at once the fear and hatred of humour felt by Marxists as perhaps their ideology's greatest enemy. He expresses an aspect of what was happening round him in one of his letters to his friend and collaborator E B White:
This is one of the greatest menaces there is: people with intelligence deciding that the point is to become grim grey and intense and unhappy and tiresome because the world and many of its people are in a bad way. It's a form of egotism, a supreme form. I've toyed with it myself and understand it a little. It's as dangerous as toying with a drug.
______________________________________________________________
When in 1861 Isaac Singer, inventor of the Singer sewing machine came to Paris, he was in several respects the prototype of the Henry James American exploring Europe - many times a millionaire, interested in the arts, anxious to widen his horizons.
In one point, however, Singer was very unlike a Jamesian hero. So far from being an innocent, corrupted by the bad Old World, he had fathered sixteen illegitimate children back home, and soon after arrival in Paris he seduced an upper-middle-class French girl thirty years his junior, whom he subsequently married, producing six more, legitimate children.
____________________________________________________________
'Of that Ilk' simply means that the surname is the same as that of the estate. For example - Sir Iain Moncrieffe of that Ilk.
______________________________________________________________________
careen - to lay a ship on its side.
career - a path through life.
_____________________________________________________________________
Maundy Gregory (1877-1941) was one of the touts used as a go-between for those who wished to purchase an honour and swell the Liberal (or rather the Lloyd George) Party fund.
There can be no doubt whatever, that the methods employed by Lloyd George when Prime Minister, passed all bounds in the scandalous and utterly cynical manner in which honours (ranging from viscounties downwards) were hawked round literally for sale: sometimes to men of the most dubious reputation.
___________________________________________________________________
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Letter to Erp. Going to the Convent.
It has finally stopped raining. Sod's Law has prevailed. When people have time off from school and work on Saturday and Sunday, it rains. Then the weather clears up for a sunny, warm week. I don't remember this happening when I was a child. Perhaps it doesn't matter to children anyway. Playing in the rain and splashing in puddles can be as much fun as skipping in the sun.
In 1951, when we finally settled into a permanent home, I started at the nearest school which was St Joseph's Catholic School, a primary school for children aged from five years to twelve or thirteen, from whence they moved to St Catherine's College next door, a secondary school, both institutions run by the Dominican nuns. The huge basilica overshadowed both schools - we all spent a lot of time in the basilica - singing and praying. The nuns lived in the adjacent convent and there were about thirty of them. Boys went to St Joseph's until they turned seven, then they went to the Marist Brothers' School, boys only. St Joseph's was ten minutes walk (or half an hour's dawdle) from home and all children walked to school. As we left our respective homes in a trickle, so as we got closer to the school the trickle turned into a stream of children, then a flood, then a veritable deluge. Four extra classrooms were built whilst I was there which now are unused, as is the whole primary school. St Catherine's has been turned into both primary and secondary and caters for both boys and girls. The school I attended for seven years is now derelict. The Marist Brothers' school disappeared twenty years ago.
The street we lived in had thirty houses with ten of them holding forty children. At least ten houses were inhabited by older people whose children had grown up and moved away. The other ten I cannot remember. Possibly they held some more children but older, in their teens and of no interest to me at six. Now I live in a street of thirty houses where there are six children. Three of these children belong to a single mother and this little family arrived lately, so they could move on again at any time. This is population control observed in microcosm, a phenomenon I can see and measure within my own little area. I am not saying it is a bad thing, this not having too many children. Being Catholic and having witnessed the end result of uninterrupted breeding by order of the Pope and his 'celibate' minions and also being a woman, I am wholeheartedly in favour of a woman deciding how many children her health (mental and physical) can bear. I went to school with children who had built up boots, leg irons, health problems from a bread and jam diet, cleft palates and hare lips, sickly (or dead) mothers, children who slept three to a bed, who coughed throughout the year, (as I did), and children who, when I look back with the knowledge, were obviously suffering from sheer neglect, having been lost in the crowd of other siblings.
