They should be made to wear a yellow jumpsuit when they do their community sentence and clean-ups, and it should be published in the paper so people can go and look at them and say, 'Oh, how the mighty have fallen'.
Two former NZ Ministers of Justice, with a third director of Lombard Finance, have been found guilty of making false statements to investors about the company’s position. Sir Douglas Graham is one of the three and he was chairman of the Lombard board. Douglas Graham was National MP for Remuera, and always seemed to me the handsome epitome of Remuera’s abiding satisfaction with itself.
And so the media are rounding up investors who have lost some or all of their life savings with Lombard. Mr Paul Wah wants Sir Douglas stripped of his knighthood. “How can a knight of the realm be ... not a common criminal but someone guilty of criminal conduct?" the pensioner asked. "My fondest wish would be to see those guys on bread and water for a few years." Well I imagine the ranks of knighthood would be somewhat reduced if white collar and other criminals were excluded.
It was Gino Zambon who proposed the very public humiliation with which we began. And indeed, if you have seen the foundations of your retirement ripped away, the money you had put together through years of work and planning… If you had placed the funds with Lombard partly because of the reputation of these men… If in later years you now have to find other ways to afford to live, including rising medical costs…
Sir Douglas himself lost money, we are informed -- he reinvested $12,000 of $17,000 of matured debentures in October 2007, and also held a small stake in Lombard Group, then NZX-listed. Well it might have been prudent not to have advanced this information. Mr Wah invested his six-figure life savings in Lombard, and is probably unimpressed if Sir Douglas thinks he is sharing the pain.
Granny Herald, always helpful, supplies us with an interesting list of knights who have been stripped. I cannot imagine how Sir Douglas now feels being listed with Albert Henry of the Cook Islands, Morgan Fahey the disgraced former Christchurch Deputy Mayor, Frank Goodwin of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Robert Mugabe -- and Jeffrey Archer who actually got to keep his life peerage in the end.
But it hasn’t happened yet, and I doubt that it will. Sir Douglas was knighted not for his financial leadership, but for the very effective work he did over the years while Minister of Justice in Treaty of Waitangi settlements. It was good work, and it would be ridiculous to take that away from him.
I confess to being as uneasy as ever when responsible media so eagerly give an airing to the irrational anger of victims. The anger is perhaps understandable, but not always. It ought to be possible for Mr Wah and Mr Zambon to see what kind of society we would have if we followed their punitive prescriptions. It ought to be possible for the NZ Herald to review the ways they select what they are going to report. It ought to be possible to distinguish between fury and sensible legal outcomes. And it ought to be easy enough to see that gross deliberate public humiliation of people (as though the directors of Lombard had not suffered enough of it already) is actually barbaric.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
22 February
It was always going to be like this on 22 February, one year on from the worst of the long series of Christchurch earthquakes. Christchurch and much of the rest of NZ spent the day remembering and wallowing, commemorating and grieving. TVNZ gave itself over to long coverage of the various events in Christchurch, with sad repetitive accounts of individual stories. We heard of heroism, sad loss, destruction of important buildings, children finding ways to cope, people who can’t cope, people who have cleared out, people doggedly making the best of it, angry people, very tired people, people still trying to clear liquefaction, problems with certification and classification, hopes for the future... We saw flowers and balloons and new memorials, a wonderful big bell in Hagley Park.
On the whole our betters spoke quite well and were mercifully brief and sensible. The Anglican Bishop, Victoria Matthews, seemed to me a real minister, quiet and strong and without ego needs. Even John Key and his speechwriters seemed to sense the real needs. One of the truest things was the music of Linwood High School, obviously rehearsed 1001 times and needing another few rehearsals yet, but so good just as it was.
For me the hardest moment was when TVNZ played a couple of minutes of the first police calls on radio to base. These officers including one woman were reeling from what they were suddenly seeing and what was dawning on them, yet still cool and professional. “We need everything you’ve got...” They were hearing calls for help from every direction. “It’s huge, send all units... the building’s on fire... we’ve got a gas leak here... I’m seeing multiple injuries here...”
Of course we fall deep into sentiment. Grown men weep. We sing How Great Thou Art, heaven knows why. We hang notes on trees. And the media devote hours of time to getting people stumblingly to recount how they felt, how they feel now, how they think they will feel eventually. Right after we heard from one ferociously protective über-mother about how her children needed to be shielded from harsh reality, we went to a bunch of about 50 yelling happy kids and some sensible adult who said, “Oh, the kids are fine, they deal with it in their own ways...” As we have always known, the kids will reflect the adults’ anxieties and hang-ups.
Here in Algies Bay we are far away from it all, and should avoid making judgements. What has happened in Christchurch is monstrous, and it’s interesting to watch how different people react. Some simply don’t manage. On the other hand, we have dear friends who know that, whatever might be the worst that could happen to them, it’s not any of that. Neither did they ever expect life to be serene.
A TV item the other day concerned a couple who bought their Lifestyle property in the Waikato somewhere, and built their Dream Home. It was all perfect, the money, the vistas, the ponies... until Transpower built a large pylon 9 metres off their boundary and hung transmission wires. These people see it as a deliberate planned invasion of their lifestyle. It wasn’t for this that they dreamed their dreams and earned their wealth. They are destroyed... being evidently so fragile. Well, tough. Get over it. Christchurch people are dealing with real issues, not mere ruffles to their lifestyle.
On the whole our betters spoke quite well and were mercifully brief and sensible. The Anglican Bishop, Victoria Matthews, seemed to me a real minister, quiet and strong and without ego needs. Even John Key and his speechwriters seemed to sense the real needs. One of the truest things was the music of Linwood High School, obviously rehearsed 1001 times and needing another few rehearsals yet, but so good just as it was.
For me the hardest moment was when TVNZ played a couple of minutes of the first police calls on radio to base. These officers including one woman were reeling from what they were suddenly seeing and what was dawning on them, yet still cool and professional. “We need everything you’ve got...” They were hearing calls for help from every direction. “It’s huge, send all units... the building’s on fire... we’ve got a gas leak here... I’m seeing multiple injuries here...”
Of course we fall deep into sentiment. Grown men weep. We sing How Great Thou Art, heaven knows why. We hang notes on trees. And the media devote hours of time to getting people stumblingly to recount how they felt, how they feel now, how they think they will feel eventually. Right after we heard from one ferociously protective über-mother about how her children needed to be shielded from harsh reality, we went to a bunch of about 50 yelling happy kids and some sensible adult who said, “Oh, the kids are fine, they deal with it in their own ways...” As we have always known, the kids will reflect the adults’ anxieties and hang-ups.
Here in Algies Bay we are far away from it all, and should avoid making judgements. What has happened in Christchurch is monstrous, and it’s interesting to watch how different people react. Some simply don’t manage. On the other hand, we have dear friends who know that, whatever might be the worst that could happen to them, it’s not any of that. Neither did they ever expect life to be serene.
A TV item the other day concerned a couple who bought their Lifestyle property in the Waikato somewhere, and built their Dream Home. It was all perfect, the money, the vistas, the ponies... until Transpower built a large pylon 9 metres off their boundary and hung transmission wires. These people see it as a deliberate planned invasion of their lifestyle. It wasn’t for this that they dreamed their dreams and earned their wealth. They are destroyed... being evidently so fragile. Well, tough. Get over it. Christchurch people are dealing with real issues, not mere ruffles to their lifestyle.
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out
Someone has identified a global phenomenon (it has to be global these days), and even given it an acronym which makes it kosher among the trendy set -- Fear Of Missing Out, FOMO. It is all around us and among us.
The adolescent never more than an arm’s reach from the cellphone... The mindless communication: “What are you doing? Nothing... What are you going to do? Dunno...”
The mother to whom it is vital that “my daughter and I have no secrets from each other -- she tells me everything”. Oh yeah? It would be a crisis should she find out that her daughter had done something, experienced something, thought something, met somebody, without the mother knowing first. The sadness of this quite often is, not so much the mother’s illusion of uninterrupted openness as it may have been years ago, but that it may be slightly true -- the adult daughter may actually be more open still with her mother than she is with her husband, partner, lover, co-tenant, or whatever she’s got. I recall a young parishioner in Scotland whose husband had just stupidly turned down a wonderful job offer in Canada -- she said to me, “Oh, but I couldn’t leave me mum...!”
Then we have the church’s high art of gossip. Seemingly mature people in the church can fall out with each other because gossip was withheld from one to the other. “You didn’t tell me...!” Confidentiality, respect for privacy and dignity, can be at a high premium in the parish church. It may be that I am over sensitive about this. I am also aware that there are plenty of people who actually think they have some right to information, accurate or distorted, about others. FOMO is a living reality in the church. St Benedict, who is important to me, was very much aware of gossip and opposed to it.
I suppose the fear of being left out of the loop is pretty basic. A couple of colleagues recently told me some information about another colleague, which I hadn’t known. My initial reaction was, I am sorry to have been told that. I didn’t need to know. And indeed, the “Need To Know” principle is always worth bearing in mind.
A real and mature challenge is to form our own assessments of people with love and charity, and constant awareness of human frailty, without the help of gossips and tittle-tatlers. After all, our need is not to pin labels on others, which will always be only marginally accurate (and we don’t like it when they do it to us), but to practise hospitality and openness and exercise generous judgement.
The adolescent never more than an arm’s reach from the cellphone... The mindless communication: “What are you doing? Nothing... What are you going to do? Dunno...”
The mother to whom it is vital that “my daughter and I have no secrets from each other -- she tells me everything”. Oh yeah? It would be a crisis should she find out that her daughter had done something, experienced something, thought something, met somebody, without the mother knowing first. The sadness of this quite often is, not so much the mother’s illusion of uninterrupted openness as it may have been years ago, but that it may be slightly true -- the adult daughter may actually be more open still with her mother than she is with her husband, partner, lover, co-tenant, or whatever she’s got. I recall a young parishioner in Scotland whose husband had just stupidly turned down a wonderful job offer in Canada -- she said to me, “Oh, but I couldn’t leave me mum...!”
Then we have the church’s high art of gossip. Seemingly mature people in the church can fall out with each other because gossip was withheld from one to the other. “You didn’t tell me...!” Confidentiality, respect for privacy and dignity, can be at a high premium in the parish church. It may be that I am over sensitive about this. I am also aware that there are plenty of people who actually think they have some right to information, accurate or distorted, about others. FOMO is a living reality in the church. St Benedict, who is important to me, was very much aware of gossip and opposed to it.
I suppose the fear of being left out of the loop is pretty basic. A couple of colleagues recently told me some information about another colleague, which I hadn’t known. My initial reaction was, I am sorry to have been told that. I didn’t need to know. And indeed, the “Need To Know” principle is always worth bearing in mind.
A real and mature challenge is to form our own assessments of people with love and charity, and constant awareness of human frailty, without the help of gossips and tittle-tatlers. After all, our need is not to pin labels on others, which will always be only marginally accurate (and we don’t like it when they do it to us), but to practise hospitality and openness and exercise generous judgement.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The time of the tractors
The time of the tractors has returned. The Blokes need to haul their boats back and forth to the water. If homo sapiens ever had a particular mating season, this has replaced it.
The tractors have been brought out, filled up, run up and deployed. Our road is alive with diesel throb and fumes as the tractors take their place with the motor mowers, line trimmers, chain saws, leaf blowers, farm bikes, quad bikes, outboard engines.
I realise now that the deployment of the tractor is more than the pragmatic thing it seems. The simple possession of a suitable machine is itself a securing of status. It is the bloke who gets to drive it of course -- I have never in coming here over 30 years seen one of the women driving a tractor. The women ride obediently in the boat being towed, they mind the kids, tend the food and booze, down to the water and back. They don’t get to drive the boats either.
Rather in the manner of the ordo surrounding that important cultural shrine, the barbecue, there are clear roles. The bloke presides, as did the priest in the high places of ancient Palestine. He invigilates the events and protocol, and the frequent libations. The handmaidens hover in the background with their supporting functions.
No one buys a new tractor. Not around here anyway. Perhaps they do at Omaha. There must be a lively market for old and obsolete farm tractors that can be kept in more or less working condition and brought to life each summer. That does not mean they are registered to go on the roadway, or have any actual warrant of fitness. The local police seem to turn a blind eye to these things, as also to the fact that children routinely ride precariously on the back of them, and most tractors have no safety roll bars that I can see.
