Attics

The worst thing about having an attic (or in our case, two of them) is that they're great places for putting stuff away 'for a rainy day', or 'until he/she has their own place', or 'we'd better keep that, it's got sentimental value' and so on. 

We've got two attics because naturally there was one in the original house, and then, when we added on a second floor, a second attic was included - only part of the original one was removed.   Consequently we have a lot of room to store junk. 

We've just been up in one of the attics looking for something that of course wasn't stored up there  - where it is stored is another question.   And once you start looking through the boxes you find things you haven't seen for a while, and then you take stuff out to have a proper look at it, find treasures, and away goes the day.

Sometimes you can be brutal and finally dump some things that really don't have a place in your life any more.  I've just got rid of half of a bag full of stuff I'd collected to do collages - I did do a couple several years ago, but that's about when the enthusiasm stopped.   Notice I said 'half a bag' - the rest will go back in the attic, no doubt, because it's not quite at the stage of needing to be thrown out.  It could be useful.   But I did get rid of the bottletops and the fragments of material and a plastic bag so old it was disgustingly discoloured.

And then there was another box full of photographs: pure family history, with lots of photos of my kids when they were small, many more of my mother and me at various ages from babyhood to late teens (me, I mean, not my mother); photos of the Queen's visit in the early 1950s - she visited the Woollen Mills my mother worked at; photos of the Pope's visit (if it was him he doesn't actually appear in any of the photos!), photos of my aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents.   Some of these we've obviously got more than one copy of; some are unique.   There's a little Autograph book in which each page has a short quote and a signature from various friends of my mother.   I don't know any of these people, which is a pity, although given the dates it looks as though they were mostly written when she lived in Australia, where I was born.   [The book in the photo is similar, but not the same.]

And there's a game called Funword - it's Scrabble in disguise.  It was used right up until some twenty years ago, and still has some scorecards with my (now deceased) English uncle's name on it, and that of his second wife (they visited at some point), my mother's and some of my kids - who must have been old enough to play at the time.

And finally, in tune with the season, there's a little Nativity scene set inside a box about two hands width wide, with two doors that open outwards.  Inside there's the tiniest Nativity imaginable, and once upon a time there used to be a light in there too.....maybe we should put it in a place of honour beside our Nativity set that's standing in the window.   For old time's sake.   

Tui ad

A Twitter user going by the name of @laurayankers has posted this picture on Twitter.    It may be a little unclear here, but it says: Let's go camping in the Octagon this summer.   I don't know where this Tui ad is  situated but it's probable it's down in the University area somewhere.  

Laura is from the UK and is flying back home in a few days.    She calls herself a UK lass trying to stay sane in Dunedin whilst here on business.

Side effects

Methadone, the treatment that's used at a Methadone detox rehab treatment center, has an alarming number of side effects.   Why I comment on this is because when I watching a TV ad last night in which they discussed medication you could take for depression, you could read along the bottom of the screen - if you were quick enough - so many side effects that you'd actually think twice about taking the drug. 

Of course, those lists of side effects are just what might happen in the worst of all possible worlds (although a person with depression doesn't really need to know any more about the worst of all possible worlds, they're often there already), and having taken two different kinds of medication for depression over the years (both of which worked, and neither of which appeared to give me any side-effects) I guess the cure is somewhat better than what might happen.   They've got to warn you, after all.   And then, like Russian roulette, you play the game. 

Here's a list of the possible side-effects of Methadone:

• drowsiness
• weakness
• headache
• nausea
• vomiting
• constipation
• loss of appetite
• weight gain
• stomach pain
• dry mouth
• sweating
• flushing
• difficulty urinating
• swelling of the hands, arms, feet, and legs
• mood changes
• vision problems
• difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
• decreased sexual desire or ability
• missed menstrual periods 

It certainly covers all the options:  difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep?  A bit like having your cake and eating it, isn't it?

Decoding the phrase

I have no idea what the following phrase actually means: challenge coins custom so I'm not even going to try.   Sometimes these odd phrases turn up in the work I do for a company online, and because of the nature of the job, it's not always easy to figure out quite what the 'employer' is getting at.  Never mind, we know it's something to do with a challenge, with coins, and with custom. 