Nevertheless, the Dominican nuns did their best. They were wonderful women. They wore the same garments they had worn in the 18th century. A starched head dress with flaring wings each side of their faces, a veil attached which flowed down past their shoulders, a full length habit with sleeves loose enough at the wrists to put their hands into, and a huge set of rosary beads attached to a broad leather belt at their waists. They were immaculate and smelt always of soap. The classrooms were always polished and clean with flowers in vases (you could always get a smile and genuine pleasure by taking a bunch of flowers to the teacher, at the risk of the other kids nudging each other and hissing at you) and all children at the convent changed from street shoes into slippers for wear in the classrooms. This was quite a good idea - it made the place quieter.
My first teacher when I was six was a fat old nun named Sister Hoffbar. I thought she was about a hundred, but she was probably just on the right side of sixty. She had the five and six year olds (the primers) and taught the alphabet and printing. We had to come out literate but not much else as the real hard grind would begin at seven years of age. Anyway, there was an enormous amount of religion to be got through in the form of stories, praying (prayers to be learned) and attendance at the basilica which we could all see out the window - the House of God! In the middle of the classroom was a huge potbellied oven with a square fire guard around it and every morning when we arrived this was red hot. This was the only classroom to be so equipped, but primers were considered just out of babyhood and were a privileged little lot. We put on our slippers and warmed ourselves as we wished. Sister Hoffbar was rather like a black and white version of Mrs Santa and the children were cuddled and smiled at quite a lot. Every one of us was made to feel we were her special little child, no mean feat when there must have been thirty of us. There was never a raised voice, never impatience, never anger from her. The end result was that we were all, without exception, happier to be at school than to be at home and this delight lasted most of us until puberty.
But, ah well, we must all grow older and at seven years of age we moved into a more academic environment. The boys disappeared thank goodness. They were inclined to be loose cannons on the deck. Colin Klein wet his pants one day and disgusted and horrified all the little girls. Simon and Richmond Low were Chinese brothers. Simon was the older but a bit slow, and he had been kept back a year. They sat together. Simon always had the runny nose, (two great, thick candles which stopped at his upper lip and which he never seemed to notice, not even to sniff them back in) and Richmond always had the handkerchief. John Horan showing off got stuck in the lift up seat of the double desk and Sister Hoffbar had to call in Old Frank to unscrew the seat. Old Frank was the handyman around the school, a somewhat daft old pensioner but still capable of doing little jobs, including lighting the big fat stove in the primers room every morning at about seven a.m. I can still see him in my mind's eye, as I saw him when I was six and seven, and I remember how I dismissed him completely as being anything other than - well - something like a slave. What little autocrats small children can be. Old Frank moved like a ghost around and through the school doing the menial tasks until he disappears from my memory when I was about ten.
Now the nuns did something which most pupils in schools will not see. I have heard of 'Renaissance Men', but every one of my teachers was a'Renaissance Woman'. They were educated (some of them had two degrees and a vocational qualification), spoke Latin as a matter of course, possibly French, knew about diet, art, literature, current affairs, music, and handcrafts - most of them embroidered, gardened, or sang.
In 1951, when we finally settled into a permanent home, I started at the nearest school which was St Joseph's Catholic School, a primary school for children aged from five years to twelve or thirteen, from whence they moved to St Catherine's College next door, a secondary school, both institutions run by the Dominican nuns. The huge basilica overshadowed both schools - we all spent a lot of time in the basilica - singing and praying. The nuns lived in the adjacent convent and there were about thirty of them. Boys went to St Joseph's until they turned seven, then they went to the Marist Brothers' School, boys only. St Joseph's was ten minutes walk (or half an hour's dawdle) from home and all children walked to school. As we left our respective homes in a trickle, so as we got closer to the school the trickle turned into a stream of children, then a flood, then a veritable deluge. Four extra classrooms were built whilst I was there which now are unused, as is the whole primary school. St Catherine's has been turned into both primary and secondary and caters for both boys and girls. The school I attended for seven years is now derelict. The Marist Brothers' school disappeared twenty years ago.
