"The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall." Cicero 55BC
Thursday, November 12, 2009
We ignore sage wisdom at our peril
"The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall." Cicero 55BC
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
saying yes to life: "YEAH" to it all
What you have to do,
you do with play.
Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning
What you have to do,
you do with play.
Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell
you do with play.
Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning
What you have to do,
you do with play.
Life is without meaning.
You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is
whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.
- Joseph Campbell
Rupert Murdoch is now the loyal opposition, only in America?
This letter from the New York Times today certainly made me smile in sharing the article from Salon.
"I was watching a documentary from Netflix, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” and the very clear relationship between Roosevelt and Obama was an eye popper.
The movie was put together in the 70s, and has no voiceover. Every now and then you get a title card, but otherwise it is all news reels and popular movies, radio broadcasts and songs. So, it wasn’t like a movie maker was trying to make a connection between Roosevelt and Obama. It just naturally happens. The footage of Roosevelt on the campaign trail is amazing. What a public speaker! They had footage of him giving a variation of his One Third of a Nation speech. Not the polite one given at the inauguration, but a spanker given on the trail. You could see that he really felt what he was saying. As he listed the One Third going to bed hungry, the one third not going to school, the one third unemployed, etc, each time he’d strike the podium with his fist and say “Right now!”
Where it was most apparent was when he was campaigning for Social Security. The resistance was just as huge (and came from the same places) as we now experience about Helath Care Reform. Roosevelt gets down close to the mic and he says “when someone tells you ‘now just isn’t the time to do this; just wait a little and we’ll do it right; there are better ways to do this than through the government’ they are lying to you.”
It was hard to see the misery a lot of people lived through, and the way political groups tried to leverage that misery to achieve an end. FDR comes up aces with me — and he pushed his agenda from the start of his administration. The times called for it. As they do now.
— margaret meyers"
Fox News isn't even pretending anymore
Want proof that journalism has devolved into entertainment? Watch "the communications arm of the Republican Party"
By Gene Lyons
Oct. 15, 2009 |
In theory, the national news media function in a free market of ideas: a self-regulating, relentless quest for what the old Superman comics called “Truth, Justice, and the American way.” (Actually, Clark Kent’s newspaper-reporter disguise strikes contemporary audiences as a sentimental anachronism. Today, he’d be a rogue cop or a CIA operative.)
In practice, Washington political journalism has become a subdivision of the entertainment industry: its best-known practitioners are second- and third-tier TV stars, and news itself a form of politicized “infotainment.” Even lowly print reporters and pundits can greatly improve their incomes by appearing on programs like “Hardball” and copping an attitude.
Chasing audiences and advertising dollars, corporate media seek to tell target demographics the kinds of stories those audiences want to hear. Nobody who watched CNN cover Michael Jackson’s death 24/7, for example, could imagine otherwise. For weeks at a time, only BBC America provided a halfway reliable window on the outside world — a hell of a note.
The boldest innovator, however, has been Fox News. Since President Obama’s election, the cable news channel has dropped all but the barest pretense of objectivity. Billing itself as “fair and balanced,” Fox has turned itself into what White House communications director Anita Dunn recently called “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
Actually, that’s an extremely polite way of putting it. It’s closer to Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth.” Fox openly promotes “Tea Parties” and other political demonstrations; it portrays every perceived White House defeat, such as Chicago’s failure to secure the 2016 Olympic Games, as a victory for something called “Fox Nation.”
“Obama Triples Budget Deficit to $1.4 Trillion,” reads a typical headline on the Fox Web site. In reality, the Congressional Budget Office projected the fiscal 2009 deficit at $1.2 trillion before Obama took office. Media Matters for America has compiled an encyclopedic list of similar absurdities.
“Doublethink,” Orwell called it: the ability to “hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” So it is with “Fox Nation” and “fair and balanced.”
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, “72 percent of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79 percent of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69 percent think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.”
Almost needless to say, all of these things are categorically false. The “death panels” falsehood, for example, was invented by serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey (financed by the right-wing Manhattan Institute with money from tobacco giant Philip Morris), amplified by Sarah Palin, and then broadcast day and night by Fox News. And so it goes, day after day.
Appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” the White House’s Dunn made it clear that the Obama administration intends to deal with the network as a political enemy. “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” she subsequently told The New York Times. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”
As feckless and cowardly as the so-called “mainstream” media have grown in the face of conservative propaganda about “liberal media bias,” this strikes me as very good news. Something like it ought to have been done as long ago as President Clinton’s first term. For the better part of a generation, Democrats have conducted themselves as if they expected Superman himself to come flying in the window to save them.
Instead, they got Clark Kent: timorous poltroons like Newsweek’s former editor Evan Thomas, who last week acknowledged in a book review that “the media’s obsession with Whitewater seem(s) excessive in retrospect.” This 16 years after Jeff Gerth’s incoherent New York Times articles kicked off the longest-running shaggy-dog story in the history of American journalism. So how many cover stories did Newsweek run touting Kenneth Starr’s fruitless investigation?
The facts were available back then, but the fearless crusaders of the so-called liberal media mostly played follow-the-leader or ran and hid. For an irreverent take on CNN’s performance, read John Camp’s raucous memoir “Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.” The veteran investigative correspondent tried to persuade his superiors that Whitewater was a hoax but got nowhere.
Providentially, the Obama administration appears to grasp that Rupert Murdoch’s minions may inadvertently have done them a big favor. By taking sides so brazenly, Fox has gained audience share at the expense of turning itself into a big fat political target. The establishment political press is far too timid and clubby to have made this discovery on its own.
But if the White House says something, they have to cover it.
© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association
"I was watching a documentary from Netflix, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?,” and the very clear relationship between Roosevelt and Obama was an eye popper.
The movie was put together in the 70s, and has no voiceover. Every now and then you get a title card, but otherwise it is all news reels and popular movies, radio broadcasts and songs. So, it wasn’t like a movie maker was trying to make a connection between Roosevelt and Obama. It just naturally happens. The footage of Roosevelt on the campaign trail is amazing. What a public speaker! They had footage of him giving a variation of his One Third of a Nation speech. Not the polite one given at the inauguration, but a spanker given on the trail. You could see that he really felt what he was saying. As he listed the One Third going to bed hungry, the one third not going to school, the one third unemployed, etc, each time he’d strike the podium with his fist and say “Right now!”
Where it was most apparent was when he was campaigning for Social Security. The resistance was just as huge (and came from the same places) as we now experience about Helath Care Reform. Roosevelt gets down close to the mic and he says “when someone tells you ‘now just isn’t the time to do this; just wait a little and we’ll do it right; there are better ways to do this than through the government’ they are lying to you.”
It was hard to see the misery a lot of people lived through, and the way political groups tried to leverage that misery to achieve an end. FDR comes up aces with me — and he pushed his agenda from the start of his administration. The times called for it. As they do now.
— margaret meyers"
Fox News isn't even pretending anymore
Want proof that journalism has devolved into entertainment? Watch "the communications arm of the Republican Party"
By Gene Lyons
Oct. 15, 2009 |
In theory, the national news media function in a free market of ideas: a self-regulating, relentless quest for what the old Superman comics called “Truth, Justice, and the American way.” (Actually, Clark Kent’s newspaper-reporter disguise strikes contemporary audiences as a sentimental anachronism. Today, he’d be a rogue cop or a CIA operative.)
In practice, Washington political journalism has become a subdivision of the entertainment industry: its best-known practitioners are second- and third-tier TV stars, and news itself a form of politicized “infotainment.” Even lowly print reporters and pundits can greatly improve their incomes by appearing on programs like “Hardball” and copping an attitude.
Chasing audiences and advertising dollars, corporate media seek to tell target demographics the kinds of stories those audiences want to hear. Nobody who watched CNN cover Michael Jackson’s death 24/7, for example, could imagine otherwise. For weeks at a time, only BBC America provided a halfway reliable window on the outside world — a hell of a note.
The boldest innovator, however, has been Fox News. Since President Obama’s election, the cable news channel has dropped all but the barest pretense of objectivity. Billing itself as “fair and balanced,” Fox has turned itself into what White House communications director Anita Dunn recently called “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”
Actually, that’s an extremely polite way of putting it. It’s closer to Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth.” Fox openly promotes “Tea Parties” and other political demonstrations; it portrays every perceived White House defeat, such as Chicago’s failure to secure the 2016 Olympic Games, as a victory for something called “Fox Nation.”
“Obama Triples Budget Deficit to $1.4 Trillion,” reads a typical headline on the Fox Web site. In reality, the Congressional Budget Office projected the fiscal 2009 deficit at $1.2 trillion before Obama took office. Media Matters for America has compiled an encyclopedic list of similar absurdities.
“Doublethink,” Orwell called it: the ability to “hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” So it is with “Fox Nation” and “fair and balanced.”
According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, “72 percent of self-identified FOX News viewers believe the health-care plan will give coverage to illegal immigrants, 79 percent of them say it will lead to a government takeover, 69 percent think that it will use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, and 75 percent believe that it will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing care for the elderly.”
Almost needless to say, all of these things are categorically false. The “death panels” falsehood, for example, was invented by serial misinformer Betsy McCaughey (financed by the right-wing Manhattan Institute with money from tobacco giant Philip Morris), amplified by Sarah Palin, and then broadcast day and night by Fox News. And so it goes, day after day.
Appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” the White House’s Dunn made it clear that the Obama administration intends to deal with the network as a political enemy. “We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent,” she subsequently told The New York Times. “As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”
As feckless and cowardly as the so-called “mainstream” media have grown in the face of conservative propaganda about “liberal media bias,” this strikes me as very good news. Something like it ought to have been done as long ago as President Clinton’s first term. For the better part of a generation, Democrats have conducted themselves as if they expected Superman himself to come flying in the window to save them.
Instead, they got Clark Kent: timorous poltroons like Newsweek’s former editor Evan Thomas, who last week acknowledged in a book review that “the media’s obsession with Whitewater seem(s) excessive in retrospect.” This 16 years after Jeff Gerth’s incoherent New York Times articles kicked off the longest-running shaggy-dog story in the history of American journalism. So how many cover stories did Newsweek run touting Kenneth Starr’s fruitless investigation?
The facts were available back then, but the fearless crusaders of the so-called liberal media mostly played follow-the-leader or ran and hid. For an irreverent take on CNN’s performance, read John Camp’s raucous memoir “Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger.” The veteran investigative correspondent tried to persuade his superiors that Whitewater was a hoax but got nowhere.
Providentially, the Obama administration appears to grasp that Rupert Murdoch’s minions may inadvertently have done them a big favor. By taking sides so brazenly, Fox has gained audience share at the expense of turning itself into a big fat political target. The establishment political press is far too timid and clubby to have made this discovery on its own.
But if the White House says something, they have to cover it.
© 2009 Gene Lyons. Distributed by Newspaper Enterprise Association
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Back to the Editing suite!
finally, my film No Petrol | No Deisel had it's civic reception, go to . . . http://richardclarksfstop.blogspot.com/
911 911 has had it's viewing and is now in NY NY
and now . . . it's back to Zane & . . .
911 911 has had it's viewing and is now in NY NY
and now . . . it's back to Zane & . . .
Friday, October 02, 2009
History, where did it all go, but it was fun :)
Someone recently suggested that the Film Industry was poorer for my absence, to which I replied "it is me that is poorer through my absence" :)
Friday, September 11, 2009
9/11 Deja Vu, all over again :)
50 years on, from pavement artist to film maker, whew, what a long and challenging road.
However, this is it, this is the day I put myself up an an Art Gallery wall. Aratoi Pathways.
This is the day I share my insides, my love of life, my passion for people and places.
My love of images, textures both visual and audible, my love of emotion.
And, in the land of my birth no less, Aotearoa aka New Zealand.
From childhood art to a long career of film editing to find myself as a story teller,
via film | photography | writing, amazing really. I had no idea my life would turn out as it has.
Gratitude comes to mind. Sometimes I feel as though I am seeing life forward and living it backwards. Or is that
meant to be vice versa? Does it matter. I am alive, fully.As in back to the future.
I strongly believe that my future lies in reviewing, reflecting, studying even, my past. A well examined life no less.
That is where the gems lie. My ability and willingness to dream and not just at night; day dreaming was one of
my favorite pass times as a child, as an 'adult' I continue, I get to watch clouds evolve and disappear, I get to
watch the sun rise through my bedroom window and see it set while on my deck. I get to watch the
passage of the moon through it's monthly phases and observe how my moods rise and fall as the oceans rise and fall.
I get to wake in the middle of the night and observe the stars.
The stars I saw in the Colorado Rockies are the same stars I see down here in the South Pacific.
Amazing really.
To accept that men have observed life down through the centuries and yet I get to experience my own
extra-ordinary view of life through my own eyes and heart. And ponder.
What is it?
What and who am I?
What does it all mean?
And to accept the simple elegant beauty that I have no need to know, to simply experience the journey.
My passage through time.
What died for me to be born? What will be born from my death? Ancient wisdom has an elegance, an inevitability.
The more life changes the more it stays the same. They key for me has been to accept the gradations, the shading
of life. To go from a Black and White view to a more embracing, more accepting view. What is, is simply what is.
Ours is not to reason Why, Ours is but to do and Die.
So, this morning, I awoke, cloudy sky, sun hidden, feeling somewhat blue. Out of bed. Clear the head. Walk.
Visit the 500 year old grove of Totara trees that live just down the road from me.
I entered the forest and removed my hat.
Like entering a cathedral, which for me, nature is. Nature to Nurture.
I walked slowly, humbled by the age and size and breadth of the trees. I stood before one particular friend.
I have talked to this particular tree often. No matter of what. I am reminded of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree I read as a child. To climb into the branches of my imagination and allow myself to be whirled around the world and dropped off in places
with people, to experience and learn. My childhood fantasies became my adulthood realities, how cool is that?
I don't need the tree to talk back, I simply need to accept that I am in the presence of Tane, Lord of the Forest.
Trees are life. Without trees I could not breath, without breath I die. Simple really.
And so here I am.
11th September 2009.
8 years after the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The WTC was a king of the forest that is the heart of
Manhattan. High rise skyscrapers. And here we are today, the Empire State Building is once more the tallest building in the Empire State. Funny how that happens.
Back to the future maybe?
Will we learn? Will I?
Will we grow? Will I?
Will we change? Will I?
Who knows! I certainly don't.
All I need to do is tell my story.
And today it seems entirely appropriate that I get to tell it via the craft I have learned and practiced. Putting images and sounds together to touch someone. Don't you just love it. I do, amen.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Aotearoa, Bill of Rights, where did it go?
A Bill of Rights for Aotearoa, do we have one, if not why not? (sir) Geoffrey Palmer proposed this but it appears to have died in birth, sad as I strongly believe we need this.
Life and the Security of the Person
As part of the right to life and security of the person, the Act guarantees everyone:
The right not to be deprived of life except in accordance with fundamental justice (Section 8)
The right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, degrading, or disproportionately severe treatment or punishment (Section 9)
The right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without consent (Section 10)
The right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment (Section 11)
[edit]Democratic and Civil Rights
Electoral Rights
The Act sets out the electoral rights of New Zealanders. The Act guarantees that every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years has:
The right to vote in elections of members of Parliament, which shall be held by equal suffrage and by secret ballot (Section 12(a))
Has the right to become a member of the House of Representatives (Section 12(b))
Furthermore, the Act guarantees everyone: Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion
The right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and hold opinions without interference (Section 13)
Freedom of expression
The right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form (Section 14)
Religion and Belief
The right to manifest that person's religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or in private (Section 15)
Assembly
The right of peaceful assembly (Section 16)
Association
The right to freedom of association (Section 17)
Movement
The right to freedom of movement and residence in New Zealand. (Section 18(1))
The Act guarantees to every New Zealand citizen:
The right to enter New Zealand (Section 18(2))
The Act guarantees everyone:
The right to leave New Zealand (Section 18(3))
The Act also (Section 18(4)) ensures that non-New Zealand citizens lawfully in New Zealand shall not be required to leave except under a decision taken on grounds prescribed by law.
[edit]Non-Discrimination and Minority Rights
Section 19 of the Act guarantees freedom from discrimination, on the grounds of discrimination set out in the Human Rights Act 1993.
[edit]Search, Arrest, and Detention
The Act guarantees everyone:
The right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, whether of the person, property, or correspondence, or otherwise (Section 21)
The right not to be arbitrarily arrested or detained (Section 22)
Everyone who is arrested or who is detained has the right to:
Be informed at the time of the arrest or detention of the reason for it; and
Consult and instruct a lawyer without delay and to be informed of that right; and
Have the validity of the arrest or detention determined without delay by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the arrest or detention is not lawful.
Everyone who is arrested for an offence has the right to be charged promptly or to be released. Everyone who is arrested or detained for any offence or suspected offence shall have the right to:
Refrain from making any statement and to be informed of that right.
Everyone deprived of liberty has the right to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the person (Section 23) Criminal Justice The Act requires that everyone who is charged with an offence:
Shall be informed promptly and in detail of the nature and cause of the charge; and
Shall be released on reasonable terms and conditions unless there is just cause for continued detention; and
Shall have the right to consult and instruct a lawyer; and
Shall have the right to adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence; and
Shall have the right, except in the case of an offence under military law tried before a military tribunal, to the benefit of a trial by jury when the penalty for the offence is or includes imprisonment for more than 3 months; and
Shall have the right to receive legal assistance without cost if the interests of justice so require and the person does not have sufficient means to provide for that assistance; and
Shall have the right to have the free assistance of an interpreter if the person cannot understand or speak the language used in court. (Section 24)
Fair Trial Everyone who is charged with an offence has the minimum right:
To a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court;
To be tried without undue delay;
To be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law;
Not to be compelled to be a witness or to confess guilt;
To be present at the trial and to present a defence;
To examine the witnesses for the prosecution and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses for the defence under the same conditions as the prosecution;
If convicted of an offence in respect of which the penalty has been varied between the commission of the offence and sentencing, to the benefit of the lesser penalty;
If convicted of the offence, to appeal according to the law to a higher court against the conviction or against the sentence or against both:
In the case of a child, to be dealt with in a manner that takes account of the child's age (Section 25)
Double Jeopardy Section 26 covers instances of double jeopardy. The Act holds that:
No one shall be liable to conviction of any offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute an offence by such person under the law of New Zealand at the time it occurred.
No one who has been finally acquitted or convicted of, or pardoned for, an offence shall be tried or punished for it again.
Life and the Security of the Person
As part of the right to life and security of the person, the Act guarantees everyone:
The right not to be deprived of life except in accordance with fundamental justice (Section 8)
The right not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, degrading, or disproportionately severe treatment or punishment (Section 9)
The right not to be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without consent (Section 10)
The right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment (Section 11)
[edit]Democratic and Civil Rights
Electoral Rights
The Act sets out the electoral rights of New Zealanders. The Act guarantees that every New Zealand citizen who is of or over the age of 18 years has:
The right to vote in elections of members of Parliament, which shall be held by equal suffrage and by secret ballot (Section 12(a))
Has the right to become a member of the House of Representatives (Section 12(b))
Furthermore, the Act guarantees everyone: Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Religion
The right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and hold opinions without interference (Section 13)
Freedom of expression
The right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form (Section 14)
Religion and Belief
The right to manifest that person's religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or in private (Section 15)
Assembly
The right of peaceful assembly (Section 16)
Association
The right to freedom of association (Section 17)
Movement
The right to freedom of movement and residence in New Zealand. (Section 18(1))
The Act guarantees to every New Zealand citizen:
The right to enter New Zealand (Section 18(2))
The Act guarantees everyone:
The right to leave New Zealand (Section 18(3))
The Act also (Section 18(4)) ensures that non-New Zealand citizens lawfully in New Zealand shall not be required to leave except under a decision taken on grounds prescribed by law.
[edit]Non-Discrimination and Minority Rights
Section 19 of the Act guarantees freedom from discrimination, on the grounds of discrimination set out in the Human Rights Act 1993.
[edit]Search, Arrest, and Detention
The Act guarantees everyone:
The right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure, whether of the person, property, or correspondence, or otherwise (Section 21)
The right not to be arbitrarily arrested or detained (Section 22)
Everyone who is arrested or who is detained has the right to:
Be informed at the time of the arrest or detention of the reason for it; and
Consult and instruct a lawyer without delay and to be informed of that right; and
Have the validity of the arrest or detention determined without delay by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the arrest or detention is not lawful.
Everyone who is arrested for an offence has the right to be charged promptly or to be released. Everyone who is arrested or detained for any offence or suspected offence shall have the right to:
Refrain from making any statement and to be informed of that right.
Everyone deprived of liberty has the right to be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the person (Section 23) Criminal Justice The Act requires that everyone who is charged with an offence:
Shall be informed promptly and in detail of the nature and cause of the charge; and
Shall be released on reasonable terms and conditions unless there is just cause for continued detention; and
Shall have the right to consult and instruct a lawyer; and
Shall have the right to adequate time and facilities to prepare a defence; and
Shall have the right, except in the case of an offence under military law tried before a military tribunal, to the benefit of a trial by jury when the penalty for the offence is or includes imprisonment for more than 3 months; and
Shall have the right to receive legal assistance without cost if the interests of justice so require and the person does not have sufficient means to provide for that assistance; and
Shall have the right to have the free assistance of an interpreter if the person cannot understand or speak the language used in court. (Section 24)
Fair Trial Everyone who is charged with an offence has the minimum right:
To a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial court;
To be tried without undue delay;
To be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law;
Not to be compelled to be a witness or to confess guilt;
To be present at the trial and to present a defence;
To examine the witnesses for the prosecution and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses for the defence under the same conditions as the prosecution;
If convicted of an offence in respect of which the penalty has been varied between the commission of the offence and sentencing, to the benefit of the lesser penalty;
If convicted of the offence, to appeal according to the law to a higher court against the conviction or against the sentence or against both:
In the case of a child, to be dealt with in a manner that takes account of the child's age (Section 25)
Double Jeopardy Section 26 covers instances of double jeopardy. The Act holds that:
No one shall be liable to conviction of any offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute an offence by such person under the law of New Zealand at the time it occurred.
