Interview with Jim Heskett

I've been doing some promotional work on Google+, getting to know some other writers and interacting with them. It's been fruitful for me, and hopefully for them. I asked a few of them if they would like to read my latest book, The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret, and give me some feedback. 

Some have responded, and the first one to read it, Jim Heskett, who's published a book of poetry recently, Love Poems, Hate Poems, was the first to come back to me. I gave him a list of questions that I thought he might like to answer, and here are the unadulterated responses. 

Me: Did the book entertain you, keep you wanting to know what happened next?

Jim: It did. The first chapter had a nice mystery hook with the blood-taking barber. The suspense had a nice ramp-up over the first half of the book.

Me: Did the characters come across as real people for you?

Jim: Hard to gauge, since I’m not too familiar with children’s literature. It felt like a fairy tale, a bit like Neil Gaiman.

Me: Were any of the lines or situations amusing to you?

Jim: The banter between Olivia and Billy was pretty clever.

Me: Did you find the situations plausible, given that there’s an element of fantasy in it?

Jim: I did, but it seemed odd to me that Jerry wouldn’t recognize his own parents after only twenty years. Also, that Billy thought of his dad as “jerry” and not “dad.”

Me: Did you feel that the language was at a suitable level for younger readers (given that it’s intended for kids from 6 - 12, roughly)

Jim: I think so, it seemed comparable to the first couple Harry Potter books.

Me: Did you enjoy it as an adult reader? Would you read it to your kids? (Well, when he’s ready...)

Jim: I did enjoy it! Good suspense, fun situations, and a satisfying ending.

Me: Did you find there were any cultural differences that you queried while reading it?

Jim: A little, but I lived in Australia, so I was able to puzzle out most of the slight language differences. Referring to the skateboarders as Ninjas was a new one to me.

Me: This is intended to be a stand-alone story, but it has links back to the first book in the series. Did it make you want to find out what the first book was about?

Jim: Since I knew nothing about the first book, I didn’t know what any of those links back to the first book were. Maybe adding some mystery by making vague references to things that happened before might help.

Me: Was there anything that really irritated you...?

Jim: I found some POV problems that stuck out to me… the POV seemed mostly in Billy’s head, but occasionally it would jump into another person’s head for a few sentences here and there. That’s a small quibble but those things always pull me out of the story.

You can also buy The Blood Secret on Smashwords, Kobo and iTunes. 

