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. 

Encouragement

First published in Column 8, on the 24^th March, 1993

A few days ago I spent a pleasant half-hour writing a letter to an author, someone I know only through a book discovered by chance in the library. I’ve never come in contact with the man before, and I’m not even sure if his other books will appeal to me.

However, the book I read (which was about the craft of writing), struck a chord on most of its 255 pages. The nearer I came to the end, the more I was sure I wanted to drop the writer a note.

Writing to authors isn’t something I do every time I read a book – if it was, I’d be writing letters all the year round. But when someone has written a book that really pleases me, and I wish it would never come to an end, then a few words of appreciation are always worth the effort.

Probably the first author I had the nerve to write to had been the victim of an unpleasant American review (the victim was a Brit).

Initially I wrote a rather stroppy letter to the magazine in which the review had appeared, telling them while everyone else had to put with and understand the American sense of humour, they didn’t seem to reciprocate by understanding anyone else’s. I believed that was the main reason why the reviewer hadn’t seen the point of the British book.

(A reviewer in the same magazine on another occasion claimed that the spellings on the British edition would be off-putting for American readers – perhaps the Americans really are becoming a different people.)

Surprisingly my pugnacious letter was published in the magazine. I photocopied it and the original review, and sent them to the author, along with a sympathetic letter which I hoped would ‘console’ him a little for the way in which his work had been attacked.

Naturally he was hardly grateful to the extent of sending me five free autographed copies of his book, but he did appreciate the fact that a reader had gone to the trouble of writing.

Writing to authors is a way of expressing appreciation for their work, and I’ve done it a few times since. Moreover, it establishes human contact that’s otherwise missing for most authors. Each of those I’ve written to have replied: in doing so they come across as ordinary people doing a job that most of us regard as something out of the ordinary.

Sure, authors get paid, and one or two out of a hundred are able to make a decent living. But apart from the payment, the mere sale of a book doesn’t mean as much to a writer as the fact that some other mind has taken hold of it, grasped its point and enjoyed it – or been stirred by it.

All writers like to be told how much their hard work has meant to their readers (incidentally, this isn’t a personal request to be inundated with fan-mail!)

Writers must work for the most part on their own; they have to cut themselves off from families and friends to get the work done; a tremendous number of brain cells are used up over a job that may barely make a ripple on the sea of books published each year.

For writers of books which aren’t bestsellers the encouragement of some readers must go a long way towards telling them what they’d done wasn’t wasted.

A short letter lets them know, months and perhaps years down the track from when they first conceived their ideas and shaped them into sensible sentences, that someone understands what they’re saying, and has responded.

Rob Lloyd Jones [see below]
from his web page

The author was John Jerome, and the book was The Writing Trade, the first book of his that I’d read. I really enjoyed Jerome’s work, the apparently effortless style, the quiet humour, and the ability to make something fairly ordinary seem extraordinary. Even the weather.

I also wrote at one time to an author of commentaries on Old Testament books. Dale Ralph Davis had by that time written several books covering the period of Biblical history from Judges to Second Kings. I received a very gracious letter from him, and still have it. I’ve read almost all of his books now, and re-read the history commentaries two or three each.

I don’t remember the incident about the British book I got ‘pugnacious’ about – so I haven’t a clue as to who the author was or what the book was called.

The most recent author I’ve written to is Rob Lloyd Jones, who among some thirty titles wrote a series of four kids’ adventure books. I found all four of these in the give-away section of the Waitaki library, where I do some volunteer work once a week. Sadly it didn’t look as though they’d been read much. However they turned out to be funny and imaginative and very readable. The main character, Jake Atlas, usually manages to unintentionally destroy quite a number of famous ancient treasures and famous places in the course of each of book; the Aswan dam in Egypt, for instance, or a well-known museum of antiquities, or some long-standing place of ancient worship, or the Terracotta Army, which goes down like vast rows of skittles. But he’s not out to destroy, but to save. He grows as a character through the series, and the last one has an ending that is surprising in light of the style of the books up to that point.

Salmon education

First published in Column 8 on the 17^th March, 1993

Hamlet once told that patient and passive listener, Horatio, that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy.

Hamlet was giving him the reasonably sound advice that he needed to keep his mind open as well as his ears. And in the play, Roots, Beatle Bryant says, ‘Education ent only books and music – it’s asking questions, all the time.’

Which brings me to the fact that I never fail to be astonished at the things I don’t know, or at the things I can learn by a conversation with someone who has interests different from mine.

For instance, our household knowledge has increased since the time salmon fishing became a feature of our lives. All manner of new words and ideas are now part of our mental furniture: sprat jigs and smolt, quinnat and sockeye. Being a burglar even takes on another meaning, in the sense of someone cheekily catching a fish in another person’s patch.

