The end of Column Eight

The end of Column Eight. 

On the 20^th April 1996 I received a letter (by post, of course) from the acting managing editor of the Midweeker:

Dear Mike, we have recently been reassessing the content and layout of the Dunedin Star Communities. With this in mind it has been decided that we will no longer be requiring your column for publication. Your contribution and support has [sic] been appreciated and while this is an end to your column we do not discount the possibility of working with you again. Yours sincerely, Jeff Whyte, Acting Managing Editor.

I went into shock, since there’d been no warning of this on the horizon, though the ‘Acting Managing Editor’ had recently taken over from the Editor I’d worked with since I’d started the columns - a very supportive editor - and he was plainly under orders to cut back on costs. From memory, I don’t think mine was the only weekly column to disappear.

Here are three of the letters that appeared at the time. 

 Weekender, 5^th May, 1996

I wish to voice my dismay that presumably you have decided to do away with Mike Crowl’s weekly column in your paper. I, along with many of my acquaintances have enjoyed reading his comments on life, and his sense of humour about everyday things. His column was always the first and sometimes the only thing I read in each issue, and I feel that your paper will lose much of its appeal for many of your readers.

R. G. Hendry.

 I just want to add my voice to the many more who must feel as I do, so disappointed that ‘Column Eight’ has come to an end. It was for me one of the main reasons I looked forward to the Midweek. It was the first article I would read. May I take this opportunity to say thank you to Mike Crowl for the many humorous, thought-provoking and often inspiring articles he has produced. Hope springs eternal, maybe you’ll be back! You will be missed.

S. N. D.

 I am sorry that you have discontinued Mike Crowl’s column in the Midweek paper. I looked forward to reading his pithy and cryptic comments on such a wide variety of subjects. Your paper, I am sure, will be the poorer for this omission. Much which comes under the term ‘restructuring’ these days is merely an excuse to lower standards.

A.H. Richardson

 

These generous letters weren’t the result of an organised attempt to reinstate the column, as far as I know. 

A (very) loose Spanish story

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

In my last post on learning Spanish, I spoke about increasing fluency by memorising random sentences. This process got interrupted by the fact that I was also learning Psalm 139 at the same time, and I wanted to finish memorising it. Which I did.

Then I came back to the random sentences - as well as going on to start learning Psalm 1, another one I’ve known in English for a long time. In fact, I taught it to my kids as a song that I made up when they were all still relatively young – my wife learned it at the same time. And interestingly enough, everyone of them remembers it to some degree at least, once we remind them of the tune.

Anyway, back to the random sentences. Here they are, just for your information.

En una época de engaño universal decir la verdad es un acto revolucionario.

El fuerte olor a pintura me mareaba, así que salí a tomar aire. 

Estoy de acuerdo: será mejor vender la casa. 

No recuerdo en este momento, pero sé que anoche pasó algo grave.

Tenemos que conducir a la izquierda de la linea blanca. 

Cualquiera puede venir a la fiesta.

Judas Iscariote entregó a Jesús por treinta monedas de plata.

Lleva un carrito para poner la compra.

Estacio el coche en un estacionamiento y salió de él.

Mañana ayunaré porque tengo que ir a hacerme unos análisis.

Here are the rough translations, so that you have some idea what they’re all about.

In an age of universal deceit to tell the truth is a revolutionary act. (It’s a quote from George Orwell, apparently.)

The strong paint smell made me sick, so I went outside to get some air.

I agree: it will be best to sell the house.

I don’t remember at this moment, but something serious happened last night.

We have to drive on the left side of the white line!

Anyone can come to the party.

Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Get a trolley to put the shopping in.

I park the car in a car park and leave it.

Tomorrow morning I have to fast because I’m having some tests.

You can see there’s nothing connected amongst them. Nor did I choose them for particular words or grammar.

I spoke about using strong images in the last post to in order both to remember them and their order. At that time I was thinking of calling these to mind in a way that didn’t necessarily connect to the sentences as a whole.

But when I learned the first lot of sentences I found I would forget one or two and didn’t always get them in the same order. Not that the order mattered particularly, but it does help to remember them. Eventually I strung them onto a kind of ‘story’ and that helped enormously to remember them and their order.

I should have worked on that basis with the third lot as well, instead of trying give each of them ‘calling cards.’ So I took the idea of strong images and using those stitched the sentences together in a very loose story.

I’d had the ideas of explosions and battles and so on – I mentioned this in the last post. I noticed that the first sentence talks about revolution, and so suddenly a group of revolutionaries were taking over the town, shooting up things and setting fire to houses.