I came across an advertisement for a tractor. I don’t understand any of it. Here it is exactly as it was printed, and I am not making this up:
Gas Left Hand Clutch. Nasty old tractor that 'D' 4 Speed Trans that shifts sideways Hand Clutch that has a brake when you pull it back 2 speed PTO but no 3 point hitch Spring Loaded Drawbar Poor Ground Clearance - Hung up on a patch of Dandelions Throttle is under the steering wheel and forward Seat Goes behind the wheels so you can stand on a pan and the brakes are down there to. 42 hp and HEAVY! Its Short to Solid Fenders for Rides and Safe to operate
Well, it is moving to realise that some bloke will read that as pure poetry.
A few years back red was the colour de rigueur. A bloke who bought a green tractor or a blue one would paint it red before anyone saw it, and then dirty it up a bit. But now I’m afraid any colour goes, along with the general deterioration of standards and disappearance of the old moral landmarks. The rest of the uniform remains however, for the present -- baseball cap, black singlet, black shorts and bare feet. After all, that is the uniform blokes wear also to the supermarket and the petrol station.
So far this summer of 2011-2012 has been dismal, however. Clouds and heavy rain. Kawau Bay has been leaden and choppy much of the time. Campers have given up and gone home. Everyone expects that the procession of fronts will ease off soon and there will still be time left for long hot days. Meanwhile here are all these tractors, some of them forlornly hauling $100,000 boats down to the water for a spin around the bay or some fishing out beyond Kawau.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Goodwill to all
Warkworth has a complex intersection where six roads meet including two which are the Number One State Highway. No one negotiates this intersection safely, although plenty of blokes think they do, and plenty more don’t care. Coming home from 8 am Communion on Christmas Day, I may or may not have yielded right of way to some woman, possibly from Omaha and driving a lurid 4-wheel-drive battle wagon, who then flew into a road rage meltdown and tailgated me all the way to Algies Bay, gesticulating and shouting what the media call epithets. I don’t know whether she intended to garrotte me or simply drive over me -- but she called off the pursuit, did a screeching gravel-spraying U-ey and disappeared, just before I got home.
My best Operational Plan in the event of a direct encounter had been to wish her a happy Christmas. Certainly the official advice, that in the event of road rage you should give cheerful waves through the rear window, does not work very well.
Amid the usual plethora of Christmas Messages from bishops, the Bishop of Blackburn chose to leap to the defence of Steve Kean the beleaguered manager of Blackburn Rovers who have sunk to the bottom of the Premier League and face something called relegation which doesn’t sound nice. Steve has been copping much abuse it seems, with demands for his head to roll. But this is standard abusive response in the UK, and to a lesser extent here. Blind cruelty is an important weapon in the response-kit of many. Logic and rationality are not, and even less are human understanding and compassion. Most of the characters in Coronation Street, on being hurt, blamed or crossed, resort by reflex to aggression and vituperation if not physical attack.
We seem to be getting angrier just about everywhere. There are hideous reports of bullying at schools, videoed and relayed on mobile phones far and wide. Various courses tell people how to react to bullying at work. Bullies seem to be leading a charmed life. Victim Support tries to pick up the results. I would throw bullies out of the school or the workplace without question, but apparently you can’t do that.
I think it is also worth noting how public humiliation, which is another form of bullying, has become the preferred weapon of media. Of course the media have their own pious justifications, but they now routinely seek reversal of suppression orders of names and evidence, and the real reasons are the selling of newspapers and the feeding of the public prurience.
“Contact sport” as it is now called is routinely violent and abusive, and this is generally thought to be the way it should be. Injuries and worse are expected, and we get regular bulletins on the medical progress of wounded sporting “icons”. Top teams have their own doctors who wait below, much in the manner of naval surgeons in Nelson’s time, while the bleeding casualties are wheeled in. Vicious punching, eye-gouging, head butting, spinal dumps, stomping, are still officially frowned on, I gather, and penalties are applied -- but it remains more important that the offender be restored to favour and to the team without delay. “What happens on the field stays on the field” has come to be a noble and manly shibboleth. Boxing, as ever, is without excuse.
It now seems acceptable to be reckless with the sensibilities of others. When someone, often a so-called comedian, is simply rancorous and acrid about other people, it is thought cool. We don’t have decency from such people. In fact what passes now for television comedy is for the most part loud, coarse and deeply unfunny. It is fed by booze and worse. It features repellent men and women still apparently locked in battle with puberty and their hormones. So sad.
My best Operational Plan in the event of a direct encounter had been to wish her a happy Christmas. Certainly the official advice, that in the event of road rage you should give cheerful waves through the rear window, does not work very well.
Amid the usual plethora of Christmas Messages from bishops, the Bishop of Blackburn chose to leap to the defence of Steve Kean the beleaguered manager of Blackburn Rovers who have sunk to the bottom of the Premier League and face something called relegation which doesn’t sound nice. Steve has been copping much abuse it seems, with demands for his head to roll. But this is standard abusive response in the UK, and to a lesser extent here. Blind cruelty is an important weapon in the response-kit of many. Logic and rationality are not, and even less are human understanding and compassion. Most of the characters in Coronation Street, on being hurt, blamed or crossed, resort by reflex to aggression and vituperation if not physical attack.
We seem to be getting angrier just about everywhere. There are hideous reports of bullying at schools, videoed and relayed on mobile phones far and wide. Various courses tell people how to react to bullying at work. Bullies seem to be leading a charmed life. Victim Support tries to pick up the results. I would throw bullies out of the school or the workplace without question, but apparently you can’t do that.
I think it is also worth noting how public humiliation, which is another form of bullying, has become the preferred weapon of media. Of course the media have their own pious justifications, but they now routinely seek reversal of suppression orders of names and evidence, and the real reasons are the selling of newspapers and the feeding of the public prurience.
“Contact sport” as it is now called is routinely violent and abusive, and this is generally thought to be the way it should be. Injuries and worse are expected, and we get regular bulletins on the medical progress of wounded sporting “icons”. Top teams have their own doctors who wait below, much in the manner of naval surgeons in Nelson’s time, while the bleeding casualties are wheeled in. Vicious punching, eye-gouging, head butting, spinal dumps, stomping, are still officially frowned on, I gather, and penalties are applied -- but it remains more important that the offender be restored to favour and to the team without delay. “What happens on the field stays on the field” has come to be a noble and manly shibboleth. Boxing, as ever, is without excuse.
It now seems acceptable to be reckless with the sensibilities of others. When someone, often a so-called comedian, is simply rancorous and acrid about other people, it is thought cool. We don’t have decency from such people. In fact what passes now for television comedy is for the most part loud, coarse and deeply unfunny. It is fed by booze and worse. It features repellent men and women still apparently locked in battle with puberty and their hormones. So sad.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
God will take care of you
Be not dismayed whate’er betide,
God will take care of you.
Beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.
This was the theme song of Uncle Tom’s Choir on Radio 1ZB back in the 1940s. It was at least as familiar as the Coronation Street theme is today. There were actually three Uncle Tom choirs broadcasting on Friday evenings, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. We all sang:
God will take care of you,
Through every day, o’er all the way.
He will take care of you,
God will take care of you.
Those were war years. There was all manner of anxiety, loss, distress, grief. I as a small boy was only marginally aware of it, but I certainly realise now how comforting it must have been to some when we sang this thing repeatedly.
It was sung the other day at the funeral of 92-year-old Mollie, Uncle Tom’s daughter, whom I clearly remember from those days, well over 60 years ago, in the choir. And a hall full of both her generation and mine joined in fervently.
Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you.
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.
Mollie’s generation and mine, by and large, don’t seem to question this faith. They believe it has been their experience through hardship and toil. God has taken care of them.
But what do they think God has done? God clearly has not shielded them from loss and sorrow. They seem not to ask questions about others along the way who plunged into the abyss of depression or suicide, or whose lives succumbed to poverty, disease, despair or atrocity. Did God take care of them? They mean, I daresay, that God offered them support, strength, comfort... Even so, I have this uncomfortable feeling that their God does not conspicuously comfort people. There are mysteries here, and there are plenty of people not in the church for more or less this reason. A God of love, mercy and comfort seems to others to be a wistful dream.
Lonely or sad, from friends apart,
God will take care of you.
He will give peace to your aching heart,
God will take care of you.
It’s a sad and selective philosophy and it embarrasses me, I have to say. It posits a very western, domesticated God, who pats us on the head and says never mind. Yet it nourishes most of the seniors who remain in the parish culture, and they sing its confident hymns and they live again in days when it all seemed so clear to them.
Others in the parish churches know it’s not like that, and wonder how much longer they can hang on. They are a diminishing number. They strongly suspect God is being misrepresented. They wonder why the minister/pastor/priest/vicar doesn’t identify aspects of popular faith which are manifestly dishonest about God. They wonder about the integrity of prayer which simply asks God for things we want, and assumes that they happened because we asked in prayer, or didn’t because we didn’t... what kind of God is that? A sentimentalist idol.
Not the God Jesus called Father.
God will take care of you.
Beneath his wings of love abide,
God will take care of you.
This was the theme song of Uncle Tom’s Choir on Radio 1ZB back in the 1940s. It was at least as familiar as the Coronation Street theme is today. There were actually three Uncle Tom choirs broadcasting on Friday evenings, Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. We all sang:
God will take care of you,
Through every day, o’er all the way.
He will take care of you,
God will take care of you.
Those were war years. There was all manner of anxiety, loss, distress, grief. I as a small boy was only marginally aware of it, but I certainly realise now how comforting it must have been to some when we sang this thing repeatedly.
It was sung the other day at the funeral of 92-year-old Mollie, Uncle Tom’s daughter, whom I clearly remember from those days, well over 60 years ago, in the choir. And a hall full of both her generation and mine joined in fervently.
Through days of toil when heart doth fail,
God will take care of you.
When dangers fierce your path assail,
God will take care of you.
Mollie’s generation and mine, by and large, don’t seem to question this faith. They believe it has been their experience through hardship and toil. God has taken care of them.
But what do they think God has done? God clearly has not shielded them from loss and sorrow. They seem not to ask questions about others along the way who plunged into the abyss of depression or suicide, or whose lives succumbed to poverty, disease, despair or atrocity. Did God take care of them? They mean, I daresay, that God offered them support, strength, comfort... Even so, I have this uncomfortable feeling that their God does not conspicuously comfort people. There are mysteries here, and there are plenty of people not in the church for more or less this reason. A God of love, mercy and comfort seems to others to be a wistful dream.
Lonely or sad, from friends apart,
God will take care of you.
He will give peace to your aching heart,
God will take care of you.
It’s a sad and selective philosophy and it embarrasses me, I have to say. It posits a very western, domesticated God, who pats us on the head and says never mind. Yet it nourishes most of the seniors who remain in the parish culture, and they sing its confident hymns and they live again in days when it all seemed so clear to them.
Others in the parish churches know it’s not like that, and wonder how much longer they can hang on. They are a diminishing number. They strongly suspect God is being misrepresented. They wonder why the minister/pastor/priest/vicar doesn’t identify aspects of popular faith which are manifestly dishonest about God. They wonder about the integrity of prayer which simply asks God for things we want, and assumes that they happened because we asked in prayer, or didn’t because we didn’t... what kind of God is that? A sentimentalist idol.
Not the God Jesus called Father.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
It’s blatantly obvious
No it’s not. It’s obvious or it’s not. Learn some logic and grammar. The same applies to patently obvious. Then we have ad nauseam: Don’t get me wrong...to be perfectly frank / candid... I’ll be honest with you... Ye gods, were they not previously? I would be the first to... I am a great believer in... Our old pal Bob McCroskrie of Family First NZ wrote in Granny Herald only this morning: Don't get me wrong - I would be the first in line to condemn violence against women… Good on y’ Bob, hang in there…!
The need for a major grizzle is upon me. I have a brother who thinks I should lighten up. Well, he has his major grizzles when it suits him. I am aged 77 and I will say what I choose.
Six female teenagers at Fairfield College in Hamilton were taken to hospital spaced out and behaving violently from taking ecstasy pills. They had to be restrained and subdued. These pills, which seem to have been available at their homes, were actually low grade and contaminated. The girls’ ages ranged from 13 to 15.
How come our astute investigative and intrusive media don’t find access to the homes and parents of these children to find out what is going on, what constitutes their culture, what these kids are having to survive if they can...? One student who brought the pills to school said she had taken them from her father's stash. So where in the media coverage is the father? Or the mother? Or whoever actually does currently have custody of these juveniles? Anyone?