You could do quite a bit with that, I'm sure....write a short poem, even.

It's a bit of a challenge
to write a poem on coins
that's according to custom,
by which I mean the challenge
of using some normal form
of poem, as is the custom;
but in this instance the challenge
may be with fake coins
which may involve Customs
and their challenge of you.

There we go; no more obscure than the original phrase.   Not bad for a draft poem, though I'm sure it can be improved upon....

Reminding myself of some travel incidents

When we arrived England in 2007, we were quite laden down with luggage: according to my diary at the time we were carrying: a lap-top in a case with umpteen cords for cellphones, lap-top, Ipod and so on; Celia’s handbag; her backpack; my backpack (full of books and such); and pulling two suitcases which between them weighed 40 kg.

We got the tube from Heathrow to Kentish Town where we were expecting to stay with a friend.   The tube is a great way to travel if you're not carrying a lap-top and accessories, two backpacks (with books and gear needed on the trip, and equivalent in size to Deuter backpacks - one on the right), a handbag (which, if I remember rightly, was probably stuffed full of anything we couldn't fit in anywhere else) and hauling two suitcases weighing 40 kg in total.   (When we go to the USA next month we won't be carrying anything like this amount of gear, thank goodness....I hope!)


Carrying or carting all that stuff on the tube is a major undertaking.  The underground in London has very few lifts (or elevators - better start practicing my Americanisms now) and so everything has to be hauled up and down stairs - in some cases, lots of stairs.   Or up the escalator, which isn't built for putting large suitcases on. 

And then, when we finally got to Kentish Town (after having to stand most of the way on the Tube as well, because it was easier than trying to fit everything around a seat), we managed to go several blocks out of our way.   It was a bit like the night in Milan when I had my wallet pinched on their underground.   We were told by the station officials to go to the police at a station a couple of stops back, did that, were looked at as though we were idiot tourists (which we were) and then told to go to the main police station, which seemed to be in a street that none of the locals knew existed.  Or else none of them were locals and they were only pretending they knew.

Fortunately, on that occasion we weren't carrying a lap-top and accessories, two backpacks (with books and gear needed on the trip), a handbag, and two suitcases weighing 40 kg in total.  We were actually carrying even less than usual, because one of those nasty Milanese people had pinched my wallet - did I mention that?   I guess I'll have to forgive them somehow, but it's one of those things that rankles.

Anyway, this time while we're away, we'll both be carrying those under-the-clothing-bags with any valuables we need.   My wife won't let me do otherwise.   But I won't be carrying my 'man-bag' that I got in Italy (it's just visible in this picture of men in the Mediterranean sea) - I think it's been commandeered by someone else in the family.   I probably will be carrying the wallet I bought while I was overseas, even though it's beginning to show signs of wear.

One of the nice things about re-reading old 'diaries' is that you come across things you'd forgotten: like the fact that my wife lost her precious cellphone while we were visiting her parents' graves in Gresham in Norfolk.  (I mention this only to point out that I'm not the only person who loses things while travelling - or even while staying at home.)  We only found the phone because I tried ringing it after we discovered it was missing - thinking it was in the house somewhere - and was answered by a woman who lived in Gresham who'd picked it up and thought it must have belonged to someone local.   We collected it a few days later....

Pool or not

At the beginning of next month we fly to Boise in Idaho.   It will roughly the middle of winter.   We're taking lots of thermal underwear on the assumption that it's going to be really cold, though it's hard to know just how cold that is.  What the people over there think is cold, of course, may be closer to what we're used to here because we don't have temperature extremes.   But I suspect it will be rather more than we're used to.  We'll just have to wait and see.   