No one who has been finally acquitted or convicted of, or pardoned for, an offence shall be tried or punished for it again.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
TED, r.i.p.
August 30, 2009
‘Soul’ of Party Is Memorialized by Nation
By DAN BARRY
ARLINGTON, Va. — The nation said final farewell on Saturday to Edward M. Kennedy, who used his privileged life to give consistent, passionate voice to the underprivileged for nearly a half-century as a United States senator from Massachusetts. He was the only one of four fabled Kennedy brothers to reach late adulthood, and he was remembered for making the most of it.
Along the rain-dappled roadways of Boston in the late morning, and then in the sweltering humidity of Washington in early evening, people waited for the fleeting moment of a passing hearse so that they could pay respects to the man known simply as Ted. At the United States Capitol, where Mr. Kennedy had served for so long, his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, stepped out of a limousine to receive hugs, bow her head during prayers, and to hear the singing of “America the Beautiful.”
The gray rainy day began with a funeral Mass at a working-class Roman Catholic church in Boston where the senator had sometimes sought comfort, without entourage or advance notice. Where he once reflected amid the hush of empty oak pews, there now sat hundreds gathered in his honor, including President Obama; three of the four living former presidents; dozens of foreign dignitaries and members of Congress; and, of course, people so familiar to Americans simply because they are Kennedys.
And it was during that portion of the Mass, when prayers of hope are shared, that his grandchildren, nieces and nephews stepped up to the microphone to express once more Ted Kennedy’s political and human desires:
That human beings be measured not by what they cannot do but by what they can do. That quality health care becomes a fundamental right and not a privilege. That the old politics of race and gender die away. That newcomers be accepted, no matter their color or place of birth. That the nation stand united against violence, hate and war. And, in echo of his famous words, that the work begins anew, the hope arises anew, and the dream lives on.
“We pray to the Lord,” each petitioner concluded.
And each time the mourners answered as one, “Lord, hear our prayer.”
After Holy Communion, Mr. Obama delivered the eulogy for the man whose endorsement in the 2008 campaign was like the passing of a sword from Camelot, helping enormously in giving this country its first African-American president.
“Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy,” Mr. Obama said. “The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy, a champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the United States Senate — a man whose name graces nearly 1,000 laws, and who penned more than 300 laws himself.”
He was the thoughtful representative of the people, Mr. Obama said, keeping in touch, for example, with the Massachusetts families who lost loved ones on Sept. 11. Across the country, he said, people would say, “You wouldn’t believe who called me today” — and it would be Ted Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy was also a family man, lover of the arts, prankster, charmer, sailor. And that is the image the president left with the congregation: “Of a man on a boat, white mane tousled, smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for whatever storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon.”
“May God bless Ted Kennedy,” the president said. “And may he rest in eternal peace.”
After the more than two-hour funeral, the senator was carried from his native Massachusetts for the other bookend of his life, Washington, D.C. and to Arlington National Cemetery, where Edward Moore Kennedy, the last of the Kennedy brothers and the only one not to die violently, was buried toward the bottom of a lush green hill.
The body of his oldest brother, Joseph, a World War II Navy pilot killed on a mission in 1942, was never recovered; he was 29. The body of his second-oldest brother, John, the president assassinated in 1963, lies a few dozen yards away; he was 46. Robert, the senator and presidential aspirant who was assassinated in 1968, lies even closer; he was 42.
And now, Teddy, who wept and eulogized and often lived in the shadows of these brothers, would join them after a 15-month struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.
Saturday’s farewell, scripted in large part by Senator Kennedy himself, concluded three days of tributes and well-orchestrated ceremonies. These included a public viewing of the coffin at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston and a private memorial service Friday night that ended with determined choruses of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
Then, under the uncooperative skies brought by morning, a motorcade that included the black hearse carrying the senator’s coffin traveled through rain-wet Boston, past people cheering and applauding, up Tremont Street to Mission Hill, a diverse, working-class neighborhood with a commanding view of the city. Church bells rang out in mournful welcome.
The hearse stopped in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a twin-spire 19th-century church that stands within walking distance of several hospitals. Known locally as a healing church, it has received over many decades the petitions and prayers of the sick and worried.
Among these petitioners was Mr. Kennedy. In 2003, while his daughter, Kara, was successfully battling lung cancer, he came to pray and reflect here, often beside the Rev. Edward McDonough, an old priest known as a healer who died in 2008. Then, last summer, aware that he had an aggressive form of cancer, the senator returned with Mrs. Kennedy, quietly, privately.
With rain drumming against hundreds of black umbrellas that together looked like a mournful stream of bunting, this public and private man returned to the church once more. With the precision of ritual, eight representatives of the five branches of military service removed his flag-covered coffin from the back of the hearse and into this soft day.
Watching from under an umbrella, not far away, was his widow, in a black suit offset by a string of pearls. They married in 1992, after which she helped to transform him from a man, scarred by loss and personal failings — not the least his role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, just 29, in a car accident in 1969 — into an elder statesman.
Family and friends, including his former wife, Joan, celebrities and politicians crammed into the oak pews inside the church, some shoving their umbrellas under their seats, some fanning themselves in a sanctuary infused with the hint of incense. Three former presidents, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, were among the mourners; George H. W. Bush was ill and could not attend.
The coffin was met in the center aisle by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, and other priests for a moment where the martial met the spiritual. The flag was taken off, folded, tucked.
The coffin was rolled up the center aisle, past 12 confessionals, past 12 marble pillars, past people with names of international resonance. It came to a stop at the altar, under the church’s cupola, whose artwork includes a painting of Mr. Kennedy’s friend, the healing priest, Father McDonough.
There the coffin remained, through the readings from the Old and New Testaments; through the ethereal music, including Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 6, played by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Cesar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus,” sung by the tenor Placido Domingo.
After President Obama delivered his eulogy, Cardinal O’Malley commended Mr. Kennedy to his maker. Ten pallbearers, all of the next Kennedy generation, slowly wheeled the coffin down the aisle, as the huge, 3,200-pipe organ above played and the congregation serenaded this lion of the Senate with “America the Beautiful.”
At the portal, the honor guard unfolded the American flag, their white gloves looking like fluttering doves that were gently draping the flag over the coffin. Then it was back down those wet gray steps, one by one, gently, and back into the Boston rain.
The eight-member honor guard guided the coffin across the slate-and-brick patio, while soldiers and police officers came to attention. As the coffin was eased back into the hearse’s bed, under the gaze of a widow’s aching eyes, it received a crisp salute.
As the motorcade began its journey to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, the people of Massachusetts lined the streets and highways, some huddled under umbrellas. In this way, Massachusetts said farewell to its favored son.
Borne by a presidential plane to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Mr. Kennedy’s coffin was taken by motorcade to Capitol Hill, where hundreds of members and staff members of Congress — many holding tiny American flags — gathered on the steps. When the motorcade appeared in the distance, applause and cheers rose up, then grew louder as the hearse came to a stop, the senator’s flag-covered coffin visible through a back window.
Mrs. Kennedy stepped out of a limousine to receive hugs, bow her head during more prayers, and to hear “America the Beautiful” sung once more. At 6:43, motorcycles engines began to grumble, and the motorcade began the final leg of its destination, down Constitution Avenue, past the Lincoln Memorial and on to the solemnness that awaited at Arlington National Cemetery.
With dusk settling on the green swells and white tablets of Arlington, and insects clicking in the trees, the joint casket team carried the coffin up the thick grass to a grave dug early Saturday morning, 80 inches long and 32 inches wide. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, read a letter that Mr. Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, one in which he shared the news of his illness, admitted his failings and testified to his strong faith.
Soon, seven riflemen were firing three volleys. Soon, the shadow of a bugler was playing “Taps,” as heat lightning stunned the night sky. Arlington was dark; a long day had ended. But come Sunday morning, cemetery officials say, the green of the grass will be smooth again, the hole filled, the sod laid. Only then it will feature a white wooden cross made by the cemetery’s carpenter, and a white marble marker that bears the name of another Kennedy, this one as distinct and as human and as accomplished as the others, a man in his own right.
EDWARD MOORE KENNEDY, it will say. 1932-2009
Reporting was contributed by Edmund L. Andrews, Bernie Becker, Abby Goodnough, Ariel Sabar and Katie Zezima.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
‘Soul’ of Party Is Memorialized by Nation
By DAN BARRY
ARLINGTON, Va. — The nation said final farewell on Saturday to Edward M. Kennedy, who used his privileged life to give consistent, passionate voice to the underprivileged for nearly a half-century as a United States senator from Massachusetts. He was the only one of four fabled Kennedy brothers to reach late adulthood, and he was remembered for making the most of it.
Along the rain-dappled roadways of Boston in the late morning, and then in the sweltering humidity of Washington in early evening, people waited for the fleeting moment of a passing hearse so that they could pay respects to the man known simply as Ted. At the United States Capitol, where Mr. Kennedy had served for so long, his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, stepped out of a limousine to receive hugs, bow her head during prayers, and to hear the singing of “America the Beautiful.”
The gray rainy day began with a funeral Mass at a working-class Roman Catholic church in Boston where the senator had sometimes sought comfort, without entourage or advance notice. Where he once reflected amid the hush of empty oak pews, there now sat hundreds gathered in his honor, including President Obama; three of the four living former presidents; dozens of foreign dignitaries and members of Congress; and, of course, people so familiar to Americans simply because they are Kennedys.
And it was during that portion of the Mass, when prayers of hope are shared, that his grandchildren, nieces and nephews stepped up to the microphone to express once more Ted Kennedy’s political and human desires:
That human beings be measured not by what they cannot do but by what they can do. That quality health care becomes a fundamental right and not a privilege. That the old politics of race and gender die away. That newcomers be accepted, no matter their color or place of birth. That the nation stand united against violence, hate and war. And, in echo of his famous words, that the work begins anew, the hope arises anew, and the dream lives on.
“We pray to the Lord,” each petitioner concluded.
And each time the mourners answered as one, “Lord, hear our prayer.”
After Holy Communion, Mr. Obama delivered the eulogy for the man whose endorsement in the 2008 campaign was like the passing of a sword from Camelot, helping enormously in giving this country its first African-American president.
“Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Rose and Joseph Kennedy,” Mr. Obama said. “The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy, a champion for those who had none, the soul of the Democratic Party, and the lion of the United States Senate — a man whose name graces nearly 1,000 laws, and who penned more than 300 laws himself.”
He was the thoughtful representative of the people, Mr. Obama said, keeping in touch, for example, with the Massachusetts families who lost loved ones on Sept. 11. Across the country, he said, people would say, “You wouldn’t believe who called me today” — and it would be Ted Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy was also a family man, lover of the arts, prankster, charmer, sailor. And that is the image the president left with the congregation: “Of a man on a boat, white mane tousled, smiling broadly as he sails into the wind, ready for whatever storms may come, carrying on toward some new and wondrous place just beyond the horizon.”
“May God bless Ted Kennedy,” the president said. “And may he rest in eternal peace.”
After the more than two-hour funeral, the senator was carried from his native Massachusetts for the other bookend of his life, Washington, D.C. and to Arlington National Cemetery, where Edward Moore Kennedy, the last of the Kennedy brothers and the only one not to die violently, was buried toward the bottom of a lush green hill.
The body of his oldest brother, Joseph, a World War II Navy pilot killed on a mission in 1942, was never recovered; he was 29. The body of his second-oldest brother, John, the president assassinated in 1963, lies a few dozen yards away; he was 46. Robert, the senator and presidential aspirant who was assassinated in 1968, lies even closer; he was 42.
And now, Teddy, who wept and eulogized and often lived in the shadows of these brothers, would join them after a 15-month struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.
Saturday’s farewell, scripted in large part by Senator Kennedy himself, concluded three days of tributes and well-orchestrated ceremonies. These included a public viewing of the coffin at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston and a private memorial service Friday night that ended with determined choruses of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
Then, under the uncooperative skies brought by morning, a motorcade that included the black hearse carrying the senator’s coffin traveled through rain-wet Boston, past people cheering and applauding, up Tremont Street to Mission Hill, a diverse, working-class neighborhood with a commanding view of the city. Church bells rang out in mournful welcome.
The hearse stopped in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a twin-spire 19th-century church that stands within walking distance of several hospitals. Known locally as a healing church, it has received over many decades the petitions and prayers of the sick and worried.
Among these petitioners was Mr. Kennedy. In 2003, while his daughter, Kara, was successfully battling lung cancer, he came to pray and reflect here, often beside the Rev. Edward McDonough, an old priest known as a healer who died in 2008. Then, last summer, aware that he had an aggressive form of cancer, the senator returned with Mrs. Kennedy, quietly, privately.
With rain drumming against hundreds of black umbrellas that together looked like a mournful stream of bunting, this public and private man returned to the church once more. With the precision of ritual, eight representatives of the five branches of military service removed his flag-covered coffin from the back of the hearse and into this soft day.
Watching from under an umbrella, not far away, was his widow, in a black suit offset by a string of pearls. They married in 1992, after which she helped to transform him from a man, scarred by loss and personal failings — not the least his role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, just 29, in a car accident in 1969 — into an elder statesman.
Family and friends, including his former wife, Joan, celebrities and politicians crammed into the oak pews inside the church, some shoving their umbrellas under their seats, some fanning themselves in a sanctuary infused with the hint of incense. Three former presidents, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, were among the mourners; George H. W. Bush was ill and could not attend.
The coffin was met in the center aisle by Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, and other priests for a moment where the martial met the spiritual. The flag was taken off, folded, tucked.
The coffin was rolled up the center aisle, past 12 confessionals, past 12 marble pillars, past people with names of international resonance. It came to a stop at the altar, under the church’s cupola, whose artwork includes a painting of Mr. Kennedy’s friend, the healing priest, Father McDonough.
There the coffin remained, through the readings from the Old and New Testaments; through the ethereal music, including Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 6, played by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and Cesar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus,” sung by the tenor Placido Domingo.
After President Obama delivered his eulogy, Cardinal O’Malley commended Mr. Kennedy to his maker. Ten pallbearers, all of the next Kennedy generation, slowly wheeled the coffin down the aisle, as the huge, 3,200-pipe organ above played and the congregation serenaded this lion of the Senate with “America the Beautiful.”
At the portal, the honor guard unfolded the American flag, their white gloves looking like fluttering doves that were gently draping the flag over the coffin. Then it was back down those wet gray steps, one by one, gently, and back into the Boston rain.
The eight-member honor guard guided the coffin across the slate-and-brick patio, while soldiers and police officers came to attention. As the coffin was eased back into the hearse’s bed, under the gaze of a widow’s aching eyes, it received a crisp salute.
As the motorcade began its journey to Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, the people of Massachusetts lined the streets and highways, some huddled under umbrellas. In this way, Massachusetts said farewell to its favored son.
Borne by a presidential plane to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, Mr. Kennedy’s coffin was taken by motorcade to Capitol Hill, where hundreds of members and staff members of Congress — many holding tiny American flags — gathered on the steps. When the motorcade appeared in the distance, applause and cheers rose up, then grew louder as the hearse came to a stop, the senator’s flag-covered coffin visible through a back window.
Mrs. Kennedy stepped out of a limousine to receive hugs, bow her head during more prayers, and to hear “America the Beautiful” sung once more. At 6:43, motorcycles engines began to grumble, and the motorcade began the final leg of its destination, down Constitution Avenue, past the Lincoln Memorial and on to the solemnness that awaited at Arlington National Cemetery.
With dusk settling on the green swells and white tablets of Arlington, and insects clicking in the trees, the joint casket team carried the coffin up the thick grass to a grave dug early Saturday morning, 80 inches long and 32 inches wide. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, read a letter that Mr. Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI, one in which he shared the news of his illness, admitted his failings and testified to his strong faith.
Soon, seven riflemen were firing three volleys. Soon, the shadow of a bugler was playing “Taps,” as heat lightning stunned the night sky. Arlington was dark; a long day had ended. But come Sunday morning, cemetery officials say, the green of the grass will be smooth again, the hole filled, the sod laid. Only then it will feature a white wooden cross made by the cemetery’s carpenter, and a white marble marker that bears the name of another Kennedy, this one as distinct and as human and as accomplished as the others, a man in his own right.
EDWARD MOORE KENNEDY, it will say. 1932-2009
Reporting was contributed by Edmund L. Andrews, Bernie Becker, Abby Goodnough, Ariel Sabar and Katie Zezima.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Body of Work to be Proud of :)
Life a trip, it’s funny, I am funny, life is fucking hilarious at times.
Here I am working away on my own project, totally mindful I am not earning an income for the first time in over 50, yep :) 50 years. Feels indulgent and yet I know it is totally necessary. An Artist! My own Art.
I have always considered that my Life is my Art.
But here I am exploring myself. Film | Photography | Writing
I took a break from Zane Grey this week and here I am logging my Reels of Commercials into my computer. Maybe I will send some work out to get some work in, income producing work, maybe.
When I first arrived in New York in 1985 and showed my body of Editing to Madison Avenue creatives, John Doig and producers, Ed Kleban, I wondered what they saw. I always thought I was an okay editor but nothing special. Anyhow I was asked what I wanted and in 1987 moved to New York. 22 years later I am walking down memory lane looking at the body of work I gathered from Sydney, New York and Hollywood. I must admit it comes as a bit of a shock, humbling actually when I look at the quality of the scripts I attracted and the editing I contributed. These are top echelon commercials. It makes me a tad sad to realize I never truly and fully appreciated or acknowledged, to myself, my skill as an editor. These commercials stand the test of time and look as good as they did back in 1976 when I won my first Cannes award. Gratitude comes to mind. And a bloody great pat on the back!
26 years of award winning work! Over 5000 commercials! Awesome really! And the best part is I loved what I was doing, every single bloody moment.
One day, soon, I will make a list of the hundreds of creatives and technicians who contributed to making my work, and me, look good. Thank you in spades.
week Four, improvement is noted :)
3rd week and into the 4th and slowly but surely the selection process continues and I get to walk back down the trail I trod back in 2003-2005.
I smile, I cringe, I like myself, I don’t like myself and so the process goes.
I can see improvement, my interviewing technique is evolving, I am evolving and obviously the journey was such a powerful healing experience after such a painful divorce. Now I am exploring the Utah, Zane Grey’s West Convention, trip, what an amazing part of the planet, I can see what Zane Grey saw in the Land, in the Mormons, honest, reliable, hard working albeit totally bigotted :) but hey, just another bunch of people trying to make sense of life, albeit with multiple wives :) the journey continues . . .
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
week three, the thaw begins :)
monday 10th august.
10;45 am finished selecting from 4 tapes of interviews with dr. loren grey.
slowly i proceed, stumbling over the interviews of myself. embarrassed by self conscious struggling. this is a journey. not only a journey of searching for the american west but a journey in search of myself. but not only a search for myself, quite possibly, as i stumble through the selection process, an acceptance of myself. i certainly find a similarity in the words of zane grey. and as i explore the footage i get to smile, laugh even, at my struggle both on tape and in the selection process. i am who i am. a fairly average, very blessed, albeit challenged human being. as flawed and as broken as anyone i have met. and that is the good news. awareness, acceptance and now i get to take action. the selection process continues day in and day out, 12 hour bites. and the irony is that as i go, i see a progression in the quality and interest of the material i am selecting. that has to be a good thing as it reflects the shooting process, starting with a sony pc 5 and finishing with a sony z1u, shooting 1080. and so the process will continue. the decision to edit myself has been discussed with my friend annie and she has agreed to act as devils advocate to my editing process. that simple fact alone is growth. making the decision, coming to the realization, the acceptance, that this is my journey, no one else’s, that i need to follow through to the very end, wherever that may be. as my dear friend david eddington reminds me, it’s all part of a process, all of it and all of a sudden i seem to be meeting documentary film makers in aotearoa who are not only supportive but also deeply imbedded in their own process. a journey shared is a good thing shared. networking, like with facebook and linkedin and twitter, all a means to an end. not necessarily flippant sites that some would snigger at. i find them healthy in re-connecting with the many friends i made in america, that in and of itself is awesome and i feel less isolated.
last night i began to read frank gruber’s biography on zane grey, i have owned it for years and some would suggest it should have been the first thing i read regarding grey. however, i am finding it empowering that i left it to last. it fills the gaps, reinforces my view of the man and his west. good stuff don’t you think, i certainly do.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Week Two
week two.
Bloody hell, I can certainly talk! Here I am into my first trip out into the West talking, talking, talking. Talking about Zane Grey. Much of it is very interesting and is my take on the man. There is possibly a good book in here. But who the hell wants to watch half an hour of driving footage with me rabbiting all over it. No one, not even Moi!
Driving miles upon miles of desert high country I found myself filming and talking and in my selection process I find myself cringing at my verbosity although in retrospect it is no different than me using a micro cassette recorder to simply capture my thoughts. I have done that on many long driving trips both in NZ and in the US. It’s my thinking aloud time I guess but when I am trying to find interesting visual elements for a film, well it sort of gets in the way and I struggle between turning the sound off and losing some good sound elements or simply selecting way more than I need. But that is the process of film making,
isn’t it? It’s a huge learning curve and I don’t want to simply skip through the selection process. I never did for clients no matter how much footage danny shot :). I watched every single frame and so i ask myself, Why would I not want the very same focus on my own projects? Good question. I would like the film to have some depth if that is where it takes me. This is a visual project, it needs to hold people, not bore them. Maybe I need to be super selective and later go back and have the tapes of dialogue transcribed. Not a job I would want to do. And so, for now, I simply need to take the time and find the gems in all the material. Maybe my Blog on the editing process will be more interesting than the film itself. Who knows? I don’t. I need to be very gentle and accepting of the fact that this is it, this is the material and all I have to work from and so do the best I can. This is first and foremost for me, period.
An hour or so later I am still selecting bits from a long tiring drive from Navajho Mountain to Flagstaff Arizona. Sunset time and Robbie Robertson is playing ‘Words of Fire, Deeds of Blood’ on my iPod as I select. Sounds like the subtext of my film :)
Fuck, now I am watching my first interview as I talk all over some great people.