Next day a couple of these girls showed up back at the school from which they have been suspended, evidently hoping to see friends. But they fled in tears when their mates turned on them with gross abuse. Their mates turned feral. What is this culture?
James Joseph Ruhe Lawrence, known as JJ, was found dead about 11.15am last Monday at the Orakei house where he lived (and seemingly died) with his mother and her boyfriend. He was two years old. JJ died from injuries suffered as the result of blunt-force trauma to his abdomen. This toddler was struck so hard in the stomach that one of his internal organs split in half. JJ depended entirely on the protection of his mother (his father is in prison). That protection failed, lethally. I can’t bear to think what this little child suffered. We are informed that JJ’s mother is pregnant again.
Now that Demi Moore has announced the demise of her six-year marriage, headlines are burning up over what really nuked her union with Ashton Kutcher. Moore, 49, issued a carefully-worded statement last week, ending months of tabloid speculation… Super broody and pregnant? "Hell, no!" says Katy Perry . While she's made no secret of her desire to start a family with husband Russell Brand , the 27-year-old pop singer has trashed tabloid talk she's expecting her first child. Rumours have been…
This is now what passes for news. I have no idea who those people are.
Surreal… incredible… miracle… carnage… The silver lining is bright going forward… that last was in the radio business news this morning.
We have abused language, logic, grammar, ethics. Everything is invaded, raped and set aside.
Last night the General Election campaign ended. It is a merciful deliverance. This morning I voted for the Labour candidate for Rodney, Christine Rose, and my party vote was Green. The Greens it seems do have principles beyond people’s self-interest. I also voted for the MMP electoral system to be retained, although it needs to be reformed somewhat.
TVNZ went to the Whangarei electorate for their final once-over-lightly wrap up of voter wisdom. It was less than edifying. The mums of Ngunguru seem to be clustering around smiling rich John Key. One woman actually informed us that “he hasn’t done anything naughty, yet.” She thought that was hugely witty and wise. Her husband or boyfriend stood there loyally nodding and poised to run any errand she might decree. They were gathered at the local school’s annual Pets Day. We got to see one of the pupils at the microphone lay down the rules for Pets Day. You are responsible for the behaviour of your own pet, she warned us, and you must pick up all droppings. We need that little lass on the beachfront here at Snells.
So New Zealand is flocking to the polls. I was a little alarmed at the few young or middle-aged faces I saw queuing up to vote. Maybe they were not out of bed yet at 9.30 of a Saturday morning. Too many think it’s cool not to vote -- they can’t be bothered, they’re not interested, they don’t even begin to understand the issues, they never read anything and some of them can’t read anyway. In NZ it is compulsory to enroll, although it is never enforced, but it is not compulsory to vote. Well, if you don’t, it seems to me, you forfeit any right to grizzle about the government.
The need for a major grizzle is upon me. I have a brother who thinks I should lighten up. Well, he has his major grizzles when it suits him. I am aged 77 and I will say what I choose.
Six female teenagers at Fairfield College in Hamilton were taken to hospital spaced out and behaving violently from taking ecstasy pills. They had to be restrained and subdued. These pills, which seem to have been available at their homes, were actually low grade and contaminated. The girls’ ages ranged from 13 to 15.
How come our astute investigative and intrusive media don’t find access to the homes and parents of these children to find out what is going on, what constitutes their culture, what these kids are having to survive if they can...? One student who brought the pills to school said she had taken them from her father's stash. So where in the media coverage is the father? Or the mother? Or whoever actually does currently have custody of these juveniles? Anyone?
Next day a couple of these girls showed up back at the school from which they have been suspended, evidently hoping to see friends. But they fled in tears when their mates turned on them with gross abuse. Their mates turned feral. What is this culture?
James Joseph Ruhe Lawrence, known as JJ, was found dead about 11.15am last Monday at the Orakei house where he lived (and seemingly died) with his mother and her boyfriend. He was two years old. JJ died from injuries suffered as the result of blunt-force trauma to his abdomen. This toddler was struck so hard in the stomach that one of his internal organs split in half. JJ depended entirely on the protection of his mother (his father is in prison). That protection failed, lethally. I can’t bear to think what this little child suffered. We are informed that JJ’s mother is pregnant again.
Now that Demi Moore has announced the demise of her six-year marriage, headlines are burning up over what really nuked her union with Ashton Kutcher. Moore, 49, issued a carefully-worded statement last week, ending months of tabloid speculation… Super broody and pregnant? "Hell, no!" says Katy Perry . While she's made no secret of her desire to start a family with husband Russell Brand , the 27-year-old pop singer has trashed tabloid talk she's expecting her first child. Rumours have been…
This is now what passes for news. I have no idea who those people are.
Surreal… incredible… miracle… carnage… The silver lining is bright going forward… that last was in the radio business news this morning.
We have abused language, logic, grammar, ethics. Everything is invaded, raped and set aside.
Last night the General Election campaign ended. It is a merciful deliverance. This morning I voted for the Labour candidate for Rodney, Christine Rose, and my party vote was Green. The Greens it seems do have principles beyond people’s self-interest. I also voted for the MMP electoral system to be retained, although it needs to be reformed somewhat.
TVNZ went to the Whangarei electorate for their final once-over-lightly wrap up of voter wisdom. It was less than edifying. The mums of Ngunguru seem to be clustering around smiling rich John Key. One woman actually informed us that “he hasn’t done anything naughty, yet.” She thought that was hugely witty and wise. Her husband or boyfriend stood there loyally nodding and poised to run any errand she might decree. They were gathered at the local school’s annual Pets Day. We got to see one of the pupils at the microphone lay down the rules for Pets Day. You are responsible for the behaviour of your own pet, she warned us, and you must pick up all droppings. We need that little lass on the beachfront here at Snells.
So New Zealand is flocking to the polls. I was a little alarmed at the few young or middle-aged faces I saw queuing up to vote. Maybe they were not out of bed yet at 9.30 of a Saturday morning. Too many think it’s cool not to vote -- they can’t be bothered, they’re not interested, they don’t even begin to understand the issues, they never read anything and some of them can’t read anyway. In NZ it is compulsory to enroll, although it is never enforced, but it is not compulsory to vote. Well, if you don’t, it seems to me, you forfeit any right to grizzle about the government.
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
A noisy cafe
Waipu is slightly off the main highway south of Whangarei. It is a settlement in European terms begun by a couple of shiploads of Scottish settlers led by a toxic bigot named Norman McLeod, who came via Nova Scotia. These days Waipu seems to exist mainly as a gateway to the coast at Waipu Cove.
We called in there for coffee. I remembered the cafe from years before when I used to escape from my parish to a parishioner’s caravan at Waipu Cove, once a year in February/March, and study German. Now, fascinatingly, the cafe had acquired a neighbour, a real live apothecary. I am not making this up. He has a modern, ordered, attractive shop, in welcoming colours, and he advertises herbal remedies for just about everything. He describes himself as apothecary. So that’s great. Warkworth does not have an apothecary, so far as I know.
But now, in the coffee place, wall to wall noise. Noise seemed to be essential. All the rest of Waipu and surroundings was quiet. In the cafe, however, something that passes these days for music was playing, relentlessly. I suspect no one in the last ten years has asked why. They always play music. Everyone does. Their coffee machine was steaming and roaring. The barrista-girl regularly, every 20 seconds, shatteringly bashed something down, I presume to clear an accumulation of coffee grounds. Locals visiting seemed to feel a need to shout to each other. None of the staff seemed remotely perturbed by this din.
We had recently had lunch in a Thai cafe in Paihia where, although the food was magnificent, the constant din was not. Concrete floor, and metal-legged chairs being scraped across the floor. No one seems able to lift chairs these days. Someone out the back, building something, was hammering...
Well, life tends to be a noisy place. It doesn’t need to be, but it is. I suspect that this level of noise is essential to our culture now. Being at home, for a few of us, means escape from all that. I wrote about silence in this blog once before. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif href="http://">
We called in there for coffee. I remembered the cafe from years before when I used to escape from my parish to a parishioner’s caravan at Waipu Cove, once a year in February/March, and study German. Now, fascinatingly, the cafe had acquired a neighbour, a real live apothecary. I am not making this up. He has a modern, ordered, attractive shop, in welcoming colours, and he advertises herbal remedies for just about everything. He describes himself as apothecary. So that’s great. Warkworth does not have an apothecary, so far as I know.
But now, in the coffee place, wall to wall noise. Noise seemed to be essential. All the rest of Waipu and surroundings was quiet. In the cafe, however, something that passes these days for music was playing, relentlessly. I suspect no one in the last ten years has asked why. They always play music. Everyone does. Their coffee machine was steaming and roaring. The barrista-girl regularly, every 20 seconds, shatteringly bashed something down, I presume to clear an accumulation of coffee grounds. Locals visiting seemed to feel a need to shout to each other. None of the staff seemed remotely perturbed by this din.
We had recently had lunch in a Thai cafe in Paihia where, although the food was magnificent, the constant din was not. Concrete floor, and metal-legged chairs being scraped across the floor. No one seems able to lift chairs these days. Someone out the back, building something, was hammering...
Well, life tends to be a noisy place. It doesn’t need to be, but it is. I suspect that this level of noise is essential to our culture now. Being at home, for a few of us, means escape from all that. I wrote about silence in this blog once before. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Loss and sorrow
In the space of about a month there has been a string of bereavements around here. My sister’s wonderful Aussie husband, Lionel, died of mesothelioma. It is a lung cancer from asbestos dust, which no doubt he inhaled many years ago when builders worked with that stuff. Lionel was in his mid-80s, and he and my sister had enjoyed 11 years together.
Then word came that our aged Kiwi aunt Jean had died in California aged 103. She was a wonderful lady. I used to visit her when I could. Jean had known much sorrow and loss. Her husband, my uncle Lex, died suddenly far too early. Her son David later committed suicide -- and that, I think, for a parent, is a grief far too far. Jean battled on, inimitably in many ways.
The same weekend came news that a much loved cousin Nora, in Glasgow, had died, also at a great age. Nora and her husband Jimmie were very good to Mary and me when we lived in Scotland for a while, long ago.
Still absorbing all that, we got news that a dearly loved friend in Fiji, Ethel Naidu, had died. Ethel was a widely loved parishioner and Elder at St Andrew’s Church in Suva, and was known all around the Arts Club, education and musical scenes.
Next, my younger brother Morris suddenly took ill with metastatic melanoma. He went downhill quickly and died last Sunday. Of all of us, Morris was the most remote, yet we feel his loss keenly. He had decreed that there was to be no funeral or other commemoration. It certainly seems strange, but his wishes have been respected.
Perhaps then I have been a little bristly, cantankerous you might say, in recent days. It has not been a smart idea to cross me. And this morning I walked into a local shop into the middle of a general “debate”, actually an airing of clichés and prejudices, about the state of the nation and in particular the wreck of the container ship Rena on a reef outside Tauranga. Thick oil and large shipping containers are now washing ashore on their beaches. Strange, how these beaches apparently were “pristine” -- but that’s just part of the general journalistic abuse of the language and of the meaning of words.
One bloke in the shop immediately tried to enlist me to agree with him that the bloody government bears the guilt of all this. That seemed to be the general default position in the shop. So I said that was absurd, and that we are turning into a nation of chronic grizzlers. Silence reigned in the shop for all of 30 seconds, and then this bloke bawled, What are yuh, some bloody greenie...? He had somehow to reassert dominance and resume being the alpha male. I guess whoever else lives in his home has long since learned to submit. I said, Yes, I’m an environmentalist. Are you not...? And I walked away. This bigot can’t cope with anyone not singing from his hymnbook. He shouted after me, Garn, yuh bloody greenie...
I simply couldn’t conceive trying to explain to this loudmouth that in the rhythms of life and death, loss and sorrow, it’s better to be grateful. We are not starving, although plenty of people are having to watch their spending carefully. Our country is not at war, let alone riven by civil war. We get the governments we vote for, which is more than ever happens in many countries, including Fiji. It is indeed sad about the container ship. It is sadder about Christchurch’s sorrows. But grizzling as a reflex reaction is to be avoided, it seems to me. St Benedict saw that long centuries ago. If people were to live together in community then what he called grumbling was to be actively discouraged. And I am a Benedictine.