The burning houses linked to the strong smell of paint – I had in mind that in a hot climate (these were South American revolutionaries, it appeared) the paint on houses might burn fiercely, and with a strong smell. So sentence two sorted.

Next I imagined a husband and wife, caught up in the revolution, and, with the houses around them being set on fire, deciding rather ironically that it was time to sell their house. An unlikely possibility in the real world, but this is a story.

And then the wife opens the back door to find someone lying there who isn’t fighting with the revolutionaries. He’s bleeding badly all over the porch and the lintel. He explains that he doesn’t remember at the moment how this came about but obviously it was a serious matter.

The couple decide they have to take the risk of getting the man to the hospital, which accounts for the wife yelling at the husband that he’s driving on the wrong side of the road. Caused probably by other people trying to leave town as well.

Of course they come to a road block - set up by the revolutionaries. The man in charge finds the wounded man in the back of the car. He’s possibly the one responsible for shooting him, coincidentally. He’s a sarcastic bloke, as his words about ‘Anyone can come to the party’ indicate. We know that the ‘party’ is likely to end in the death of the wounded man.

The wife knows something about this revolutionary, and that he is a betrayer. Her comment about Judas and Jesus arises from this.

The road block is outside a supermarket. The revolutionary thinks it’s a joke to say the husband should get a trolley to put the ‘shopping’ (the wounded man) in. But the couple are hesitant: what will become of him?

Nevertheless the husband goes off, in his car, to park it in the supermarket parking area, and bring back a trolley. His words about this have a hint that he’s done something more than just leave the car. (Yes, I know I’m stretching things a bit here!)

The final sentence has the wounded man saying the words about ‘tomorrow morning’ and ‘tests’ – a grim joke perhaps indicating that he’ll be tortured in the morning.

Of course this ‘story’ is full of plotholes, and only partially goes anywhere. Or perhaps it leaves us up in the air and gives us a desire to know what happens next (!)

Once these stories are well and truly memorised I’ll move on, and we’ll see what happens next. Maybe.

 

Demeaning

First published in Column Eight on the 19^th May, 1993

Demeaning is the new in-word. Warren Cooper tossed it around like a hollow caber a few weeks ago when he claimed that the media is demeaning the Government. With all due respect it isn’t hard to do this, particularly when one minister (who shall be nameless) on the radio modestly declared he was ‘sincere and hardworking.’

However, demeaning the Government is child’s play compared with some of the more heavy duty demeaning that’s presently going on.

The Demeaning (formerly the Indecent) Publications Tribunal ruled recently that in pornography men are harder to demean than women. This rather curious ruling compares the treatment of men in a series of homosexual magazines with that of women in ‘heterosexual’ pornography mags.

Thus while women are ‘always’ treated as objects in heterosexual mags, the men in the homosexual ones were treated as both objects and subjects. So that’s okay. Follow? I must admit it took me several careful readings of the news report to understand what was being said.

Why do I have this niggling feeling that there’s something awry in all this wordplay?

I agree that an all-male porno mag doesn’t reinforce negative male attitudes to women, or reinforce gender-based inequalities. Of course it won’t. But surely that isn’t what the Indecent Publications Tribunal was set up to judge!

The IPT was set up to rule on indecency, not on inequality between the sexes, and I think it’s failed to do this. I also think it no longer understands the meaning of the word demeaning.

Demeaning has the sense of debasing. These days we usually understand it as an action on the part of one person or group which demeans another human being or group.

Surely, therefore, indecency itself is demeaning, quite apart from whether it debases women or men. And magazines are pornographic when they display human genitalia in such a way as to treat them merely as objects with no sacred worth, showing human bodies impersonally and without regard for their dignity.

The borderlines are being stretched constantly, of course, even in magazines that in no way would call themselves pornographic. But I think the average person has a fairly good idea, with or without the help of ITP, of what constitutes pornography.

In Melbourne the same curious double-standard as that used by the IPT recently appeared. A billboard of a naked 17-year-old youth with smutty words across his private parts was considered by women to be okay. However, it would have showed a ‘dominant and repressive’ social attitude if the person had been a young girl.

In New Zealand we have a naked man walking down the street on a television ad: in fact men dropping their pants on TV has become almost commonplace. Those who complain are told it’s only humorous.

Female strip shows are called degrading, yet women now attend male strip show in droves. How can it be demeaning for one half of the human race and not for the other?

