Sunshine Good Rain Bad

People who present on the weather programmes on TV have a curious bias towards sunshine, and a tendency to denigrate rain.  Yet earlier in the year we were supposedly in drought mode in New Zealand, not just in the 'Far North' (as the weather people call it) but right throughout the country.  The Far North certainly was in a state of drought, though not of Biblical proportions, which is what you'd have thought was the case from TV.

Drought is a result of too much sunshine and too little rain, yet night after night we hear on the weather section of the news that tomorrow will be sunny for these areas or those, but unfortunately there will be rain in this or that place.  Unfortunately?  We need rain.  The earth needs rain.  We need rain to grow plants, to water animals, to keep our reservoirs full.  Perpetual sunshine doesn't do this - ask any African who's lived through several years of drought. 

The irony is, perhaps, that the TV channels that pronounce on the unfortunateness of rain are the ones that are based in Auckland...a city that gets more rain than many of its southern counterparts.  NIWA tells us that the mean rainfall for Auckland over a 19-year period was 1240 mm. The equivalent for Christchurch was only just over half, at 648, and for Dunedin, supposedly in the 'Deep South', the mean rainfall was 812, around three-quarters of Auckland's precipitation.  Dunedin, when it gets rain, lets it drizzle on for a few days, spreading it around in a nice even fashion.  Auckland buckets it all down in a heap and drowns everything. Yet the number of wet days Dunedin got (still using the mean figures) was 124; the number Auckland got was 137.  Christchurch got only 85!  That's not to say that the South Island is altogether sparse in its rainfall: Milford Sound takes the prize by having 6749 mm and Westport 2274.

Whatever the stats, it's still worth rethinking how the weather section is presented: a constant insistence on Sunshine Good Rain Bad eventually makes viewers think this really is the case.  It would be good to see a bit more honesty on the weather program.  But I'm not holding my breath.

Muskoka Chairs

Adirondack is one of those words you occasionally hear in passing and never have a chance to catch up on and find out exactly what it means. And it helps if you actually read the word as it's spelt: I'd always thought it was adonirack. (Which personally, I quite like!)

The Adirondacks are a range of mountains which run through from New York state across the border into Canada.

They were given their name in 1838 by Ebenezer Emmons, an American geologist. The word carries stress on the third syllable: Adirondacks - which isn't how I would have thought it was pronounced...! (Although I pronounce adonirack with the stress on the same third syllable.)

The word is an Anglicized version of the Mohawk ratirontaks, meaning "they eat trees", a derogatory name which the Mohawk historically applied to neighboring Algonquian-speaking tribes. By 1634, the word was being used by the Mohawks, when speaking among the Dutch, to refer to French and English. The Dutch transliterated the word Aderondackx at that time.

I didn't mean to get sidetracked onto the geography of a particular area in this post, but rather to mention Muskoka chairs. These chairs are sometimes known as Adirondack chairs (or even Adirondak, if you follow the quirky spelling of the area). The Muskoka comes from the municipality of Muskoka, Ontario a cottage country area north of Toronto.

The Adirondack or Muskoka chair was designed by Thomas Lee while he was on holiday in 1903 - it's the sort of thing you do either because you find that you need something to stimulate your brain while on holiday or because there happens to be nothing comfortable to sit on outside. (When I say 'you' I really mean 'one' - since I've never designed a chair on holiday yet...I always hope that there'll be at least something to sit on when I arrive at wherever I'm going to. A holiday without chairs is closer to a nightmare for me. )

The chair wasn't named either Adirondack or Muskoka for the first couple of decades of its existence (and when I say 'the chair' I really mean the innumerable chairs that a certain Harry Bunnell seems to have made - and sold - from Lee's design...without his permission.) They were called Westport plank chairs during that time, since they were made in Westport. Out of planks.

I guess all chairs have names (apropos of the naming of things, it's intriguing to hear the names of the various manoeuvres ice skaters perform in Dancing on Ice) but most of us aren't aware of them. So I hope this post has been informative - and not confusing. Westport/Adirondack/Muskoka. Take your pick!