Mr Prosser

The song and dance about Mr Prosser because of his hyperbole about young Muslim males seems to have died down, perhaps because it was really nowhere near as big an issue as all the other politicians (except Mr Peters) made out.  In his article in Investigate, Mr Prosser was plainly writing in an exaggerated fashion, which is what hyperbole means: the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.  [My italics]
The only reason all the MPs took it literally was because (a) they felt it was the PC thing to do - tolerance and all that; (b) Mr Prosser became the scapegoat for all those 'mistakes' that other politicians make - either intentionally or unintentionally.  It meant they could heap all the garbage on him and make themselves smell clean.
The Green Party made this statement, which is equally full of hyperbole: "...the Green Party moved that Parliament affirm "that all New Zealanders, regardless of their religious faith or ethnicity, should be treated equally before the law and that the rights and dignity of all people, in particular of Muslims, should be upheld, and that the House acknowledge the responsibility of all New Zealanders to care for one another, to honour the sanctity of each and every one of us, and act with justice, equity and respect in all that we say and do." Fine words, but note the phrase 'in particular of Muslims'.  This could easily be read as putting Muslims on a rung higher than everyone else.  Is that what they meant?  Very unlikely.  
And note the other phrase 'to honour the sanctity of each and every one of us.'  Compare this to this clause from the Green Party's Policy on Women: Review abortion services to ensure equity of access for women throughout New Zealand.  So it's all right to honour the sanctity of each and every one of us in a fancy, rhetorical style, but when it boils down to honouring the sanctity of the lives of children as yet unborn, the Green Party wants to ensure that women claiming their 'right' to do what they want with their own bodies, can abort these children.  
With one hand the Green Party hoists itself up a notch with its fine words; with the other it drops back again into the same old tired slogans.  
In another paragraph from the NZ Herald's report we have: But while some, including Dr Ghani [President of the Federation of Islamic Associations], said they accepted [Mr Prosser's] apology at face value, others, including Prime Minister John Key and Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres, were doubtful.  Mr Key's comment was: if he's apologised he's just doing that to move on. 
Huh?  Would Mr Prosser apologise in order to stand still?  He had no reason to apologise in the first place, but having apologised he's supposed to act as if he hasn't apologised.  Please, Mr Key.  Speak logically if you will (and remember that every time you open your mouth you tend to contradict something you said on other occasion; it's all reported by the media).  David Shearer said anyone holding Mr Prosser's sort of views shouldn't be an MP.  Really?  I'd be interested to hear what the criteria are for being an MP.  It might be enlightening. 
The right honourable Hone Hawawira was so incensed with Mr Prosser he wouldn't even let him make a personal statement in Parliament.  Where was the Speaker at that time - or has Harawira decided that he makes the rules in the House now?  Note that this is the same Mr Harawira who swore in response to a question from a student at Waikato University in which the student, Steve Baron, referred to Māori as a "minority group," (which statistically, they are). Harawira said Mr Baron was a racist who "lumped Māori in with other minorities like homosexuals and Asians.....He tried it on and he got his comeuppance."   The same Mr Harawira who was part of a group that assaulted University students with bats and hoses.  The same Mr Harawira who said he "wouldn't feel comfortable" if one of his children came home with a Pākehā partner, but he asked whether "all Pākehās would be happy with their daughters coming home with a Māori boy? The answer is they wouldn't." He was asked, since some of his whānau have dated Pacific Islanders and he didn't have an issue with it, "does that make him prejudiced?" He said "Probably, but how many people don't have prejudices?"
Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei said Mr Prosser should leave Parliament.  'This is hate speech, I'm concerned that NZ First continues to support him.'  Green Party members are very concerned about 'hate speech'. A 74-year-old German female pensioner was dobbed in by the German Green Party for carrying a 'hate speech' sign in a demonstration; Presidential Candidate for the Green Party, Roseanne Barr, called a Christian speaker 'an accomplice to murder' for disagreeing with liberal views about gay marriage. The problem is, that what the Green Party calls 'hate speech' used to be called 'free speech' - in other words, a different opinion on some particular question.
Act Party leader John Banks said while he'd probably made more mistakes than Mr Prosser, "he needs to fall on his sword."  It's interesting to hear Mr Banks admitting to making mistakes - he's never apologised before for most of his blunders since he's been in Parliament.  
 So, as usual, the upshot is that if there's a chance to win points off an MP, or a Party, then other MPs or Parties will do so.  Never mind about governing the country; just waste heaps of expensive time (even more expensive since the last politicians' pay rise at Christmas) on issues that are small in the overall view of things.  Perhaps Mr Prosser was foolish to write in such an exaggerated fashion.  Nevertheless he's pointing at a real problem, which is that airport security since 2001 has become a nightmare: it's expensive, it's time-consuming, and it's mostly unproductive.  And worst of all, the innocent passengers who just want to get from A to B are the ones that suffer.

Rambling on about hats

Look at photos from the early twentieth century, and everyone - men, women and children - is wearing a hat. Everyone.

Even up until the fifties, when I was a child, most people wore hats. We wore caps to school, caps that had a little brim out the front made of hard card which was good for flicking someone else with.

And then suddenly this all stopped. It was as if overnight a switch had been reset and hats became invisible. You have to wonder what happened to them all.