Richard :) shut the fuck up. Jeez, I can be hard on myself. But as much as I cringe at my early interviews I fully realize and accept that this is a journey. As much a journey as my travels were. Now I get to live it all over again in the safety and security of my own isolation. God, I hope I get better :)
And the second interview is much, much better, whew!
Up ward and onward dickie old boy.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Day One, who wants to know about Day One?
and so, I posted day two thinking that I would get started, get settled and post one I had actually started and not get into the tedium of trying to get started, so now you want to know . . . . Wednesday 22nd July 2003 10AM-ish. Details, life is in the details.
"I have just re-digitized the first scene of Tape RC103. Mojave Desert and have opened a sequence. 2003 First Trip. Now the journey begins. Richard, do not editorialize this first sequence. Simply select anything and everything I find interesting, no matter how trite it may appear. Okay Dickie? "
So there you have it, Day One. I am not going to do three, four, five, et al, it my be five, 12, 21, whatever. However i am keeping a running journal next to my keyboard as I work and I may post 3/5/10 days at a time . . . whatever :) it's a journey and I have begun. YEEHA!
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Pakeha & Pearl, Day 2.
editing pakeha & pearl, day two . . .
bloody hell. this is a process, a process i can well do without but a process that is necessary and, I could say, absolutely essential to my journey as a story teller. it is tortuous in the extreme. i find myself second guessing myself. cringing. wanting to yell at myself for not shooting better, different, more professionally. WHOA there dickie! This is a process as my friend David E. tells me. it’s like painting, or any art, it is a process. it’s like learning archery or any skill. all i need to do is start at the beginning. digitize the material to my hard drives. begin selecting those pieces that have ‘something’, anything. comments on camera, off camera. judgemental remarks. this is me. a single white male. my point of view, a legitimate point of view and I have no right to be second guessing myself. simply follow the process and pray for guidance, surrender and let go of the outcome. A painter buys canvas, stretches it over a frame, sits them self at an easel or on the floor or wherever and begins laying down the basics. It is a process and I need to embrace the simple fact that the process is not going to be easy. this is not the time to be questioning myself as to the relevance or the audience or anything for that matter.
Begin. That is where the mystery and magic resides, in taking the first shaky step, like a baby. That is exactly what it is, my first baby step in telling my own story. That is the cruncher, this really is my own story. It started out as me searching for Zane Grey’s America, Zane Grey & Me. Now it is evolving to Pakeha & Pearl. I am the pakeha, a white new zealander. My Land Rover was also PAKEHA, the licence plate. My Airstream trailer became PEARL, as was Zane Grey’s first name before he changed it. Pearl Zane Gray became Zane Grey. He also changed the spelling of his last name. And so, just like ZG, I am changing, evolving, starting on the journey as he did. It is not without a certain irony that I have started this project around the age he died. I get to pick up the baton I guess.
I went searching for Zane Grey’s America and found something entirely different, as I hope to reveal in the film.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Fact or fantasy, sounds like the Bible!
The small falsehoods and great truth of the Fourth of July
A lot of the lore that surrounds the holiday isn't accurate, but its meaning and power are undeniable.
By Peter de Bolla
July 4, 2009
Each Fourth of July is celebrated in the time-honored way -- fireworks, parades, cookouts and, oh yes, recommitment to the fine principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence: those "self-evident" truths and "unalienable" rights.
It is curious, however, that so much of the inherited lore around the Fourth of July is based in misapprehension.
For starters, the day itself, July 4, isn't exactly America's Independence Day. John Adams believed that July 2 would become the significant day in the new republic's calendar of celebration. That's because it was on July 2, 1776, that delegates from the 13 Colonies at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in fact voted to proclaim independence from King George III and his ministers.
What happened two days later? A decision to make the July 2 decision public. The delegates gave the statement they'd agreed on to a printer, and the "broadsides" he published carried the July 4 date.
Not surprisingly perhaps, the physical document revered as the Declaration of Independence, a vellum scroll kept in the National Archives in Washington with 57 signatures proudly sitting at its foot, has no claim on being the unique founding document. It was hand-copied later. As to the signatures of those who pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor, they were added later still -- some were inscribed by new congressional delegates, men who hadn't even been in the room on July 2.
Moreover, although generations of American schoolchildren have learned that the declaration's author was Thomas Jefferson, this is also a slightly inaccurate portrayal of the facts. Jefferson did indeed draft the text, but others in the Continental Congress had their own views about the best form of words to use. The last paragraph, for example, containing the words "that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free independent states," was in fact penned by another Virginian, Richard Henry Lee.
In 1776, there was no public proclamation, no formal "declaration" read to the Colonists on either July 2 or July 4. And the news that resolutions against the king had been adopted could of course only travel at the speed of the fastest horse and rider. Therefore, the celebration of any selected day as the birth of the nation could only ever be a convenient fiction.
Nevertheless, in 1777, the members of the Continental Congress did decide to note July 4 by not meeting. A small and very low-key celebration was mounted, and everyone went to church. There was some talk of muskets being fired, but gunpowder was in short supply as the Colonies were at war.
Each subsequent year, celebrations were held in towns and cities, and each began to develop traditions for observing the day. The text of the declaration was read aloud. Dinners were held, often in the open air, with elaborate toasts, commonly 13 in number representing the original Colonies. Fireworks were from early on a feature of the day. Parades of the local great and good took place in town squares. By the time of the 50th anniversary in 1826, the traditions of the public celebration were fully established.
Perhaps it is best to see the Fourth of July as a story that, although not strictly speaking true, nevertheless conveys a belief: that the nation came into being on a particular day in 1776, signed, sealed and delivered. And each and every Fourth of July, as if for the first time, the story is both celebrated and instantiated, "America" -- by simple force of a declaration -- is founded again.
Today most of you will take the day off, put some hot dogs on the grill and open a few cans of beer. Some, like the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1992, will unfurl the Stars and Stripes and sing "Happy Birthday." But however one chooses to celebrate independence, may it also be remembered that the birthday of the nation, and the declaratory act that founded it, created and continues to create an architecture of belief. In 1776, it had the power to change the world. For good or ill, it still does.
Peter de Bolla, a professor of cultural history and a fellow of King's College at Cambridge University, is the author of the recently published "The Fourth of July and the Founding of America.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
From Inspiration to Dysfunction?
This had me pissing my self laughing this morning and reminds me that this is New Zealand, where (some) women are men and the real men are real nervous. The story appears to me as a reflection of politics in Aotearoa. Where the leader of the day is trying hard to keep his fellow politicians from making a fool of themselves while holding up the progression of the governance of the country. This is a small country that does not need to be run by splintered factions, it's a hangover, pun intended, from the scottish clan system which has been shown by W.H.Murray to be a totally dysfunctional, take no prisoner, life style. It is also interesting that recently, at a local community meeting in Featherston, it was revealed, by the local police commander, that Scotland and New Zealand lead the World in alcohol related crime! .
Copied from the NZ Herald:
Driver not asleep, just struggling with drunk passenger - police
New 11:02AM Thursday Jun 25, 2009
By David Kraitzick
The driver of a car causing delays at an intersection in West Auckland on Sunday was not asleep, just struggling with his drunk passenger, police have said.
One reader emailed nzherald.co.nz to say she was delayed by 10 to 15 minutes after the two occupants of the car apparently fell asleep while waiting at the lights to turn right into Triangle Rd in Henderson.
But today Sergeant Shaun Palmer said it "sounded and looked worse than it was".
The driver had worked all night and was taking his heavily intoxicated friend home.
Sergeant Palmer said the driver was having trouble with his drunken passenger slumping over him.
Each time they stopped at intersections the driver would "struggle to get his passenger off him".
Two officers attended the scene around 2pm.
The driver's breath test showed no alcohol but he will be receiving tickets for various other licence offences.
He had a learner licence.
Sergeant Palmer said the incident caused no accidents or injuries.
- NZHERALD STAFF Copyright ©2009, APN Holdings NZ Limited
Sunday, June 21, 2009
A simply inspirational story . . .
By Esmeralda Bermudez,
Metro LA Times June 19, 2009
Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion.
She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze.
Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework.
"No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her.
Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago.
What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.
As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. Every morning, she upheld her dignity, making sure she didn't smell or look disheveled.
On the streets, she learned how to hunt for their next meal, plot the next bus route and help choose a secure place to sleep -- survival skills she applied with passion to her education.
Only a few mentors and Harvard officials know her background. She never wanted other students to know her secret -- not until her plane left for the East Coast hours after her Friday evening graduation.
"I was so proud of being smart I never wanted people to say, 'You got the easy way out because you're homeless,' " she said. "I never saw it as an excuse."
A drive to succeed
"I have felt the anger at having to catch up in school . . . being bullied because they knew I was poor, different, and read too much," she wrote in her college essays. "I knew that if I wanted to become a smart, successful scholar, I should talk to other smart people."
Khadijah was in third grade when she first realized the power of test scores, placing in the 99th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers marked the 9-year-old as gifted, a special category that Khadijah, even at that early age, vowed to keep.
"I still remember that exact number," Khadijah said. "It meant only 0.01 students tested better than I did."
In the years that followed, her mother, Chantwuan Williams, pulled her out of school eight more times. When shelters closed, money ran out or her mother didn't feel safe, they packed what little they carried and boarded buses to find housing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, staying for months, at most, in one place.
She finished only half of fourth grade, half of fifth and skipped sixth. Seventh grade was split between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eighth grade consisted of two weeks in San Bernardino.
At every stop, Khadijah pushed to keep herself in each school's gifted program. She read nutrition charts, newspapers and four to five books a month, anything to transport her mind away from the chaos and the sour smell.
At school, she was the outsider. At the shelter, she was often bullied. "You ain't college-bound," the pimps barked. "You live in skid row!"
In 10th grade, Khadijah realized that if she wanted to succeed, she couldn't do it alone. She began to reach out to organizations and mentors: the Upward Bound Program, Higher Edge L.A., Experience Berkeley and South Central Scholars; teachers, counselors and college alumni networks. They helped her enroll in summer community college classes, gave her access to computers and scholarship applications and taught her about networking.
When she enrolled in the fall of her junior year at Jefferson High School, she was determined to stay put, regardless of where her mother moved. Graduation was not far off and she needed strong college letters of recommendation from teachers who were familiar with her work.
This soon meant commuting by bus from an Orange County armory. She awoke at 4 a.m. and returned at 11 p.m., and kept her grade-point average at just below a 4.0 while participating in the Academic Decathlon, the debate team and leading the school's track and field team.
"That's when I was really stressed," she says, at once sighing and laughing.
Khadijah graduated Friday evening with high honors, fourth in her class. She was accepted to more than 20 universities nationwide, including Brown, Columbia, Amherst and Williams. She chose a full scholarship to Harvard and aspires to become an education attorney.
Early adversity
She tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.
There are questions about her mother Khadijah is not ready to ask, answers she is not ready to hear. How did her mother end up on the streets? How come she never found a stable home for her daughters? Why wasn't there family to turn to, no father, no grandparents? And what will become of her little sister?
"I don't know. I don't know," is often her response. Ask personal questions about her mother and the fire in Khadijah's eyes turns dim. She knows when she arrives in Cambridge, Mass., she will need to seek counseling. So much of her life is a blur.
She knows she was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a 14-year-old mother. She thinks Chantwuan might have been ostracized from her family. She may have tried to attend school, but the stress of a baby proved too much. When Khadijah was a toddler, they moved to California. A few years later, Jeanine was born.
She has chosen not to criticize her mother. Instead Khadijah said she inspired her to learn. "She would tell me I had a gift, she would call me Oprah."
When her college applications were due in December, James and Patricia London of South Central Scholars invited Khadijah to their home in Rancho Palos Verdes to help her write her essays.
When they went to return her to skid row, her mother and sister were gone.
Khadijah accepted the Londons' invitation to spend the rest of her school year with them.
In their comfortable hilltop home, Khadijah learned a new set of lessons. The orthopedic doctor and nurse taught her table manners, money management and grooming.
She won't be the first homeless student to arrive at Harvard.
Julie Hilden, the Harvard interviewer who met with Khadijah to gauge whether she should be accepted, said it was clear from the start that Khadijah was a top candidate. But school officials had to make sure they could provide what she needed to make the transition successful.
They plan to connect her with faculty mentors and potentially, a host family to check in with every so often. She will also attend a Harvard summer program at Cornell to take college-prep courses.
"I strongly recommended her," Hilden said. "I told them, 'If you don't take her, you might be missing out on the next Michelle Obama. Don't make this mistake.' "
Seeking connections
"I think about how I can convince my peers about the value of education. . . . I have found that after all the teasing, these peers start to respect me . . . . I decided that I could be the one to uplift my peers . . . . My work is far reaching and never finished."
Khadijah expected to feel more connected after nearly two years at Jefferson, to make at least one good friend.
Students flock to the smart girl for help with homework and tests and class questions. She walks through campus tenderly waving and smiling and complimenting everyone she knows.
But when prom pictures arrive, they show her posing alone in a silky black and white dress. In her yearbook, hundreds of familiar faces look back, but the memories are missing.
"It's a nice, glossy, shiny, colorful yearbook," she said. "But it feels like they're all strangers. I'm nowhere in these pages."
In the last six months, she saw her mother only a few times and on Thursday tried to find her. Khadijah headed to a South-Central storage facility where they last stored their belongings.
She found Chantwuan sitting on a garbage bag full of clothes.
"Khadijah's here!" her sister Jeanine yells. Chantwuan's face lit up.
She explained the details of her graduation, the bus route to get there and gave her mother a prom picture. She said she would leave for summer school Friday.
There is no talk of coming home of for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Proudly, Khadijah modeled her hunter green graduation cap and gown and practiced switching the tassel from right to left as she would during the ceremony.
"Look at you," her mother says. "You're really going to Harvard, huh?"
"Yeah," she says, pausing. "I'm going to Harvard."
esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com
------------------------------------------
Thank you Esmeralda, that is a truly remarkable story, thank you, if you ever are in contact with her tell that this old white dude :) from Aotearoa New Zealand is rooting for her.
I lived in LA from 1990 to 2006 and mentored a teenage hispanic boy from Culver City/Venice, where I lived, Jose Pomposa, through the Fulfillment Fund, it was possibly one of the highlights of my life to date. We can do nothing alone, I am convinced of that but still struggle with the concept.
Our family gave all the appearances of middle class trappings but I never made it past High School, my mother told me years later that I was the one she wanted to have a University education but she couldn't afford it. We all walk interesting paths in life. I would love to put this article, with your full credit, on my Blog, is that okay, cheers, Richard.
-------------------------------------------
Hi there,
Yes on the blog reference.
Thanks a million for reading Khadijah's story and sharing it with your loved ones. I wish I could craft a response to each e-mail we have received, but there are hundreds and by the looks of it, there will be hundreds more in the coming days. Readers from across the country, and from as far away as Brazil, India, Tokyo and New Zealand have sent their regards and encouragement.
Khadijah has been an exceptionally private person her entire life, but she chose to share her story because she wants to inspire youths everywhere to believe in themselves. This is what she plans to dedicate her life to as an education attorney.
I know she will be humbled and blown away by your response. For those of you who have asked to make donations toward her living expenses, thank you. I know she will be most grateful.
I will pass along details on where to send help as soon as possible.
With gratitude,
Esmeralda Bermudez,
Metro Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
Metro LA Times June 19, 2009
Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion.
She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze.
Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework.
"No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her.
Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago.
What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.
As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. Every morning, she upheld her dignity, making sure she didn't smell or look disheveled.
On the streets, she learned how to hunt for their next meal, plot the next bus route and help choose a secure place to sleep -- survival skills she applied with passion to her education.
Only a few mentors and Harvard officials know her background. She never wanted other students to know her secret -- not until her plane left for the East Coast hours after her Friday evening graduation.
"I was so proud of being smart I never wanted people to say, 'You got the easy way out because you're homeless,' " she said. "I never saw it as an excuse."
A drive to succeed
"I have felt the anger at having to catch up in school . . . being bullied because they knew I was poor, different, and read too much," she wrote in her college essays. "I knew that if I wanted to become a smart, successful scholar, I should talk to other smart people."
Khadijah was in third grade when she first realized the power of test scores, placing in the 99th percentile on a state exam. Her teachers marked the 9-year-old as gifted, a special category that Khadijah, even at that early age, vowed to keep.
"I still remember that exact number," Khadijah said. "It meant only 0.01 students tested better than I did."
In the years that followed, her mother, Chantwuan Williams, pulled her out of school eight more times. When shelters closed, money ran out or her mother didn't feel safe, they packed what little they carried and boarded buses to find housing in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Ventura, San Diego, San Bernardino and Orange County, staying for months, at most, in one place.
She finished only half of fourth grade, half of fifth and skipped sixth. Seventh grade was split between Los Angeles and San Diego. Eighth grade consisted of two weeks in San Bernardino.
At every stop, Khadijah pushed to keep herself in each school's gifted program. She read nutrition charts, newspapers and four to five books a month, anything to transport her mind away from the chaos and the sour smell.
At school, she was the outsider. At the shelter, she was often bullied. "You ain't college-bound," the pimps barked. "You live in skid row!"
In 10th grade, Khadijah realized that if she wanted to succeed, she couldn't do it alone. She began to reach out to organizations and mentors: the Upward Bound Program, Higher Edge L.A., Experience Berkeley and South Central Scholars; teachers, counselors and college alumni networks. They helped her enroll in summer community college classes, gave her access to computers and scholarship applications and taught her about networking.
When she enrolled in the fall of her junior year at Jefferson High School, she was determined to stay put, regardless of where her mother moved. Graduation was not far off and she needed strong college letters of recommendation from teachers who were familiar with her work.
This soon meant commuting by bus from an Orange County armory. She awoke at 4 a.m. and returned at 11 p.m., and kept her grade-point average at just below a 4.0 while participating in the Academic Decathlon, the debate team and leading the school's track and field team.
"That's when I was really stressed," she says, at once sighing and laughing.
Khadijah graduated Friday evening with high honors, fourth in her class. She was accepted to more than 20 universities nationwide, including Brown, Columbia, Amherst and Williams. She chose a full scholarship to Harvard and aspires to become an education attorney.
Early adversity
She tried her best; she never smoked or drank, never did drugs, and she never put us in abusive situations. However, that was the best she could do.
There are questions about her mother Khadijah is not ready to ask, answers she is not ready to hear. How did her mother end up on the streets? How come she never found a stable home for her daughters? Why wasn't there family to turn to, no father, no grandparents? And what will become of her little sister?
"I don't know. I don't know," is often her response. Ask personal questions about her mother and the fire in Khadijah's eyes turns dim. She knows when she arrives in Cambridge, Mass., she will need to seek counseling. So much of her life is a blur.
She knows she was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a 14-year-old mother. She thinks Chantwuan might have been ostracized from her family. She may have tried to attend school, but the stress of a baby proved too much. When Khadijah was a toddler, they moved to California. A few years later, Jeanine was born.
She has chosen not to criticize her mother. Instead Khadijah said she inspired her to learn. "She would tell me I had a gift, she would call me Oprah."
When her college applications were due in December, James and Patricia London of South Central Scholars invited Khadijah to their home in Rancho Palos Verdes to help her write her essays.
When they went to return her to skid row, her mother and sister were gone.
Khadijah accepted the Londons' invitation to spend the rest of her school year with them.
In their comfortable hilltop home, Khadijah learned a new set of lessons. The orthopedic doctor and nurse taught her table manners, money management and grooming.
She won't be the first homeless student to arrive at Harvard.
Julie Hilden, the Harvard interviewer who met with Khadijah to gauge whether she should be accepted, said it was clear from the start that Khadijah was a top candidate. But school officials had to make sure they could provide what she needed to make the transition successful.
They plan to connect her with faculty mentors and potentially, a host family to check in with every so often. She will also attend a Harvard summer program at Cornell to take college-prep courses.
"I strongly recommended her," Hilden said. "I told them, 'If you don't take her, you might be missing out on the next Michelle Obama. Don't make this mistake.' "
Seeking connections
"I think about how I can convince my peers about the value of education. . . . I have found that after all the teasing, these peers start to respect me . . . . I decided that I could be the one to uplift my peers . . . . My work is far reaching and never finished."
Khadijah expected to feel more connected after nearly two years at Jefferson, to make at least one good friend.
Students flock to the smart girl for help with homework and tests and class questions. She walks through campus tenderly waving and smiling and complimenting everyone she knows.
But when prom pictures arrive, they show her posing alone in a silky black and white dress. In her yearbook, hundreds of familiar faces look back, but the memories are missing.
"It's a nice, glossy, shiny, colorful yearbook," she said. "But it feels like they're all strangers. I'm nowhere in these pages."
In the last six months, she saw her mother only a few times and on Thursday tried to find her. Khadijah headed to a South-Central storage facility where they last stored their belongings.
She found Chantwuan sitting on a garbage bag full of clothes.
"Khadijah's here!" her sister Jeanine yells. Chantwuan's face lit up.
She explained the details of her graduation, the bus route to get there and gave her mother a prom picture. She said she would leave for summer school Friday.
There is no talk of coming home of for Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Proudly, Khadijah modeled her hunter green graduation cap and gown and practiced switching the tassel from right to left as she would during the ceremony.
"Look at you," her mother says. "You're really going to Harvard, huh?"
"Yeah," she says, pausing. "I'm going to Harvard."
esmeralda.bermudez@latimes.com
------------------------------------------
Thank you Esmeralda, that is a truly remarkable story, thank you, if you ever are in contact with her tell that this old white dude :) from Aotearoa New Zealand is rooting for her.
I lived in LA from 1990 to 2006 and mentored a teenage hispanic boy from Culver City/Venice, where I lived, Jose Pomposa, through the Fulfillment Fund, it was possibly one of the highlights of my life to date. We can do nothing alone, I am convinced of that but still struggle with the concept.
