Not quite the Queen's Birthday List

One last thing from HitTail for tonight: a list of the people I’ve written about who keep turning up in search engines.
Anna Leese – NZ opera singer doing well in London.
Wally Crossman – NZ painter and friend of mine.
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman – NZ poet whom I’ve had a very small amount to do with.
James Mason – particularly in relation to the film, Odd Man Out.
Michael Gurr – Australian playwright, and author of Days Like These, which I started to read just before I left for England, and had to return to the library.
Emma Fraser – NZ soprano who’s also doing well.
Ronnie Rinalde – the man who whistled his way to fame.
Anna Jemison - Aussie actress who appeared in Smash Palace, one of NZ's great movies.
Lindsay Crooks – excellent NZ painter who died a couple of years ago of a brain tumour. I knew him quite well, too.
Lloyd Jones – NZ author of Mr Pip, the only book of his I’ve been able to get into!
Arnold Bachop – long-time friend, and lyric tenor.
Graeme Obree – rather sulky-looking star of The Flying Scotsman.
Kate Lineham – broadcaster.
Karl Maugham – another NZ painter, whose paintings of florid gardens really appeal to me.
And finally:
Winifred Kavalieris, whose name didn’t mean a thing to me when I saw it on the list, but who turns out to be the author of a poem I quoted. I don’t really know who this writer is, but the same name turns up as a research student in the Physical Education Dept of Otago University. There she’s listed as writing a paper called: Illuminating the Manuscript: The extraordinary nature of dance education in schools.

Radio ga ga

I haven't listened to internet radio much - or streaming radio, as it tends to get called here - but it is something quite amazing. It's a bit like the whole business of Skype, which my wife and I have been sorting out for when we go to England next week. Hearing the radio through your computer is a peculiar thing, especially when the quality is as good as you'd get on your own radio - well, most of the time. I've had patches when it's a bit hesitant, or there's some obvious interference, but overall it comes across very well. And it's great to have such a choice! When the program on the Concert program isn't to my liking - for instance, when they're playing something I've heard just once too often, or it's Tuesday night and Kate Lineham is on with her Sound Lounge, where all manner of 'music' is played, much of it quite inferior. It's often only played because it's 'alternative' in some way.
We 21st century people are more than spoiled for choice - there's so much choice in everything that's available to us. Of course, I'm talking about us middle-class Westerners who have the world at our feet, when all is said and done, and who as well off as many of the people who were considered wealthy in the 18th and 19th century. In some cases we're better off, in fact. We just don't realise how well off we are, which doesn't really do us much good, in the long term.