It occurred to me that there aren't likely to be many swimming pools around in Boise (or Nampa, which is where we're actually going to be staying).   With temperatures plummeting in the winter to minus figures, the idea of having a swimming pool is probably a bit nonsensical, and yet, in the summer, the temperatures climb to more than we ever have here.  It's a bit like Alexandra, Central Otago, which in winter is like walking around in a fridge, in summer like being basted on an oven.   So I suppose pools may not be as uncommon as I first thought.  Whether they'd need heated pools (and consequently the services of a company like PoolSupplyUnlimited.com pool heat pumps it's hard to say.  Certainly in the summer it might be ridiculous to be heating your pool, but in winter?  Well, it would depend whether you planned on going out, (in a Finnish fashion) to swim in your pool in the middle of the snowy season.   But if you were being Finnish, you'd expect your pool to be freezing cold anyway, so heating it wouldn't be an option.  It's all too complicated for a small brain like mine.

Pumped! (as in stoked!!)

Just came across this:

Mars Mission Return-Fuel Production
Casey Chartier*, Mike Crowl, Greg Honda

Wow! what am I doing talking about a Mars Mission at an Industry Educational Showcase in the University of Connecticut/  Well, of course I'm not.   It's some other young bloke who actually knows something about the subject.  He's a chemical engineer, by the look of it, a senior, so this presentation is to show what he and his offsider have learnt over the last few years in the course of their studies.  

All I was doing when I came across this was looking for some connection between Goulds pumps and my name.   Nothing special; just one of those odd things. 

Forgetting and remembering

Back in 2007 I wrote a post about maternity clothes.  I'd forgotten about it completely until I happened to pick up on it just now. 

It was written while we were in England, but I have no idea what hotel it was that we were staying at, at the time.  In fact, I can't remember the incident at all.   We'd met a man from Edinburgh who had eight children - the oldest was 23 and was working with his father; the youngest was 17 months old.   Furthermore one of his older daughters was expecting a child who would then have an aunt only a couple of years older than her.  They'd make good companions - and have some difficulties explaining their relationship, I expect!

It's odd that this story means nothing to me; if I hadn't written it down, it would have gone completely from my head, in spite of the fact that according to some sources we're supposed to remember everything that's happened to us.  I think these sources may be exaggerating.  It's much more likely we forget as much as we remember, otherwise we'd go crazy.   There are some people who are supposed to remember everything - there was a group of them on TV recently - but I think (as my wife noted) it's more likely they remember a great deal about certain subjects and very little about what most of us forget (like how many times we went to the loo yesterday, or the day before, for instance).   Some things become so commonplace that the mind has no reason to remember them, and wisely gets rid of that excess stuff. 

PS I've just checked with my wife: she can't remember this incident either.....!

A sneeze in a redhaired nostril

Continuing on with my interest in odd words, or the odd combinations of ordinary words, I'm looking briefly today at trailer hitches before I go on to look at some of the ways Les Murray uses words in a poem called Flowering Eucalypt in Autumn. 
 
Here are some of the single words and combinations of trailer hitching words: multi-fit receiver hitches,  goosenecks, pintles, receiver mount combination ball, switch balls, folding ball gooseneck hitch, (or even better) underbed folding ball gooseneck hitch, universal fifth wheel base rails, adjustable eyes and enforcement collars.   The mind boggles - even more at a weld-on pocket anchor.   Just think of welding an anchor into your pocket, and you see what I mean.  There's ample material here for a poem, I think!

So onto a real poem.   In Murray's poem he's doing what he often does, piling metaphor upon metaphor to try and show the enormity of a small or ordinary-seeming thing (as he does with some humour in Shower, one of my favourite poems.)

In this poem, the crimson blossoms are dropping to the ground:
....a napped rug
of eyelash drift, of blooms flared
like a sneeze in a redhaired nostril. 

They're:
minute urns, pinch-sized rockets
knocked down by....
....the daily
parrot gang with green pocketknife wings. 

....each flower comes 
as a spray in its own turned vase,
a taut starburst, honeyed model 
of the tree's fragrance crisping in your head. 

Finally:
a tower of fabulous swish tatters,
a map hoisted upright, a crusted
riverbed with up-country show towns.

Quoting bits like this doesn't do justice to the poem, so it's worth reading it as a whole.   Nevertheless, a sneeze in a redhaired nostril certainly lingers in the mind....!