The over-emphasis on exposing the human body in our society is excused on the basis that we’ve somehow matured from attitudes of the past. In fact it’s typical symptom of a society rapidly heading toward un-civilisation, and towards the decay, erosion and ultimate overthrow that normally follows such behaviour.

The Demeaning Publications Tribunal, meanwhile, contributes to our downfall, by allowing indecent publications to be sold. And the pornographic merchants of the world sit back and laugh, and rake in the dough.

 

The IPD was dissolved a few months after this column was written, and replaced by the Office of Film and Literature Classification – now called the Classification Office. It covers a wide range of areas, in part as a result of the huge changes that have come about due to digital information.  

Trade unions

First published in Column Eight on the 26^th May, 1993

An election year promise: New Zealand will become a nation of brown and white Asians.

Brendon Burns in The Press quotes words spoken by one Rev G H McNeur in 1926. ‘The average New Zealander has not begun to realise that the future of his country is in any serious way bound up with the happenings in China. China is awake. Is New Zealand asleep?’

Burns claims McNeur wondered why we hadn’t understood that our future is inextricably tied to China. Was that what McNeur had in mind? Perhaps, in those days, he was rather more concerned with China as a threat.

In the 1920s many New Zealanders barely knew that nations like China and Japan existed. And during the war one of these people became hated foreigners – for some Kiwis that still are. Perhaps we were wise to wait.

Mr Bolger, in his recent junket round three of the Big Asian nations, at least avoided the appalling arrogance attributed to Sir Keith Holyoake in his Asian dealings. Austin Mitchell wrote: ‘Sir Keith admonished the Japanese to drink more milk and eat more meat, to grow up big and strong and presumably slow their economic growth rate down to New Zealand’s.’

As a thumb-sucking self-secure little nation for so long, tied to Mother Empire’s apron strings, some of us are baulking at all the new trading partners we’re acquiring. We have some mind-resetting to do, especially in terms of viewing Korea, China and Japan as part of our neighbourhood.

Exporters, however, see dollar signs clinking above the heads of the 1.2 billion Chinese. But they look further than that: to other Asian countries – and the Pacific. There’s Papua New Guinea, and of course, the great Pacific nation, Australia.

Trade is all very well, but it isn’t all one way. You can’t just empty your containers on foreign shores while your overseas bank account fills up with dollars. Our trading partners will want to send us something in return.

Australia promotes Neighbours-liness in one of its soaps, but in real life, Crass Economic Return lies across the Strait.

What do we get for our export of expatriates, for example. A million dollar bill for feeding them! do they appreciate us sending them our finest rugby players? No – they stomp their springs all over the face of our national sport by cluttering up our TV screens with something called State of Origin. (Very puzzling – I thought I knew the names of all Australia’s states. Or is this some obscure reference to the confusions of an early church father?)

The more trading we do the more like our trading partners we may being to look. (And possibly like us, although with 1.2 billion Chinese it seems unlikely.)

Will all our New Zealand-made stuff have to go overseas, just to keep up with the rush we’re told is coming? Will we in return begin to wear garments made in places as diverse as Port Moresby, Osaka and Beijing (or even Melbourne!)?

No doubt this trading will eventually reduce our overseas debts. We can begin putting some money back into our own people again, in the form of classes in Japanese, Chinese, Pidgin and Ocker. That may prove more long-sighted than sending people off to Burnham/Waiouru for six weeks.

I would like to contribute this suggestion to international trade in celebration of my new-found Asiasticity. On a recent trip to China, a friend of mine found it necessary to carry toilet paper – at all times. Obviously this produce is in short supply.

Right here in Dunedin we have a company producing the stuff, almost on the wharf. How easy it will be to run the fork-lift across the road from factory to ship.

With all this new trade-unioning, I have another hope. That soon we’ll be able to call our national fruit by its rightful name again: the Chinese gooseberry.

Rev McNeur. Photo courtesy of 
The Presbyterian Research Centre, Dunedin

 think this is a good example of how not to write a weekly column. The title is a pun that doesn't get referenced again the text. The focus starts in one place and shifts halfway through to another. It begins in a fairly serious fashion and ends with mostly oddball humour. It doesn’t sound to me as though I actually had much idea what I was talking about when I wrote it, so it probably can be classed, at best, as a filler.

However, it has a certain historic value: trade is still a big issue, and there are now far more Asian people living in New Zealand than would have been contemplated in 1993, many from India, which doesn’t get a mention in this article.