Then word came that our aged Kiwi aunt Jean had died in California aged 103. She was a wonderful lady. I used to visit her when I could. Jean had known much sorrow and loss. Her husband, my uncle Lex, died suddenly far too early. Her son David later committed suicide -- and that, I think, for a parent, is a grief far too far. Jean battled on, inimitably in many ways.
The same weekend came news that a much loved cousin Nora, in Glasgow, had died, also at a great age. Nora and her husband Jimmie were very good to Mary and me when we lived in Scotland for a while, long ago.
Still absorbing all that, we got news that a dearly loved friend in Fiji, Ethel Naidu, had died. Ethel was a widely loved parishioner and Elder at St Andrew’s Church in Suva, and was known all around the Arts Club, education and musical scenes.
Next, my younger brother Morris suddenly took ill with metastatic melanoma. He went downhill quickly and died last Sunday. Of all of us, Morris was the most remote, yet we feel his loss keenly. He had decreed that there was to be no funeral or other commemoration. It certainly seems strange, but his wishes have been respected.
Perhaps then I have been a little bristly, cantankerous you might say, in recent days. It has not been a smart idea to cross me. And this morning I walked into a local shop into the middle of a general “debate”, actually an airing of clichés and prejudices, about the state of the nation and in particular the wreck of the container ship Rena on a reef outside Tauranga. Thick oil and large shipping containers are now washing ashore on their beaches. Strange, how these beaches apparently were “pristine” -- but that’s just part of the general journalistic abuse of the language and of the meaning of words.
One bloke in the shop immediately tried to enlist me to agree with him that the bloody government bears the guilt of all this. That seemed to be the general default position in the shop. So I said that was absurd, and that we are turning into a nation of chronic grizzlers. Silence reigned in the shop for all of 30 seconds, and then this bloke bawled, What are yuh, some bloody greenie...? He had somehow to reassert dominance and resume being the alpha male. I guess whoever else lives in his home has long since learned to submit. I said, Yes, I’m an environmentalist. Are you not...? And I walked away. This bigot can’t cope with anyone not singing from his hymnbook. He shouted after me, Garn, yuh bloody greenie...
I simply couldn’t conceive trying to explain to this loudmouth that in the rhythms of life and death, loss and sorrow, it’s better to be grateful. We are not starving, although plenty of people are having to watch their spending carefully. Our country is not at war, let alone riven by civil war. We get the governments we vote for, which is more than ever happens in many countries, including Fiji. It is indeed sad about the container ship. It is sadder about Christchurch’s sorrows. But grizzling as a reflex reaction is to be avoided, it seems to me. St Benedict saw that long centuries ago. If people were to live together in community then what he called grumbling was to be actively discouraged. And I am a Benedictine.
Monday, October 03, 2011
Groin injury
We appear to be at the end of the all the Pool Games in the Rugby World Cup, and are poised for the Quarter Finals. I am struggling to keep up, let alone give the impression of interest. Mary on the other hand is entering everything on a large wall chart which permanently occupies our dining table. Yesterday Wales thrashed (don’t you loathe these silly overkill verbs...) Fiji 66 - 0, while Ireland saw off Italy 36 - 6. Poor old Fiji can’t expect to thrive in the midst of an oppressive military dictatorship.
Tonga, usually classified patronisingly as a minnow, on the other hand dismissed France, not classified as a minnow, 19 - 14, to the accompaniment of much exuberance, although we haven’t yet heard from the Tongan king. France is in serious despair, despite the curious fact that they still, rather than Tonga, go forward to the Quarter Finals. Much about all this is veiled from my understanding.
But now it is reported that the nation is in much dismay because All Black Dan Carter, the handsome one, managed to tear his Adductor Longus at footie practice. This is called a Groin Injury. It is somewhat dreaded. I researched this, and it is not the groin at all. Goodness knows where they got that idea, and I hope the All Black doctor has done some anatomy. It is a thigh injury. The groin is further up. We got repeated TV shots of Dan Carter in obvious pain, limping off the field holding the relevant place. Now it seems he is out of the rest of the RWC.
And so a black pall of misery has settled over the land. Almost the whole front page of major newspapers is devoted to it this morning. On radio there are serial interviews with anyone with an opinion or a prognostication. We were already nervous because Richie McCaw, the captain, has been getting niggles from a foot injury. His foot has a metal screw in it which sounds inconvenient to me. Perhaps they need to tighten the screw.
And so my breakfast was made miserable by the Dan Carter lamentations. His estimable parents in Southbridge were unable to fly to Auckland to be with him because there were no available seats. They are distraught. We got reassuring words from some previous All Black citing crises of the past. The All Blacks have to “step up” and “do the business”. I turned to the Concert Programme to save my digestion.
Yes it’s sad. Dan Carter is an icon, a role model, a legend, a hero and a heart-throb. He is also crucial in the All Black game, we are told. It remains to be seen whether he is essential. Meanwhile there are other events in the world that really do matter, and there are a few other good people with health issues somewhat more dire than a sports-inflicted torn Adductor Longus.
Tonga, usually classified patronisingly as a minnow, on the other hand dismissed France, not classified as a minnow, 19 - 14, to the accompaniment of much exuberance, although we haven’t yet heard from the Tongan king. France is in serious despair, despite the curious fact that they still, rather than Tonga, go forward to the Quarter Finals. Much about all this is veiled from my understanding.
But now it is reported that the nation is in much dismay because All Black Dan Carter, the handsome one, managed to tear his Adductor Longus at footie practice. This is called a Groin Injury. It is somewhat dreaded. I researched this, and it is not the groin at all. Goodness knows where they got that idea, and I hope the All Black doctor has done some anatomy. It is a thigh injury. The groin is further up. We got repeated TV shots of Dan Carter in obvious pain, limping off the field holding the relevant place. Now it seems he is out of the rest of the RWC.
And so a black pall of misery has settled over the land. Almost the whole front page of major newspapers is devoted to it this morning. On radio there are serial interviews with anyone with an opinion or a prognostication. We were already nervous because Richie McCaw, the captain, has been getting niggles from a foot injury. His foot has a metal screw in it which sounds inconvenient to me. Perhaps they need to tighten the screw.
And so my breakfast was made miserable by the Dan Carter lamentations. His estimable parents in Southbridge were unable to fly to Auckland to be with him because there were no available seats. They are distraught. We got reassuring words from some previous All Black citing crises of the past. The All Blacks have to “step up” and “do the business”. I turned to the Concert Programme to save my digestion.
Yes it’s sad. Dan Carter is an icon, a role model, a legend, a hero and a heart-throb. He is also crucial in the All Black game, we are told. It remains to be seen whether he is essential. Meanwhile there are other events in the world that really do matter, and there are a few other good people with health issues somewhat more dire than a sports-inflicted torn Adductor Longus.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
God and the RWC
Robert Kitson informs us in the Guardian that nineteen chaplains are in attendance on the teams at the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/sep/20/rugby-world-cup-2011-chaplains)
I don’t know where to start. Are they all Christian chaplains, or is there a spread of Moslem, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist? What about an atheist chaplain or two? Or do atheists not suffer the same despair and loss when things go wrong? Among the Christians, do we have a proper range of Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist...? Sorry about all the questions, but Robert Kitson does not clarify these things.
Nineteen chaplains...? That’s one-nine, 19. Have these chaps nothing to do back home? It sounds to me like a nice little travel item. Then, one should ask, any female chaplains? Robert Kitson lists the frequent sources of distress for players, and they include trouble at home, losing a game, getting injured, risking getting injured, pregnant wife or girlfriend back home. Perhaps they simply need their mums, and a soothing word from a female chaplain might be just the ticket.
The article is accompanied by a photo of the Fiji team at prayer before a game. I believe I have written on this before. It horrifies me. One of the tragedies of world Christianity is this domestication of God, co-opting God on the side of our footie game, for heaven’s sake -- the same superstition that pervades so much Christian practice, the assumption that God can be propitiated and coerced into doing what we want when we ask. This god doesn’t exist except as an idol. It is a superstition as ancient as humankind. It is not the faith of Christ.
Somehow I can’t help feeling that these 19 chaplains would be better employed back where they came from, in real Christian ministry.
.....................................
It is very difficult for anyone to say what we may be thinking about the continued laments of the families of the 29 miners killed in the Pike River disaster. You can’t walk hobnailed through grief.
But it is 10 months now. The bodies of the miners have not been recovered because the mine is deemed too dangerous to enter. The Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Pike River tragedy is proceeding.
Meanwhile the families -- at any rate, some of them -- are making the recovery of their loved ones, or what’s left of them, if anything is left, some kind of touchstone of everything else. I understand that it is some comfort to get human remains back, although I find it hard to know why. Loss is loss. Why would you want a few scraps of human tissue back? In war, many thousands had “no known grave”. Often unidentifiable remains were found, and these were dignified with the words, “Known Unto God”. Over hundreds of years people have been buried at sea.
Have the Pike River families become somehow locked into someone’s silly and unnecessary agenda -- “get our boys back or else”...? We also get constantly reminded of the West Coast mining culture, which is alleged to be different from others. Those blokes would have charged straight back into the mine to retrieve their mates. They might also have got themselves killed.
I did not lose a loved one in the mine disaster, but I find it hard to understand why this fight is necessary. If the mine is sealed and shut down, then that will be their grave. If the mine is sold and reopened eventually, presumably some remains may be found and decisions will be made then. No one is setting out to be callous and uncaring.
............................................
An exceptional article in the Guardian Weekly of 09.09.11 by Gary Younge is entitled “Americans must learn to get over themselves”. Younge articulates what so many of us have wanted to say for a long time, one test of quality journalism.
He begins with the chilling news that Condoleezza Rice on 9.11 ordered her national security senior staff to come up with ideas on “how to capitalise on these opportunities” -- leverage immediately, to maximum political effect.
But since 9.11, ten years on, writes Younge, we are able to see the limits to enormous military power, America’s relative geopolitical decline, and its hopeless polarised political culture.
And he identifies the pervasive element of narcissism in America’s national grief. It persists to this day in the 10-year commemorations. Grief becomes a badge of existence and identity. This couldn’t happen to Americans. Revenge was the only option. “It was as though Americans were unique in their ability to feel pain, and the deaths of civilians of other nations were worth less.”
But one of the most compelling pictures for me of the 9.11 atrocity was none of that, not even the sight of the towers burning, memorable and all as that was as we watched it on the TV in our hotel room in Berlin. It was the sight of George W Bush sitting down reading with the kiddiwinkies at some infant school. Was he reading to them or were they to him? Then some aide whispers in his ear the news that the nation is under attack, and Bush sits there with his stunned mullet look.
Valiantly, like Drake continuing his game of bowls, he finished the reading lesson lest any of the kiddies got upset.
America’s response to that event has been a global disaster. We redefined a word, rendition -- it used to mean that your church choir tackled some anthem slightly beyond them, and now it means hauling suspect terrorists secretly by air to somewhere they can be tortured. America established its own atrocity, Guantanamo Bay. What happens there doesn’t matter so much if it’s not on American soil. Islamaphobia in some quarters has become pretty well compulsory.
Now we have President Obama fighting what looks like a rearguard action for sanity against the utter loonies of the Republican Party. That is what’s terrifying. It is as though these people never learn anything over the years, about race and unity, about religion and sense, about simply being kind, understanding your enemy, tackling the sources of poverty and injustice in the world... or waking up to the fact that most of the world are actually glad they are not Americans.
I don’t know where to start. Are they all Christian chaplains, or is there a spread of Moslem, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist? What about an atheist chaplain or two? Or do atheists not suffer the same despair and loss when things go wrong? Among the Christians, do we have a proper range of Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist...? Sorry about all the questions, but Robert Kitson does not clarify these things.
Nineteen chaplains...? That’s one-nine, 19. Have these chaps nothing to do back home? It sounds to me like a nice little travel item. Then, one should ask, any female chaplains? Robert Kitson lists the frequent sources of distress for players, and they include trouble at home, losing a game, getting injured, risking getting injured, pregnant wife or girlfriend back home. Perhaps they simply need their mums, and a soothing word from a female chaplain might be just the ticket.
The article is accompanied by a photo of the Fiji team at prayer before a game. I believe I have written on this before. It horrifies me. One of the tragedies of world Christianity is this domestication of God, co-opting God on the side of our footie game, for heaven’s sake -- the same superstition that pervades so much Christian practice, the assumption that God can be propitiated and coerced into doing what we want when we ask. This god doesn’t exist except as an idol. It is a superstition as ancient as humankind. It is not the faith of Christ.