I mentioned the other day about the copyright issues relating to copying poems into blogs and onto the Net.  It doesn't seem to be that big an issue, since any Les Murray poem I've gone looking for in order to provide a link to the full poem has been readily available online.   Perhaps the Net is the best thing to happen to poetry in all that art's history....?

Rhyme schemes - or not

Though I'm now using another blog to write specifically about poetry (and to include poems I've written myself), I've always included posts about poems and poetry on this blog too, so I'll continue to do so.

I've been reading Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled recently, and this time going through it in detail.  (I started to read it a few years back, after I saw it in a bookshop in England, but didn't go very far.)   In the section where he discusses rhyme, he uses that old system of detailing how the poem's lines rhyme by marking each line as a or b or c etc.   A common rhyme scheme, then, will be something like:
a
b
a
b. 

There are, of course, many more complicated schemes than this.   I've been reading through Les Murray's collection The Vernacular Republic: Poems 1961-1983.   I've delved into it in the past, and am already familiar with some of the poems because they come from other collections that I have, but this time I'm working systematically through it (from the end to the beginning, just to be different) and am intrigued by Murray's oddball rhyming schemes.  If 'schemes' is the correct word. 

Murray's poems are a mix of the witty and humorous (Morse, which tells the story of a Morse Code operator who does surgery on a man by receiving instruction by Morse from a doctor miles away), or the ones in which he plays with sounds and rhymes almost overwhelmingly (The Mouthless Image of God in the Hunter Colo Mountains - a crazy title that seems to have little to do with the poem which begins with the idea of a youth getting dogs to bark in the night), or the ones that philosophise about Art (Satis Passo), or ones that use foreign words and arcane English words or made up words (phallocrypt, single-bulged, cols, Orogold) that seldom or never appear in ordinary speech.   His breadth of language is always extraordinary, in fact. 


And then there are ones like The Smell of Coal Smoke which is a loosely biographical piece about his mother and grandfather.   In it he uses a common enough rhythm (though the lines are by no means always the same beat length) and mostly common language, and seems to be using a very common rhyme scheme:

aa
bb
cc
dd

This scheme comes a cropper in the second stanza where it goes to:

aaa
bb
c
a
c

The c rhyme happens to rhyme with the a rhyme in the first stanza....no doubt intentionally.

The third stanza has this scheme:

aa
bb
c
a
cc

Which appears to have nothing to do with the previous stanza, rhyme-wise.  The fourth stanza works this way:

aa
bb
cc
ab

Finally, stanza five works like this:

aa (a partial rhyme of frisson and Cornishman)
b
c
b
d
c (another partial rhyme, this time of Brown and soon - Brown has appeared more than once before)
d

Hardly conventional, and certainly disruptive if you think that he's going to go in a smooth direction, rhyme-wise.  It could be said that Murray doesn't know much about rhyme schemes.  It's more likely he does know and likes to break the mould.   Or that he's conveying something psychological by disrupting the expected flow of the piece, giving us a sense of how the boy who's 'narrating' the poem feels.   It's the same with the length of the lines, which sometimes are quite short, and sometimes seem to run out of breath.  You can read the whole poem here, and see what you think.

Riding boots and Haiku

I used to use Google Desktop on my computer at work, where it was great for finding the countless files that my boss and his offsider produced.  There were often several copies all exactly the same filed in different folders.  When I got this Dell computer, however, it didn't seem to like Google Desktop, and my geek son told me that there was an in-built search engine anyway, kindly provided by Microsoft.

Well, there was.

Microsoft promises much - 
Much disappointment
for the person word-searching.

I've just been reading a few of the haiku in the sample version on Amazon Kindle of Bicycle Haiku - hence the sudden bursting into miniature poetry (haiku are a bit like miniature horses, aren't they?)  This book is a series of sketches and haiku done while the author was riding from San Francisco to New York in 1979.  The author, Kevin Kelly, self-deprecatingly writes in the blurb: This book will not be a best-seller. It's a book of poetry, and you know what that means. It might appeal to anyone intrigued by pedaling across a continent, or loners fascinated by blue highways and other little-travelled roads, or sensitive souls really into haiku, or sketches. I can imagine a few odd ducks who collect self-published books that will be thrilled by this book. Personal friends of mine may be interested in this vanity publishing. For the rest -- that is for most normal people -- there is nothing of fashionable interest here.