 

The eyes’ habit

First published in Column Eight on the 5^th May, 1993

I started to write this week about the 5,000 school pupil suspensions/expulsions, and the statement that half that number were Maori or Pacific Islanders.*

Though my wife says it’s unlikely, I was going to be objective and fair. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised what a difficulty I have (along with many other New Zealanders), in being objective and fair about anything to do with race.

Concerning objectivity, American journalist, Walter Lippman, said, ‘The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.’ I’ve been placed in a mostly pakeha lifestyle all my days, but I’m realising a need to change my eyes’ habits.

Over the last twenty years I have, along with many other Europeans in this country, become alienated towards non-European New Zealanders. Why? Because we’ve believed much of what we’ve read and heard in the media: mostly bad news about the people we share these islands with.

To describe a man in the news as Maori no longer defines him in the way the bland and rather meaningless word ‘Caucasian’ does. We read more into ‘Maori.’ We know Caucasians commit crimes, but we ‘know’ that Maori commit more of them.

I confess I usually react to news about Maori, and Pacific Islanders, in a fairly negative light. But while their worst citizens are just as evil as the worst pakeha, the majority of them are reasonable, good-natured, decent human beings trying to deal with a time that’s become morally, socially and economically chaotic.

We don’t hear much about the ordinary non-crime committing ones; they don’t make eye-grasping headlines, or shock-horror television clips. And until we begin to hear about them, our perception is going to be slow to change.

In my childhood, and further back, Maori people were almost invisible, especially for us South Islanders.

Perhaps after the Maori Wars we thought of their wild warriors as ‘tamed’ – and didn’t think much beyond that. With good reasons: they hardly appeared in our history lessons, nor much in our newspapers. If we thought about them at all, we considered they lived in harmony with us. They’d conducted their skirmishes in the 19^th century, and got war out of their system.

Since the seventies, however, we could easily believe that the once-peaceful Maori were conducting some sort of guerilla warfare – or peace-fare; it consisted of attempting once more to raise their mana in the land they share with their fellow human beings.

These days there’s a smattering of the Maori language taught in most schools and kindergartens. But the emphasis seems to be on songs that remain obscure to the kids, and on legends that don’t relate to daily life.

Understanding the Maori in his daily life is difficult for many of us. The best overview I’ve come across was in a novel, Witi Ihimaera’s The Matriarch. The author took us back into the Maori Wars, showing what a vicious and grim period it was, with much suffering on both sides. He also showed us what life was like in that ‘invisible’ time. But best of all, he present a picture of contemporary Maori life, the straddling between the community and the city, the being at home in both worlds, yet not quite at home anywhere.

We need to read Maori writers to appreciate Maori people. We need to see Maori artists at work in films and on television. Compare the ‘Caucasian’ film Utu and the Maori film Ngati; it’s an interesting exercise in viewpoint. Utu is vicious, violent and tasteless (a copycat Rambo); Ngati is dramatic, humorous and celebratory, sometimes self-mocking, and essentially gentle.

And we need to have journalism about, and by, Maori and Pacific Islanders. Journalism that accentuates the positive.

*In 1993, school suspensions in New Zealand reached an estimated 5,000 cases, sparking significant national concern and leading to legislative reform. This milestone occurred directly after New Zealand raised the compulsory school age to 16 on January 1, 1993. The surge in cases prompted an inquiry by the Education and Science Select Committee, ultimately reshaping how schools handle student exclusions.

 The Maori Wars are now mostly known as the New Zealand Wars.

Since I wrote this, the racial landscape in NZ has changed considerably. There are more Maori – or people of Maori descent – working as politicians in Parliament. In fact two of the three leaders of the current ‘Coalition’ are of Maori descent. There is also a Maori party, though its members have done themselves more harm than good during their time in this Parliamentary term.

The use of Maori language has increased greatly, and there are immersion schools where only Maori is spoken from a young age. More people of Maori descent are attending University.

Sadly, the crime reports in the newspapers continue to feature men (mostly) of Maori descent, and murder and violence is well and truly on the rise.

On the other hand, three of my grandchildren are part-Maori…

Denial

First published in Column Eight on the 28^th April, 1993

I walk into the kitchen. Grated cheese is spread from one end of the bench to the other; milk sits in several pale puddles; the charcoal from a burnt slice of toast is piled up in a little mountain; unidentifiable liquids drip intermittently from the cake-beater, the milkshake-maker and the hair drier. I nearly break my back ice-skating across a margarine blob on the floor.

Easily roused, I give that fingernail-on-the-blackboard parental cry: ‘Who did this?’ Every child in the house answers, ‘I dunno. It wasn’t me.’