Somehow I can’t help feeling that these 19 chaplains would be better employed back where they came from, in real Christian ministry.
.....................................
It is very difficult for anyone to say what we may be thinking about the continued laments of the families of the 29 miners killed in the Pike River disaster. You can’t walk hobnailed through grief.
But it is 10 months now. The bodies of the miners have not been recovered because the mine is deemed too dangerous to enter. The Royal Commission of Enquiry into the Pike River tragedy is proceeding.
Meanwhile the families -- at any rate, some of them -- are making the recovery of their loved ones, or what’s left of them, if anything is left, some kind of touchstone of everything else. I understand that it is some comfort to get human remains back, although I find it hard to know why. Loss is loss. Why would you want a few scraps of human tissue back? In war, many thousands had “no known grave”. Often unidentifiable remains were found, and these were dignified with the words, “Known Unto God”. Over hundreds of years people have been buried at sea.
Have the Pike River families become somehow locked into someone’s silly and unnecessary agenda -- “get our boys back or else”...? We also get constantly reminded of the West Coast mining culture, which is alleged to be different from others. Those blokes would have charged straight back into the mine to retrieve their mates. They might also have got themselves killed.
I did not lose a loved one in the mine disaster, but I find it hard to understand why this fight is necessary. If the mine is sealed and shut down, then that will be their grave. If the mine is sold and reopened eventually, presumably some remains may be found and decisions will be made then. No one is setting out to be callous and uncaring.
............................................
An exceptional article in the Guardian Weekly of 09.09.11 by Gary Younge is entitled “Americans must learn to get over themselves”. Younge articulates what so many of us have wanted to say for a long time, one test of quality journalism.
He begins with the chilling news that Condoleezza Rice on 9.11 ordered her national security senior staff to come up with ideas on “how to capitalise on these opportunities” -- leverage immediately, to maximum political effect.
But since 9.11, ten years on, writes Younge, we are able to see the limits to enormous military power, America’s relative geopolitical decline, and its hopeless polarised political culture.
And he identifies the pervasive element of narcissism in America’s national grief. It persists to this day in the 10-year commemorations. Grief becomes a badge of existence and identity. This couldn’t happen to Americans. Revenge was the only option. “It was as though Americans were unique in their ability to feel pain, and the deaths of civilians of other nations were worth less.”
But one of the most compelling pictures for me of the 9.11 atrocity was none of that, not even the sight of the towers burning, memorable and all as that was as we watched it on the TV in our hotel room in Berlin. It was the sight of George W Bush sitting down reading with the kiddiwinkies at some infant school. Was he reading to them or were they to him? Then some aide whispers in his ear the news that the nation is under attack, and Bush sits there with his stunned mullet look.
Valiantly, like Drake continuing his game of bowls, he finished the reading lesson lest any of the kiddies got upset.
America’s response to that event has been a global disaster. We redefined a word, rendition -- it used to mean that your church choir tackled some anthem slightly beyond them, and now it means hauling suspect terrorists secretly by air to somewhere they can be tortured. America established its own atrocity, Guantanamo Bay. What happens there doesn’t matter so much if it’s not on American soil. Islamaphobia in some quarters has become pretty well compulsory.
Now we have President Obama fighting what looks like a rearguard action for sanity against the utter loonies of the Republican Party. That is what’s terrifying. It is as though these people never learn anything over the years, about race and unity, about religion and sense, about simply being kind, understanding your enemy, tackling the sources of poverty and injustice in the world... or waking up to the fact that most of the world are actually glad they are not Americans.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Biffo, etc... Miscellany
Rugby football is a game [in which] each side is allowed to put in a certain amount of assault and battery and do things to its fellow man which, if done elsewhere, would result in 14 days without the option, coupled with some strong remarks from the Bench. (P G Wodehouse, 1930)
It seems that over the weekend there was an important game in the other code, League, which featured a major brawl. Two players sent off resumed their dispute beyond the sideline, “back in civilized territory” as one writer put it, and were joined by many others.
I find all this seriously unedifying. Neither I nor people I associate with ever raise their fists, or imagine any issue is properly dealt with that way. Yet on or off the rugby field, or league, it becomes what the sports writers call a little bit of biffo. Sometimes it is the way blokes handle things. Never mind that it’s illegal, even in League. It happens, it is understood evidently in the male sporting psyche, and a good referee is one who is not too scrupulous about common assault.
Well OK, but it’s lost on me.
. . . . . . . . . .
Michele Bachmann, one of the Republican candidates for the US presidency, heaven help us all, has claimed that the recent earthquake and the hurricane that shook the eastern seaboard of the USA were messages from God. What was the message? We've got to rein in the spending, she said. God arranged a mediocre kind of earthquake, and a somewhat serious storm, to get the attention of the politicians, says Michele.
This woman seriously hopes to be President of the United States of America. She gets messages from God. It’s early days yet, of course, and she has to beat down the candidacy of the Governor of the State of Texas, Rick Perry, who seems to be a really toxic religious fruitcake. As governor, Rick has consented to hundreds of judicial executions as a righteous thing. He wouldn't have got elected if he hadn't vowed to kill condemned people. Rick proclaimed his presidential candidacy at some major fundamentalist religious rally. Incidentally, what happened to the constitutional separation of church and state in the USA? I only ask...
Sarah Palin is also a candidate evidently, in a wide choice which includes Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich… It is as though God is saying to the Democrat Party, your sacred role is to protect my people, my world, from such a fate. Anyway, that’s what I think God is saying.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The Rugby World Cup starts here at the end of next week. The Fiji team arrived yesterday. At Auckland airport the visiting rugby teams emerge via a separate, special gateway which leads onto a stage, rather in the manner of returning astronauts. They stand there while hakas are endured and the media get their fill of them. The rest of us, hoi polloi, emerge from our flights in the usual way.
The land has gone curiously silent on the fact that the All Blacks have just had two consecutive serious losses in the TriNations tournament, first to South Africa, and then to Australia. I have no idea what this means, although I was under the impression that these were the All Blacks' two major foes. Well they each just beat us. Senior All Blacks, heroes, icons, role models as they are, have been getting “rested”. It’s like the lull before Waterloo. A frisson of fear quivers through some of the faithful.
Meanwhile I have set myself, at this late stage of life, to discover and learn what the game of Rugby is actually for and about. I consulted the rules, on Wikipedia and other sites. Do not go there -- it is terminally boring. I printed out a 2-page article on "Offside", and find I understand, maybe, the first sentence. The first sentence reads: Offside rules in rugby union are complex.
It seems that over the weekend there was an important game in the other code, League, which featured a major brawl. Two players sent off resumed their dispute beyond the sideline, “back in civilized territory” as one writer put it, and were joined by many others.
I find all this seriously unedifying. Neither I nor people I associate with ever raise their fists, or imagine any issue is properly dealt with that way. Yet on or off the rugby field, or league, it becomes what the sports writers call a little bit of biffo. Sometimes it is the way blokes handle things. Never mind that it’s illegal, even in League. It happens, it is understood evidently in the male sporting psyche, and a good referee is one who is not too scrupulous about common assault.
Well OK, but it’s lost on me.
. . . . . . . . . .
Michele Bachmann, one of the Republican candidates for the US presidency, heaven help us all, has claimed that the recent earthquake and the hurricane that shook the eastern seaboard of the USA were messages from God. What was the message? We've got to rein in the spending, she said. God arranged a mediocre kind of earthquake, and a somewhat serious storm, to get the attention of the politicians, says Michele.
This woman seriously hopes to be President of the United States of America. She gets messages from God. It’s early days yet, of course, and she has to beat down the candidacy of the Governor of the State of Texas, Rick Perry, who seems to be a really toxic religious fruitcake. As governor, Rick has consented to hundreds of judicial executions as a righteous thing. He wouldn't have got elected if he hadn't vowed to kill condemned people. Rick proclaimed his presidential candidacy at some major fundamentalist religious rally. Incidentally, what happened to the constitutional separation of church and state in the USA? I only ask...
Sarah Palin is also a candidate evidently, in a wide choice which includes Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich… It is as though God is saying to the Democrat Party, your sacred role is to protect my people, my world, from such a fate. Anyway, that’s what I think God is saying.
. . . . . . . . . . .
The Rugby World Cup starts here at the end of next week. The Fiji team arrived yesterday. At Auckland airport the visiting rugby teams emerge via a separate, special gateway which leads onto a stage, rather in the manner of returning astronauts. They stand there while hakas are endured and the media get their fill of them. The rest of us, hoi polloi, emerge from our flights in the usual way.
The land has gone curiously silent on the fact that the All Blacks have just had two consecutive serious losses in the TriNations tournament, first to South Africa, and then to Australia. I have no idea what this means, although I was under the impression that these were the All Blacks' two major foes. Well they each just beat us. Senior All Blacks, heroes, icons, role models as they are, have been getting “rested”. It’s like the lull before Waterloo. A frisson of fear quivers through some of the faithful.
Meanwhile I have set myself, at this late stage of life, to discover and learn what the game of Rugby is actually for and about. I consulted the rules, on Wikipedia and other sites. Do not go there -- it is terminally boring. I printed out a 2-page article on "Offside", and find I understand, maybe, the first sentence. The first sentence reads: Offside rules in rugby union are complex.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
The blooming looming rugby world cup
The blooming looming Rugby World Cup is now fewer than 28 days away. It’s unstoppable. NZ Post Philatelic has just announced its first ever 3-dimensional stamp at $15 a lick. The image is a closeup of the Cup itself in all its glory, and in 3 dimensions. Oh, joy. You can also have a solid silver commemorative coin for about $135. This depicts a few beefy All Blacks in their haka.
Some Aussie rugby writer, pathetic and peeved witless at the All Blacks’ latest 30-14 defeat of the Wallabies, says the haka immediately prior to an All Black game should be disallowed, as it gives them an “unfair physical advantage”. The whole game of rugby is about male dominance over another man, and they're yelling and screaming and threatening and you've to sit there and go: 'Umm, this'll be finished soon’, said this bloke. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
It seems that we are sending less than the All Blacks full strength to South Africa next weekend, so as to conserve some of the top players. (I had to do a little research to find out what is happening in South Africa -- something called the Tri Nations.) We are constantly updated on the players’ joints and groins and other important places, and I entirely agree that wherever possible they should reduce the tearing of tendons, rippage of nerves, fracture of bones. The sight of one of these hulks, in clear agony, being helped off the paddock is less than edifying. Of course they are in a tradition which tells of one historic rugby icon, injured in the game, who refused help, insisted on playing on, and it was only at the end it was discovered he had dislocated his shoulder. This sort of stuff is admired.
Down at the Viaduct in Auckland they have installed a couple of immense TV screens in The Cloud, the strange sluglike edifice that seems to have beached itself like some slow primeval amphibian vertebrate. These screens are the size of half a footy paddock, presumably in case any of the devotees are short sighted. They cost about a million dollars we are told.
We are now emerging, everyone hopes, from the latest pre-tournament crisis. Adidas was charging a truly extortionate $220 for the official RWC All Black jersey. Some Whakatane retailer realised that customers could buy the jersey on line for much less, and promptly dropped his price. He said, it was not only to achieve sales, but also in defiance of the greed of Adidas, in which cause he was prepared to take a loss.
The question then was whether Adidas would drop their price or tyrannize the retailers -- and they blundered straight into a stunning PR disaster which surely has their American bosses incandescent. I don’t personally care about any of this, but it’s delicious to watch. The Rugby Union bosses, caught between their indignant fans on the one hand, already having paid through their bleeding noses for seats at the games, and Adidas’s serious sponsorship money, simply gibbered. Not what you want, less than a month out from the RWC.
It’s interesting to me from listening to the Adidas bosses, that their generous sponsorship of rugby year by year was always actually dependent on Adidas making money from rugby sales of their gear. So it was never altruistic, and I was simply naïve to assume it was. Of course, Adidas’s donated millions are an investment to make money for their shareholders. How silly of me. These gents will pull the plug whenever it suits them.