However, Microsoft's in-built searcher now searches only when it feels like it, which, increasingly of late, has become less and less of the time.  Microsoft Word promises to identify all my spelling mistakes, too, but this resource has also become very spasmodic: on some Word files it works, on others it refuses to do so.

Microsoft promises much. 
But unconfident 
spellers daily left at sea.

And the only reason I was trying to use my in-built search engine was to see if I had anything on riding - I'd already found the Bicycle Haiku reference on Evernote, but it didn't seem to go with English riding boots which is what I was more particular about finding.   The riding boots in the picture, which are an example of the English variety, seem a little lost in the midst of their field.  One is looking off to its right, trying to find its owner; the other is snuggled close to its twin, just in case it gets left behind.  At least that's how it seems to me.

One boot surveys the landscape; 
searching.  The other
leans, hides inside itself.

2020: It's a while since I wrote this post, and my experience of Word's on computer search system is that it's much improved.

HitTail catch-up II

Last week HitTail's new email system announced that the following three items would be top of the pops if mentioned in my blog:

the mousetrap study guide 
sequoia cunningham dunedin
people wear ties

This week the list is a little different, with ties dropping out and three other items coming in.  

chrissy popadics
ralph davis musician
salesman in beijing
the mousetrap study guide
sequoia cunningham dunedin

Chrissy Popadics made a comeback on this blog just a month ago, when I mentioned she was now known by her married name of Johnson.   Nevertheless, people still keep looking for her under her maiden name.

I've never written about Ralph Davis the musician, as far as I'm aware, but I've certainly written about Ralph Davis the pastor and commentary writer.   He's one of my favourite commentary writers, and I have (or have lent out) all his books.  Maybe I should have a lapel pin produced saying something like: I'm a fan of Ralph Davis.  That would cover all bases, including any that related to Ralph Davis the musician, who may or may not be this guy.

 The third of the new items on the list today is Salesman in Beijing, which I wrote about at the end of 2009.  The book is by Arthur Miller, and details his trip to Beijing to produce a version of his play, Death of a Salesman.   I suspect people looking for a combination of the words salesman and Beijing are looking for something more in the retail line, however. 

Poems on the Net

I've been collecting poems for some time, initially writing them out by hand in the old days before computers, then typing them up and printing them out and putting them in a folder, and, most recently, copying them holus-bolus off the Net into a file on Evernote.  

There are two issues I haven't entirely sorted out in my head with regard to copying poems. If it's for your own personal use, then you're not affecting the poet's livelihood anymore than you would if you read the poem on the Net, or in a library book. At least as far as I can see (with a poem it's difficult to copy only the ten percent allowed from books, for instance). 

Gunter Eich

One of the issues is that if you copy a poem onto a blog like this one, there's officially a difficulty with copyright, because the poet doesn't gain anything financially from his or her work (though show me a poet who makes a living out of the craft and I'll be pleased to meet them). The other issue, however, is like the boot on the other foot. A huge number of poets barely have an audience of any sort, even in these days of the wide dissemination of all sorts of written material. To have your poem acknowledged by another writer (even if it is only a blog writer like me) is at least a way of getting a little more traction on your poem. There are so many billions of poems in the world (everyone in the world could have at least a dozen or more to call their own if we distributed them evenly), and for a poem to be seen beyond its tiny print run in a book, or its appearance on a poetry site such as The Writer's Almanac (which is a great place to come across interesting poems  - and some that seem to me to be barely poems...but that's another issue) is an advantage to the poet rather than a disadvantage.  

So with that second argument in mind, rather than the first, I'm including the following poem by Günter Eich in the blog. It was published this translation in Angina Days: Selected Poems (the translator was Michael Hofmann - you can find out more about his translating here). 