Our family gave all the appearances of middle class trappings but I never made it past High School, my mother told me years later that I was the one she wanted to have a University education but she couldn't afford it. We all walk interesting paths in life. I would love to put this article, with your full credit, on my Blog, is that okay, cheers, Richard.
-------------------------------------------
Hi there,
Yes on the blog reference.
Thanks a million for reading Khadijah's story and sharing it with your loved ones. I wish I could craft a response to each e-mail we have received, but there are hundreds and by the looks of it, there will be hundreds more in the coming days. Readers from across the country, and from as far away as Brazil, India, Tokyo and New Zealand have sent their regards and encouragement.
Khadijah has been an exceptionally private person her entire life, but she chose to share her story because she wants to inspire youths everywhere to believe in themselves. This is what she plans to dedicate her life to as an education attorney.
I know she will be humbled and blown away by your response. For those of you who have asked to make donations toward her living expenses, thank you. I know she will be most grateful.
I will pass along details on where to send help as soon as possible.
With gratitude,
Esmeralda Bermudez,
Metro Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
Thursday, June 18, 2009
I type there fore, I write?
What am I as a writer?
What is a writer?
Who am I?
I enjoy writing, I love the solitude of sitting at a keyboard looking out my window onto the street that passes me by in a nice section of Featherston, gateway to the Wairarapa. At night, as now, my ipod giving me an exlectic parade of singers, opera, rock, harmonic with which to just type. Type. Is that the same as writing. Journaling. Exploring my thoughts as I try to clear my mind so that I am not searching for words but simply plucking them from the air, not thinking, typing. Is that writing? Am I a writer? Or am I a journalsist? Heaven help me if this ever gets reviewed on Lumiere. I shudder to contemplate the words that don’t fit my dictionary of travels and travails, no, well to stay away. Keep to my typing and leave the writing for those who profess to be writers. I really and simply love typing. Allowing the constant stream of my imaginings to just tumble out onto the page. Simply tumble even.
But what’s the point I hear you ask?
Good question, I reply.
I have no idea, maybe I am lazy, maybe at a deeper level I am simply angry at the world and don’t want to try and change anyone’s thinking. My laziness is not wanting to structure myself into a novelist, a poet, a travel writer, a block buster, goddamn it, how does one do that? No I will leave that for others and simply enjoy the process of typing.
Wet tire sounds on a wet road, cars stream past my blacked out nightime window giving lie to the fact that this is a small rural outpost to Wellington that big brashy bureaucratic metropolis over the hill. Some would reply that it is me who is over the hill, maybe so. But I have come to this typing thing late in life, past the half way mark, into the last third, almost. I always said and continue to say that I will live to be 100. One Hundred Not Out, what a great title for my autobiography. But, for the moment, I am stuck in a few projects, after all I am not a writer or even a typist by trade, I am a film editor, a story teller with visual imagery which also creeps across into my photography. Story telling. Shit! Does that mean I am a story teller and does that mean . . . I have to write a story?
A real story like The Bone People or one of Katherine Mansfield’s essays, now they, are real stories. I have a painting of, well it’s a print really, just so you know I have economioc constraints at work, but there is the great Wellington woman, the escapee, like me, who left. Katherine Mansfield hangs, framed, behind me as I type. But write she could and I visited her Wellington home and bought a print and some books to make sure the doors were kept financially open for the next generation to discover that aotearoa is not the be all and end all. Now there is my anger. I just now took a pause to cook a couple of beef burgers, some bacon, all laid gracefully on a mesculin salad and washed down with a glass of my own burgundy. Yep, kiwis can call it a pinot, I will stick to what I know best, it’s a burgundy.
As I was saying, there is my anger, living alone, having to watch my finances, having to work to pay for my expensive Leica lenses, bugger! And of course, coming out of that is the fact that that, that’s it, that’s my anger, that’s all of it. No biggie, it’s not rage, it’s not small minded niggledyness, I pray there be such a word, no that’s the level of my anger. A good accessible level of good creative energy which, after all, is what anger is when it’s channelled. Or at least I believe so, some freudian shrinkwrapped genius may say otherwise, “oh he had a really nasty childhood” horse shit I reply, yes, I had a childhood, indisputable. Nasty? Possibly. Harmful? Most likely. But hell, here I am, typing, typist don’t get angry, they get . . . even!
Zane Grey’s wife Dolly, his editor, his business manager, whatever, she got even, he died aged 67, she got the lot. A miserable son of a bitch as far as I can tell but boy, could he write. Yes. And, he became the highest paid writer in the whole god damned world back there in the ‘20’s. Approaching a million bucks a year. Now that is writing change. Who cares the naysayers who referred to him as “that as yet unborn hack western writer”. Bloody hell, who’s counting. Zane Grey single handedly saved my arse as a kid. And so when I found my self sixty and single I went hunting for my childhood muse, searching for Zane Grey’s America, what did I find? ME! Bugger, there I was lurking in the American West just waiting for the connection. I found my self. Out in Young, Arizona. Eden, Utah, Ridgeway, Colorado. Death Valley, Nevada. Big Sur, California. Jemez, New Mexico. Other places sprung up all along the trail. See there I go, “the trail”, such a western phrase, not to be found in Aotearoa NZ. Nope. The “TRAIL” is found in the West. Bisbee, Douglas, Tonto Rim, Pleasant Valley, Monument Valley, Arches National Monument, The Badlands, Zion, Capitol Reef, Tombestone even. Yep, I watched sunsets and sunrises over the Grand Canyon, Coral Sands, Lees Ferry, Telluride and the 14000’ peaks above Ouray. That is what I found and that is where I found myself. Richard Thomas Clark. Ngati Pakeha. Out there in the West. Mormons, Ranchers, Paiute, Navajho, Teachers, Cowboys, Storekeepers, Knife makers, Gun makers. Hatmakers, Leather workers, Saddle makers. Truck drivers, trout Fishermen, Ak 47 toting Stone Mason survivalists. Even, before he dropped dead in the street, the former Beverly Hills Cop, for real. I kid you not. We got on great, two bullshitters bullshitting over coffee at the local service station. Planet Janet who strolled through Ridgeway with her dogs and cats in tow. I love them all, they have added to my life and here I get to type it all out. Maybe there is a story in there somewhere. Maybe. Time will tell. Night folks.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
and we're worried by boy racers :)
Why I drive a Subaru :) and, as an ex Advertising Film Editor, I ask . . .
1. how many takes did they shoot?
2. how many cars did they lose?
3. how many changes of underclothing?
4. how much was the 3rd party insurance?
5. how many carbon credits did the production devour? . . . I had to ask that for the politically correct . . . YEAH RIGHT!
1. how many takes did they shoot?
2. how many cars did they lose?
3. how many changes of underclothing?
4. how much was the 3rd party insurance?
5. how many carbon credits did the production devour? . . . I had to ask that for the politically correct . . . YEAH RIGHT!
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Legalize Weed?
Marijuana. An Illegal Drug
Such an emotive subject.
Alcohol. A Legal Drug
Also an emotive subject.
And so I ask myself why it is that one is legal and available and the other illegal. They are sort of similar. I enjoy a beer, a glass of wine, I have no issue with knowing my limits, I can drink a glass of beer and one glass is enough, I find I have no need and no desire to drink more. There is nothing sociable about getting drunk with my mates. That is an arcane piece of bullshit that I do not buy into. Peer pressure, it’s that simple. And so with marijuana, of course I have smoked a joint, who hasn’t? Again, like beer a joint is enjoyable. It’s relaxing. I have not smoked a joint for years, like 25 or so. I have no desire to get drunk or get stoned. I am not a smoker and so marijuana doesn’t suit me. But I have thought, that on ocasions, it would be nice to share a joint with a close female friend. It’s a relaxant, like alcohol. And so I ask, why is it illegal when alcohol is legal? Marijuana is like coffee a natural substance. Cigarettes at one time were pure tobacco until the tobacco companies began adding addictive substances to it. Beer is brewed and marketted by giant conglomorates, they add chemicals, they raise or lower the alcohol content according to their market. We are so regulated that we have lost the ability to make our own choices.
Decriminalise marijuana and watch the prisons empty.
I have nothing to prove that would be the case, I have no research. But to jail people for having a joint is totally nuts. We see teenagers, male and female, binge drinking and we, as a society, do nothing but shake our heads and wring our hands. And, pick up the pieces.
There are those of us human beings who are compulsive addictive personalities. That is part and parcel of our humanity. We seek the impossible, we seek perfection, which I know from my own life experience to be a misguided and impossible mission.
So where does that leave me/us in the debate?
In returning to my homeland I signed up for a meet some one web site
And read, with interest and a smile, that most women, when asked their thoughts on drugs, all said “No Way”. Self righteous claptrap. What about alcohol, over the counter medication, what about work and money and relationships, all drugs of choice.
I have a dear friend, no longer in my life, that whenever her 7 year old son gets tired and overwhelmed, gives him a prescription drug. He’s 7!
Take him for a walk, give him a hug, get a man in his life.
A 7 year old drug taker!
He is going to hate his mother at some point of his awakening, as he will hate his absent, alcohol dependant, violent father. Simple really.
We are addictive by nature and addictive by nurture.
I can see that as soon as I wrote that.
I can see my own compulsive addictive need for a woman in my life to fill the void. Through a daily practice, (no not masturbation, though I know it as powerful healer and very healthy) which I refer to as spiritual, I am able to balance my need for love by looking in all the right places, making healthy choices.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Addiction, neediness, it’s all part of my broken humanity and for that I am truly grateful.
However, I do enjoy a glass of wine, a glass of beer and I would like to be able to share a joint if I so wished.
Cigarettes are legal, cigarettes are addictive, cancerous and plain socially repugnant to me. I dislike the smell and I dislike the attitude of smokers who litter the environment with cigarette butts.
Just like beer and spirit drinkers who toss the containers once emptied. Bugger.
It doesn’t answer the question as to why one, Alcohol, is legal and the other, Marijuana, is not.
It’s a good question. It needs an honest, unemotional debate.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Heal the Victims. Prosecute the Perpetrators!
Knowing how many Irish came to New Zealand, hearing stories of catholic children in New Zealand, Australia and America, then seeing the hidden monastries in Jemez, New Mexico where priests and nuns were sent to 'dry' out, I am not at all surprised with the level of violence in our communities.
"Good men will always do good, evil men will always do evil, but for good men to do evil, that takes religion."
The shocking scale of sexual and physical abuse in educational institutions in Ireland run by the Catholic church was revealed today in a report describing how thousands of boys and girls were raped, abused and exploited by the religious brothers and nuns who were supposed to look after them.
The 2,600-page report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found that for decades rape was "endemic" in more than 250 Irish Catholic care institutions from the 1930s to the 1990s, and that the church in Ireland protected paedophiles in its ranks from arrest.
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," it said.
Children in industrial schools and reformatories were treated more like convicts and slaves than people with human rights, it said. Rape was particularly common in boys homes and industrial schools run by the Christian Brothers.
There were angry scenes outside the hotel in Dublin where the report was launched this afternoon after about 20 former residents of industrial schools were prevented from attending the press conference. Speaking outside the hotel, John Kelly of the Irish Survivors of Child Abuse group, Soca, said: "We were treated as criminals as children when we were sent to these places and even now … there were Garda officers on call to arrest us if we tried to get in [to the press conference]. It was an absolute disgrace."
Kelly described the failure of the report to recommend criminal prosecutions as a complete whitewash.
The five-volume report confirmed allegations from thousands of former pupils from the institutions. The Ryan Commission said that beatings in institutions run by both priests and nuns were commonplace. "In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximise pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said.
It also criticised the failure of the Irish state, most notably the department of education, for allowing the abuse and exploitation to continue for decades. The department aided this culture "through infrequent, toothless inspectors" that always deferred to the Catholic's church's authority, the report said. The inspections even failed to ensure that children were adequately fed, clothed and educated.
The commission proposed 21 ways the Irish government could recognise past wrongs, including building a permanent memorial, providing counselling and education to victims and improving child protection services.
After the revelations of systematic clerical abuse, Pope Benedict was challenged to hold a Vatican inquiry into the role of Catholic religious orders in Ireland's orphanages and industrial schools. Irish Soca said it was now up to the Vatican to investigate the scandal further.
Kelly said: "Now that the Ryan commission is finished we call upon Pope Benedict to convene a special consistory court to fully investigate the activities of Catholic religious orders in Ireland. Among other things, such a court could establish the whereabouts of Irish state assets that were misappropriated over many years by the religious orders and make restitution to the Irish state exchequer."
Kelly said Irish Soca was disappointed that members of the religious orders who abused children, and the government officials who turned a blind eye to abuse in places like the Artane industrial school, would not be prosecuted.
The commission investigated more than 100 schools run by Catholic religious orders – the majority by the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy.
The commission's original judge, Justice Mary Laffoy, resigned from her post in 2003 over claims that the department of education, which was in charge of inspecting the orphanages and industrial schools, was holding back documents from her inquiry.
Nine-tenths of the bill for compensating victims of the institutionalised abuse will be shouldered by Irish taxpayers rather than the church. In June 2002, a special deal between the Catholic hierarchy and the government of Bertie Ahern, agreed that the Church would pay only €128m in compensation. The overall cost of compensation, according to official figures, will be €1.3bn.
A second damning report, due to be published by the end of June, will detail the abuse of hundreds of children in the Dublin archdiocese from 1940 onwards. More than 100 priests are facing allegations and 400 people have been identified as victims.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
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15th june 1943
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15th june 1943
Input interpretation:
Date formats:More formats/calendars
Time difference from today (Sunday, May 17, 2009):
My birthday and some more trivia . . .
Time in 1943:More
Observances for June 15, 1943 (New Zealand):
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Daylight information for June 15, 1943 in Gisborne, New Zealand:More
Phase of the Moon:Large image
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Thursday, May 14, 2009
Don't Cry For Me Guatemala!
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin
- Benjamin Franklin
Thursday, May 07, 2009
The Romance of Rail
Trains make a noise, lots of noise. Trains come in all shapes and all sizes. Trains, real trains, coal powered, steam driven, make smoke, lots of smoke. It’s what makes kids love them. There is a romance to them. And, of course, trains are always going somewhere.
As a child I love the K Class Locomotives and I loved the small black shunters that shunted backward and forward from Port Napier to
Port Ahuriri. Short, blunt. Purposefull. They crossed the road at the bottom of Bluff Hill where we lived. They hooted, I smiled. There is a mystery to a train, there is magic, and, as I said, a romance.
In my teens, as a harrier, I travelled from Napier to Gisborne by railcar, not a real train and yet it was still a train. We tossed rolls of toilet paper over the Mohaka Viaduct. We ate railway pies and drank railway tea and we played Crown & Anchor as we travelled and ran badly as a result. I remember living in suspended silence as our eldest brother caught the Wellington to Auckland Express and heard it become the Tangiwai Rail Disaster in 1953, but that he had missed the train at the last moment. From Sydney to Adelaide 3rd class, now that was a trip. Cold, Hard, Slow. Sydney to Brisbane was more enjoyable. I travelled from Perth to Manjimup in West Australia. I watched the giant ore trains that emptied the Pilbara to fill ships for Japan. I commuted daily by train in Sydney and New York, I have travelled from Hong Kong Central into China’s New Territories, travelled underground in London and Paris but my favorite spot on the face of the planet is, and always will be, Grand Central Terminal in New York. Center of the Universe I call it. Standing in the main concourse, up on the mezzanine, looking out over what appears to me as a huge ants nest of intertwined travellers. Literally thousands upon thousands going about their daily business. Travellers waiting to be met, seen off, connecting with other travellers, a huge melting pot of humanity.
The destination board fascinated me. The Hudson Line and all the other lines that went all the way to Niagara Falls. For nourishment as I watched I ate at the Oyster Bar, so often that I became a regular.
A dozen mixed oysters and a glass of Cloudy Bay.
I walked through the main concourse every morning and every evening, to and from work on Madison Avenue. The deep down rumble of multiple trains on multiple tracks on multiple levels. The sound is what got me, the acoustics. Down below the main concourse I can stand in one corner and whisper into the vaulted wall and another person across the passageway can hear my voice as clear as a bell. Amazing. I loved the Hudson Line, visiting friends at Croton, Sleepy Hollow and Ossining, aka Sing Sing. I love the New York subway, the smell, the noise, the rattle of trains on the 6 Line, the A Line, the E and all the others that took me down town, up town, the cross town shuttle. Finally, and unfortunately it was the overwhelming smell of urine and the grime and crime of the subway that had me leave New York for the Coast. I love New York.
And then to Penn Station to catch the train, 1st Class, to Washington DC. That was something, to pass an America in decay. An America that used to produce. Sad to see shuttered buildings, mile after mile.
I spent 21 years in New Zealand, 20 years in Australia, 20 in America and now I am back in New Zealand and am in despair at the state of our State Rail. Grubby, boring, unimaginative, slow and expensive.
However, on certain days, I get to drive at 160k chasing the classic trains that sometimes ply the Manawatu Gorge and sometimes appear in the Wairarapa. What magic there is in trains.
I have stood 3 feet from an East West Main Line near Route 66 in Arizona, as a mile long train roared by, loaded two stories high with shipping containers and to be told that 42 trains pass this spot daily.
I edited Television Commercials for BNSF in America. I filmed BNSF Rolling Stock as I travelled the American West for two years. I spent time chatting to the crew of the Durango to Silverton steam trains. Glorious engines from a glorious age. I have devoured Zane Grey and read Union Pacific so many times I almost live it. I drove from Venice Beach, California to Ogden Utah, where the Golden Spike was driven way back in ’65, towing an Airstream Trailer. All those memories and I am not at all what I would call a Train Nut or Fan. But, for whatever reason, trains play a large part in my imagination. I love to film and photograph them and have a growing collection. And the thing that really, really gets me is the sad lonesome sound of distant trains, be they in New Zealand or the American West. Someone, somewhere is travelling by train right now.
Long Live the Tracks. Long Live the Trains that Ply them and the Engineers who keep them running.
Friday, May 01, 2009
New York, New York . . . . 22 years to the Day!
. . . and here I am, the 1st of May 2009, down under down under.
22 years to the day, it was a Friday afternoon in New York that I arrived, JFK, taxi to Mid Town, booked into Morgans Hotel where all the men wore black, commes de garcon no less, to which I quickly caught on and still have a ‘commes’ suit, albeit a bit worn, like me. But holding up well and still looks good in substance, like me J, today I am more Missy Miyake J
Friday night in Manhattan, May 1, First of May, Smugglers Day.
I slept, I admit. A flight from Sydney to LA to New York was not conducive to all night partying and anyhow. . . Madison Ave is not reknown for a great night life.
Midtown Manhattan, like Masterton, New Zealand, dies early.
The hotel WAS the night life. Soooo subtle, soooo chic. Soooo pricey!
Anyhow, I slept well, hit the streets of the Big Apple bright and early with the words of well meaning Sydney friends, “you will not find it easy to find accomodation in New York”, ringing in my ears.
YEAH RIGHT!
I bought the NYT aka New York Times, ran my finger down the To Let page and voila, 137 East 35th, a brownstone, one bedroom, fully furnished, courtyard, the Gods were smiling, a phone call, “where are you staying, I will pick you up” said the voice. Murray Hill, very close to work, not a cool address back then, today it is the Murray Hill Historic District. http://murrayhill.gc.cuny.edu/e35thp/
Then it was simply a brownstone walk up, but to me, home.
“You will not find it easy, etc, etc . . .” yeah right!
First phone call, Alf Swindler, yep I still remember, holocaust survivors, building owner, drycleaners, my New York Godfather and God Mother. I still treasure their reference. I stayed a year, it was perfect, entertained visitors from Sydney, the ones who proclaimed I would not find . . . blah, blah, blah! Some who stayed wore out there welcome, one, who will remain nameless, left wearing a glass of very good burgundy over her virginal white dress.
What was I thinking. Germans make great cars, lousy lovers.
But, it was me who invited her to stay J wasn’t it? Merde!
I was blessed with that apartment and a couple of NY friends, Christoffer and Jackie, they made me very welcome, thanks to you both, wherever you are today.
Saturday, I was moved in and later that day, I was a bonafide ‘Noo Yoika’ wasn’t I, sitting in Café Dante on McDougall Street, New York’s Best Tiramasu. My favorite café in all the World, seriously.
My one bedroom apartment with a view of the Chrysler Building from my private roof top garden, Dogwood Trees, Azaleas, a BBQ, a killer view directly above Lexington Avenue. Awesome. Pinch me someone!
I was Film Editor, trained in Sydney, about to be christened in NY.
Monday, 3rd May 1987, I walked up Park Avenue South, taking in the neck bending sights, the yellow daffodils of spring, the ritzy apartment I fantasized over at the cnr of Park Ave South and 35th St. That one, I had to look down into, awesome. I fantasized that one for years, who lived there, what was it like, how much, all crass but well intentioned dreaming.
Up the Avenue, across 42nd Street, people, people, people. A veritable ant’s nest of people. Under the Hilton, aka PanAm building, through Grand Central Terminal's main concourse to Madison Avenue and into the most disfunctional editing company, my A4 Visa sponsors, I have ever experienced, apart from the one I started in Venice Beach J 3 years later.
That night I walked back into the Concourse, down to the Oyster Bar and found my Home away from Home. No need for me to cook ever again. I ate there, often J
A dozen mixed oysters, a glass or two of Cloudy Bay, a short black Espresso, baked NY Cheese cake and walked home down Park Avenue to 35th Street and home. They almost got to start it as I sat down.
I lived in Murray Hill for a year until, dream of dreams, written on my pre-arrival wish list, a TriBeCa Loft. The Triangle Below Canal.
The Swindlers were really sad to see me go and invited me back anytime I wished. Bless them, they were truly good people.
90 Hudson Street, a top floor loft with a garden, my own private garden, a sun room, views out over DeNiro’s loft, down Chanterelle, THE hottest New York eatery.
It fit my written description of MY NY dream to a T.
From my garden I could glimpse the Hudson River, which in case you were wondering, you were wondering right? Is where I heaved, yep, heaved my first wedding ring. Such a profound feeling and, I still have the New York wish list.