The street we lived in had thirty houses with ten of them holding forty children. At least ten houses were inhabited by older people whose children had grown up and moved away. The other ten I cannot remember. Possibly they held some more children but older, in their teens and of no interest to me at six. Now I live in a street of thirty houses where there are six children. Three of these children belong to a single mother and this little family arrived lately, so they could move on again at any time. This is population control observed in microcosm, a phenomenon I can see and measure within my own little area. I am not saying it is a bad thing, this not having too many children. Being Catholic and having witnessed the end result of uninterrupted breeding by order of the Pope and his 'celibate' minions and also being a woman, I am wholeheartedly in favour of a woman deciding how many children her health (mental and physical) can bear. I went to school with children who had built up boots, leg irons, health problems from a bread and jam diet, cleft palates and hare lips, sickly (or dead) mothers, children who slept three to a bed, who coughed throughout the year, (as I did), and children who, when I look back with the knowledge, were obviously suffering from sheer neglect, having been lost in the crowd of other siblings.
Nevertheless, the Dominican nuns did their best. They were wonderful women. They wore the same garments they had worn in the 18th century. A starched head dress with flaring wings each side of their faces, a veil attached which flowed down past their shoulders, a full length habit with sleeves loose enough at the wrists to put their hands into, and a huge set of rosary beads attached to a broad leather belt at their waists. They were immaculate and smelt always of soap. The classrooms were always polished and clean with flowers in vases (you could always get a smile and genuine pleasure by taking a bunch of flowers to the teacher, at the risk of the other kids nudging each other and hissing at you) and all children at the convent changed from street shoes into slippers for wear in the classrooms. This was quite a good idea - it made the place quieter.
My first teacher when I was six was a fat old nun named Sister Hoffbar. I thought she was about a hundred, but she was probably just on the right side of sixty. She had the five and six year olds (the primers) and taught the alphabet and printing. We had to come out literate but not much else as the real hard grind would begin at seven years of age. Anyway, there was an enormous amount of religion to be got through in the form of stories, praying (prayers to be learned) and attendance at the basilica which we could all see out the window - the House of God! In the middle of the classroom was a huge potbellied oven with a square fire guard around it and every morning when we arrived this was red hot. This was the only classroom to be so equipped, but primers were considered just out of babyhood and were a privileged little lot. We put on our slippers and warmed ourselves as we wished. Sister Hoffbar was rather like a black and white version of Mrs Santa and the children were cuddled and smiled at quite a lot. Every one of us was made to feel we were her special little child, no mean feat when there must have been thirty of us. There was never a raised voice, never impatience, never anger from her. The end result was that we were all, without exception, happier to be at school than to be at home and this delight lasted most of us until puberty.
But, ah well, we must all grow older and at seven years of age we moved into a more academic environment. The boys disappeared thank goodness. They were inclined to be loose cannons on the deck. Colin Klein wet his pants one day and disgusted and horrified all the little girls. Simon and Richmond Low were Chinese brothers. Simon was the older but a bit slow, and he had been kept back a year. They sat together. Simon always had the runny nose, (two great, thick candles which stopped at his upper lip and which he never seemed to notice, not even to sniff them back in) and Richmond always had the handkerchief. John Horan showing off got stuck in the lift up seat of the double desk and Sister Hoffbar had to call in Old Frank to unscrew the seat. Old Frank was the handyman around the school, a somewhat daft old pensioner but still capable of doing little jobs, including lighting the big fat stove in the primers room every morning at about seven a.m. I can still see him in my mind's eye, as I saw him when I was six and seven, and I remember how I dismissed him completely as being anything other than - well - something like a slave. What little autocrats small children can be. Old Frank moved like a ghost around and through the school doing the menial tasks until he disappears from my memory when I was about ten.
Now the nuns did something which most pupils in schools will not see. I have heard of 'Renaissance Men', but every one of my teachers was a'Renaissance Woman'. They were educated (some of them had two degrees and a vocational qualification), spoke Latin as a matter of course, possibly French, knew about diet, art, literature, current affairs, music, and handcrafts - most of them embroidered, gardened, or sang.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Letter to Erp - Timmy the Pony
Dear Erp:
It is still raining here, but warm and still. The garden is like a tropical forest. I would dearly have loved to see the comet in the southern skies this week, but the clouds have prevented this. Never mind, let me go back in time and see if I can amuse you with more prosaic and earthly things, like the story of Timmy the Pony.