However, none of this solves my problem -- how to escape the hype, the hysteria, the rivers of booze, the excruciating “values” of professional contact sport and machoism, the endless mindless prognostications about imminent games, the hassles about public transport, the huge demands on the police and others, the endless environmental consequences of all the world travel, the bondage and obsequiousness of the media and its sports writers, the relentless dumbing down of our culture…
And the sheer noise. It may be only faintly audible here at Algies Bay, except on radio and TV. I can get the Concert Programme on Sky much better than by radio, so that’s good. I have plenty of books. For food we need go no further than Warkworth.
The best thing would be to go to Niue for maybe 4 weeks -- but of course, that’s not going to happen, idyllic and all as it would be. Yesterday morning the Concert Programme suddenly and delightfully played Eric Coates’s By a Sleepy Lagoon, a Tropical Moon… I do have a couple of commitments here. Anyway, in Niue they would probably all be sitting around a kava bowl in front of a giant TV screen generously supplied by the Chinese consulate…
Some Aussie rugby writer, pathetic and peeved witless at the All Blacks’ latest 30-14 defeat of the Wallabies, says the haka immediately prior to an All Black game should be disallowed, as it gives them an “unfair physical advantage”. The whole game of rugby is about male dominance over another man, and they're yelling and screaming and threatening and you've to sit there and go: 'Umm, this'll be finished soon’, said this bloke. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
It seems that we are sending less than the All Blacks full strength to South Africa next weekend, so as to conserve some of the top players. (I had to do a little research to find out what is happening in South Africa -- something called the Tri Nations.) We are constantly updated on the players’ joints and groins and other important places, and I entirely agree that wherever possible they should reduce the tearing of tendons, rippage of nerves, fracture of bones. The sight of one of these hulks, in clear agony, being helped off the paddock is less than edifying. Of course they are in a tradition which tells of one historic rugby icon, injured in the game, who refused help, insisted on playing on, and it was only at the end it was discovered he had dislocated his shoulder. This sort of stuff is admired.
Down at the Viaduct in Auckland they have installed a couple of immense TV screens in The Cloud, the strange sluglike edifice that seems to have beached itself like some slow primeval amphibian vertebrate. These screens are the size of half a footy paddock, presumably in case any of the devotees are short sighted. They cost about a million dollars we are told.
We are now emerging, everyone hopes, from the latest pre-tournament crisis. Adidas was charging a truly extortionate $220 for the official RWC All Black jersey. Some Whakatane retailer realised that customers could buy the jersey on line for much less, and promptly dropped his price. He said, it was not only to achieve sales, but also in defiance of the greed of Adidas, in which cause he was prepared to take a loss.
The question then was whether Adidas would drop their price or tyrannize the retailers -- and they blundered straight into a stunning PR disaster which surely has their American bosses incandescent. I don’t personally care about any of this, but it’s delicious to watch. The Rugby Union bosses, caught between their indignant fans on the one hand, already having paid through their bleeding noses for seats at the games, and Adidas’s serious sponsorship money, simply gibbered. Not what you want, less than a month out from the RWC.
It’s interesting to me from listening to the Adidas bosses, that their generous sponsorship of rugby year by year was always actually dependent on Adidas making money from rugby sales of their gear. So it was never altruistic, and I was simply naïve to assume it was. Of course, Adidas’s donated millions are an investment to make money for their shareholders. How silly of me. These gents will pull the plug whenever it suits them.
However, none of this solves my problem -- how to escape the hype, the hysteria, the rivers of booze, the excruciating “values” of professional contact sport and machoism, the endless mindless prognostications about imminent games, the hassles about public transport, the huge demands on the police and others, the endless environmental consequences of all the world travel, the bondage and obsequiousness of the media and its sports writers, the relentless dumbing down of our culture…
And the sheer noise. It may be only faintly audible here at Algies Bay, except on radio and TV. I can get the Concert Programme on Sky much better than by radio, so that’s good. I have plenty of books. For food we need go no further than Warkworth.
The best thing would be to go to Niue for maybe 4 weeks -- but of course, that’s not going to happen, idyllic and all as it would be. Yesterday morning the Concert Programme suddenly and delightfully played Eric Coates’s By a Sleepy Lagoon, a Tropical Moon… I do have a couple of commitments here. Anyway, in Niue they would probably all be sitting around a kava bowl in front of a giant TV screen generously supplied by the Chinese consulate…
Friday, August 05, 2011
Miscellany 4 - The American People, etc
The American People... It is apparently compulsory that any politician or public figure making a statement in the USA must make explicit and devoted reference to The American People. The Canadian People, for instance, or the Australian People, simply does not have the same resonance, although I suspect The German People once did. The American People is an entity surrounded and held together by powerful mythologies such as The American Dream, whatever that is.
It seems to be an amalgam of what they call democracy and the posturing and fraud Americans call the political process, the more sanitised versions of their history since Plymouth Rock, Hollywood, Davy Crockett and steamboats on the Mississippi, the flag and misty-eyed celebrations, and American Lives being lost at Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Tarawa, their rationalisations of the horrors of slavery and racism and attitudes thereby that persist to this day... Every people’s history, as told, is a little dishonest in places.
Americans rarely seem to realise that the rest of the world winces when they talk as though an American Life lost is somehow more costly than anyone else’s life lost.
It is apparently just and right that other nationalities should submit to the demands of international justice and the courts of The Hague, but no American Boy will be subjected to any foreign court.
Well ain’t it a goddamn shame.
......................................
One day, in Paris, in a tour bus, we were swinging around into the square in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. In the seat behind us were an American couple maybe in their 70s.
Elmer, is that that Noeter Dayme...?
You got it, Gloria.
......................................
I went to a family funeral this week. I got to speak at it. It was the funeral of my brother-in-law, as fine and gentle an Aussie man as you would ever hope to meet. He was an unassuming Christian believer, and he was always very active in his church and far beyond.
So, we had a Christian funeral. That is to say, the point of the service was the Word of God about life and death, comfort and hope. We heard words from the Bible, words from people of faith. We sang Christian hymns -- we did not play horrors from the current pop catalogue or what someone thought was trendy. It was in a Christian church, not in some football club rooms or school hall.
Above all, we did not have a string of people getting up to make scarcely articulate speeches about his life, their selective memories of him, telling silly inaccurate and sometime offensive stories and jokes, desecrating the place with their total inattention to the demanding challenges of life and death. In our sickeningly superficial culture, most people now become surprising heroes after they have died. We think somehow we owe it to them. We don’t. What we owe them is the truth.
Those of us who organised my brother-in-law’s funeral decided early on that we would not have a string of testimonies to someone who everyone already knew had been a good, even exceptional, person.
So it was a Christian service, and that was a huge relief. It paid attention to the facts of life and death, of love and hope. It paid tribute to my brother-in-law’s life, and his final illness. It marked his service as a Christian man, which was considerable.
It was all that needed to be done.
It seems to be an amalgam of what they call democracy and the posturing and fraud Americans call the political process, the more sanitised versions of their history since Plymouth Rock, Hollywood, Davy Crockett and steamboats on the Mississippi, the flag and misty-eyed celebrations, and American Lives being lost at Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal and Tarawa, their rationalisations of the horrors of slavery and racism and attitudes thereby that persist to this day... Every people’s history, as told, is a little dishonest in places.
Americans rarely seem to realise that the rest of the world winces when they talk as though an American Life lost is somehow more costly than anyone else’s life lost.
It is apparently just and right that other nationalities should submit to the demands of international justice and the courts of The Hague, but no American Boy will be subjected to any foreign court.
Well ain’t it a goddamn shame.
......................................
One day, in Paris, in a tour bus, we were swinging around into the square in front of Notre Dame Cathedral. In the seat behind us were an American couple maybe in their 70s.
Elmer, is that that Noeter Dayme...?
You got it, Gloria.
......................................
I went to a family funeral this week. I got to speak at it. It was the funeral of my brother-in-law, as fine and gentle an Aussie man as you would ever hope to meet. He was an unassuming Christian believer, and he was always very active in his church and far beyond.
So, we had a Christian funeral. That is to say, the point of the service was the Word of God about life and death, comfort and hope. We heard words from the Bible, words from people of faith. We sang Christian hymns -- we did not play horrors from the current pop catalogue or what someone thought was trendy. It was in a Christian church, not in some football club rooms or school hall.
Above all, we did not have a string of people getting up to make scarcely articulate speeches about his life, their selective memories of him, telling silly inaccurate and sometime offensive stories and jokes, desecrating the place with their total inattention to the demanding challenges of life and death. In our sickeningly superficial culture, most people now become surprising heroes after they have died. We think somehow we owe it to them. We don’t. What we owe them is the truth.
Those of us who organised my brother-in-law’s funeral decided early on that we would not have a string of testimonies to someone who everyone already knew had been a good, even exceptional, person.
So it was a Christian service, and that was a huge relief. It paid attention to the facts of life and death, of love and hope. It paid tribute to my brother-in-law’s life, and his final illness. It marked his service as a Christian man, which was considerable.
It was all that needed to be done.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Miscellany 3
Last night as I recall we were 55 days away from the start of Rugby Heaven, the Rugby World Cup. A huge excrescence seems to have come ashore on the Auckland waterfront, like some liquefaction from the abyss of the Kermadec Trench. This is called The Cloud, I believe -- no one seems to know why -- and it’s purpose is to function as a giant bowser station for pumping Heineken and Steinlager into the bloodstreams of the faithful. The Prime Minister called it Party Central. It will be a very noisy place.
Given that any actual rugby event will be kilometers away, this place must be solely dedicated to booze and noise as a kind of adjunct -- or what in another context might have been called peripheral damage. It is a comment on our culture, that the malignant RWC metastasizes into separate islands of indulgence at vast expense, as though the simple enjoyment of watching football game were never enough, or even the point. There will be pubs and clubs and other venues everywhere, with wide TV screens, dispensing alcohol to the devotees.
Daily on TV we are seeing happy happy people holding up their blue RWC tickets. We have ours, have you got yours? The slogan seems to be You gotta be there. No I don’t. Bad mistake.
....................................................
Then I thought to consult the RWC websites. There is a place where they have clearly gone to some trouble to organise the national anthems to be sung at the rugby events. Somebody thought to mobilise some of New Zealand’s choral talent for recordings of everyone’s national anthems decently and in order. This is excellent news. It means that we won’t be subjected to the cringing embarrassment of some swooping talentless soprano, trained, if that is the word, in the hip hop school of tuneless noisemaking, destroying whatever merit there may be in God Defend NZ, or Allons Enfants, and getting flatter and flatter. The recordings you can hear on the website are very brisk and professional, with decent orchestration. We are given the words in the home language. All of this ensures that I will, if I’m around, tune in to the start of the games to hear the anthems.
....................................................
Dr Richard Worth, the cabinet minister who resigned last year after allegations of sexual impropriety, has been confirmed as Honorary Consul to New Zealand for Monaco. Well, there’s a certain tantalising fittingness about that. Dr Worth has just returned from the wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco and Charleen Wittstock. The body language of Charleen and Albert at the festivities, I thought, said it all. It is as though they loathe each other. They honeymooned in Durban, not merely in separate rooms but in separate hotels. Their honeymoon was cut short because Albert had to get home to have blood tests in a paternity suit. Isn’t that wonderful.
I seem to remember Sir Robert Jones, in one of his books, writing that among the people he would never employ are those who wear sun shades pushed back to the top of their heads, and anyone called Charleen. Ah well, no doubt Charleen’s role is to produce an heir.
Someone may know why Monaco needs a consul in NZ, honorary or otherwise. Why does NZ consent to clutter up its diplomatic corps with representation from Monaco? Do we have representation from Chad, Upper Volta or Albania?
.....................................................
Manu Samoa beat the Wallabies 32-23. There is delirious rejoicing in Apia and Auckland. And I believe they did it on merit. The Aussies were simply outplayed. And outmuscled, I imagine. I try to avoid schadenfreude, but these moments in sport seem to demand it. Former Samoan rugby hero Peter Fatialofa said he might have a beer or two even though it was Sunday. This is big stuff. I knew his mother, Tui Fatialofa. She was a lovely, brave and noble woman who was the first Samoan woman to be ordained a Presbyterian minister in the face of much tut-tutting in the patriarchy. Tui, I think, might have made a Sunday exception too.
Given that any actual rugby event will be kilometers away, this place must be solely dedicated to booze and noise as a kind of adjunct -- or what in another context might have been called peripheral damage. It is a comment on our culture, that the malignant RWC metastasizes into separate islands of indulgence at vast expense, as though the simple enjoyment of watching football game were never enough, or even the point. There will be pubs and clubs and other venues everywhere, with wide TV screens, dispensing alcohol to the devotees.