I conclude that a neighbour’s child stole into the house, opened the fridge and larder for a day of devastation. This was an attempt to fool his parents into thinking he always keeps his own kitchen clean.

Not so. Someone in our house did it, but everyone denies it.

Denial. It’s a common complaint in our world, and not only when it comes to covering up our own misdemeanours.

Some curious people even go so far as to cover up the misdemeanours of others, claiming that actual factual events never took place.

We have at present one gent being refused access to several countries because he insists on denying the reality of the Jewish Holocaust.

And he’s not even alone. M Hirsch Goldberg (in The Book of Lies) says Paul Rassinier, a French author, Arthur Butz, a Northwestern University professor, and Robert Fausisson, a Sorbonne professor, all equally claim that the Holocaust is a hoax.

How curious. The Holocaust has been called ‘the most documented of all crimes.’ So how can people deny it? (I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at denial – we still share this ball-shaped planet with convinced flat-earthers.)

In our own nation we have Maori tribes stating that large chunks of land should be returned to them because they were ‘stolen’ by early visitors to the land. Yet history books tell how some of these ‘stolen’ lands were sold several times over by our present Maoris’ ancestors. Some South Island Maori even travelled to Sydney to clinch the deal.

More usually, denial wants to cover up its own ugly truths.

Last week Waco’s David Koresh appeared on television in an Aussie interview laughing off claims that he’d abused children and women, physically and sexually. Yet the voices of his victims said otherwise. I suppose if you think you’re a Messiah you can do, and deny, anything. (Bert Potter has the same problem.)

Denial is a form of lying. A far-more widely acknowledged Messiah, Jesus, once said to the hypocrites of His day, ‘The devil is your father, because he’s the father of all liars.’

But you don’t have to be the devil to be denied. The widely-acknowledged Messiah has also come in for His share of denial. Last year Barbara Thiering had a go at Him, using some newly invented cryptology to argue away everything He was supposed to have said and done.

How much increase in cash she may have made from her form of denial is anyone’s guess, but she can’t have done much to increase her reputation as a scholar.

And more recently, one Professor Thompson has concluded that various chief figures never existed, because he couldn’t find any archaeological evidence for them.

When we went to Cannibal Bay in the Catlins at New Year we looked in vain for signs of the guidebook’s ‘remains of a forest buried by blown sand and evidence of moa-hunter living areas.’ Our first reaction was to deny the truth of the guide book.

However, does it mean that more knowledgeable people were necessarily wrong, or that contemporary records were mistaken, just because we didn’t find any evidence?

These scholars and messiahs mentioned above have come a long way from leaving a mess in the kitchen and the childhood saying, ‘It wasn’t me.’

Denial on their scale becomes a refusal to face the facts, or believe the truth.

 

David Koresh was already dead, on the 19^th April, 1993, by the time this column was published, so I presume the television interview had been filmed some time before. The horrendous end to the Waco siege was as shocking as the Jim Jones murder-suicide in Guyana.

Doublespeak

First published in Column Eight on the 21^st April, 1993

Every employer must at some time have sat down to face that most delicate and awe-inspiring of tasks: the writing of a testimonial for a departing employee whose stay has not endeared them to you.

A type-rope tread is required. How to be fair without destroying the person’s working future? On the other hand you need to warn prospective employers of whom they may be employing.

A code is needed. Here are a few examples of its use.

I recommend him heartily to any other employer: I’m happy as long as he’s not working for us.

A sparkling, witty, vivacious and outgoing person who communicates easily with both customers and staff: Never stops talking long enough to do any work.

This person will revolutionize your office procedures: Once he gets hold of your files you’ll never find anything again.

Efficiency is her other name: She not only corrects all your spelling mistakes – she re-writes your letters.

Picks up new tasks so quickly, you’ll wonder why you need to train her: She can’t be told anything because she already knows it all.

Exceptional at handling the firm’s finances: Must have been putting his hand in the till, but we couldn’t catch him doing it.

Self-confident, innovative, full of new ideas, progressive and dynamic: He knew more than the boss.

This person has become skilled in all our operations and knowledgeable about all our tasks. He has never missed a day’s work, and has put in extra time without remuneration (frequently missing lunch breaks to get jobs finished). He has taken work home, and even called up during his holidays to see how things are going: He used to be the manager.

Of course, that’s the employers’ viewpoint. Supposing employees had to write testimonials for their bosses – what sort of doublespeak would be needed then? Some examples…

An excellent supervisor: It’s a relief when he stops looking over your shoulder to see if you’re doing the job properly.