If I hadn’t fallen in love, got married, I would still be there. Maybe.
I held great parties. I enjoyed great clients, great work. Clints flew me to London, LA, Mexico City and Xtapa. American Express, Master Card, Helene Curtis, American Airlines, all blue chip accounts. Budgets that made my hair curl. Clients lined up to work with me, can you believe it. If I was busy, they waited. Seriously. I find it hard today to accept that I could earn such money simply doing what I enjoyed doing, editing. To me it has always beaten working for a living. Do what you love and the money will follow, true today as it has ever been.
90 Hudson was around the corner from Puffies Bar & Grill, across the road from Zutto, a great Japanese Café. Café Dante was a 10 minute train ride, Odeon, a 5 minute walk.
I was in New York, Madison Avenue, Advertising. Bliss.
It was and still is my Mount Everest.
I lived 7 blocks from the WTC where we spent our wedding day lunch with my best man Nicky D’Antona. We were married in NY City Hall, St Patricks Day. Not an Irishman in sight. They were all at Puffies J
TriBeCa is sublime. Even after I left New York I would visit my old haunts, Café Dante and the Hood ,where I learned much about who I am and who I am not.
Not all bad J I even filmed there a week before 9/11.
Now that was weird. I was in NY on a very large 22 spot packagel of tvs aka television commercials, took an early morning taxi across town from the Paramount Hotel, down the East River to Wall Street, shooting miniDV as we drove, down past South Street Sea Port and there, as I alighted from the taxi, were the Twin Towers.
WTC R.I.P.
The sun had risen over Brooklyn Heights and the light was magic, not a cloud. I loved it. I walked around Battery Park, I knew it like the back of my hand. It was my running track, from 90 Hudson, across to Battery Park, up the West Side Highway to 42nd Street, across to Broadway and then turn right and Downtown. A good 10 miler. I ran in Harlem, I ran in Central Park, I ran over the Brooklyn Bridge. I raced 10 milers in the snow in Central Park. Ran the Corporate Challenge. I loved it.
Belonged to the NY Road Runners Club. Never ran the Marathon, that waited for my 55th birthday and the LA Marathon.
I arrived in New York in 1987, I was 44, had my birthday at Chanterelle, thank you Christy. I know that broke whatever budget we didn’t have, never have had J. No problem earning, just can’t save.
Then Hollywood called, New York was Crime infested, Grime coated, the fun took too much hard work, it stopped being fun.
Xmas, 1990 and the plan was to drive across America to my new Gig in Hollyweird aka Hollywood. Brand new Jeep Cherokee, bang. Some young rich kid from Queens cut us off in the Village. Merde! We went to Jamaica instead, then flew to LAX and Venice Beach whilst the Jeep got repaired. Don’t go to Jamaica, too much like present day Fiji, a true banana republic.
22 years ago, to the day and so many, many memories. Good memories, very good memories. I fell in love, I married, I was successful. My daughter from Australia visited, it was sublime, we cried together for the first time. Christy and me were very happy.
Christy didn’t visit New York again until Christmas 2002. Our last hurrah, our last Christmas together, it seemed appropriate in retrospect that we spent it in New York, going down her memory lane, the Lower East Side, such a pity we were so far apart. But I did run Central Park to Harlem in the snow, bloody froze didn’t I.
I returned to New York the week after 9/11 and videoed what I felt. It has now become a 45 minute hommage to the City that never sleeps. The City that will remain in my heart and mind the rest of my days.
I LOVE NEW YORK and New Yorkers, Let’s go Mets!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Thoughts on Anzac Day, 2008
G'day mates. . .
I sat down last year and wrote this piece which went somewhere I did not expect, it's interesting to me to read it a year later, see what you think, cheers, Richard.
Yesterday I had a session with my healer, Helen in Carterton, south of where I live by 15 minutes. It turned out that she lived close by me where and when I grew up, in Napier. I possibly delivered milk to her house, her family. Anyhow yesterday she worked on me. A healer. Working on my spirit, my soul.
Why would I see a healer? Why would I/do I, need healing?
Here I am it’s 6:04 AM, cup of tea, sitting at my lap top, again, high above the trees. Writing. Wondering what to write. I feel congested, my nose is blocked, I feel phlegmy, if there is such a word. My writing/typing comes slowly today, more thoughtful I guess. I love the idea of writing, it’s kind of romantic, it’s a big part of who I am today and I don’t have to think too much which is part of my struggle, part of my dis-ease, thinking, not writing. I think too much or at least that is what I think. Is it possible, is it a negative to think to much? Or am I berating myself over nothing much. I guess it prevents me feeling too much. To think is not to feel. Or so I say today. Tomorrow who knows? Anyhow I am trying to sense, sense, feel, feel my feelings and not think, not rationalize, not defend, protect, excuse.
Mmmm! What am I afraid of defending? My Self? Possibly.
It has been an interesting week. I seem to spend Mondays recovering from weekend activity. Tuesday I drove to Wellington and met a young Director, a very personable young guy. We talked of the film he has shot that is in the process of editing, his editor has left the country and he needs someone to complete the process and prepare it for post production. In the past my ego would be all excited at the prospects of editing a ‘movie’, however these days I find myself more discerning. A lovely word, discerning. We talked and I took a copy of the film, drove my dog to Petone bought fish and chips and oysters, all batter laden and deep fried, found a spot at the beach and I ate my way through the package of high cholesterol food. I stuffed myself and wondered why. Burying my feelings I guess. Home back over the hill and I sat and watched the film. It has the bones of something. But what? A story with no real redeeming factors, simply a story written by someone who wanted to make a movie. The cameraman/editor did as good a job as can be done in 9 days. It, the script, has potential. However it sort of sits between a great many genres and doesn’t hit anyone of them clearly or cleanly. It is not even a parody of it’s self. Can it be made into something? I am not in a place, like I was after my divorce 4 years ago, where I needed something to fill the gap inside of me. I guess that is why I ate those fish and chips the way I did. I guess. No, today I need something more than fish and chips to heal my soul. I need a love affair, be it with a woman, a film, my writing even. I need something more than what has been presented to date. Which brings me to Wednesday, lunch with Janet, last name unimportant, and after the meeting even less so. I met Janet 18 months ago at Glistening Waters Story Telling Festival, here in the town in which I live. I was impressed. It was my first real experience of such a thing. People getting up, as in ancient times, telling stories. Stories that had meaning, depth, metaphorical, in the style of Joseph Campbell, who I discovered in New York, a Mythological story teller. He touched me profoundly. The concept of Myth came to me late in life. I was 43. I guess the struggle I have with the young film maker is that the film has no sense of myth, no sense of anything but a shallow tale of love and betrayal. I guess it’s unimportant what Janet said to me, I will leave it, as a dog leaves a bone, well alone. Just another female agenda, I will leave it at that :)
And it was as I wrote that my ears picked up the sound of singing, a lone female, I stopped typing and went to the window and there heard the voice of a woman singing the New Zealand National Anthem. Out over the valley I call home. It is 6:29 AM Friday 25th April 2008. It’s ANZAC Day. God De-fend New Ze-a-land. Awesome. Now if the film had a tinge of that, a tinge of something deeper than a couple of young guys screwing women, then, well maybe then. But to be reminded of the price that New Zealand men and women paid on the beach at Gallipolli and in Ypres in the First World War and the price they have continued to pay ever since, well that taps my emotions and really inspires a sense of 'Homeland' and what it means. I have a photograph, taken years ago in Napier, where I grew up, it is black and white. I am standing in front of a Cenotaph, the Napier Cenotaph, I am holding a large pole with a flag on it. It was ANZAC day years ago. Before I left New Zealand. I guess I was about 13. Today I am 64 going on 46.
It is dawn. Not a crystal clear day like yesterday but a foggy slightly gray day. A large bank of fog sits across the valley, much like the marine layer in Santa Monica Bay, California where I lived for 16 years before returning to New Zealand two years ago. I loved the fog. The Pacific Ocean marine layer that would creep in off the ocean like a blanket, a sort of security blanket. I felt it kept me safe. Today I am 35 miles from the coast, the furthest I have ever lived away from the sea. I was born overlooking the Pacific. In California I lived an exact 6.5 minute mile from the Pacific shore and walked/ran there every day, early, like now, 6:37AM, to walk my dog and to clear my head for the day ahead. Here in New Zealand the cloud bank tells me it is cold, very cold. Warm air rising to meet cold or is it cold rising to greet warm, whatever. It is cold, there is a bone chilling coldness in the pre-dawn light. I do not envy the faming life, even though I have tried it.
ANZAC Day 2008.
Veterans are gathered all across New Zealand and Australia to remember the fallen. To remember the time when they fought and fell. Wounded. Changed for ever. The 1914-18 war was the war to end all wars. We don’t seem to have learned. “Man, the animal that never learns”. Tonight I have my Radio Show. I have a Story Teller joining me. We will talk of this time.
When I woke this morning I had forgotten it was ANZAC DAY. I was comfortable in my warm bed with my dog curled against my legs, she creeps up when I am not looking, or so she thinks. I had thought, earlier in the week, that I would film the Dawn Parade. The gathering of veterans at 5:30 AM and the silent, candle lit vigil to the War Memorial. So much for that plan. None of my immediate family has fought in a War and I was always curious as to what members of my parents families, aunts and uncles, had fought. i felt a certain shame that they had not or was it hidden pride that they were maybe pacifists, I found recently they were Home Guard, they knew ladders and such, go figure, I just fell off a ladder and broke my fucking shoulder didn't I. My Uncle Tom, went and returned, my Mother's brother, from whom my second name, Thomas, comes. And so, I guess, I do have a connection to this day. All this week, leading up to this day poppies have been sold in the streets and I didn’t buy one. I thought, I am beyond and above war. A pacifist at heart. Arrogant son of a bitch. No matter what I may think, believe, about military conflict, War, these men and women fought and died for the life I live today. I have never really considered this before. Maybe they fought so I wouldn’t have to. I was born in the last, dare I say, dying days of the second World War. Is my soul reincarnated from a dead or dying soldier, a tortured Pole in Auschwitz? A German soldier? Who knows what psychic wounding I carry. I do know that I am stirred in ways I never thought possible at the sound of the New Zealand National Anthem rising to my tree house high above the town of Masterton. I silently salute my Uncle Tom and all his mates who fought and fell, who fought and returned, broken men and women. The price they carry today is far beyond any of my suffering this time around. It’s 6:52 AM, I believe the whole of New Zealand stops for this moment in time. A half day of shops closed to which, before this moment I foolishly objected. Not any more. This is my Memorial. Silent. In solitude with my own thoughts, my own thinking. But beyond my thinking, my stinking thinking, is my feeling. I can sense the sadness, the pain, the suffering. Men and Women, Children of those who didn’t return, paying homage to those who fought for what they believed in. It is not for me to say right or wrong. I simply do not know. That was then and this is now and they gave their lives so I could think, today, about freedom and dissent. My voice has been guaranteed by their lives.
This is not what I sat down to write. I sat down to try and find something worth writing about. I lay in bed, not wanting to go back to sleep and not wanting to rise in the cold dark air and take my dog for a walk. But this is what I write and I guess this is what ANZAC DAY means to me. As if anyone is interested. Who know, maybe it will help others take the time to ponder, to think, feel even. Feel deep down what it represents in our seemingly shallow materialistic lives today.
LEST WE FORGET is the inscription on War Memorials across the country, in all the small cities and towns that make New Zealand what it is. A small piece of England in the South Pacific. But it is not just Pakeha who fought and fell. The Maori of Aotearoa fought ferociously as only warrior tribes can. Today Peter Arnett is on Maori Television. One of the World’s great War Correspondents and a thorn in the side of the Military Industrial Complex and the current White House. A mix of Maori and Pakeha, who tells it as he sees it. Simple really.
For those who didn’t die fighting there are always stories to tell and today those stories will be repeated. Enhanced maybe but still told with a tear and a tug at heart by those who remember. God bless them all. The long and the short and the tall. I sense a healing in writing these thoughts, fancy that. Amen.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
What A Magnificent Turn Off!
Every single person who hit the light switches to the off position deserves all the accolades i can dream of. Congratulations one and all.
In Aotearoa New Zealand the power usage dipped by a whopping 3.5%. YEEHA!
For those who turned off all their power outlets, even bigger kudos.
I have to admit, I did turn all my lights off but left my computer back up running.
While the lights were off I went outside and looked up. The stars have never looked so glorious,
I have never felt quite so humble or grateful that all those light switches could make such an amazing difference.
Thank you all World Citizens, WE did good!
Earth Hour 2009: A Billion to Go Dark Saturday?
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
March 26, 2009
Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening.
Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time.
The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming.
Now in its third year, Earth Hour has been attracting some high-profile advocates.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently pledged his support for Earth Hour, saying it has the potential to be "the largest demonstration of public concern about climate change ever attempted."
Secretary-General Ban urged people to participate as a way of letting politicians know that they expect progress at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, when world leaders will meet to draft a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol.
Other big names endorsing Earth Hour 2009 include actors Edward Norton and Cate Blanchett, musicians Alanis Morissette and Big Kenny, and the band Coldplay.
Landmarks at Night
Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 with about two million participants.
By 2008 the event had spread to nearly 400 participating cities in 35 countries and 50 million participants. (See before-and-after pictures of Earth Hour 2008.)
As of press time, more than 2,800 cities, towns, and villages in 84 countries worldwide are expected to take part in Earth Hour 2009.
World landmarks such as the Empire State Building, the Las Vegas strip, the Eiffel Tower, Rio de Janiero's statue of "Christ the Redeemer," Athens's Acropolis, Egypt's Great Pyramids, and Rome's Colosseum will also slip temporarily into darkness.
"Sometimes it takes a while for a good idea to get out there, and this year we're really hitting our stride," said WWF spokesperson Leslie Aun.
Earth Hour: Energy Saver?
While Earth Hour is important as a symbolic gesture, it would be even more valuable if the energy savings of the event were known, said Mary-Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center in New York City.
"The issue is whether it goes beyond a 'really cool' event and leads to anything tangible," Carr said.
"If there was an idea of how much energy was being saved, people could take measures to lower their energy use in a systematic and practical way."
Unlike in previous years, WWF is not releasing energy-savings estimates for this year's Earth Hour.
"We think the value of Earth Hour is the lights going off," WWF's Aun said, "not the energy savings."
© 1996-2008 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
In Aotearoa New Zealand the power usage dipped by a whopping 3.5%. YEEHA!
For those who turned off all their power outlets, even bigger kudos.
I have to admit, I did turn all my lights off but left my computer back up running.
While the lights were off I went outside and looked up. The stars have never looked so glorious,
I have never felt quite so humble or grateful that all those light switches could make such an amazing difference.
Thank you all World Citizens, WE did good!
Earth Hour 2009: A Billion to Go Dark Saturday?
Ker Than
for National Geographic News
March 26, 2009
Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening.
Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time.
The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming.
Now in its third year, Earth Hour has been attracting some high-profile advocates.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently pledged his support for Earth Hour, saying it has the potential to be "the largest demonstration of public concern about climate change ever attempted."
Secretary-General Ban urged people to participate as a way of letting politicians know that they expect progress at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December, when world leaders will meet to draft a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol.
Other big names endorsing Earth Hour 2009 include actors Edward Norton and Cate Blanchett, musicians Alanis Morissette and Big Kenny, and the band Coldplay.
Landmarks at Night
Earth Hour began in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 with about two million participants.
By 2008 the event had spread to nearly 400 participating cities in 35 countries and 50 million participants. (See before-and-after pictures of Earth Hour 2008.)
As of press time, more than 2,800 cities, towns, and villages in 84 countries worldwide are expected to take part in Earth Hour 2009.
World landmarks such as the Empire State Building, the Las Vegas strip, the Eiffel Tower, Rio de Janiero's statue of "Christ the Redeemer," Athens's Acropolis, Egypt's Great Pyramids, and Rome's Colosseum will also slip temporarily into darkness.
"Sometimes it takes a while for a good idea to get out there, and this year we're really hitting our stride," said WWF spokesperson Leslie Aun.
Earth Hour: Energy Saver?
While Earth Hour is important as a symbolic gesture, it would be even more valuable if the energy savings of the event were known, said Mary-Elena Carr, associate director of the Columbia Climate Center in New York City.
"The issue is whether it goes beyond a 'really cool' event and leads to anything tangible," Carr said.
"If there was an idea of how much energy was being saved, people could take measures to lower their energy use in a systematic and practical way."
Unlike in previous years, WWF is not releasing energy-savings estimates for this year's Earth Hour.
"We think the value of Earth Hour is the lights going off," WWF's Aun said, "not the energy savings."
© 1996-2008 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
From Sea to Shining Sea!
This is why I love America, a term limit of 4 years, with a maximum of 2 terms, has the Presidential flavor of America lead the way for change. New Blood, new ideas, my own community in Aotearoa aka New Zealand, could well do with this imprint of true democracy. Principles above Personalities. I applaud the American People for such vision.
WASHINGTON, DC, March 25, 2009 (ENS) - Congress today approved a massive public lands bill that protects 200 million acres of wilderness in nine states and a thousand miles of rivers, a 50 percent increase in the wild and scenic river system. It establishes new national trails, national parks and a new national monument and provides legal status for the National Landscape Conservation System, which will protect some of the country's most spectacular landscapes.
The package of 164 separate bills bundled together, known as the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act of 2009 (H.R.146), has been stalled several times on its way to approval, most recently on March 11, when the measure fell two votes short of the two-thirds majority in the House required at that time.
Today, only a simple majority was required and the House passed the bill by a vote of 285 to 140. The bill was approved by the Senate last week and now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature into law. President Obama is expected to sign the measure.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today is "a day of celebration for all who treasure and enjoy our natural and cultural heritage."
"This bipartisan legislation creates more than two million new acres of wilderness, and provides the greatest expansion of wilderness areas in 15 years, including more than 700,000 acres in my own state of California," Pelosi said.
"In this challenging time of drought in the West, the lands act also includes numerous water-related provisions that will help manage the drought, improve aging infrastructure, recharge groundwater supplies, and promote the reuse and recycling of water," Pelosi said. "The bill also contains a historic settlement to restore the San Joaquin River in the Central Valley of California."
"The provisions in this bill were developed in communities across America by local supporters, working together with their elected representatives," the speaker said. As a result, the bill enjoys broad support from wildlife, conservation, hunting and fishing, and outdoor business groups across the country."
William H. Meadows, president of The Wilderness Society was quoted as saying:
“This is a monumental day for wilderness and for all Americans who enjoy the great outdoors. With passage of this bill, Congress has made a great gift to present and future generations of Americans. These special places make our communities better places to live, clean our air and water for free, and provide ecological resilience in the face of climate change. They’re also great places to hike and camp and fish with family and friends, of course.”
Way to go America!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Slip, Slap, Slop
SUNSCREEN: WHAT DO THE PROS USE?
What is the best sunscreen for sailing? Scuttlebutt asked some of the people
who are regularly on the water, and here is advice provided by Chris Larson,
1997 Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, 7-time World Champion:
“Growing up in Florida, I was exposed to the sun from an early age. I’ve had
my share of “AK’s” actinic keratosis (pre-cancers), and biopsies. In addition,
I had a full lip ‘laser’ resurfacing and Efudex treatment, a "topical
chemotherapy" chemical face peel. Trust me; these are not things you want to
experience.
“I currently use Coppertone Sport 50 SPF breathable sunscreen and have always
come back to Coppertone products over the years. It just seems to work best
for me. Sunscreens work differently on each individual due skin type and
makeup. Trial and error is the best way to find something which gives you the
most protection.
“Application is ABSOLUTLEY the most important factor in sun protection. I have
a morning ritual of taking a shower and then immediately applying 3-4 coats of
sunscreen. Heat and moisture from the shower open skin pours allowing it to
absorb significantly more product. This method covers me for the whole day.
Applying sunscreen on the boat just doesn’t cut it and I inevitably come away
with too much sun.
“In addition, Lip protection is a must. Zinc Oxide is the best for ultimate
protection; however any lip balm w/ a SPF over 30 will work. Lastly, it’s
important to see your dermatologist every 6 months.”
Kevin Burnham,
2-time Olympic medalist:
“Been through a lot of treatments. Lip laser burn that left my lips open and
raw for weeks. Face peels with Efudex and numerous direct hits with the laser
on various parts of my body. I had both eyes operated on from the sun burning
them and creating pterygiums that had to be removed.
“I use the sunscreen called Aloegator that is made in Irving, Texas. I use the
Kids SPF 45 cream that soaks into the skin. They have another SPF 45 that is a
gel that causes me to sweat. The kids stuff does not burn the eyes either. The
technique is to start with a shower in the morning and apply the first
application, as soon as I get out and dry off. For my lips, I use Zinc oxide
PASTE - not ointment. This stuff is mixed with a wax of some sort and stays on
much better than the ointment. I order kilo jars of it from the pharmacy. When
I am not on the water I use Neutrogena 30 lip balm. It is clear and does a
good job. I am now wearing Patagonia gloves for my hands, while driving the
car and on the water in Miami. It is SPF 30 and they do a good job. My hands
have become a real concern due to the thinness of the skin there.
“All and all I believe that the most damage was as a child growing up three
houses from the beach in Florida (in the 60’s/70’s). They did not have sun
protection back then and I was always one huge blister in the summers. I think
that if we had the sunscreen lotions that we have now, I would not have
incurred so much sun damage to my skin. I feel that down the line I will be
treated for serious melanoma problems. My skin type was never meant to be in
the tropics and my love of the water combined, makes for a deadly
combination.”
Curmudgeon’s Comment: Thanks to everyone that shared their sunscreen
stories. Tips from Russell Coutts, Anna Tunnicliffe, Greg Fisher, Paige
Railey, Zach Railey, Gram Schweikert, Betsy Altman, Bill Hardesty, Morgan
Larson, Morgan Reeser. Bill Munster, Doogie Couvreux, Terry Hutchinson, Ken
Read, Chris Larson, and Kevin Burnham are all on the Forum to view. Do you
have any sunscreen advice? Post it here:
http://forum.sailingscuttlebutt.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=7198
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Advertising Agencies are their own worst enemies . . .
