Column Eight and letters

A bunch of letters I received over the years regarding Column Eight. Some of these came through the post, as things did in those days, though my address was never advertised anywhere, and some were sent to the Midweek/Weekender office.

25^th May, 1992

Dear Mike,

We read with interest your Column while in Dunedin once again last week. We wish to say that we appreciated your tactful comments regarding the Dalai Lama’s Public Meeting in the Town Hall.

Thank you for exalting Jesus Christ as the complete answer for this World and its People today. We do wish many ministers would speak out from their Pulpits with this same courage as you have shown.

We have written a letter to the Bishop of Dunedin stating our disapproval of the fact that St Paul’s Cathedral was used for the purpose of a Public Meeting addressed by the Dalia Lama who represents the pagan god, ‘Buddha.’

It’s no small wonder that many people today are confused in trying to find the truth.

Your cousin Denise (nee Hannagan) has recently told us who you are. We are her Mother and Father-in-law.

Keep speaking out as you feel you have to.

God bless you for doing so

Eleanor & Bruce Teasdale, Arrowtown.

 

16^th August, 1992
Dear Mr Crowl,

Thank you from all of us for your very kind tribute to Dad in the Midweeker. Many people phoned to make sure we saw it.
We have copied it several times now to send the news of Dad’s death to his good friends overseas – in Canada, USA, Japan etc.
Yours sincerely, Mary O’Neill, Dunedin

 

Dec 16, 92.

Dear ‘Mike’

You and your column are really doing something for Dunedin, & Otago generally. You say such wise words, inspiring faith, hope and love, & all the godly gifts of mercy & justice & tolerance & truth. I look forward to your column more than anything & I hope it will be instrumental in bringing many souls to Christ (as He has been to me).

I hope your ‘virus’ & other painful experiences are of the past now. You have had a bad time! And you expressed it very well, I could feel it in my own bones.

This is written in an awful hurry. Some day we may meet, who knows.

Meanwhile God bless you & guide you all your days.

In sincerity, Effie Todd (81 yr old widow – but rich in Him).

Brockville, Dunedin.

 

29.5.93

By all means keep the copies of letters I sent.

You have some sort of influence & can spread it around – every little helps.

I also sent copies to ‘Women Against Porn’ & SPCS (I don’t know what they really do).

Rita Denham, South Dunedin

 

18.3.94

Dear Mr Crowl,

Your article continues to be excellent.

It seems a pity that the Midweek/Weekender has started up an ‘Adults’ Entertainment’ column, hopefully it won’t gather momentum until it reaches the mammoth proportions of the sleazy ads in the ODT, which are now akin to a walk around a red light district.

Ironic that close to the ODT columns is a paragraph stating that all ads must be in good taste. There is really no such thing these days, but I wonder exactly what criterion the ODT goes by.

The media re much to blame for the increase in pornography, sexual crimes, etc, in the way they continually dwell on it & dig out every little detail. Grist to the mill for potential perverts.

Yours sincerely, Mrs R Denham, South Dunedin.

 

July 28/93

Well done, Mike! I really enjoyed Column Eight: Fisherwomen. Not only was it great to read about women’s achievements but it was especially gratifying to see a journalist refusing to condone the use of ‘girls’ to describe adult women.

Thank you,
Yours sincerely

Shona Thompson, Dunedin.  

 

August 23^rd, 1994

Dear Mike Crowl

I meant to write to you immediately and congratulate you for your bravery in writing the Monarchy letter in Column Eight for Midweek of 10^th Aug 94.

Your opinion as portrayed would be one that is held by many silent Australian and New Zealand citizens.

While your Monarchy letter has appeared in Dunedin Star Midweek, it should qualify for publication in all New Zealand daily newspapers and that is what you may find difficult to achieve.

D J Ralston, Mosgiel.  

As of the 4^th of September, 2026 I’ve yet to discover which column this relates to.

 

17 May 1995

Dear Mr Crowl

I feel I must write in sincere appreciation of your timely column (‘Profane but PC’) in today’s Midweek.

Thank you for so aptly stating in a public forum what so many Christians strongly feel, yet cannot express due to lack of ability or opportunity.

With this article, you have pushed home a vital point: ‘How curious that political correctness protects all manner of groups but one.’ How curious, indeed.

May God bless you.

Yours sincerely,

Mary L Falconer, Mosgiel.

(I do not expect any response to this letter).

 

 

 

This came on a small card with no date:

Dear Mike,

I always read your column with interest.

Enclosed find a way of using all those unused envelopes.

M H Graham.

As of the 4^th of September, 2026 I’ve yet to discover which column this relates to.

 

Hello Mike,

I read with interest your article ‘A Sade State of Affairs.’ It so happens I lent someone a book once of Marquis de Sade but it was never returned to me. It annoys me that I am unable to remember the title and I simply wondered if you could inform me how many books there were and what their titles were.

Keep up the good work. You’re a great writer and I always read your articles with immense interest.

Have a great day and never mind if you cannot help me, it’s not too important.

With kind regards, Joss Detollanaere, Waitati

Sadly, this being before the days of Google, I was unable to help.

 

 

No date:

Dear Mike,

I like this column very much; would you sign it & send it back?

Jocelyn Jaquiery (same name, but not Stephen Jacquiery’s wife)

Stephen Jacquiery has been one of the ODT’s longstanding photographers. 

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.