In 1951, when I was six years of age, my parents finally stopped their peripatetic wanderings and settled in a villa in Invercargill, a town of about 40,000 souls. My two sisters had been born by then, and the family was complete.
Somewhere along the line a Shetland pony named Timmy arrived in town with us. I think he may have been my pony whilst my father worked on a farm but cannot remember. All I can remember is that Tim lived in a paddock about five minutes bike ride from our house, and it was my job to visit him every day after school to check on him, give him water, and have a ride - if I could ever get the bridle and pony pad on him. He was a pony with all the vices a Shetland (a notoriously cunning equine breed) could possibly have. He bucked, bit, threw his head up hoping to connect with mine if I was leaning forward trying to urge the lazy little sod into a trot,(or down, if there was a chance I was standing underneath him trying to haul his hoof off my foot) and kicked. Tim was one of those ponies which come with a warning - DO NOT WALK BEHIND ME! My father must have got him for free because I can't imagine anyone paying good money for such a shaggy little menace. He wasn't even good company, as some horses are, coming up to rest their head on one's shoulder and blowing sweet air out of their nostrils, nickering with pleasure to see their little owner arrive to give some company - not Tim! He looked at me with Scottish disdain and went back to eating. I got my exercise in vain attempts to get near enough to him with the bridle. Taking a piece of carrot or apple was pointless. Tim would eat it then present his hind quarters to me, a warning that I should skip smartly out of kicking range. Around the paddock we went several times, Tim keeping about one yard away from me at all times. If I did catch him and bridle him, it was only because he was bored with the paddock and wanted to get out to cause somebody grief.
He must have let me catch him at least once. I remember riding him home and letting one little girl about my age from down the street hop up on his back. Tim, of course, bucked, she wasn't ready, came off, and went home crying with a broken arm. Her mother came down and had a talk with my mother, who had a talk with my father, and Tim quickly and mysteriously disappeared after that. I made a couple of enquiries about him next day and was told he had been sold to another family who wanted a pony for their little girl and this had been agreed to as I had not been looking after him well enough. I believed my parents and felt bad for a couple of hours about my neglect of Tim, but not bad enough to regret his disappearance, then forgot all about him during a skipping contest.
I suppose the hairy little menace had somewhat of a conscience because he could easily have killed me with a kick, but they always seemed to miss. His bites, although immediately painful, did not leave bruises. He helped me strengthen my upper arms for a later first class serve in tennis with much fruitless hauling of his foreleg when he stood on my foot - that never really hurt either. He didn't care though that I could have broken something important when I got bucked off - although that never happened either and I can only think that, being a Shetland, Tim was so close to the ground there wasn't far enough to fall. I don't know how the little girl from down the road broke her arm. Not used to it I suppose. The most hurt I suffered through visiting Tim was when I trod on a nail sticking up out of a piece of wood lying in the long grass in the pony paddock. I had to pull my foot off the nail and by the time I got home my canvas shoe was red with blood. New Zealand is rich in tetanus, especially around horses, so my mother put a bread poultice on the wound but I expect the copious bleeding had flushed out any germs because I didn't get tetanus.
When I look back, I guess I lived pretty dangerously for a six year old. My mode of transport, my bike, was full sized - I had to reach up to grasp the handlebars, and my father had put wooden blocks on the pedals and lowered the seat as far as it would go so it was a bit like an aeroplane where the most dicey part was the take-off. Getting off was no problem to someone who had been thrown by Tim as often as I had. Until I got bigger I would brake to almost stopping point then jump, leaving the bike to fall where it would - something a pilot would recognise as bailing out (without a parachute). I didn't ride the bike to school but I went everywhere else within a half mile or so on it and remember distinctly practising riding with no hands, a skill much admired in those balmy days. After regular run-ins with Tim a bike was my preferred mode of transport - no feeding, no watering, no curry combs, no tack, no hurtie bits, just the beginning of my affection for a technological form of transport over the organic and I don't care how romantic some people find horses - I think they are expensive, time consuming, and dangerous.