1967 - 2007
. . . those were the years I worked as a film editor on television and cinema commercials, aka 'spots', and for which I am truly grateful. What a wonderful life for a kid who day dreamed and quite possible experienced add, attention deficit disorder, quite possible i still do. "sorry, what did you say?" but seriously, over 5000 'spots'. Some biggies, some award winners, some downers but all in all a truly great experience working with some of the worlds great advertising makers, creative directors, writers, art directors, producer and directors, not to leave out great, cameramen, photographers, sound mixers, colorists, online editors and all those great people who were my assistants and who are the real heros of my career. Robbie, James, Stella, John, Paul, Pierson, et al. So I can only smile when I see Omnicon, the Giant International Ad Conglomerate, trying to shaft suppliers. Come on guys. You would not be sitting where you are sitting if it weren't for all those companies who trustingly go out and make your spots, win your awards. 50% up front is the deal guys. No Money, No Shoot. No Money, No Post Production, no special effects, no sound, no music, nothing. Period. Of course it is up to the collective will of the people involved to stand up against Omnicon and their ilk. In 40 years I never incurred but one bad debt. I am glad I am not in business today. Mind you the industry can often be it's own worst enemy, Agencies loved to let go their most experienced producers all in the name of cost cutting, well guess what, it was their experience that made the Industry tick and all the shiny cheeked newbies must have cost clients dearly. I love editing ads, I would love to edit more but why should I finance corporations and CEO's who helped put us where we are today. Enough said.
Stephen Best / APA National CEO March 21, 2009
APA on Omnicom statement..."our policy has not changed"
The last week has seen ever-increasing concern and anger in the advertising community concerning a change in the way the Omnicom Group and its subsidiaries conduct business between Omnicom subsidiaries and suppliers. Advertising Photographers of America (APA) reached out for comment from the Omnicom Group about the crisis. With the Omnicom Group being the world's largest advertising holding company, a change in terms and conditions affects the advertising community on so many levels. The policy of concern is called Sequential Liability. Sequential Liability simply means that the agency only pays the suppliers after it has been paid.
Quoted from The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) published guidelines dealing with this trend:
"Certain agencies have inserted a Sequential Liability clause in their contracts. Others have added a side letter to be signed by the production company. Still other agency contracts do not overtly refer to Sequential Liability as being in effect, but do refer to the agency "acting as agent for" (the advertiser), which suggests the same thing.
If the agency is requesting the recognitions of a "principal-agent" relationship, then the client (principal) should not be released from the obligation of payment until total payment is made to the production company. It should be clarified that even if the client pays the agency, the client remains liable if the agent defaults in fulfilling the payment obligation.
Sequential Liability means that the agency as agent for its principal, the advertiser, is liable for payment to the production company only if the advertiser has paid the agency; otherwise the advertiser is directly responsible for the payment."
On Thursday, March 20, 2009, at 11:47 AM, APA spoke with Pat Sloan, Omnicom Director of Public Relations, to express the concerns of APA and others to the
opposition of this policy. APA members are not able to finance major advertising projects and these terms and conditions are not acceptable. Director Sloan's statement is that there has been no change to their policy on this matter.
Sequential Liability has been policy in the industry for many years. The reality is that advertising agencies, many are Omnicom's subsidiaries, have provided advances and credit to production companies and photographers to begin awarded projects with substantial expense. "Business as usual" must continue was stated to Director Sloan. APA members, independent photographers and small business owners, are not in a position to finance commercial projects of possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars.
APA business practices have long promoted the inclusion of "statements of intent" to receive 50% to 100% of expenses before the start of a job. It is imperative that this practice continues without removal of advances by clients. Photographers should also include that the photographer owns the copyright and any license agreement must be paid before the release of images.
As creators of intellectual property, photographers hold the copyright on their images. It is imperative that registration of images be immediately submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright law and licensing agreements with your clients provide you strong legal protection. APA recommends legal action only as a last resort but registration is needed to recover statutory damages and legal fees.
We must stand together and confront these terms and conditions because they are not in the best interest of photographers and their community of support. If even one accepts them, it will cascade and the role of advertising photographer will change to one of being a financial institution or bank for clients. We must not go down that heavily liable road.
The Omnicom Director of PR did promise to recommend a meeting to discuss these matters. It is APA's hope that a meeting will be arranged and discussions will continue to a successful resolution.
As previously stated, BE CAUTIOUS and don't be afraid to walk away. We must stand together.
Stephen Best
APA National CEO
. . . those were the years I worked as a film editor on television and cinema commercials, aka 'spots', and for which I am truly grateful. What a wonderful life for a kid who day dreamed and quite possible experienced add, attention deficit disorder, quite possible i still do. "sorry, what did you say?" but seriously, over 5000 'spots'. Some biggies, some award winners, some downers but all in all a truly great experience working with some of the worlds great advertising makers, creative directors, writers, art directors, producer and directors, not to leave out great, cameramen, photographers, sound mixers, colorists, online editors and all those great people who were my assistants and who are the real heros of my career. Robbie, James, Stella, John, Paul, Pierson, et al. So I can only smile when I see Omnicon, the Giant International Ad Conglomerate, trying to shaft suppliers. Come on guys. You would not be sitting where you are sitting if it weren't for all those companies who trustingly go out and make your spots, win your awards. 50% up front is the deal guys. No Money, No Shoot. No Money, No Post Production, no special effects, no sound, no music, nothing. Period. Of course it is up to the collective will of the people involved to stand up against Omnicon and their ilk. In 40 years I never incurred but one bad debt. I am glad I am not in business today. Mind you the industry can often be it's own worst enemy, Agencies loved to let go their most experienced producers all in the name of cost cutting, well guess what, it was their experience that made the Industry tick and all the shiny cheeked newbies must have cost clients dearly. I love editing ads, I would love to edit more but why should I finance corporations and CEO's who helped put us where we are today. Enough said.
Stephen Best / APA National CEO March 21, 2009
APA on Omnicom statement..."our policy has not changed"
The last week has seen ever-increasing concern and anger in the advertising community concerning a change in the way the Omnicom Group and its subsidiaries conduct business between Omnicom subsidiaries and suppliers. Advertising Photographers of America (APA) reached out for comment from the Omnicom Group about the crisis. With the Omnicom Group being the world's largest advertising holding company, a change in terms and conditions affects the advertising community on so many levels. The policy of concern is called Sequential Liability. Sequential Liability simply means that the agency only pays the suppliers after it has been paid.
Quoted from The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) published guidelines dealing with this trend:
"Certain agencies have inserted a Sequential Liability clause in their contracts. Others have added a side letter to be signed by the production company. Still other agency contracts do not overtly refer to Sequential Liability as being in effect, but do refer to the agency "acting as agent for" (the advertiser), which suggests the same thing.
If the agency is requesting the recognitions of a "principal-agent" relationship, then the client (principal) should not be released from the obligation of payment until total payment is made to the production company. It should be clarified that even if the client pays the agency, the client remains liable if the agent defaults in fulfilling the payment obligation.
Sequential Liability means that the agency as agent for its principal, the advertiser, is liable for payment to the production company only if the advertiser has paid the agency; otherwise the advertiser is directly responsible for the payment."
On Thursday, March 20, 2009, at 11:47 AM, APA spoke with Pat Sloan, Omnicom Director of Public Relations, to express the concerns of APA and others to the
opposition of this policy. APA members are not able to finance major advertising projects and these terms and conditions are not acceptable. Director Sloan's statement is that there has been no change to their policy on this matter.
Sequential Liability has been policy in the industry for many years. The reality is that advertising agencies, many are Omnicom's subsidiaries, have provided advances and credit to production companies and photographers to begin awarded projects with substantial expense. "Business as usual" must continue was stated to Director Sloan. APA members, independent photographers and small business owners, are not in a position to finance commercial projects of possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars.
APA business practices have long promoted the inclusion of "statements of intent" to receive 50% to 100% of expenses before the start of a job. It is imperative that this practice continues without removal of advances by clients. Photographers should also include that the photographer owns the copyright and any license agreement must be paid before the release of images.
As creators of intellectual property, photographers hold the copyright on their images. It is imperative that registration of images be immediately submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright law and licensing agreements with your clients provide you strong legal protection. APA recommends legal action only as a last resort but registration is needed to recover statutory damages and legal fees.
We must stand together and confront these terms and conditions because they are not in the best interest of photographers and their community of support. If even one accepts them, it will cascade and the role of advertising photographer will change to one of being a financial institution or bank for clients. We must not go down that heavily liable road.
The Omnicom Director of PR did promise to recommend a meeting to discuss these matters. It is APA's hope that a meeting will be arranged and discussions will continue to a successful resolution.
As previously stated, BE CAUTIOUS and don't be afraid to walk away. We must stand together.
Stephen Best
APA National CEO
Friday, March 20, 2009
I feel totally sad.
British actress Natasha Richardson died from bleeding in her skull caused by the fall she took on a ski slope, an autopsy has found.
The medical examiner ruled her death an accident, and doctors said she might have survived had she received immediate treatment.
Richardson suffered from an epidural haematoma, which causes bleeding between the skull and the brain's covering, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner's office.
Such bleeding is often caused by a skull fracture, and it can quickly produce a blood clot that puts pressure on the brain. That pressure can force the brain downward, pressing on the brain stem that controls breathing and other vital functions.
Patients with such an injury often feel fine immediately after being hurt because symptoms from the bleeding may take time to emerge.
"This is a very treatable condition if you're aware of what the problem is and the patient is quickly transferred to a hospital," said Dr Keith Siller of New York University Langone Medical Centre. "But there is very little time to correct this"
How well I know that.
I received an Email from my ex today, she reminded me of my own "half inch from brain dead" accident in 2006 or was that 5? Anyhow, there I was riding my bike on a training ride for the San Francisco to Los Angeles AIDS Bike ride. Did I train or what, clients came to the party with dollars that had me looking at myself, "they like me they . . . ", yeah right! But train I did, 80 miles, 90 miles, 110 miles. I was fit. All this on a cheap 500 buck hybrid bike with mountain bike bars and stuff. I signed up, I trained. I loved it . . . and then I blinked. I rode the Santa Monica Bay cycle path on a Sunday. Wrong! I had set myself a rule, never, ever, ride the SM Bike Path on a Sunday. Sunday Bloody Sunday. That is what happened. Thankfully, as I fell, hit front on by another cyclist, a Life Guard we believe ????? a Doctor was riding behind me and as I lay, covered in red liquid, she cradled my head until paramedics strapped me to a board and I was raced to the Marina Hospital. I found out who this angel was but when I went to phone her I froze. It was too much. There was a women I did not know who knew me as well as my Mother did, who cradled my head as I lay bleeding, "A half inch from brain dead" said my Neuro Surgeon when my ex asked why I felt like shit. I could not bring myself to talk to this woman who quite possibly saved my life.
I feel incredibly sad for Liam Neeson. There is no going back. Natasha is gone. Love frozen in time.
A couple of years after my accident my wife and I were watching the start of the Los Angeles Tri-Athlon at Venice Beach when one of the leading riders dropped his bike right in front of us. My wife had a post traumatic stress melt down right there, right then. All I could do was hold her, like the angel had done for me. I felt so sad, as I feel so sad for Liam.
Loss is painful. Indescribably painful.
The medical examiner ruled her death an accident, and doctors said she might have survived had she received immediate treatment.
Richardson suffered from an epidural haematoma, which causes bleeding between the skull and the brain's covering, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the New York City medical examiner's office.
Such bleeding is often caused by a skull fracture, and it can quickly produce a blood clot that puts pressure on the brain. That pressure can force the brain downward, pressing on the brain stem that controls breathing and other vital functions.
Patients with such an injury often feel fine immediately after being hurt because symptoms from the bleeding may take time to emerge.
"This is a very treatable condition if you're aware of what the problem is and the patient is quickly transferred to a hospital," said Dr Keith Siller of New York University Langone Medical Centre. "But there is very little time to correct this"
How well I know that.
I received an Email from my ex today, she reminded me of my own "half inch from brain dead" accident in 2006 or was that 5? Anyhow, there I was riding my bike on a training ride for the San Francisco to Los Angeles AIDS Bike ride. Did I train or what, clients came to the party with dollars that had me looking at myself, "they like me they . . . ", yeah right! But train I did, 80 miles, 90 miles, 110 miles. I was fit. All this on a cheap 500 buck hybrid bike with mountain bike bars and stuff. I signed up, I trained. I loved it . . . and then I blinked. I rode the Santa Monica Bay cycle path on a Sunday. Wrong! I had set myself a rule, never, ever, ride the SM Bike Path on a Sunday. Sunday Bloody Sunday. That is what happened. Thankfully, as I fell, hit front on by another cyclist, a Life Guard we believe ????? a Doctor was riding behind me and as I lay, covered in red liquid, she cradled my head until paramedics strapped me to a board and I was raced to the Marina Hospital. I found out who this angel was but when I went to phone her I froze. It was too much. There was a women I did not know who knew me as well as my Mother did, who cradled my head as I lay bleeding, "A half inch from brain dead" said my Neuro Surgeon when my ex asked why I felt like shit. I could not bring myself to talk to this woman who quite possibly saved my life.
I feel incredibly sad for Liam Neeson. There is no going back. Natasha is gone. Love frozen in time.
A couple of years after my accident my wife and I were watching the start of the Los Angeles Tri-Athlon at Venice Beach when one of the leading riders dropped his bike right in front of us. My wife had a post traumatic stress melt down right there, right then. All I could do was hold her, like the angel had done for me. I felt so sad, as I feel so sad for Liam.
Loss is painful. Indescribably painful.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
An Image Problem? YEAH RIGHT!
Would hardline sentencing damage NZ's international reputation?
7:56AM Friday March 20, 2009
Foreign Affairs officials are warning the Government that its hardline sentencing and non-parole policy risk damaging New Zealand's international reputation.
They say National's "no parole for the worst murderers" policy and the proposed "three strikes and you're out" law could breach international obligations on torture and civil rights.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade says such breaches would affect New Zealand's ability to influence other countries.
Would hardline sentencing damage NZ's international reputation? Here is the latest selection of Your Views:
SeanAux (Newmarket)
What a load of you know what! These people should be sacked for being so far out of touch with reality. I am so sick of this goody goody two shoes mentality in Wellington, who are obsessed to an unhealthy degree of what others think of us. I'm so for this.
National have a mandate to make serious changes, so go ahead National! I seriously can't think of any country that would stop trading with us because of this. It's not like we're imposing cutting people's hands off or electrocuting them!
Three strikes law sounds like a great idea, even if it's just for theft. If they can't learn after 3 times, then they never will. Most States in the US have this system and it works. A lot of states in the US even have the death penalty, and do you see countries cutting off trade or diplomatic ties with them? No! Why?
Thing I admire about the Americans, they just do what they feel is good for them (rightly or wrongly) without pandering to left wing goody two shoes organisations in the UN.
Kiwicafe (Featherston)
How can New Zealand's reputation be worse than it is to anyone, kiwi of not, who has eyes to see the rot and smell that permeates the socially destructive policies of governments and non elected 'advisers'; going back beyond the 80's? We have the largest incarceration numbers behind the US, the largest number of firearms behind the US. We refuse to speak the truth regarding things that concern our society. Criminals and Bully's, white collar, get far better treatment than those they harm. It is time for every single kiwi to stand up and demand more of:
1. Ourselves, self honesty!
2. Public Servants and Academics, who continually tell us how to live :)
3. Prime Ministers, leaders of all Political Parties.
4. We need referendums to honestly reflect the needs of the people.
5. We need to bring back self defence so that the young get the sense they will come of worse when they attack the young and the elderly.
6. Community Policing to fill the chasm the Police can't fill.
7. practice zero tolerance for anti social behavior across the board from schools to the beehive.
8. Accountability.
9. An honest, robust, safe NZ will attract expats home, we don't need to fill the country with trash!
Sethh (Meadowbank)
For me it is nice and simple.If some people dont care about my rights to walk on a safe street, personaly I dont care about their rights, and I dont want to walk on the same streets.And i will not change country.3 offenses, you got warned mate, you got locked up for ages.I am not worried about my human rights, I never broke the law, not even speeding.
Richard (Timaru)
Babies killed, tourists raped, beaten, murdered, that is what is damaging our reputation
E.Clectic (Kingston, Wellington City)
Pack of limp-wristed, politically-correct, overpaid bureaucrats. New Zealand is second in the world in the rate of imprisonment per capita - it's not good enough! We need to be number one and show the rest of the world that when it comes to crime we're top pf the heap and we mean business. With a really high prison population foreign visitors will know that they are safe because they know they're all locked up.
otagomed (Levin)
This country while they are so tough on giving us speeding tickets and penalizing for late tax payments, yet they are so soft on murderers. Will it damage our international reputation? Probably among international criminals.
CBD (Auckland Central)
This country is already far too soft on criminals so by toughining up will only make visitors, who on the whole are law abiding, feel safer. As for the UN, they're spinless and this is pampering to the looney left. Criminals have far more rights than their victims and this must change. To National and Act, don't let this sort of scare tactic put off doing what is right for the big majority of law abiding citizens.
LB (Ohauiti)
I surpose it will take a little more time for the scaremongering P/C element that has ingrained itself into Government Depts over the years to either get real or get out. Of course this will not effect our reputation.I travel often to Europe and we are known for scenry food and wine and that is about it.
yesterday morning I took my Dog, Kiri te Kanawa, for her's and my daily run, on the way home we were attacked by a large German Shepherd who came, at speed, through a fence on the other side of the road.
Originally I thought it was going for me, Yeah Right!
Anyhow my dog came off second best and I slowly took her home, checked for wounds and then reported the attack to the local Featherston Police. I filled out a report. I also informed the local Dog Catcher who informed me the Dog was owned by a Policeman . . . to serve and protect, Yeah Right!
I then took my Dog to the vet who injected and dosed and billed me. Now the Bill gets passed onto the Perp! i only wish the owner was injected and dosed. I expect the owner to pay, Yeah Right!
Here is a list of zero tolerances for my community, feel free to add yours, feel free to plagiarize anything and everything
. . . we deserve safe and vibrant communities . . .
1. Intolerance for youth offending, from acorns do oaks grow . . .
2. Drugs, P, H, Alcohol abuse, violence, both Male & Female
3. Petty Crime
4. Police incompetence, Political correctness, mean what you say, just don't say it mean!
5. Tagging, Vandalism, if it's kids, the Parents need to pay, period!
6. Dairy Farmers releasing waste into the water table. Don't fine them, ban them.
7. 1080, stop poisoning our environment
8. Neglected Historic Buildings, the owners know who they are
9. Poor Town Branding & Planning
10. Lack of clearly marked off street parking
11. Unregistered and Uncontrolled dogs, what's good for me is good for the farming community!
12. Lack of Transparency by local 'officials'
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Into the Unknown? YEAH RIGHT!
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance".
Cicero 55 BC
Roman author, orator and politician (106 BC - 43 BC)
" I BELIEVE THAT BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES . . . IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EVER ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS TO CONTROL THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY . . . THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS THAT WILL GROW UP AROUND THEM WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THEIR PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEIR FATHERS CONQUERED."
THOMAS JEFFERSON
1743 - 1826
Cicero 55 BC
Roman author, orator and politician (106 BC - 43 BC)
" I BELIEVE THAT BANKING INSTITUTIONS ARE MORE DANGEROUS THAN STANDING ARMIES . . . IF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE EVER ALLOW PRIVATE BANKS TO CONTROL THE ISSUE OF CURRENCY . . . THE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS THAT WILL GROW UP AROUND THEM WILL DEPRIVE THE PEOPLE OF THEIR PROPERTY UNTIL THEIR CHILDREN WAKE UP HOMELESS ON THE CONTINENT THEIR FATHERS CONQUERED."
THOMAS JEFFERSON
1743 - 1826
Friday, February 27, 2009
Dear Prime Minister
The Honourable John Key
Parliament Office
Private Bag 18888
Parliament Buildings
Wellington 6160 New Zealand
Dear Prime Minister,
It sounds strange writing that, as I have lived overseas for 43 years and for the past 20 years it was always, Mr. President.
My reason for writing is really very simple. It is the third anniversary of my arriving back in New Zealand and I have a problem that is like an itch that will not go away, no matter how much I itch.
This problem requires action and the action needs to begin with me. This letter is my first step.
As I see it New Zealand has a problem.
New Zealand has a dis-ease.
It is a disease of the Spirit that is called New Zealand. A massive break down in the social and moral fabric of New Zealand.
At the present time in history we have a total collapse of the world’s economy.
Reserve Bank Governor Dr Alan Bollard told the job summit in Auckland recently that the global recession is the "biggest destruction of global wealth ever".
To me that is the sort of dialogue that is needed, an honest acknowledgement that we, as a nation, have a problem.
For whatever reason, it appears to me that we have a duality, a synchronicity of issues. We have the issue of the break down of our social fabric and also of the break down in the global economy.
The beating, in Auckland, of an 85 year old beneficiary absolutely disgusted me and empowered me to write. Today I live in Featherston, before that Masterton, before that Los Angeles, New York and Sydney. I was born in Wellington.
On a Friday or Saturday night in Featherston windows are vandalised, buildings tagged. In Masterton on the same nights groups of 200 to 300 youths, both male and female congregate on the streets after the bars and pubs close. In Wellington it is not safe to walk the street after 7PM. Auckland has ghettos equally as dangerous as any in Los Angeles. In Christchurch teenage boy racers are totally out of control, in Dunedin students, for some particular reason believe it is okay to destroy property as a way of celebrating a return to class. These issues are being repeated all across New Zealand.
Talk of 3 strikes and bootcamps have me smile to myself. They haven’t worked elsewhere, why should they work here. We need a long term change in direction, not band aid short attention, vote winning span fixes.