In mid-February I had an intriguing conversation with Jack Chandra, the chairman of the Otago branch of the New Zealand Salmon Anglers’ Association, on the subject of doorstep fishing. This is one of Dunedin’s somewhat underrated tourist attractions. (It certainly attracts the locals, particularly the wife of one of the locals. The minister of one church even spends his off-duty hours salmon fishing – ‘gathering sermon material.’)

I hadn’t realised that salmon fishing in our harbour is a relatively new thing: a decade ago it was virtually unheard of. Salmon aren’t native to South Island waters; they were imported last century.

However, the shallow waters of the Leith aren’t deep enough for the salmon to do any of that upstream swimming which is a feature of their spawning cycle. So the Anglers’ Association took a ‘put and take’ approach to salmon fishing in our harbour. This means you don’t get salmon out of the water unless you put them in first, in the form of very young salmon, called smolt.

One of the interesting things about smolt, which are hatched further north and brought down here in oxygenised tankers, is that while they are very young a few degrees’ change in temperature can make quite a difference to their little lives.

Turn the temperature up about four degrees and all the males become females. Now that must please my feminist readers – or the one I know I have, at least.

Can you imagine such a process taking place amongst humans? Here’s some cool young dude all geared up for a sunbathe at the beach. It’s a hotter than usual day, and he gets his tan all right. However, he also finds, to his horror, it’s necessary to go home and change his trousers for a skirt. Permanently. The dangers of melanoma pale by comparison.

Back to the serious stuff…

Once the smolt arrive in our harbour, they make themselves at home for up to six weeks before heading out to sea. So what makes them return? Though the harbour waters are salty, they’re diluted enough to act as fresh water for the salmon; this water ‘imprints’ them, and like salmon everywhere, they will eventually return to their ‘home’ ground.

Of course salmon can only be taken if they are put in to the harbour in the first place. This exercise costs money, and though the association’s members work very hard at raising it, they could always do with more. Along with Jack, I feel it would be a sad day for Dunedin if a burgeoning tourist attraction died a premature death for lack of cash.

We need to encourage this doorstep recreation.

Then, perhaps, when the City Council puts the cable car back into High St, it could run the other end down to the wharf. As the tourists reach the turntable, they would step off the platform, gather up their ‘rods for hire’ fishing gear, (including a container of freshly caught sprats), throw in their line and relax. The salmon would do the rest.

 

Part of Otago Harbour - the main city is to the left;
the sea off in the distance. 

It’s interesting that we discovered while we were on holiday in Wanaka this year a place called Hook, where you can fish for a Chinook salmon, have it filleted and gutted and vacuum-sealed in order to take home. Or you can have it cooked on the spot by their café chef, and eat it while enjoying the sun and water. There are several ponds in the place, and most of them have salmon in them; some in large quantities. It’s a great place just to walk around in, or sit watching amateur fishermen and women doing their best.

You can still fish for salmon around Dunedin’s harbour, though not so readily anymore at the wharves close to the city, some of which have been closed off. These are Quinnat salmon, apparently.

Good intentions

First published in Column 8 on the 10^th March, 1993

Grammy award winner Eric Clapton sings a poignant song, with words along the lines of ‘Would I know your name, if I saw you in heaven?’ This song heart-tugs, rousing hard-to-deal-with emotions. There’s a plaintive cry of hopelessness.

Clapton may or may not be interested, but I have it on authority that there will be no tears in heaven, and I can’t see any sensible reason why we shouldn’t know people’s names there. His song, however, makes an interesting contrast to those of the 60s and 70s, when Lennon and Co told us we didn’t need God; rather we needed to ‘Imagine there’s no heaven.’

A cry of hopelessness, and tears on Earth. What to do and where to start?

In recent weeks a group of churches issued a combined ‘Message of Intent’ (a thing unthinkable a couple of decades ago) which dealt primarily with a social justice initiative in a (post) God-zone.

Though I’m told the media extensively discussed the statement, I’m not sure the said principles reached the ears of the person in the street. Just to recap on them, the churches want (1) the life and dignity of human beings enhanced; (2) to encourage good relationships in the community.

They want us (3) to recognise that all are called to work for the common good; (4) to believe work is an expression of human worth and self-respect, which all people have a right to; (5) to proclaim that the poor and vulnerable must be a major concern in social policy.

All very worthwhile statements. I’m sure they weren’t only being proclaimed to church members. The churches are declaring to those in power the need for social justice. Though the New Zealand churches have been noticeably remiss in their role as a voice of any authority for several decades, they’re to be applauded for making up lost ground.