I originally picked up this poem because I was looking for something that had the word trophies in it.  This served the purpose admirably.   The poem is called First of January. 

Only a calendar would start the day by talking about a new year,
the walls know damn well this isn’t the start of anything new.
Outside, as ever, the clouds blow past, light as hair,
and the wind rattles the windows with the same hands.

March and April will come, and eventually
a day will fill you with its endless hours;
along with the sky and the blown clouds
it will fall into your hands and your house.

Sometimes you catch your face at night in a mirror
obscurely filled with aging—
a faded envelope with unbroken seal,
stuffed always with the same script.

Every day is new and a jubilee,
but pain is a long way off ,
and of the celestial trophies
the only one in your possession is the evening star.

Off to Idaho

Calling wedding rings (as they're known in New Zealand) wedding bands is something my wife and I might have to bear in mind when we go to the States in January to attend my younger son's wedding. 

We'd resigned ourselves to not being able to go, since, when we looked at our finances, we could see that the trip would wipe us out completely, and we'd come back home (if we could afford to come back home) with no resources whatsoever.   Pensioners don't build up their resources quite as quickly (if at all) as people who are earning wages/salaries.

And then, some of the people from our church got together with a plan: instead of giving my son and his fiancee wedding presents (he lives here at present but will be residing in the States after his wedding), they would see if they could raise enough to send us to the wedding - as a kind of 'large' present.  And somehow they have.   (I'm not asking any questions about how it was all sorted; I'm just happy they've managed to do it!)

So we're off to Boise on the first of January, where apparently it's likely to be minus something degrees (!) outside.  I dare say it's warmer inside, but we're going to take plenty of warm clothes anyway.   Can't afford to wind up as a snowman and woman stuck somewhere in Idaho!

Web hosting

 I haven't checked out the world of web hosting much in recent months; for a while, when I was working in my last job, and had some measure of involvement in whether we should set up a website (as opposed to the one our head office maintained which was, to be it politely, boring, even after it had had a makeover).

So it's quite useful to come across a site that offers you the chance to compare web hosts and their pricing, their time on the Net and their star rating, and also takes you a step further back and gives you an extensive FAQ as to what web hosting is all about, and explains in reasonable detail what it is you should be looking for when you decide you're finally going to set up your business - or your personal history/joys/woes and such - on the Net. 

As always with these kinds of FAQs there is something that I've just never heard of before: a Cron job, for instance.  Being a collector of interesting words, this one has gone on my current list!

There's also a news page where you can catch up with info that you may have missed - most likely have missed, in fact.   I discovered here in an item dated the 1st December, that authorities have taken down 150 counterfeit sites.  Perhaps I don't come across counterfeit sites very often because of the kind of things I do on the Net - but it's good to know someone is looking out for us poor little consumers...

This isn't the only news page on this site - there are two or three others, including one that focuses on items relating to search engines.   It's good to find place like this, even if you come across them, as it were, by happenstance (another interesting word!)

The Poetry competition I missed out on

 I noticed a competition in the North and South magazine I brought home from my old workplace yesterday.  It required you to write a poem in which every lined rhymed with all the others - the poem still had to make reasonable sense.  However, it was the June 2011 edition of the magazine, so I guess someone has already won this particular competition.   Not that it stopped me being 'inspired' by the idea.

I'm not a man who frequents bars;
Or thinks it cool to down large jars
Of beer; I've never ever tried cigars;
I don't get sweaty seeing big, fast cars,
And consequently have no scars
From crashing and then seeing stars. 
What, you ask, do I live on Mars?
Not at all, I've watched the movie, Lars
And the Real Girl, grammar I can parse,
I know the name of the Curé of Ars,
(John Vianney), know that Fars
Is a province in Iran, formerly called Pars,
Can differentiate Picassos and Renoirs,
However, I've never finger-picked guitars
In bazaars frequented by Russian Czars. 