Often calls you into his office to discuss working problems: Is always demanding you go upstairs so he can threaten to sack you.

Very good at give and take: Gives abuse then takes a bit off your wages.

Makes sure everything in the office is well-oiled: He’s a greaseball.

Keeps staffs’ personal problems confidential: Keeps details in a file which may be brought out and used in evidence against you.

Likes to make sure everything is running smoothly at all times: A one-man band with no idea how to delegate.

Allows staff to work at their own pace: Spends the whole day in his office ringing up the TAB, or working out how much he can deduct for expenses, or programming his computer to give him the next six figures in the Lotto.

Sensitive and concerned about staff needs: Will only bawl you out in front of everyone when you’ve made the mistake of the century; or when your wife has left you and the kids and somehow managed to sign your house over to your mother-in-law; or when the big chief from head office is down on a PR trip with reps from the Japanese sister company.

Usually even-tempered, and manages to keep her cool even under the most stressful circumstances: As long as the stressful circumstances are yours she’ll be okay; but when she’s having morning sickness, or finds that her husband forgot to put pickle in her ham sandwiches, or when instead of sending out the top copy the typist has fast-posted the carbon she’d scribbled rude remarks on – then, and only then does she exhibit a little distemper.

 

courtesy: https://www.amtec.us.com

 

The TAB is the agency that controlled betting on racehorses at this time; now it also covers betting on a wide range of sports with human participants. It’s been running for some seventy years.

Indecision

First published in Column Eight on the 31^st March 1993

Otago: wild coasts, arid inlands, lush pasturelands. A province of marvellous contradictions. That last word sums up not only the piece of Earth we inhabit but also this province’s prevailing attitude to its Anniversary Day.

Do other provinces take such an ad hoc approach to their holiday? Would we so arbitrarily toss around Labour Weekend, Good Friday or Boxing Day? (We have better reason to do so with Queen’s Birthday, since the Queen celebrates it twice each year.)

This year confusion was added to confusion as banks and offices took one stance, retailers another, and some schools a third, in order to fit in with a much more important event – the cricket.

With some shops believing that they have to trade every day, or die, shoppers had no idea what would be open in town.

What are we celebrating? Not much it seems. The newspaper presented some historical articles on the earliest settlers, and reported on the high school’s Anniversary Day speech. I didn’t see anything else.

Quite honestly, while we fluff around year after year, the whole point of the holiday ceases to be. What will take to make us unite? An Act of Parliament?

Indecision continues in another area: the Andy Bay roundabout. I had high hopes for improvement when I saw Citiworks back there digging and delving. Yes, the plot in the middle is bigger, with a nice kerb for cars to ride up on to. It still, however, looks like a base for some civic dignitary’s bronze statute which hasn’t arrived from the foundry.

Let’s face it, a roundabout doesn’t work in this location. Abandon it and put in some plain old-fashioned traffic lights before an enormous semi-trailer demolishes a Mini trying simultaneously to negotiate that pitiful zig-zag of a double lane.

Yet more indecision: the buses. The free day must have shown that Dunedinites don’t have any inherent problem about riding on buses. (Although I have some inherent problems about that seamy ‘You can do it on a bus’ piece of advertising. It’s about as clever as most toilet graffiti. 

Where Dunedinites do have problems is the basic fact that it costs more to travel daily on a bus than to take the car – in terms of petrol, at least. If every member of our family used a bus instead of being taxied everywhere (that’s assuming with the present timetable they could find a bus), our budget would skyrocket. Either that, or we’d just stop going lots of places.

The chicken or the egg. As long as prices stay up, and as long as there are no buses when they’re needed, who’s going to bother going on them?

More indecision: parking meters back in the main shopping area. Just when we’d got the city beginning to look halfway decent, someone want to clutter it up again. (Why not bring back overhead electricity wiring as well?)

The problem isn’t the fact of parking in the main street, it’s the fact of cars in the main street. Rather than plant rows of meters again, let’s think about making the Octagon through to Frederick St a pedestrian-only zone. The idea’s been around for years – let’s move with the times and get on with it.

And finally, a possible decision – 16-year-olds in night clubs.

I’d like to be optimistic about human nature, so I’ll try. Of course they won’t drink, of course no one will  buy drinks for them, of course the bar staff will have time to supervise, of course there won’t be trouble, of course the drinking problem in New Zealand won’t be encouraged.

Of course, pigs will become a problem to air traffic controllers.