Yours unrepentedly,
Jude
It is still raining here, but warm and still. The garden is like a tropical forest. I would dearly have loved to see the comet in the southern skies this week, but the clouds have prevented this. Never mind, let me go back in time and see if I can amuse you with more prosaic and earthly things, like the story of Timmy the Pony.
In 1951, when I was six years of age, my parents finally stopped their peripatetic wanderings and settled in a villa in Invercargill, a town of about 40,000 souls. My two sisters had been born by then, and the family was complete.
Somewhere along the line a Shetland pony named Timmy arrived in town with us. I think he may have been my pony whilst my father worked on a farm but cannot remember. All I can remember is that Tim lived in a paddock about five minutes bike ride from our house, and it was my job to visit him every day after school to check on him, give him water, and have a ride - if I could ever get the bridle and pony pad on him. He was a pony with all the vices a Shetland (a notoriously cunning equine breed) could possibly have. He bucked, bit, threw his head up hoping to connect with mine if I was leaning forward trying to urge the lazy little sod into a trot,(or down, if there was a chance I was standing underneath him trying to haul his hoof off my foot) and kicked. Tim was one of those ponies which come with a warning - DO NOT WALK BEHIND ME! My father must have got him for free because I can't imagine anyone paying good money for such a shaggy little menace. He wasn't even good company, as some horses are, coming up to rest their head on one's shoulder and blowing sweet air out of their nostrils, nickering with pleasure to see their little owner arrive to give some company - not Tim! He looked at me with Scottish disdain and went back to eating. I got my exercise in vain attempts to get near enough to him with the bridle. Taking a piece of carrot or apple was pointless. Tim would eat it then present his hind quarters to me, a warning that I should skip smartly out of kicking range. Around the paddock we went several times, Tim keeping about one yard away from me at all times. If I did catch him and bridle him, it was only because he was bored with the paddock and wanted to get out to cause somebody grief.
He must have let me catch him at least once. I remember riding him home and letting one little girl about my age from down the street hop up on his back. Tim, of course, bucked, she wasn't ready, came off, and went home crying with a broken arm. Her mother came down and had a talk with my mother, who had a talk with my father, and Tim quickly and mysteriously disappeared after that. I made a couple of enquiries about him next day and was told he had been sold to another family who wanted a pony for their little girl and this had been agreed to as I had not been looking after him well enough. I believed my parents and felt bad for a couple of hours about my neglect of Tim, but not bad enough to regret his disappearance, then forgot all about him during a skipping contest.
I suppose the hairy little menace had somewhat of a conscience because he could easily have killed me with a kick, but they always seemed to miss. His bites, although immediately painful, did not leave bruises. He helped me strengthen my upper arms for a later first class serve in tennis with much fruitless hauling of his foreleg when he stood on my foot - that never really hurt either. He didn't care though that I could have broken something important when I got bucked off - although that never happened either and I can only think that, being a Shetland, Tim was so close to the ground there wasn't far enough to fall. I don't know how the little girl from down the road broke her arm. Not used to it I suppose. The most hurt I suffered through visiting Tim was when I trod on a nail sticking up out of a piece of wood lying in the long grass in the pony paddock. I had to pull my foot off the nail and by the time I got home my canvas shoe was red with blood. New Zealand is rich in tetanus, especially around horses, so my mother put a bread poultice on the wound but I expect the copious bleeding had flushed out any germs because I didn't get tetanus.
When I look back, I guess I lived pretty dangerously for a six year old. My mode of transport, my bike, was full sized - I had to reach up to grasp the handlebars, and my father had put wooden blocks on the pedals and lowered the seat as far as it would go so it was a bit like an aeroplane where the most dicey part was the take-off. Getting off was no problem to someone who had been thrown by Tim as often as I had. Until I got bigger I would brake to almost stopping point then jump, leaving the bike to fall where it would - something a pilot would recognise as bailing out (without a parachute). I didn't ride the bike to school but I went everywhere else within a half mile or so on it and remember distinctly practising riding with no hands, a skill much admired in those balmy days. After regular run-ins with Tim a bike was my preferred mode of transport - no feeding, no watering, no curry combs, no tack, no hurtie bits, just the beginning of my affection for a technological form of transport over the organic and I don't care how romantic some people find horses - I think they are expensive, time consuming, and dangerous.