Not knowing anything about thyroid imbalance

My old friend, HitTail, has been taken over by a new group, and they're now planning on sending out either a daily or weekly email giving the weekly keyword suggestions which I'll then use in my blog.   I'm not sure what these are based on, but this week's email has as its suggestions:

the mousetrap study guide
sequoia cunningham dunedin
people wear ties

These are a slightly curious bunch: out of the three only the first brings up this blog on the first page of Google's search results.  The other two don't show the Random Notes up at all.   If I put in skinny ties, however, I come up number three on the results (as does the image on the right).   If I put in Sequoia Cunningham (without Dunedin), however, the first result brings up a video called A Severely Exhausting eXercise which was co-directed by a young man I worked with in the play, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, back in 2008.  Sequoia is also featured in it.   Thus the coincidences of the Internet.


I have written about all three items, (the Mousetrap one got its own post, almost entirely), but not to the extent that they'd seem to be items that would necessarily attract readers to my blog.  It's almost as if I wrote about thyroid imbalance and suddenly people started flocking here.  Don't think it's going to happen, but you never know. 


Talking of which (thyroid imbalance, I mean) I've only ever come across one person who had some issue in this area, although I think it's not uncommon.   I worked with this lady in the three years before I retired, and she'd had issues with it (alleviated by medication) for many years.   But that's about the sum total of my knowledge of TI. 

Still, if thyroid imbalance shows up next week in the HitTail stats, I'll be pleased...and surprised!

Missing

Yet another report in the newspaper this morning about a missing military decoration.   It was on display for some time in a museum that no longer exists. 

We've had thefts from the National Museum, cunningly done over a period of time, and only coming to light in the last year or so.   That was theft on a grand scale.  This newest incident seems to be just carelessness on the part of those who should have been looking after the medal, a Victoria Cross which was awarded to Sergeant Donald Forrester Brown in World War I. 

The whereabouts of medals and other military paraphenalia, such as military rings, no doubt, is supposed to be recorded on the National Museum's Cenotaph data base.   But there's no record of it. 

Which means it could be anywhere: in private hands, accruing value as the years pass - recent auction sales of such medals have reached anything between $227,500 and $1.4 million.

Stepping up

I popped into Scribes secondhand bookshop the other day since I happened to having lunch with someone at a cafe just down the road, and was looking at the poetry books, just out of curiosity.   I was tempted to get a Marge Piercy book of poems, but wasn't sure whether I'd be paying for lunch: it was a choice of one or the other.  (As it happened the other person paid for lunch, but I didn't get back to the shop.)

I don't know that I've come across much of Piercy's writing, but it looked fairly accessible while being definitely good solid poetry.   I'll have to track her down elsewhere sometime.   I can't even remember the name of the book to note here.  

What I do remember is that I was checking out some of the books on the upper shelves and in order to do so had to stand on one of those little metal stools that are somewhat akin to a Dalek.  And about as stable.  I didn't want to hang onto the shelves in case they collapsed on top of me, but I wasn't sure that the Dalek was going to give me much support either.  A set of library step stools would have given me a greater sense of security, but I don't think there were any nearby. 

This would have to be my only criticism of Scribes, which is otherwise one of my favourite shops.  However, it's out of the way of my usual routes, so I don't often get there - regrettably. 

There's enterprise for you!

Matilda Helm, a seven year old self-confessed chatterboxfrom Southbridge Primary School in Canterbury, saw World Vision's East Africa Appeal on television last month and decided to help.  In a delightfully down-to-earth comment she notes: "I saw kids just like me eating yuck food and dying and thought it was really unfair."

On the 2nd of November she undertook a rather unusual task: a sponsored vow of silence.  Her aim was to raise funds for the children suffering from the famine - the first famine of the 21st century, as it happens.

She was permitted to stay quiet in class by her school principal after explaining in a letter that she was "... sending money to World Vision for East Africa because people there are dying right now".

By taping her mouth shut and writing questions and answers on a piece of paper, Matilda managed to get through the school day without breaking her vow.  Some achievement for a seven-year-old!

She says it was hard to stay quiet. "I have lots of friends and they all tried to make me talk!" but she still managed to raise $400.   $400 will feed a family of six in the famine area for around about four months.


Source: World Vision NZ