 

Trooping the Colour 

The Queen herself didn’t actually celebrate her birthday twice a year; but we in New Zealand celebrated it on a day different to the actual day she was born. Apparently the first Monday in June is the day – in England – when the Trooping the Colour takes place. In England, of course, it’s also the start of Summer, and the ‘official’ birthday of whichever monarch is in power. New Zealand, without consideration, celebrates it at the beginning of winter, which makes no sense at all.

Otago Anniversary Day is supposed to be observed on the closest Monday to the 23^rd of March. However, most schools celebrate it on Easter Tuesday, even when the school holidays occur at the same time. Offices tend to close on the official day, but shops often stay open and also tack it onto Easter. Even though many of them now stay open as well!

I don’t know which Andersons (Andy) Bay roundabout I’m talking about here. Partly this is my ongoing dislike of roundabouts that aren’t really big enough, or are too big – or like the newest one in Oamaru, where I now live, are so big that they barely fit the intersection, and cars struggle to rotate around them. Ambulances and fire engines avoid it completely.images 

I’m intrigued that way back in 1993 I was advocating for a pedestrian only main street. I've long since changed my mind about this. In the last couple of years, part of George St (the main street), was turned into a semi-pedestrian street. Except that cars can drive along it single file, and in one direction, as well. It has not exactly proved popular, and worse, it’s removed even more parking spaces from the central city, something that a peculiarly ideological City Council (the one before the current one) decided was a good idea. Now traffic flow in the city is worse than it was, and finding a park is more of a nightmare than ever. Pro-bikies, who have gained sections of the roads where car used to park and where bikies seldom appear, say this is a great thing, carefully forgetting that the elderly don’t tend to ride bikes, that it’s very difficult to take home your weekly grocery shopping on a bike, that getting children to school is impossible on one bike and so on. And that Dunedin has many hills…

Glorious?

First published in Column Eight on the 7^th April, 1993

I see some protester has scrawled obscenities on the Cenotaph. Downwards at an angle above the inscription, The Glorious Dead, is a word both objectionable and objecting.

I may be wrong in thinking that the protester disagrees with the message engraved on this monument. Maybe he or she had nothing else to do. The obvious intent, however, was to cry out that the implications of the phrase, The Glorious Dead, are hard to justify. Our view of war, in general, has changed since the days when monuments were raised in memory of soldiers slain in battle.

While some of those who gave their lives for their countries may live on in glory, their deaths were anything but glorious.

Death on the battlefield is a horrifying alternative: a long slow lingering torture or a sudden extinguishing of the light. There isn’t much in between. Although the death arises in an attempt to halt the onslaught of the enemy, at the moment of truth, those slaughtered must find their self-sacrificing motives mixed with, or even overwhelmed by, the desire for life.

Yes, I know giving one’s life for one’s country is a noble thing. so we used to think; it’s an extension of the noble philosophy of giving one’s life for a friend. But what battle was ever noble? Most are outlandish horror.

An article in the news this week detailed the after-battle life of a Vietnam veteran, from Palmerston North. This man has been so affected he can no longer stand the stress of living amongst other people. A television documentary some months back showed US veterans living out their lives in isolation, far away from families and friends.

I’ve been considering this whole matter of glory in war, or the lack of it – and its morality – after reading the draft of a book on pacifism by a near-neighbour of mine, Walter Lawry.

In the days of World War II, patriotism was at one of its  heights, and the majority thought war had to be fought, come what may.

The pacificist minority were viewed as traitors, wimps, and cowards, people who  had no consideration even for the safety of their own wives and families.

Their heroism was viewed very bleakly by almost all who had dealings with them. Yet it takes as much courage to stand up to the majority who believe they are right, as it does to stand up to an enemy who threatens to overwhelm you, and take your life.

Ironically, it seems easier to die for your country than to live on in the ignominy of going against the common grain.

The story outlined in this book is the sort that blows away all the dusty geniality of our history, as we thought we knew it. It exposes the antagonism shown to the conscientious objectors, an antagonism equal in ferocity to that shown to the enemy.

As Lawry says, New Zealand had to prove itself more loyal to the Empire than the very country that made the Empire. In Britain, some ‘conchies’ were given a short prison sentence – perhaps a month. Generally they were put to useful work.

In NZ, they were separated from their wives and families, imprisoned for the duration of the war – up to five years – and wasted in terms of productivity.

More than forty years down the track we’re finally beginning to appreciate the price men paid for refusing to go off and kill.

Standing up to the current world view will always get you knocked down. And as Easter approaches, I’m reminded of that all-time great conscientious objector, Jesus of Nazareth. He had the same problem when He stood up for the truth. His enemies buried Him and tried to put Him out of sight.