Yours unrepentedly,
Jude
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Letter to Erp
Dear Erp:
It is raining here today, but humid. I knew it would rain. I watered my garden yesterday.
I have just returned from the library. I am a member of eight libraries - i.e. Invercargill, Gore, Dunedin, Otago University, Chinchilla (Aust), Brisbane, Lane Cove (Sydney) and Toowoomba (Aust). When I was seven years of age, my old Scottish grandmother took me to the library (she was on her way to the pub where she spent her Friday afternoons drinking gin and water) and enrolled me. After that I went three times a week and got three books each time until I turned twelve, when I moved to the adult library and began to step up my reading. I don't know what I would do without a public library. It is my first port of call wherever I am in the English speaking world. Today I got The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, (recommended by yourself, Erp), The Old Devils, by Kingsley Amis, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (which I have read before but need to re-read) plus three videos - Finian's Rainbow, I Claudius, and Agnes Browne.
My old Scottish grandmother therefore has a lot to answer for if it is true, as my father said many times, that sitting on one's backside reading is sheer laziness. My grandmother's name was Martha and her parents owned a dairy farm in the days when cows were milked by hand and Martha had worked hard until the time she was sent at 18 to look after her recently dead elder sister's six children. (She married her brother-in-law and eventually had six children to him herself.) She brought up 12 children, working on the farm as well, then eventually bought and ran a hotel, which hotel catered for up to forty paying guests. She nursed her husband, a daughter-in-law who died, a grandaughter who also died (aged eight), and then, old and useless, came to live with my family. She had the front room and I promptly assumed proprietal rights and moved in with her. She stayed two years, when I was aged seven and eight. Then she moved out again and went to look after her widowed son and Faye, his fourteen year old daughter. I was furious and performed beautifully, crying and screaming for her until threats of 'getting something to really cry for' quietened me. I never really liked my parents after that.
Grandma seemed to have two sets of everything. One set for around home, and one set for going out. That included teeth and rings. She was never idle. She knitted her skirts and tops, and made rag rugs. She smoked Capstan Cork tipped cigarettes until she died at 84. She drank gin and water and got very merry every Friday afternoon with about half a dozen other old pensioners, but the rest of the week she made herself useful (particularly to me, I made sure of that), and taught me to knit and let me play her 78 records on her wind up gramophone and rifle through her belongings. Every night she made Milo for us both (with two malt biscuits) then we climbed into bed together. This was a feather bed, by the way, a rarity today. The only demands she made on me were that I was quiet (I was, sitting there reading) and that I did not move around in the bed (which I did not, knowing I was onto a good thing). I thought I was set for life.
Grandma never seemed to mind my watching her, (with fascination as she prepared to go out on Friday afternoon - first her corsets, then seamed stockings, a knitted suit, going out jewellery. black wide fit shoes, a fur coat, hat, gloves and handbag, and going out teeth) but I watched with admiration, never with a critical eye. I never thought one day she wouldn't come back.
I look at old women today with their grey hair and comfortable clothes - my grandmother was never like that. She had her hair dyed jet black until her final stay in hospital. She was short and broad and walked with the determination of a sumo wrestler. She rarely smiled (except when not sober after an afternoon on gin and water) because everything in life was serious for her. She had a doggedness, a sort of slogging on or battling against the odds, an air of never giving in or giving up, a sort of understanding that no-one wins, death waits for all, but in the meantime you must do the right thing, and keep up standards.
I think living with my grandmother for those two years set the pattern for my old fashioned behaviour, that is to say my love of routine and peace and quiet, from then on. I always think of her when I hear 'Lily of Laguna' or 'At the Balalaika' (big hits in her youth and often played by me on her wind up gramophone), when I see laxative chocolate (I ate a whole block found whilst rifling through her drawers thinking it was real chocolate and it tasted okay as well), when I see a fox fur draped over a woman's shoulder in an old film, when I knit (it wasn't easy for her, me being left handed and her being right handed, she had to reverse things to teach me), and many other things when my grandmother lives again - in my memory. I wish I had her back just long enough to tell her even after over fifty years, I still miss her.