All the social engineering that has been put in place by successive Governments has obviously not worked. No matter what the political flavor. We are a nation of tinkerers, short sighted, attention deficit tinkerers. What has got us in this state will not get us out. A clean slate is required. Thinking outside the box. And today I see that Knighthoods are to be reinstated, enough. We are not a suburb of Britain but a Pacific nation.
Strong, decisive leadership is called for. The status quo cannot be allowed to prevail. It is not simply the children who are the issue, successive parents have contributed as have governments, the health profession, business leaders and white collar predators. Much of New Zealand has been sold to the highest bidder, be it Railways, Power, Education, Health, the Media. Much of this is controlled by forces that do not have the best interests of New Zealand at heart.
I would love to see yourself and cabinet ministers, community leaders and other relevant parties come together and acknowledge that we do indeed have a crisis. This needs to be simple and clear, not a chorus but one voice, your own, backed by those I suggest.
The community, local, sporting, business, creative, rural, the community needs empowering, so that communities can come together, in a cohesive manner, to address the issues and take action. I believe the time is now and I believe that it is what the people of New Zealand desparately need.
Too many babies have died, too many elderly have been abused, too many state entities and services have been lost, far too many maori, pakeha and others are incarcerated for minor offences. We have lost iconic business overseas, New Zealander jobs are performed by slave labour in China, Indonesia and India, et al. No Government money should be spent overseas if there is a New Zealand company not only willing but also capable of filling the need.
I remember an ancient piece of wisdom, “Once I got Busy, I got Better.”
No matter where it comes from, it works. It has worked for me, it will work for others. We need to re-educate, encourage, empower, employ.
We need to prioritize and not bandaidize the issues. We need the rekindling of the Spirit that is New Zealand.
Every Friday, 5PM, I have a radio show, KiwiCafe On Air, in the Wairarapa, Community Access Radio 89.7 ARROW FM.
I raise these issues in the community, there appears to be a consensus but there is also a silence, a denial.
We need a voice, we need leadership and we need it now.
I ask, I expect, no less of the elected Leader of New Zealand.
Sincere regards,
Richard Clark
43 Wakefield Street
Featherston Wellington 5710
Aotearoa New Zealand
http://kiwicafe.blogspot.com/
Studio: 06 308 6262
Mobile: 027 291 5494
EMail: richard@kiwicafe.com
and so, what are the answers, as a start here are a few of my ideas, please feel free to add your own and i will forward them to you know who . . .
1. Mentoring, long term, ages 13 -21
1a. Families mentoring families, those that can mentor those who can't
2. Scholarships for talented at risk youth
3. Industry apprenticeships, as it used to be, indentured apprentices
4. Empowering the elderly to live in towns, not retirement villages, tear down the barriers.
4a. Create new village communities, like pods. Take existing ravaged communities, encourage the middle class to come in as mentors to create a sense of civic and moral pride. Create community gardens. Pay for a retired person to act as garden supervisor who can teach gardening skills.
5. In retrospect the young dudes who robbed my vineyard would not go to jail but have to work for me, supervised by me, to cover the cost of my loss and damage.
6. Bring back home sciences in schools
6a. ban all cell phones from schools, not texting, no bullying
7. Create a competition for everyone, like the Sydney Opera House, to design town centers
7a. maori by their very nature are entreprenurial, it is time for pakeha to rise to the occasion and create funding for
8. Raise the driving age, immediately, no brainer, no debate
9. The same with drinking laws, no debate
10. Bring in new laws governing the sale of alcohol, where it is sold, how it is sold.
11. Class alcohol as a Class A drug.
12. Change creative funding so that violence is discouraged, more local/community content
13. All children between the ages of 5 and 21 to be registered along with their parents.
13a. ID cards for every one from birth
14. Parents of children between the ages of 5 & 18 to be financially responsible for damage done.
15. Community councils to deal with first time offenders.
16. Community service by teenagers to count toward grades in school
17. Teenagers drink driving lose their licence until age 21, period, no debate.
18. Existing laws regarding tinted car windows, modified street vehicles to be stringently policed.
19. Community patrols to co-ordinate with police, no powers but recognized and supported by Police and Community
20. Safe Zones for children
21. Groups of over 3 teenagers to be discouraged, strongly, they need to earn the respect they demand.
22. Pre-teens roaming towns, before and after school hours, will be delivered home to parents
23. safety zones around Schools and Shopping Centers
24. Zero tolerance for ALL crime, be it it white or blue collar or no collar
25. Party pills, you have to be joking folks, they have no place in any society, it simply gives permission for shit happening
26. A New Zealand Constitution and Oath of Alleigance for all New Zealanders
27. Undertake some new infrastructure, put people to work on projects that will benefit New Zealanders, a reinvigorated railway system, long haul trucks off the roads and on to rail.
28. A dual Carriageway the length of New Zealand incorporating a Bike Lane.
29. Limits on dairy farms, vineyards and get rich quick schemes so we have an environment to be truly proud of.
30. Term limits for Mayors to Prime Ministers, rotation of leadership and participation by the community
31. Come on guys, add so ideas, no matter how whacky, just don't waste the opportunity by being anonymous.
32. STOP the traffic. if the Violence doesn't stop, the STOP the traffic. The community and the police will quickly get the idea.
These are simply ideas, my own, please don't shoot the messenger . . . now it's over to you or anyone else to add their thoughts and ideas . . .
Thursday, February 26, 2009
AGAPE, that's all there is . . .
By JOHN F. BURNS
Published: February 25, 2009
LONDON — Ivan Cameron was just 6, a boy with a lovely smile who was born with cerebral palsy and a severe form of epilepsy that deprived him of the ability to walk, talk or feed himself. He spent much of his time in the hospital, sometimes with his parents sleeping on the floor beside him, helping care for what they called their “beautiful boy.”
Early Wednesday, when Ivan died after another late-night dash to the hospital, the news resonated deeply in Britain. The BBC made his death the lead item on its main news bulletins for much of the day, ahead of the world financial crisis. For the first time in 15 years, the House of Commons canceled prime minister’s questions, the 30 minutes of pugilistic politics that is Parliament’s main weekly attraction, and devoted the time instead to tributes to Ivan by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other party leaders.
What made Ivan headline news at his death, and a topic of widespread public sympathy while he was alive, was that he was the oldest child of David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party and the man heavily favored by opinion polls to be Britain’s prime minister after an election that must be held by June 2010.
But there was something more, and that was what the British public learned about Mr. Cameron and his wife, Samantha, through the prism of Ivan’s life.
Many in Britain said those insights lent a powerful humanity to Mr. Cameron, who is Eton and Oxford educated, and his wife, the daughter of a viscount. This helped them shake the “toff” image — the term is British slang for an upper-class person, often with sniffy views about the “lower” classes — that might otherwise be fatal to Mr. Cameron’s chances of winning the keys to 10 Downing Street.
Since he became Conservative leader three years ago, Mr. Cameron, 42, has chosen, with his wife’s support, to open their family life to public view, something unusual for any British politician, and especially for the parents of a severely disabled child. Mr. Cameron was criticized in some quarters for allowing a BBC documentary maker to film Ivan and the couple’s other children, Nancy, 5, and Arthur, 3, in the privacy of their London home, and for discussing Ivan’s illness candidly. Some viewed Mr. Cameron as using Ivan to help recast the Conservative Party from the “nasty party” it had become in the 1990s, as a former party chairman described it, into the compassionate one that Mr. Cameron says he wants it to be.
Mr. Cameron responded by saying that the British public had a right to know as much as possible about the man seeking to be prime minister, and that his family life was an important part of who he was. In this, he won strong backing from organizations that lobby on behalf of Britain’s disabled, who said that Ivan’s story, and what it told of the hardships and joys of raising a disabled child, were an important step in widening public understanding.
Parts of Mr. Cameron’s BBC interviews about Ivan, whom he once described as “this little person who just wants to keep going,” were rebroadcast in Britain throughout the day on Wednesday.
Describing the moment when he learned of Ivan’s disabilities in an interview with The Sunday Times, Mr. Cameron said, “The news hits you like a freight train. You are depressed for a while because you are grieving for the difference between your hopes and the reality. But then you get over that, because he’s wonderful.”
In a 2007 speech, Mr. Cameron spoke of his pride in the boy. “He is a magical child with a magical smile that can make me feel like the happiest father in the world,” he said. “We adore him in ways that you will never love anybody else, because we feel so protective.”
Nor has Mr. Cameron shied away from the political lessons he has taken from Ivan’s life. In his efforts to make the Conservatives electable again, he has tackled head-on fears stoked by the governing Labor Party that the National Health Service would not be safe from privatization under the Conservatives. In 2006, he said at the Conservative Party conference that he was committed to keeping the health service in public ownership because “my family is so often in the care of the N.H.S.”
Friends of the Camerons have said that the couple’s experience, including sleeping on the floors of hospital wards to be with Ivan, had also introduced them to a wide cross-section of Britons they might not otherwise have met, or at least not have come to know as well, and that the experience had broadened Mr. Cameron’s views.
Ivan’s early death was not unexpected, given the severity of his form of epilepsy, known as Ohtahara syndrome, which requires round-the-clock care.
On Wednesday, his death halted, for at least a day, the often acrimonious relationship between Mr. Cameron and Prime Minister Brown, who have made little secret of their antipathy for each other. Mr. Brown, too, lost a child — Jennifer, his first — in 2002 when she was only 10 days old.
Mr. Brown, like Mr. Cameron, has two other small children, including a boy, Fraser, who has cystic fibrosis.
Mr. Brown appeared deeply moved when he spoke in the House of Commons on Ivan’s death after personally intervening to have the scheduled round of prime minister’s questions called off.
“I know that in an all-too-brief life, he brought joy to all those around him,” he said. “And I know also that for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family’s love. Every child is precious and irreplaceable, and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.”
Published: February 25, 2009
LONDON — Ivan Cameron was just 6, a boy with a lovely smile who was born with cerebral palsy and a severe form of epilepsy that deprived him of the ability to walk, talk or feed himself. He spent much of his time in the hospital, sometimes with his parents sleeping on the floor beside him, helping care for what they called their “beautiful boy.”
Early Wednesday, when Ivan died after another late-night dash to the hospital, the news resonated deeply in Britain. The BBC made his death the lead item on its main news bulletins for much of the day, ahead of the world financial crisis. For the first time in 15 years, the House of Commons canceled prime minister’s questions, the 30 minutes of pugilistic politics that is Parliament’s main weekly attraction, and devoted the time instead to tributes to Ivan by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other party leaders.
What made Ivan headline news at his death, and a topic of widespread public sympathy while he was alive, was that he was the oldest child of David Cameron, the leader of the opposition Conservative Party and the man heavily favored by opinion polls to be Britain’s prime minister after an election that must be held by June 2010.
But there was something more, and that was what the British public learned about Mr. Cameron and his wife, Samantha, through the prism of Ivan’s life.
Many in Britain said those insights lent a powerful humanity to Mr. Cameron, who is Eton and Oxford educated, and his wife, the daughter of a viscount. This helped them shake the “toff” image — the term is British slang for an upper-class person, often with sniffy views about the “lower” classes — that might otherwise be fatal to Mr. Cameron’s chances of winning the keys to 10 Downing Street.
Since he became Conservative leader three years ago, Mr. Cameron, 42, has chosen, with his wife’s support, to open their family life to public view, something unusual for any British politician, and especially for the parents of a severely disabled child. Mr. Cameron was criticized in some quarters for allowing a BBC documentary maker to film Ivan and the couple’s other children, Nancy, 5, and Arthur, 3, in the privacy of their London home, and for discussing Ivan’s illness candidly. Some viewed Mr. Cameron as using Ivan to help recast the Conservative Party from the “nasty party” it had become in the 1990s, as a former party chairman described it, into the compassionate one that Mr. Cameron says he wants it to be.
Mr. Cameron responded by saying that the British public had a right to know as much as possible about the man seeking to be prime minister, and that his family life was an important part of who he was. In this, he won strong backing from organizations that lobby on behalf of Britain’s disabled, who said that Ivan’s story, and what it told of the hardships and joys of raising a disabled child, were an important step in widening public understanding.
Parts of Mr. Cameron’s BBC interviews about Ivan, whom he once described as “this little person who just wants to keep going,” were rebroadcast in Britain throughout the day on Wednesday.
Describing the moment when he learned of Ivan’s disabilities in an interview with The Sunday Times, Mr. Cameron said, “The news hits you like a freight train. You are depressed for a while because you are grieving for the difference between your hopes and the reality. But then you get over that, because he’s wonderful.”
In a 2007 speech, Mr. Cameron spoke of his pride in the boy. “He is a magical child with a magical smile that can make me feel like the happiest father in the world,” he said. “We adore him in ways that you will never love anybody else, because we feel so protective.”
Nor has Mr. Cameron shied away from the political lessons he has taken from Ivan’s life. In his efforts to make the Conservatives electable again, he has tackled head-on fears stoked by the governing Labor Party that the National Health Service would not be safe from privatization under the Conservatives. In 2006, he said at the Conservative Party conference that he was committed to keeping the health service in public ownership because “my family is so often in the care of the N.H.S.”
Friends of the Camerons have said that the couple’s experience, including sleeping on the floors of hospital wards to be with Ivan, had also introduced them to a wide cross-section of Britons they might not otherwise have met, or at least not have come to know as well, and that the experience had broadened Mr. Cameron’s views.
Ivan’s early death was not unexpected, given the severity of his form of epilepsy, known as Ohtahara syndrome, which requires round-the-clock care.
On Wednesday, his death halted, for at least a day, the often acrimonious relationship between Mr. Cameron and Prime Minister Brown, who have made little secret of their antipathy for each other. Mr. Brown, too, lost a child — Jennifer, his first — in 2002 when she was only 10 days old.
Mr. Brown, like Mr. Cameron, has two other small children, including a boy, Fraser, who has cystic fibrosis.
Mr. Brown appeared deeply moved when he spoke in the House of Commons on Ivan’s death after personally intervening to have the scheduled round of prime minister’s questions called off.
“I know that in an all-too-brief life, he brought joy to all those around him,” he said. “And I know also that for all the days of his life, he was surrounded by his family’s love. Every child is precious and irreplaceable, and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure.”
Monday, February 23, 2009
Fascism of the Airwaves!
"Over time, the space of free expression has shrunk." –Lawrence Lessig
click on the Title . . . .
Saturday, February 21, 2009
R.I.P. Socks, The Cat
Biography
Socks was adopted by the Clintons in 1991 after he jumped into the arms of Chelsea Clinton while she was leaving the house of her piano teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he was playing with his sibling, 'Midnight'. Midnight was later adopted by someone else. After Bill Clinton became President, Socks moved with the family from the governor's mansion to the White House and became the principal pet of the First Family in Clinton's first term, though he was known to share his food and water with a stray tabby, dubbed "Slippers". He was often taken to schools and hospitals. During the Clinton administration, children visiting the White House website would be guided by a cartoon version of Socks.[1]
He eventually lost the position of principal Clinton pet in 1997 when the Clintons acquired Buddy, a Labrador Retriever. At this point, some fans of Socks joked that he had been "voted out of office" of White House pet in favor of the more traditional dog.
Socks found Buddy's intrusion intolerable; according to Hillary Clinton, Socks "despised Buddy from first sight, instantly and forever." Bill Clinton said, "I did better with ... the Palestinians and the Israelis than I've done with Socks and Buddy."[2] When the Clintons left the White House in 2001, they took Buddy to their new home, but left Socks under the care of Bill Clinton's secretary, Betty Currie.
In December 2002, Socks was part of Little Rock Arkansas Christmas parade.
In October 2004, Socks made a now-rare public appearance when Currie was guest speaker at an Officers' Spouses Club luncheon at Andrews Air Force Base. Socks accompanied her and took part in a photo op.
In June 2008, Socks was still living with Currie and her husband in Hollywood, Maryland, about 80 miles from Washington, but had a thyroid condition, hair loss, weight loss, and kidney problems.[3]
In December 2008, Socks was reported to be in failing health, apparently suffering from cancer.[4]
Socks was euthanized on February 20, 2009 in Hollywood, Maryland[5], after suffering cancer of the jaw.[6] It was also estimated, that Socks would have turned 20 in spring 2009, what makes him born in spring 1989. [7]
Monday, February 16, 2009
"You Have Male!"
January 2006, I landed at Auckland Airport to be met by my sister, a great welcome, “the prodigal returns” she said, I checked google as to the concept of a prodigal, I should have simply re-read Steinbeck’s East of Eden, that would have said it all. 43 years in the ‘wilderness’. Or as the booze ads state, “Yeah Right”. I flew to Napier, the town of my teen years, I was born in Wellington, on the side of Mount Vic. Collected a car I had bought over the internet, Trade Me, just like the house I bought site unseen while hiking the Colorado Rockies. The internet was my friend. The car I bought was all I thought it would be, the house was even more than I thought it would be. And so January 7 2006 I settled into a life in my ‘Home’ land. Yeah Right! I was an ex-pat, an american citizen even, “why the hell did you become an America” I was asked less than politely. “Because I could and because in America I felt accepted for the first time in my life, I wasn’t asked what I was doing there, I was simply accepted, as one amongst many.” I replied. “Hurrumph!” they replied as to write me off.
So here I am three years down the line and a great questioning of my motives. Why am I here? Why am I divorced? That was not part of my plan. I married, I fell in love, New York, she left, I became single at a time I was looking forward to enjoying the process of retirement.
Retirement! What a myth. What does retirement mean? A long slow death, marking time to kick the bucket or for the hand of death to reach out and take the life we stopped living. Nope, today I am not retired. I am fully alive, not always pretty but most of the time it’s great, thank God.
So what about the internet?
It has kept me in touch with friends all across America, around the World, friends who gave my life meaning, relevance, some were clients, some hiking, cycling, sailing, writing pals some spiritual friends, some lovers, wives, simply friends.
Wow, gratitude, big time.
So when I arrived I had no experience of dating in New Zealand of women in Godzone as they laughing call it, I signed on to a couple of meet someone sites and the games began.
As a guy I have heard it said that women want, desire, despair for even, sensitive men. Like real men. I have a good idea who I am, spent some years looking, finding, accepting the good, bad and downright ugly of who I am. The good far outweighs the other two, but it’s my friends who say that, I am slowly learning that they are right and I am wrong. I am a good human being. So, in writing my details for Trade Me in the Personals I tried to be as honest as possible. A few replies, not for me. I met a couple, actually I met just one, tried to set up safe meetings with others, ouch. Don’t for one moment believe that women are soft and men are strong. Women can be take no prisoners brutal. Maybe it is New Zealand, maybe it’s the air, the water, the ice cream? Not. It’s the Women. Some were even Americans, go figger! Not a pretty experience and I do not for one small moment point the finger, I have a great deal to learn.
I like to say that I have been married 3 times, the first time, the most painful, was to my Mother, yep, think about it. My Mother. I sound like Jack Nicholson in the movie, China Town. My Mother. God bless her but my Mum was not endowed with a great deal of compassion, that died with her mother at age 6. A suitable case for . . . any how? She did the best she could and before she died, made beautiful amends to me. Thanks Ma.
So here I am, in New Zealand, still smarting from a lost love. Looking for who knows what? I followed some woman down paths that were downright hilarious and would make a great virtual reality show but, as I don’t do television, I will give that a miss. Then, as often happens, a beautiful lady, my own vintage, one of the great years, came into my periphery. One bite and I was done. My friend has moved away and I wonder. But I don’t stand still and I look. Funnily enough there are women, beneath the radar, living good lives, and I am realising that like my ex, I have choices. I do not need to settle for less. I want a strong, sensitive, creative soul with whom I can share my journey. No I will not marry, 2/3 times, I am sooo over it. It has crippled me emotionally and financially. I need some space, independence, fun, some serious love. I will not find it over the internet. I may find it at the Butcher, I thought I had, but the ancient wisdom of rejection being god’s protection has me wishing I grew up a jew. They know, they simple know.
I ask myself where this came from this article, Blog entry, whatever. A story of a german woman who met a kiwi bloke over the internet, bad move, the guy, like most “kiwi blokes” was a jerk and more. Men are basically good. Men who label themselves as Aussie Blokes, Yanks, Kiwi Blokes, bad, bad news. Don’t go there. Kiwi Sheilas, don’t go there. Period. Keep my instincts open, keep my eyes alert, my heart vulnerable, to a degree. Kiwi Sheilas don’t want sensitive guys, they don’t know a sensitive guy from a bottle of Tui. Seriously. They want a feed, they want a provider and more. They want retirement. Sounds cruel, possibly but then, ancient wisdom, the truth hurts. Bugger! There are some truly beautiful women on the face of this planet just as there are some truly beautiful men. Let the two meet, sooner than later :) ! I can but smile and live my life as it presents itself, day by beautiful day, amen.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Why save the World?
Why does the world economy need fixing?
I sat in my garden tonight, clouds scudded across a clear sky lit by a 3/4 moon. I love day dreaming, night dreaming. The clouds have a life of their own and I can make of them what I want. A cloud becomes a dog becomes a bear becomes a very mean looking rat devouring a happy looking dog and so it goes. All open to interpretation. Just like the art opening I attended tonight. A portrait competition. The one image I truly loved and would buy if my second house sold, was a painting of an american from conneticut, painted in 20 minutes by his teenage daughter. Rivetting. I loved it. And then there was another portait of an old woman that was simply hypnotic across the crowded space. And so I ask the question why does the World’s economy need fixing? Why go into debt even more than we are to rescue a few bank managers. Simply let them die, let the mortgages be cancelled it’s only paper after all, the government prints it, let the government shred it. Let people own their houses, mortgage free. Simple really. Imagine the money that could be channelled back into the economy? Massive.
Why do we have to fix things, why not simply accept that the economy is in the shit and let it find it’s own level, just like a drunk. It is classic addictive behavior we are watching. The only proven really lasting way an addict will find recovery is by first hitting bottom, second by acknowledging they have a problem, then trust in a universal/personal concept of god or higher power we all give lip service to but never quite find the courage to totally, absolutely trust and then finally, surrender to.