Daily on TV we are seeing happy happy people holding up their blue RWC tickets. We have ours, have you got yours? The slogan seems to be You gotta be there. No I don’t. Bad mistake.
....................................................
Then I thought to consult the RWC websites. There is a place where they have clearly gone to some trouble to organise the national anthems to be sung at the rugby events. Somebody thought to mobilise some of New Zealand’s choral talent for recordings of everyone’s national anthems decently and in order. This is excellent news. It means that we won’t be subjected to the cringing embarrassment of some swooping talentless soprano, trained, if that is the word, in the hip hop school of tuneless noisemaking, destroying whatever merit there may be in God Defend NZ, or Allons Enfants, and getting flatter and flatter. The recordings you can hear on the website are very brisk and professional, with decent orchestration. We are given the words in the home language. All of this ensures that I will, if I’m around, tune in to the start of the games to hear the anthems.
....................................................
Dr Richard Worth, the cabinet minister who resigned last year after allegations of sexual impropriety, has been confirmed as Honorary Consul to New Zealand for Monaco. Well, there’s a certain tantalising fittingness about that. Dr Worth has just returned from the wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco and Charleen Wittstock. The body language of Charleen and Albert at the festivities, I thought, said it all. It is as though they loathe each other. They honeymooned in Durban, not merely in separate rooms but in separate hotels. Their honeymoon was cut short because Albert had to get home to have blood tests in a paternity suit. Isn’t that wonderful.
I seem to remember Sir Robert Jones, in one of his books, writing that among the people he would never employ are those who wear sun shades pushed back to the top of their heads, and anyone called Charleen. Ah well, no doubt Charleen’s role is to produce an heir.
Someone may know why Monaco needs a consul in NZ, honorary or otherwise. Why does NZ consent to clutter up its diplomatic corps with representation from Monaco? Do we have representation from Chad, Upper Volta or Albania?
.....................................................
Manu Samoa beat the Wallabies 32-23. There is delirious rejoicing in Apia and Auckland. And I believe they did it on merit. The Aussies were simply outplayed. And outmuscled, I imagine. I try to avoid schadenfreude, but these moments in sport seem to demand it. Former Samoan rugby hero Peter Fatialofa said he might have a beer or two even though it was Sunday. This is big stuff. I knew his mother, Tui Fatialofa. She was a lovely, brave and noble woman who was the first Samoan woman to be ordained a Presbyterian minister in the face of much tut-tutting in the patriarchy. Tui, I think, might have made a Sunday exception too.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Fifty dancing virgins
As I write, the actual Cup, the Webb Ellis Cup, the Rugby World Cup, is down at Bluff about to start its pilgrimage northwards through the land for the homage of the faithful. First, today, they carted it across Foveaux Strait to Stewart Island where the primary school kids did a haka and had their photos taken individually alongside the Cup.
This is very moving stuff. They have modified some large cartage van as the centerpiece of their cavalcade, and it seems that worshippers in Hokitika or Havelock, Dannevirke or Dargaville, can form orderly queues and file through the van for a reverential glimpse of the Cup.
It is reminiscent of the ancient Hebrew narrative describing King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant up into Jerusalem. He sacrificed bullocks along the way and had the Ark preceded by dancing singing virgins. David himself danced the Ark into Jerusalem, naked, and subject to some public ridicule. He was just happy, that’s all.
So at least when the Cup is in the approaches to centres with sacred rugby turf there could be some local dancing virgins. About fifty should do it, if they can be found. A reduced number might be necessary at Taumarunui. Solemn barbecues with Heineken could substitute for sacrifices, although I would personally prefer a properly spit-roasted bullock. But that would take too long.
The Cup is an elaborate silver thing with a lid, and I was intrigued to learn that its two handles have silver representations of a satyr on one and a nymph on the other. This could be seen as sinister. The only connection I can think of between satyrs and nymphs on the one hand, and world Rugby on the other, seems to me strictly off-field and causes considerable angst from time to time, with players sent home. One has to ask why this design was chosen. Perhaps we will never know. One possibility is that, as happened in the building of old cathedrals, carvers and engravers, artisans and decorators, often left their own little secret jokes.
Well, now it proceeds north. With only two months to the opening of Rugby Heaven and its ancillary horrors such as Auckland’s Party Central -- to say nothing of the media’s sickening obsequious and sycophantic devotion -- it has become a case of sauve qui peut. There is no escape committee I know of.
An item in the NZ Herald today says there is some trouble recruiting enough people to serve beer. I imagine there are sufficient people to drink it.
This is very moving stuff. They have modified some large cartage van as the centerpiece of their cavalcade, and it seems that worshippers in Hokitika or Havelock, Dannevirke or Dargaville, can form orderly queues and file through the van for a reverential glimpse of the Cup.
It is reminiscent of the ancient Hebrew narrative describing King David bringing the Ark of the Covenant up into Jerusalem. He sacrificed bullocks along the way and had the Ark preceded by dancing singing virgins. David himself danced the Ark into Jerusalem, naked, and subject to some public ridicule. He was just happy, that’s all.
So at least when the Cup is in the approaches to centres with sacred rugby turf there could be some local dancing virgins. About fifty should do it, if they can be found. A reduced number might be necessary at Taumarunui. Solemn barbecues with Heineken could substitute for sacrifices, although I would personally prefer a properly spit-roasted bullock. But that would take too long.
The Cup is an elaborate silver thing with a lid, and I was intrigued to learn that its two handles have silver representations of a satyr on one and a nymph on the other. This could be seen as sinister. The only connection I can think of between satyrs and nymphs on the one hand, and world Rugby on the other, seems to me strictly off-field and causes considerable angst from time to time, with players sent home. One has to ask why this design was chosen. Perhaps we will never know. One possibility is that, as happened in the building of old cathedrals, carvers and engravers, artisans and decorators, often left their own little secret jokes.
Well, now it proceeds north. With only two months to the opening of Rugby Heaven and its ancillary horrors such as Auckland’s Party Central -- to say nothing of the media’s sickening obsequious and sycophantic devotion -- it has become a case of sauve qui peut. There is no escape committee I know of.
An item in the NZ Herald today says there is some trouble recruiting enough people to serve beer. I imagine there are sufficient people to drink it.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Fleeing the football, part 2
As long ago as 8 December 2009 I wrote a blog entry about the looming Rugby World Cup entitled “Fleeing the Football”. Already, back then, I was starting to panic about the abyss of booze and hyper-silliness into which the RWC threatens to plunge us all.
I mentioned having seen a kind of countdown clock in Christchurch Cathedral Square which was already, even then, proclaiming the number of days and nights before the advent of Rugby Heaven. Has that thing survived the earthquakes? If it has, can anyone get near it in the CBD Red Zone to see it and worship? Anyway, I can announce that it is now 79 days to the opening ceremony -- we get the countdown every evening immediately prior to the TV One 6 pm news.
Moreover, we now have stories of “wannabees” auditioning for dance troups and the like for the RWC opening ceremonies. I might consider auditioning to dance at the closing ceremony... But here were all these odd and ofttimes apparently talentless people prancing around in the hope of free entry.
We have dark debate about whether Eden Park is up to it. The only time in my life I have ever been near Eden Park was in 1981, protesting the All Blacks’ final test against the Springboks. The police made very sure we never got into the park. But that was the day of aircraft low-level flour-bombing of the park, and much violence. The protesters that day were sorted initially into groups of graded willingness to get batoned by police and otherwise assaulted. Barrie MacCuish and I joined the group with the most nuns and people in wheelchairs. It was a great day on which we said that some things matter more than Rugby football.
Christchurch’s facilities are of course no more, and there is much grief about that.
There remains no solution about escape from all this, unless I am willing to cough up whatever it costs to take a cruise down the Rhine, or spend some weeks on Niue. The thing is going to last for weeks. I have not had the courage to find out how long it lasts.
Possibly, for all our Rugby tradition and fervour, the country is just now too preoccupied to be greatly bothered, and all the hype will end up struggling for attention. Everything about it seems tiresome to me -- such as the report tonight that most of the “Kiwi-made” artifacts and mementoes on sale in the tourist shops are actually nothing of the kind. They are made in China or Vietnam, fake, cheap, embarrassing. It’s trashy and sad.
We have huge problems to occupy us in NZ at present, some aspects of them bringing out the best in Kiwis. It’s hard to see how the RWC will be anything other than a nuisance, and some occupational therapy for the sports-mad and simpletons.
I mentioned having seen a kind of countdown clock in Christchurch Cathedral Square which was already, even then, proclaiming the number of days and nights before the advent of Rugby Heaven. Has that thing survived the earthquakes? If it has, can anyone get near it in the CBD Red Zone to see it and worship? Anyway, I can announce that it is now 79 days to the opening ceremony -- we get the countdown every evening immediately prior to the TV One 6 pm news.
Moreover, we now have stories of “wannabees” auditioning for dance troups and the like for the RWC opening ceremonies. I might consider auditioning to dance at the closing ceremony... But here were all these odd and ofttimes apparently talentless people prancing around in the hope of free entry.
We have dark debate about whether Eden Park is up to it. The only time in my life I have ever been near Eden Park was in 1981, protesting the All Blacks’ final test against the Springboks. The police made very sure we never got into the park. But that was the day of aircraft low-level flour-bombing of the park, and much violence. The protesters that day were sorted initially into groups of graded willingness to get batoned by police and otherwise assaulted. Barrie MacCuish and I joined the group with the most nuns and people in wheelchairs. It was a great day on which we said that some things matter more than Rugby football.
Christchurch’s facilities are of course no more, and there is much grief about that.
There remains no solution about escape from all this, unless I am willing to cough up whatever it costs to take a cruise down the Rhine, or spend some weeks on Niue. The thing is going to last for weeks. I have not had the courage to find out how long it lasts.
Possibly, for all our Rugby tradition and fervour, the country is just now too preoccupied to be greatly bothered, and all the hype will end up struggling for attention. Everything about it seems tiresome to me -- such as the report tonight that most of the “Kiwi-made” artifacts and mementoes on sale in the tourist shops are actually nothing of the kind. They are made in China or Vietnam, fake, cheap, embarrassing. It’s trashy and sad.
We have huge problems to occupy us in NZ at present, some aspects of them bringing out the best in Kiwis. It’s hard to see how the RWC will be anything other than a nuisance, and some occupational therapy for the sports-mad and simpletons.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Hymnody
For some 19 years Maureen Garing has run a half-hour programme on Radio NZ, early Sunday mornings, called Hymns for Sunday Morning. Well, I imagine it was never intended to appeal to our country’s growing throngs of unchurched and agnostic, most of whom would be profoundly unconscious anyway at 7 am on a Sunday. Hymns for Sunday Morning is for memories and nostalgia chiefly among my generation perhaps.
But to get to the point… Last Sunday Maureen Garing presented her final programme. And to mark this she played a selection of her own favourite hymns. They were all wonderful -- George Herbert, Purcell, Handel… The best of all for me was the one she chose as the representative Scottish Metrical Psalm, the end of Psalm 72, His name for ever shall endure. I am unable to find words to describe why, with all that has happened over the years, I still respond immediately and instinctively to this spirituality, its robust faith, the songs arising from mists and hardship.
I am well aware that this selection of hymns would have been largely incomprehensible to most of the contemporary church, or what’s left of it. What we have now is the generation that arises inchoately to How great thou art, or plays the bagpipe version of Amazing Grace whenever possible. The only psalm they know is The Lord’s my shepherd, but they don’t know it’s a psalm. They don’t know what a psalm is. Maureen Garing’s selection moreover included not one Colin Gibson or Shirley Murray. So of course it was archaic -- and I loved every note of it.
Then I came across another reaction, to a previous hymn selection by Maureen Garing. This is by some Methodist bloke in his parish newsletter:
Not known for her innovative choice of hymnody to greet our waking hours, Ms Garing excelled herself by announcing she was planning to play the hymn without which, in her words, the Advent/Christmas season would not be complete. The hymn? Ding Dong Merrily on High!! As I headed for the shower, I wondered, troubled, what possible relevance such a song might have for bereft families in the mining communities of the West Coast, or the farming communities of Northland facing the arid realities of drought. Not that the rest of the programme had been much better. There had been but one solitary indigenous carol, one in ten maybe. The rest was meringue stuff - light and fluffy, beautifully articulated and modulated by some of the best cathedral choirs in England, but engaging at what point in the cares and struggles of listeners dealing with the sharp and wounding realities of today's New Zealand?