With nostalgia,
Jude
It is raining here today, but humid. I knew it would rain. I watered my garden yesterday.
I have just returned from the library. I am a member of eight libraries - i.e. Invercargill, Gore, Dunedin, Otago University, Chinchilla (Aust), Brisbane, Lane Cove (Sydney) and Toowoomba (Aust). When I was seven years of age, my old Scottish grandmother took me to the library (she was on her way to the pub where she spent her Friday afternoons drinking gin and water) and enrolled me. After that I went three times a week and got three books each time until I turned twelve, when I moved to the adult library and began to step up my reading. I don't know what I would do without a public library. It is my first port of call wherever I am in the English speaking world. Today I got The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, (recommended by yourself, Erp), The Old Devils, by Kingsley Amis, and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (which I have read before but need to re-read) plus three videos - Finian's Rainbow, I Claudius, and Agnes Browne.
My old Scottish grandmother therefore has a lot to answer for if it is true, as my father said many times, that sitting on one's backside reading is sheer laziness. My grandmother's name was Martha and her parents owned a dairy farm in the days when cows were milked by hand and Martha had worked hard until the time she was sent at 18 to look after her recently dead elder sister's six children. (She married her brother-in-law and eventually had six children to him herself.) She brought up 12 children, working on the farm as well, then eventually bought and ran a hotel, which hotel catered for up to forty paying guests. She nursed her husband, a daughter-in-law who died, a grandaughter who also died (aged eight), and then, old and useless, came to live with my family. She had the front room and I promptly assumed proprietal rights and moved in with her. She stayed two years, when I was aged seven and eight. Then she moved out again and went to look after her widowed son and Faye, his fourteen year old daughter. I was furious and performed beautifully, crying and screaming for her until threats of 'getting something to really cry for' quietened me. I never really liked my parents after that.
Grandma seemed to have two sets of everything. One set for around home, and one set for going out. That included teeth and rings. She was never idle. She knitted her skirts and tops, and made rag rugs. She smoked Capstan Cork tipped cigarettes until she died at 84. She drank gin and water and got very merry every Friday afternoon with about half a dozen other old pensioners, but the rest of the week she made herself useful (particularly to me, I made sure of that), and taught me to knit and let me play her 78 records on her wind up gramophone and rifle through her belongings. Every night she made Milo for us both (with two malt biscuits) then we climbed into bed together. This was a feather bed, by the way, a rarity today. The only demands she made on me were that I was quiet (I was, sitting there reading) and that I did not move around in the bed (which I did not, knowing I was onto a good thing). I thought I was set for life.
Grandma never seemed to mind my watching her, (with fascination as she prepared to go out on Friday afternoon - first her corsets, then seamed stockings, a knitted suit, going out jewellery. black wide fit shoes, a fur coat, hat, gloves and handbag, and going out teeth) but I watched with admiration, never with a critical eye. I never thought one day she wouldn't come back.
I look at old women today with their grey hair and comfortable clothes - my grandmother was never like that. She had her hair dyed jet black until her final stay in hospital. She was short and broad and walked with the determination of a sumo wrestler. She rarely smiled (except when not sober after an afternoon on gin and water) because everything in life was serious for her. She had a doggedness, a sort of slogging on or battling against the odds, an air of never giving in or giving up, a sort of understanding that no-one wins, death waits for all, but in the meantime you must do the right thing, and keep up standards.
I think living with my grandmother for those two years set the pattern for my old fashioned behaviour, that is to say my love of routine and peace and quiet, from then on. I always think of her when I hear 'Lily of Laguna' or 'At the Balalaika' (big hits in her youth and often played by me on her wind up gramophone), when I see laxative chocolate (I ate a whole block found whilst rifling through her drawers thinking it was real chocolate and it tasted okay as well), when I see a fox fur draped over a woman's shoulder in an old film, when I knit (it wasn't easy for her, me being left handed and her being right handed, she had to reverse things to teach me), and many other things when my grandmother lives again - in my memory. I wish I had her back just long enough to tell her even after over fifty years, I still miss her.
With nostalgia,
Jude
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