We've never quite gone back to the total hat scene, although hats of various sorts are much more visible now than they were a decade ago. A few weeks ago, for a few days in a row, there was a man in a suit, on the bus, wearing a hat that looked like the one on the right - it's the sort of hat very few people wear these days.

Which reminds me that a couple of decades ago some brave soul started up a hat shop here in Dunedin, at a time when hats were practically invisible. A friend of mine bought one that was even more stylish than the one pictured, and wore it briefly - until he realised that just no one was wearing anything like that. And the shop closed within months of opening, as I recall, which was hardly surprising.

Women's hats, of the kind that used to be worn by every woman (with exceedingly extravagant versions available to those in 'society'), appear at weddings, but not much anywhere else. (My wife wore one to my son's wedding.) We seem to have moved on from the age when the hat was a symbol (more than something to protect your head) and when people spent a good deal of time on windy days holding onto their hats - or chasing them along the street. And we've certainly moved on from the time when it was normal to wear a hat,whatever the weather, and whatever the occasion.

In the hotel room we stayed at in Heidelberg four years ago, the only other item in the room was a hatstand - which seemed a bit optimistic.

However, having said that hats are well nigh invisible, that's not quite the truth. Hats of the more formal kind, with a brim all round seem to have gone into hiding, but hats in general (covering a wide range of styles) still appear - if you keep your eyes open.

Men and boys wear the baseball type cap (thankfully the right way round for the most part) and these are particularly useful for wearing as a kind of shade to keep the sun out of your eyes. Consequently I wear one through the summer when I'm walking to work, and even well into the winter - both to keep my head warm and also to act as a shade against the very low winter sun. I even wore a cloth (or flat) cap for a time - someone had given it to me and it just suited the purpose.

And talking of winter, that's when a vast array of hats appear: beanies that fit all around the bonce, (by beanie I mean the NZ version, not the one in the picture) and the occasional balaclava, and those peculiar knitted things full of colour that hang around down the ears and would loop around under the chin if it was stylish to do them up (I've just discovered they're called a 'chullo'). Knitted hats, in fact, are very common in the winter, and certainly in our climate they're great for keeping the heat in (although I've read somewhere recently that we don't actually lose a large percentage of our heat from our heads after all - wish scientists would get their facts right and stick with them).

Wikipedia, of course, has articles on the hat - this one has a great list of them with photos attached - it surprising just what a wide variety there are around the world. You can even buy Wikipedia trucker hats with various sayings on them...rather like the slogans on t-shirts.

Well, there you go. How to ramble about the hat when I could possibly, and probably should be, doing something else. What the heck, I'm nearly retired!

The right way to deal with statistics

Bradley Wright, pg 218-9 of Christians are Hate-filled Hypocrites...and other lies you've been told:

For reasons I don't fully understand, statistics hold a strange power over people. Someone who is otherwise a clear thinker will readily accept something not true when it is presented as a statistic. (This is especially true for statistics presented in written form.) Statistics somehow can bypass the critical-thinking part of hte brain and go straight ot the "oh, that must be right" part.

Guess what? You don't have to believe all statsitics! The Bible commands us to love others unconditionally, but this applies to people, not statistics. With statistics, we should be everything we shouldn't be with people - cranky, sceptical, and critical. With statistics, acceptance should be earned, not freely given.

I routinely irritate friends and family by not believing the statistics that they tell me if the statistics don't sound right. When I disagree, they sometimes respond by repeating the statistic, in case I somehow missed that it's a statistic (and therefore to be accepted at face value). I still choose not to believe it, and their reaction is often one of disbelief, as if I'm breaking some unwritten rule.

His rules for his 'deputy-sociologists' in dealing with a statistic (pg 221):

Question whether it's accurate
Question the motives of the person writing
Disagree with the conclusions
Judge the statistic in light of your own experiences
Not believe it for any reason, including just being in a cranky mood.

I note that this has been my way of working with statistics for quite some time, so it's nice to know I'm in good company!