Many New Zealanders don’t think the church as a body counts for much, but it still, in fact, has a very substantial role to play in the history and workings of this nation. I believe it’s gradually coming back into its own.

The churches are the ones picking up what they can of the pieces the Government has dropped in its be-all-and-end-all approach to economics. And last year it was a churchman who rightly informed Jim Bolger he was misquoting the Gospel.

Moreover, though non-churchgoers may not yet be aware of it, Christians are closer in unity now than they have been since they first came to this land. They haven’t got it all together yet, but it’s coming.

All that aside, I look at these five principles, and find there’s something lacking. They could just as easily have been produced as part of a party-political manifesto. As a statement of intent by Christians, a major piece of Christianity is missing.

To quote another part of the statement, the five principles are ‘firmly rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ.’ Yes, I guess you could say they are, although one of Jesus’s provocative statements was, ‘You’re always going to have the poor with you; pay attention to Me while you have the chance.’

The five principles, it seems to me, need to have a sixth added to make them worthy of the Christian body. Jesus Christ, for all His good works on Earth, which we’re told were too many to be counted, came here for a more specific purpose than any of the five stated above.

He came to make a way that could change people’s lives from the inside out. Thus when the people wanted more bread, He spoke about feeding their spirits; when they wanted to make Him an earthly King, He told them His kingdom wasn’t of this world, and hid from them.

I rejoice that the church is finally getting up off its chuff and doing what it has always done best. But I want to see it doing the whole job, dealing not only with the outer person, but with the inner.

 

From the Blog: On Teaching

I can’t find any reference to Jim Bolger misquoting the Gospel online, so I don’t know what this was referring to. And I also can’t find further details of the ‘Statement of Intent.’ Like so many well-intentioned things it appears to have disappeared from history, though perhaps someone can point me to a copy of it.

Even more on learning Spanish

The sentence-fluency process I wrote about a few weeks ago hasn't been getting much elbow room over the last few weeks, but I have continued learning Psalm 139 in Spanish - I already know it in English, so I've got a framework to start with. I'm up to verse 17 as of today. This has been an ongoing process since before the other (fluency) thing started, and since it's along the same lines, it's worth continuing with. 

The most difficult part is remembering how the verbs and pronouns go; they vary greatly from phrase to phrase in the Psalm. But more difficult is recognising the various irregular 'states' of the verbs - Spanish is far more full of irregular verbs than English. Most of these are fairly common words that are used frequently, verbs like hacer - to make, or do - or dicer - to say. Or worse: ser - to be - and ir - to go which are both the same in the oddly-named preterit tense: the tense that describes something that's done once and then finished. Here they're the equivalent of the English I was and I went tenses. These are irregular in English, but like most English verbs, don't change much from person to person ('person' as in I, we, you etc).

I assume Spanish speakers get used to using the same words for I was and I went - the context will no doubt make it clear. But it's hard to imagine English speakers using I was, for instance, for both I was and I went. I was downstairs when you called doesn't quite mean the same thing as I went downstairs when you called. But I could be making a mountain out of a molehill here, not yet being sufficiently au fait with the nuances of Spanish - or - No estoy suficientemente familiarizado con los matices del español. (That's Mr Google's translation; hopefully he's got it right, but it looks reasonable.)

Anyway, all this is leading to the following point: I decided to do something about the verb situation - dealing with the irregular ones, that is - and so I've started using the Anki cards to help me. I've taken several irregular preterit verbs (or preterite, as Wikipedia has it) and listed them in different ways on the cards. So I might focus on three of these verbs on one card, and list the first person singular for each in the answer. That kind of thing. Some of them are relatively familiar in their irregular forms (after all we use the past tense a lot in any language) so I recognise them. But remembering them is another matter. However, I've only been at this process for two or three days, and it's starting to come together. 

By the way, I got the various irregular verbs from The Red Pocket Book of Spanish Verbs, a book I found - if I remember rightly - at the Hospice shop in Dunedin. They have two shops at virtually the same location: one a normal op shop and the other nothing but books, mostly in good condition. And in categories. And in alphabetical order of authors! Wonderful work, Dunedin Hospice Shop!!

You don't have to have a red pocket to put the book in; it's the cover that's red. It tells us on the cover that it conjugates 333 verbs and does it fully. Yes, I can believe that. But in order to do so in a pocket-sized book (pocket as in large pocket) it has reduced the print to almost miniscule. I can just read it and no more. On a good day. With lots of sunshine. 

This copy used to belong to someone called Jack Bermingham. 
Thanks, Jack, for giving it a second life at my place.
I hope your eyesight didn't deteriorate as a result of the font size!