When it comes to truth, things haven’t changed a lot. The only difference now is that the majority bury Easter, and Jesus, and the glorious truth He spoke about, either under an avalanche of pop-eyed bunnies and chocolate eggs, or indifference.

Walter Lawry lived a couple of blocks away from me, and I was given the privilege of reading his book, We Said No To War, before it was published, in 1994. I think I did a bit of proofreading on it.

Continuing on with Spanish!

 I haven't been keeping up with the groups of ten Spanish sentences that I was working on because I decided to finish memorising Psalm 139 in Spanish. (Salmos ciento treinta y nueve.) I'm just about there; I have about four verses to go. But it's hard work! 

I usually try and learn them when I wake up earlier than I intend, say about 4 am. I lie in bed with my phone under the covers so as not to disturb my wife, and go over and over them. By breakfast time, of course, the words have wandered off into the brain's systems somewhere, as they should, but they don't want to come back until later. Maybe they have to get endorsed somehow, as being bona fide members of the long-term memory club. 

Anyway, I haven't thrown away the idea of fluency through the Spanish sentences. There are currently three sets of ten; the third set is mostly struggling to get off the ground because of the clash with Salmos ciento treinta y nueve.

I considered earlier on today that it's perhaps it’s not essential to remember those sentences forever, as it were. None of them are important in their own right, and they don't connect with each other in terms of subject matter. They're random sentences from my collection of Anki cards. 

On the other hand, being able to remember them individually and correctly is good for me, so I'm better to aim for long-term retention. 

Initially with the first group of ten sentences I took one strong word out of each sentence as the key word and then matched it up with another strong word out of the next sentence. Once I had all ten key words I used to them to form a kind of 'story.' 

This worked pretty well on the first set, less so on the second, and not really at all on the third. Which indicates a flaw somewhere. That may have been that I realised I now had to do the work of connecting these key words up to each other in some way in order to remember them!

Having to remember the ‘key words’ in order to find the sentence in my head was just another thing to have to remember on top of the sentences themselves. Perhaps the brain bureaucracy thought that remembering two lots things at once was a bit unnecessary, and they've demanded I simplify. 

I'm part of a choir where the conductor started the year off aiming to teach us the Kodály sol fa method along with the new music we were doing. I was enthusiastic at first, and the choir tried hard to fit to this, but for all the method's values it meant we were having to learn two things at once, one of which was not readily connected with the music. And then we still had to learn the words of the songs separately. The method has its merits and is highly regarded in its home country, among other places. But somehow it just didn't gel for many of us. Possibly the brain bureaucracy was trying to ease its workload.

Back to the sentences. I needed a better way. 

For a long time I've used an alphabetical system to keep track of which piece of poetry or Scripture is next in my long list of memorised items. This consisted of attaching the name of a person I knew well to each item I learned. 

It was very satisfactory when I only had a smallish list, but once it got to the cumbersome stage - my list is now about two thirds of the way through the alphabet for the fifth time - it became hard to remember whether it was Harry or Harold who was H in the set I was working on, or Arnold or Arthur, and so on.

The trouble is that names, even though they may remind me of particular people I know well, have no intrinsic meaning. (Yes, of course they have meanings as words that have become names.) I've known quite a few people called Harry or Harold or Arnold or Arthur, or variations on those. Their names are important but the names themselves are essentially just 'tags' to identify them. They don't in themselves say anything memorable about the particular person. 

So as a memory system they're not ideal. But the alphabet is well and truly embedded in my head. If I combine that with using strong, vigorous, even violent nouns to invoke a picture in my imagination, I'm making better connections and should keep them more readily. If I give each Spanish sentences an alphabetical noun that immediately put something strongly visual in my head, then I'm a step closer to tacking them successfully onto the sentences. 

The nouns have to be very definite, easily visualised and very memorable. Definite and very memorable is more usable than just any old noun that comes along, such as A is for Apple. Better to have A is for Atomic Bomb, B for Battle (of Waterloo?), C for Car Crash (preferably not of my car, but perhaps it should be). Gabriel Wyman talks about strong violent associations in part of his book, though in a slightly different context; the idea has a long history of usage in memorization. 

I'm not sure of the logistics of putting this together as yet, but it's more encouraging than the feeling I have at the moment of losing the ground I've gained.

UPDATE 5.8.26: Salmos 138 now complete - just have to keep revising it until it's permanently stuck in the memory banks!

This is close to the version I'm learning, but still not the same. 
I'm amazed at how many Spanish translations there are of this Psalm.