Well, OK. Ding Dong, Merrily on High, if you trouble to read the rest of it, is actually a song of high Trinitarian doctrine. But never mind. This bloke calls it meringue stuff, light and fluffy. He prefers something like that silly NZ carol, Upside Down Christmas.
The church which inspired and motivated me simply isn’t here any more. I love and celebrate its memory. I grieve at its passing, but of course all things pass. Perhaps I romanticize it. Hearing its echoes, however, stirs me still.
But to get to the point… Last Sunday Maureen Garing presented her final programme. And to mark this she played a selection of her own favourite hymns. They were all wonderful -- George Herbert, Purcell, Handel… The best of all for me was the one she chose as the representative Scottish Metrical Psalm, the end of Psalm 72, His name for ever shall endure. I am unable to find words to describe why, with all that has happened over the years, I still respond immediately and instinctively to this spirituality, its robust faith, the songs arising from mists and hardship.
I am well aware that this selection of hymns would have been largely incomprehensible to most of the contemporary church, or what’s left of it. What we have now is the generation that arises inchoately to How great thou art, or plays the bagpipe version of Amazing Grace whenever possible. The only psalm they know is The Lord’s my shepherd, but they don’t know it’s a psalm. They don’t know what a psalm is. Maureen Garing’s selection moreover included not one Colin Gibson or Shirley Murray. So of course it was archaic -- and I loved every note of it.
Then I came across another reaction, to a previous hymn selection by Maureen Garing. This is by some Methodist bloke in his parish newsletter:
Not known for her innovative choice of hymnody to greet our waking hours, Ms Garing excelled herself by announcing she was planning to play the hymn without which, in her words, the Advent/Christmas season would not be complete. The hymn? Ding Dong Merrily on High!! As I headed for the shower, I wondered, troubled, what possible relevance such a song might have for bereft families in the mining communities of the West Coast, or the farming communities of Northland facing the arid realities of drought. Not that the rest of the programme had been much better. There had been but one solitary indigenous carol, one in ten maybe. The rest was meringue stuff - light and fluffy, beautifully articulated and modulated by some of the best cathedral choirs in England, but engaging at what point in the cares and struggles of listeners dealing with the sharp and wounding realities of today's New Zealand?
Well, OK. Ding Dong, Merrily on High, if you trouble to read the rest of it, is actually a song of high Trinitarian doctrine. But never mind. This bloke calls it meringue stuff, light and fluffy. He prefers something like that silly NZ carol, Upside Down Christmas.
The church which inspired and motivated me simply isn’t here any more. I love and celebrate its memory. I grieve at its passing, but of course all things pass. Perhaps I romanticize it. Hearing its echoes, however, stirs me still.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Down the hatch
“He said part of growing up was learning how to drink in a mature way.”
I extracted this quote from the current furious debate on how to stop our youth turning up at A & E legless and obnoxious, or jumping off the motorway overbridge. I neglected to note which society pseudo-sophisticate said it. However…
Just how do you ingest ethanol (C2H5OH) in a mature way? Do you have little sips? Is it in a mature way if you are in socially sophisticated company?
“Growing up”, he said. You know when you’re growing up because you are drinking “in a mature way”. Well, isn’t that nice. This chap seems to have missed that they are growing up anyway, however they drink.
Alcohol is inseparable from any human society with the possible exception of the Johnsonville Play Centre -- the tots, you understand, not the mums. The earliest human records show fermentation of grain and the consumption of booze. The same records tell of drunkenness and disorder. The children in Fiji knew how to make a heady toddy from the central shoot of the coconut palm. Plenty of people in every age have gone through life choosing not to take alcohol, but most have happily indulged, many to grave or even lethal excess.
How pompously I am writing about all this. My point is that drinking in a mature way can only mean ceasing when you know you have had enough. “Enough” may mean that you have had all you want right now, or it may mean that if you have any more you will be at risk of behaving obnoxiously, driving dangerously, making an ass of yourself, or simply feeling sick. That point of decision, for whatever reason, is a mature decision, I guess -- and maybe it’s what the societal sophisticate means.
The reality is that once you have already poured some alcohol down your throat your brain has rapidly got less able to make that mature decision. There is also the deep question of will -- if what I want is to drown sorrows and cares, have a joyous time, enjoy getting legless (which is what school kids and others now unashamedly confess on TV), I may be unwilling to obey the call of wisdom and maturity. Peer pressure too may override any sensible decision.
One reaction to recent tragedies among binge drinking secondary school kids was an article by a woman whose name meant nothing to me -- she remembered her own adolescence which was marked by much booze and mayhem. She knew she brought some years of anxiety to her parents and others, and did a lot of damage. “But hey!” she said, “we had fun!” Well that’s alright then. Granny Herald actually published this drivel. We had fun. I didn’t. Being overcome with joy as the room swivelled around at 2 am is not quite the way I recall it.
So I would like to know from our society bloke precisely how he proposes to foster this maturity by feeding free alcohol -- beer and Bacardi, whisky and wine, champagne and cocktails -- to 100 teenagers under “controlled conditions”, before their school ball.
It is idiotic, irresponsible, deeply mistaken, bad leadership and example. Drinking is drinking. No one needs to do it. I personally believe life is better without it. But let’s not fall for this silly myth that you can drink in a mature way, which is innocuous.
I extracted this quote from the current furious debate on how to stop our youth turning up at A & E legless and obnoxious, or jumping off the motorway overbridge. I neglected to note which society pseudo-sophisticate said it. However…
Just how do you ingest ethanol (C2H5OH) in a mature way? Do you have little sips? Is it in a mature way if you are in socially sophisticated company?
“Growing up”, he said. You know when you’re growing up because you are drinking “in a mature way”. Well, isn’t that nice. This chap seems to have missed that they are growing up anyway, however they drink.
Alcohol is inseparable from any human society with the possible exception of the Johnsonville Play Centre -- the tots, you understand, not the mums. The earliest human records show fermentation of grain and the consumption of booze. The same records tell of drunkenness and disorder. The children in Fiji knew how to make a heady toddy from the central shoot of the coconut palm. Plenty of people in every age have gone through life choosing not to take alcohol, but most have happily indulged, many to grave or even lethal excess.
How pompously I am writing about all this. My point is that drinking in a mature way can only mean ceasing when you know you have had enough. “Enough” may mean that you have had all you want right now, or it may mean that if you have any more you will be at risk of behaving obnoxiously, driving dangerously, making an ass of yourself, or simply feeling sick. That point of decision, for whatever reason, is a mature decision, I guess -- and maybe it’s what the societal sophisticate means.
The reality is that once you have already poured some alcohol down your throat your brain has rapidly got less able to make that mature decision. There is also the deep question of will -- if what I want is to drown sorrows and cares, have a joyous time, enjoy getting legless (which is what school kids and others now unashamedly confess on TV), I may be unwilling to obey the call of wisdom and maturity. Peer pressure too may override any sensible decision.
One reaction to recent tragedies among binge drinking secondary school kids was an article by a woman whose name meant nothing to me -- she remembered her own adolescence which was marked by much booze and mayhem. She knew she brought some years of anxiety to her parents and others, and did a lot of damage. “But hey!” she said, “we had fun!” Well that’s alright then. Granny Herald actually published this drivel. We had fun. I didn’t. Being overcome with joy as the room swivelled around at 2 am is not quite the way I recall it.
So I would like to know from our society bloke precisely how he proposes to foster this maturity by feeding free alcohol -- beer and Bacardi, whisky and wine, champagne and cocktails -- to 100 teenagers under “controlled conditions”, before their school ball.
It is idiotic, irresponsible, deeply mistaken, bad leadership and example. Drinking is drinking. No one needs to do it. I personally believe life is better without it. But let’s not fall for this silly myth that you can drink in a mature way, which is innocuous.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Repulsive human activities
I concede at the outset that what is repulsive to me may be bliss to others (eg. “rugby heaven”). I further concede that it is not my function to pass judgement on others, and that even seeming to do so may excite their wrath and indignation. I think we all however should form judgements about various dubious pastimes.
1. Boxing. In the noble sport of boxing the goal is to brain damage your opponent to the extent that he can’t get up off the floor. This is done mainly by punches to the head. Punches around the chest and midriff also help in the general deliberate debilitation, but it is the grogginess that counts, and that signifies brain damage. I can see why this appeals to some people. It excites the worst features, blood lust, bullying, violence, in human nature. It is not noble at all. Morally, medically, boxing is without excuse or justification. I do remember that it is immensely popular in some cultures such as Samoan, and inexplicably with some intelligent individuals such as Sir Robert Jones.
2. Motor sport. This won’t win me any friends either. Motor sport is noisy, polluting, hideously expensive, pointless. I am not aware that it contributes to fitness or social welfare in any way. It is a happy hunting ground for petrol-heads and lovers of inordinate speed, power and danger, and the females who seem to hang about. It was a good day when Auckland decided it didn’t want the annual Formula One event clogging up our streets and bringing the inner city to a halt for days on end. I sense that Hamilton is now starting to regret that they ever took it on. Stock cars and such things seem simply juvenile and silly to me. (Of course there is also the motor bike. I know of one surgeon who reputedly refused to treat any victim of a motor bike smash -- and I know of another one who had a love affair with his Harley Davidson. Motor bikes are here to stay, of course, and I know that many people ride them responsibly. So I’m not including them in my criticism of motor sport.)
3. Foul language. Well, I guess it’s my upbringing in the first instance. We were not allowed to use “bad” language, ever, at home -- let alone “foul” language. But it’s also a matter of good taste, which now seems widely lost. Foul language is now endemic. It has become unexceptional. People now think it is justified by usage. Women as well as men swear frequently and pointlessly in their normal conversation. It fouls the air. It has become part of the general trivialising of words and meaning. My attitude also reflects, I realise, the respect for my native language in which I was raised. The language, well used, is not like that. Are these people chronically short of adjectives, or simply general vocabulary? The English language at its best is built and equipped for subtlety, for shades of meaning and expression. Perhaps people no longer possess subtleties and insights anyway, let alone know how to express them. Anyway, foul language is not used in our home.
1. Boxing. In the noble sport of boxing the goal is to brain damage your opponent to the extent that he can’t get up off the floor. This is done mainly by punches to the head. Punches around the chest and midriff also help in the general deliberate debilitation, but it is the grogginess that counts, and that signifies brain damage. I can see why this appeals to some people. It excites the worst features, blood lust, bullying, violence, in human nature. It is not noble at all. Morally, medically, boxing is without excuse or justification. I do remember that it is immensely popular in some cultures such as Samoan, and inexplicably with some intelligent individuals such as Sir Robert Jones.
2. Motor sport. This won’t win me any friends either. Motor sport is noisy, polluting, hideously expensive, pointless. I am not aware that it contributes to fitness or social welfare in any way. It is a happy hunting ground for petrol-heads and lovers of inordinate speed, power and danger, and the females who seem to hang about. It was a good day when Auckland decided it didn’t want the annual Formula One event clogging up our streets and bringing the inner city to a halt for days on end. I sense that Hamilton is now starting to regret that they ever took it on. Stock cars and such things seem simply juvenile and silly to me. (Of course there is also the motor bike. I know of one surgeon who reputedly refused to treat any victim of a motor bike smash -- and I know of another one who had a love affair with his Harley Davidson. Motor bikes are here to stay, of course, and I know that many people ride them responsibly. So I’m not including them in my criticism of motor sport.)
3. Foul language. Well, I guess it’s my upbringing in the first instance. We were not allowed to use “bad” language, ever, at home -- let alone “foul” language. But it’s also a matter of good taste, which now seems widely lost. Foul language is now endemic. It has become unexceptional. People now think it is justified by usage. Women as well as men swear frequently and pointlessly in their normal conversation. It fouls the air. It has become part of the general trivialising of words and meaning. My attitude also reflects, I realise, the respect for my native language in which I was raised. The language, well used, is not like that. Are these people chronically short of adjectives, or simply general vocabulary? The English language at its best is built and equipped for subtlety, for shades of meaning and expression. Perhaps people no longer possess subtleties and insights anyway, let alone know how to express them. Anyway, foul language is not used in our home.
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