We can’t fix it, however much we try, we got ourselves into this mess so what makes us believe we can get out of it?
Trust, faith, courage, hope, love and action, the universe can and so we need to let it. What’s the worse that can happen? At the present time I have two houses, not intentionally, I bought a small cottage thinking it would be easy to sell my first house, a fancy schmansy architecturally cute place but beyond my resources and far too much for me, a single white male. I have no ‘job’ per se, I am a freelance film editor. Therefore I have no income in the conventional sense and I have a mortgage that will totally bust me in six months. That’s it. Sure I can sell the car, if someone buys it. Sure I can sell my computers but then there goes any income earning tools. I could sell my camera gear, my books, my art, my 3500 CD’s, my collection of classic movies . . . if someone buys them.
So here we are. On the edge of a siesmic financial shifting, shitting even, of the economic tuetonic plate. We have been there before, we will go there again, history repeats what we don’t change. Our attitudes.
And so I ask myself, why does the world economy need fixing? I personally, don't believe it does.
I got myself where I am today, I will either take action or I won’t, who cares, does it really matter, I think not. Food for thought late at night as the 3/4 moon drifts slowly and the white, elegant, ever changing clouds morph from one fantasy image to another.
The image of a huge capricious beast shaped cloud devouring all the two legged creatures we believe are human.
Simple really.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Who Knew? Zane Grey knew!
I am a huge Zane Grey reader and devotee, have been since I was 15, I am now a tad older :)
Grey wrote romantic fiction with a huge philosophical sub-text. Most readers simply didn't get it.
However, his son Dr. Loren Grey was Emeritus Professor of Psychology at UC Riverside in California.
I met Dr. Grey on numerous occasions in Woodland Hills where we shared a lunch or two. All in
the name of research.
He didn't/couldn't see the connection of his father's writing to Darwin or Jung. Survival of the fittest
is a truism. Not for the faint hearted.
That doesn't make those who are weak in spirit wrong, simply means they are challenged by life.
In my research, aka reading, for a documentary film I have read and re-read
many of Grey's books I devoured as a teenager.
Light of Western Stars, Wanderer of the Wasteland, Riders of the Purple Sage, Rainbow Trail.
I have re-read all these but it is UP Trail that interested me most with regard to the changing of the guard on Capitol Hill.
It is based around the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad.
1865 I believe.
Zane Grey's research was well know for his attention to detail. Meticulous.
As I read 'The UP Trail' I found myself smiling at the similarities to today.
We have learned nothing. The Gougers are alive and well across America, across the World.
No different down unde, maybe even more entrenched.
Always have been, always will be, unless . . .
We forget that Washington and other Capitols around the World, London, Wellington, Paris, Moscow, Hong kong, Tokyo,.
Beijing even, all collect vast sums of taxes and there are vast numbers of people with their snouts in the trough, both Private and Public snouts. Both Public and Private troughs, for there are both.
What happened?
Nothing!
America and all human kind is simply wired for survival and from that comes fear and greed, especially amongst those who support the concept of a Free Market Economy. That is kind of an oxymoron, Free Market. There is no Free anything, even the air we breath is poisoned by our own actions. John Steinbeck's East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath say it all as do
Kipling, Stevenson, Hemingway, all the great writers have reported this. Nothing is new.
The new corruption is the old corruption. East . . . West, it doesn't matter. View the 'new' Russia, the 'new' China.
President Barack Obama is a man of Hope, however :) there is that word again. However, he
has been educated in the same system that created the playing field we find ourselves on, which is
the way it has always been. John Key, the brand new Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand, made his reputation on the same playing fields in the same financial institutes that have brought us to our knees. funny money. Even I have been suckered by the concept and I can see my own hunger for a profit, but those days have come to an end. No more the 3 B's.
The Beemer, the Bach and the Boat. Time to get back to work. My Mother knew that, learned that, the hard way. No money, no rent, no rent, no home, no home, no family, etc, etc . . .
In America the Founding Fathers sure are laughing all the way to the bank. And the Banks, they are simple laughing.
I have a mortgage, not large but I have one. I have an excellent credit rating. I took a fixed rate mortgage just 6 months ago, not for one moment thinking that the Sky would fall and fall it did. My bank, ASB, quoted me a $13500.00 fee for changing my interest rate. mmmmm. Okay so my timing sucked, it did, who knew? Certainly not me. In the past if I wanted to refinance to take advantage of an interest rate, I would simply refinance. Sure there was a fee, but there was no penalty. In America banks were very accommodating, that was my experience and I was a loyal customer. Today I am becoming loyal to my self.
I have always done well by working hard during tough times. I do well when the going gets tough, as with work, as with relationships :)!
It's time to look for a Bank that listens. good luck I hear you say :) You may well be right.
Globally we need a blank piece of paper. We need a new beginning, we need another Boston Tea Party.
We need a Revolution!
And, we need it now. Not a Revolution of Spirit, although it will take Spirit to make it happen.
No, we need a Revolution of Morality, of Integrity, of Ideas. The same old is not the same old anymore. This is a biggie.
I am reminded of Zane Grey's Code of the West. It was a guiding principle, it was not religious, it was a spiritual aspect to life.
It was a deep, profound desire for individual responsibility first with a hand there for others when able.
As they say during pre take off instructions when flying, "In the case of emergency first put the oxygen mask on yourself".
So what am I trying to say here?
What we have doesn't work. To me, it's that clear.
We need either new ideas or a return to fundamental decency, a return to pre-christian ethics.
I spend quite a bit of time hiking the mountains behind my house in Aotearoa NZ, they are my cathedral. That is where I find solace, ideas and much, much more. Up high, amongst the alpine tree cover I find myself. I find the God of my understanding. The ancients went into the desert to find help, down on their knees they yelled to the heavens "HELP!" It works for me. Maybe we need a return to that simplicity without the complexities of technology cluttering our every living moment. Sure I text, sure I BLOG, sure I email and use the latest greatest that man has created . . . HOWEVER! I do not depend on it. I can live without it. Or so I like to think :)
A pad of paper and a pencil and I am happy.
I continue to journal every single day, at least once. It gets the perils of life out of my head and onto paper, then I have a choice, burn or save. To date I save. One day, maybe, I will burn baby burn. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust or words to that effect. My journals will be toast, I will be cremated or simply rot on some mountain trail.
Not all bad. Man will perish, the Planet will keep on keeping on, simple really.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Are we hurting enough?
Just now, listening to our local access radio station, I sat in sadness and disbelief as a local police constable talked of hotels and bars in masterton closing around 1-2:00AM and some 2 to 300 people take to wandering the streets in various stages of intoxication.
I spoke to a good friend of mine soon after and shared with them that I had spent the weekend recording a conference held in conjunction with AA, Alcoholics Anonymous in Wellington.
I heard the expression “I was so sick I thought I was well”. Wow! Sounds like Aotearoa NZ as I have experienced her these past 3 years. Yep, three years ago I moved to Aotearoa NZ after 43 years of Australia and The United States of America. In Australia I experienced a level of bullying that reminded me of my childhood but never comprehended the effects until I moved to New York. I learned my film editing craft in Sydney and the level of drinking astounded me. If I refused to go drinking on a Friday night, I could kiss goodby to my job. The only time I could have a dialogue with the company owner was after he had downed a couple of beers. Sad but true. The drinking culture was totally imbedded in the DNA of the film industry. I remember smiling at American producers who had taked projects “Down Under” to shoot. They loved the crews but were astounded at the amount of alcohol consumed. It is no wonder that for the first time in my life, at age 44, in New York, I felt totally accepted and not bullied. Maybe that says more about me than the societies I grew up in, maybe not. It certainly took me that long to begin my real education to life and love and healing. Finally I was able to reflect on my life to that time. I found many blank spaces in my memory, those spaces still exist, spaces where I shut down to deal with the trauma of particular experiences as a child.
I have experienced black outs since but only from the effects of a bike accident when I was in a short head injury induced coma. I know that short period of time will always be gone. The brains way of dealing with shock. But to have black outs that refuse to heal lingering from childhood, that I find profoundly sad.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to drink until the brain blanks out. Binge drinking does that and teenage women/girls in Aotearoa are a huge disproportionate statistic in this ‘game’. I cannot even begin to comprehend what drives teens and pre-teens, as young as 8 and 9, to engage in such life challenging pursuits. Sure, as a child, I did some dumb arsed things, for which I was surely and, at times severely punished but never, ever, did I or my friends simply try and drink to oblivion. We did wheelies in the ‘oldies’ car. Even ran under the back of a turning farm truck between Masterton and Carterton. And what about the party pill phenomenon? That staggers me. Yes, I have smoked a joint or two, once I even snorted coke but thought my nose would explode so only did it once. The thought of injecting myself with a needle, no way. I saw a Peter Weir movie once where a huge close up of a needle picking up the skin of the forarm and injecting some sort of fluid totally turned me off. I nearly threw up at the image. Thank god for my sensitive nature. I always thought I needed toughening up, especially to live in New York or Venice Beach. But no. I never felt unsafe in those areas. Was never abused or robbed, can’t say the same for the Wai.
The places I have felt fear for my physical safety have been few and far between. Ceduna on the South Australian plains, Kings Cross in Sydney, Masterton and Wellington in New Zealand. A sad testimony to the state of my ‘homeland’.
What to do? Nothing!
Raise the awareness, show, through a commitment to my own recovery, that it is possible to live life fully and freely by changing attitudes. By taking responsibility. By holding others, and myself, fully accountable for our actions. It’s not at all easy. But nothing worthwhile in life is at all easy. To be President of the United States of America or President of the Greytown Lions Club, neither can be phoned in. It takes commitment. It takes focus and it takes practice, it also, in my own experience, takes the input and support of others. We cannot do it alone. We are social beings us humans. It doesn’t always seem so but given a choice we would rather, or should I say I would rather, be in the company of equals than live a life of isolation. I love the concept of ‘One Amongst Many’. It gives a sense of belonging. It also could be said that the groups who go binge drinking are not in isolation but then that, to me, become a whole new ballgame of giving away individual responsibilty and mob rule takes over. The Stockholm Syndrome I believe. The same energy and insanity that created the Salem Witch Trials of America in 1682. The phenomena lasted less than a month but nearly 30 people were put to death. Young girls told stories that had no substance in fact and people were jailed, prosecuted, persecuted and burned at the stake. It wasn’t until one person said stop, that anyone started questioning the substance of the behaviour that lead to the trials.
Today we need someone to yell “STOP!”.
Me, You, Us!
We, as a society, are out of control and We, as a society have out collective heads up our collective arses, all that concerns us, or so it seems to me, is the state of the economy and if we can hang onto the beemer and the bach.
We just voted out a Socialist, “Nanny State” Government and yet the Substance Abuse increased dramatically during the years they governed. So that is not the answer.
I have often heard it said that a person will not change until they hurt enough. Bloody hell, what do teenagers and adults in this so called Clean Green, 100% Pure New Zealand have to do to hurt so badly that they will find the desire to change.
Today, I am lost for an answer. All I can do is scream “HELP!”.
Who will join me?
Monday, January 19, 2009
President Barack Obama, Hail to the Chief
This is it.
The Obama Inaugration.
I never for one moment thought I would see a day such as this in my life time and I am lost for words in trying to describe my thoughts and feelings. It is times like these that to hold American citizenship is a profound priviledge.
To President Obama and his First Family I offer my unswerving support and respect.
You said it could be done, you said WE could do it. Democracy is alive and well in The United States of America. It is not simply America, it is the United States of America. United in concept and United in reality.
The American Dream is, once more, a shining beacon of hope around the World.
From Wikipedia;
The swearing-in of the President of the United States occurs upon the commencement of a new term of a President of the United States. The United States Constitution mandates that the President make the following oath or affirmation before he or she can "enter on the Execution" of the office of the presidency:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The newly elected or re-elected President traditionally adds "so help me God" to the constitutionally mandated statement.
The swearing-in traditionally takes place at noon on Inauguration Day at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., with the Chief Justice of the United States administering the oath. From the presidency of Martin Van Buren through Jimmy Carter, the ceremony took place on the Capitol's East Portico. Since the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan, the ceremony has been held at the Capitol's West Front. The inauguration of William Howard Taft in 1909 and Reagan in 1985 were moved indoors at the Capitol due to cold weather. Until 1937, Inauguration Day was March 4. Since then, Inauguration Day has occurred on January 20 (the 1933 ratification of the Twentieth Amendment changed the start date of the term).
Since Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth swore in President John Adams, no Chief Justice has missed a regularly-scheduled Inauguration Day swearing-in. When Inauguration Day has fallen on a Sunday, the Chief Justice has administered the oath to the President either on inauguration day itself or on the preceding Saturday privately and the following Monday publicly. Eight presidential deaths and Richard Nixon's resignation have forced the oath of office to be administered by other officials on other days. The War of 1812 and World War II forced two swearing-ins to be held at other locations in Washington, D.C.
From 1789 through 2005, the swearing-in has been administered by 14 Chief Justices, one Associate Justice, three federal judges, two New York state judges, and one notary public. Though anyone legally authorized to administer an oath may swear in a President, to date the only person to do so who was not a judge was John C. Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge's father, a notary whose home the then-Vice President was visiting in 1923 when he learned of the death of President Warren G. Harding.
- end quote
And so we enter the Obama Years.
Hope, courage, trust, faith and love.
The St Francis of Assisi prayer seems entirely appropriate . . .
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen indeed.
The Obama Inaugration.
I never for one moment thought I would see a day such as this in my life time and I am lost for words in trying to describe my thoughts and feelings. It is times like these that to hold American citizenship is a profound priviledge.
To President Obama and his First Family I offer my unswerving support and respect.
You said it could be done, you said WE could do it. Democracy is alive and well in The United States of America. It is not simply America, it is the United States of America. United in concept and United in reality.
The American Dream is, once more, a shining beacon of hope around the World.
From Wikipedia;
The swearing-in of the President of the United States occurs upon the commencement of a new term of a President of the United States. The United States Constitution mandates that the President make the following oath or affirmation before he or she can "enter on the Execution" of the office of the presidency:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
The newly elected or re-elected President traditionally adds "so help me God" to the constitutionally mandated statement.
The swearing-in traditionally takes place at noon on Inauguration Day at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., with the Chief Justice of the United States administering the oath. From the presidency of Martin Van Buren through Jimmy Carter, the ceremony took place on the Capitol's East Portico. Since the 1981 inauguration of Ronald Reagan, the ceremony has been held at the Capitol's West Front. The inauguration of William Howard Taft in 1909 and Reagan in 1985 were moved indoors at the Capitol due to cold weather. Until 1937, Inauguration Day was March 4. Since then, Inauguration Day has occurred on January 20 (the 1933 ratification of the Twentieth Amendment changed the start date of the term).
Since Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth swore in President John Adams, no Chief Justice has missed a regularly-scheduled Inauguration Day swearing-in. When Inauguration Day has fallen on a Sunday, the Chief Justice has administered the oath to the President either on inauguration day itself or on the preceding Saturday privately and the following Monday publicly. Eight presidential deaths and Richard Nixon's resignation have forced the oath of office to be administered by other officials on other days. The War of 1812 and World War II forced two swearing-ins to be held at other locations in Washington, D.C.
From 1789 through 2005, the swearing-in has been administered by 14 Chief Justices, one Associate Justice, three federal judges, two New York state judges, and one notary public. Though anyone legally authorized to administer an oath may swear in a President, to date the only person to do so who was not a judge was John C. Coolidge, Calvin Coolidge's father, a notary whose home the then-Vice President was visiting in 1923 when he learned of the death of President Warren G. Harding.
- end quote
And so we enter the Obama Years.
Hope, courage, trust, faith and love.
The St Francis of Assisi prayer seems entirely appropriate . . .
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen indeed.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Inspiration! A Miracle Indeed.
THE GOAL THAT KEPT NICK ALIVE
The death of 2008 Paralympic Gold Medalist Nick Scandone has allowed for
significant reflection on what he had overcome since being diagnosed in 2002
with ALS, also commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease. Winning the medal was
significant, but to stay alive to do so demonstrated how vital this goal was to
his life. Just after winning the medal, his wife Mary-Kate noted how it was a
bittersweet moment for the couple. “It’s everything we’ve been fighting for,”
said Mary-Kate. “Sailing and his [Paralympic] goal has kept him alive.” In an
emotional moment, Mary-Kate thanked the designer of Nick’s boat “because he gave
me four more years with my husband.”
US SAILING has collected several stories/anecdotes/quotes about Scandone from
teammates and people in the sailing community. Here is one from his Paralympic
teammate Maureen McKinnon-Tucker:
“I had never seen, nor will I ever see again, such a true example of how someone
could LIVE FOR something. Nick showed pure human will: He spared all other
elements of his life that would take an ounce of sailing distance out of him. He
saved expenditure of energy for only ONE THING...sailing. When he didn't want to
eat, he ate to sail. When he didn't want to swallow, he drank water to sail..
Everything was to sail. And more specifically, everything was for the goal: the
gold. If he hadn't had his eyes on that prize, I assure you he would have passed
long before now. We all have life lessons to learn from Nick both on land and at
sea. Nick was a kind, calm, confident, unpretentious, mentoring, generous person
and a brilliant, brilliant sailor. By being Nick's teammate, I have been
rewarded by being both a better sailor and better person - and so have all of us
who knew him.” -- Complete collection:
http://olympics.ussailing.org/Current__News/Nick_Scandone_Tribute.htm
The Celebration of Life for Nick Scandone will be held on Sunday, January 18,
2009 at 2:00 pm at the Balboa Yacht Club, 1801 Bayside Drive, Corona del Mar, CA
92625. Attendees are encouraged to bring their favorite memories of Nick and
speak during the open mike portion of the reception. In lieu of flowers, the
family suggests donations can be sent to ALS Foundation (http://www.alsa.org)
or:
BYC Maritime Sciences and Seamanship Foundation (BYC MSSF)
In memory of Nick Scandone
1901 Newport Blvd., Suite 350
Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Tax ID #33-1102882.
Photo tribute of Nick: http://SButt011109a.notlong.com
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Miracle Needed
Towards a Miracle in the Middle East
By Marianne Williamson
Today is a day to cry for Israel. Today is a day to cry for the
Palestinians. Today is a day to cry for all of us.
Today is a day of war.
War anywhere, at this point in our history, is an action that threatens
peace everywhere. Particularly when it comes to the Middle East. From its
spiritual significance to its political significance, it is humanity's hot
spot. It always has been and probably always will be. It's where all the
rivers of human perspective meet, to become either a cauldron of hatred or
an ocean of love.
While it might be tempting to "take sides" between Israel and the
Palestinians, spiritually there are no sides to be taken. God does not give
us victory in battle but rather lifts us above the battlefield. As a
generation, our moral imperative is to end war period, to somehow move
beyond the idea that war is an acceptable means of solving problems.
Anything less then that makes us attitudinal conspirators with a line of
probability leading to nuclear catastrophe.
According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, humanity's biggest problems
cannot be solved; they must be outgrown. Our task is to create a field of
consciousness in which the idea of war has dropped from the ethers.
So how do we outgrow war?
The first thing we do is to accept the possibility that the end of war is
possible. In fact, in the words of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, "We must
challenge the belief that war is inevitable." We must embrace the
possibility that a world without war could exist.
Secondly, we must mature beyond the belief that the thinking that got us
into this mess is thinking can lead us out of it. "The problems of the world
will not be solved on the level of thinking we were at when we created
them," wrote Einstein. We must realize that the mortal ego will not provide
us with a solution to the existence of war, because it itself is the
problem. Notions such as, "The Israelis have a right to defend themselves,"
and "The Palestinians have taken so much abuse; what do you expect them to
do?" are both insidious drivers of war masquerading as principled stands.
They keep us attached to the very duality that is the root of separation and
war.
On a spiritual level, our greatest service to both Israelis and Palestinians
is to reach for a higher truth within our own minds. An essential principle
of metaphysical reality is that all minds are joined; as any of us are drawn
to higher thoughts, then all of us are drawn to higher thoughts. As we
ourselves embrace a higher truth, we help create an anti-gravitational force
field that lifts all minds above separation, hatred and war.
For all our talk about wanting to be the change, how many of us are siding
now against one side or the other in the current Mid-East conflict? If you
really want to help the situation there, ask God to remove from your heart
any judgment you have against the Israelis or the Palestinians. Any thought
of judgment you hold is like a gun that you yourself are firing.
The human race is evolving to the realization that what is happening on the
level of consciousness both precedes and determines what happens in the
world. War is just an effect, not a cause. With the power of our minds, we
can move beyond the level of effect to the level of cause. There, and only
there, can we wipe out what President Franklin Roosevelt called the
"beginnings of all war."
As Americans, we have a creed --- a set of principles enshrined and
institutionalized in our founding documents. First and foremost among them
is that "all men are created equal." Period. End of story. Don't be lured
into thinking that either Israelis or Palestinians have been either the
perfect innocents or the perfect victims here; such thinking serves neither.
The greatest gift you can give to both is to realize that on a spiritual
level, Israelis and Palestinians are one. Their only true reality is the
reality of whom they are in this moment, freed from any thoughts of the
past.
Complexity is of the ego; do not linger there. Of course there is a
complicated history to the struggle currently playing out in the Middle
East, and that complicated history has significance and relevance for
traditional political formulation. So leave that to the traditional
politicians. Our task as seekers and purveyors of a higher human
consciousness is to move beyond traditional political notions, to a holistic
politics that embraces the relevance of psychological and spiritual
realities to the political issues of our time. As students of Gandhi and Dr.
King, we know that moving beyond the violence in our own hearts is essential
if we are to be conduits for the creation of a world at peace. The truly new
politics goes beyond mere "post-partisan" hand-shaking and collaboration
among former rivals. It takes us to a new kind of thinking as a basis for
the creation of a new kind of world.
Traditionalists can call us naïve all they want to. But anyone who thinks
that human hatred can simply be bombed away.they are naïve. Anyone who
thinks we can continue to tolerate violence on this planet at
ever-increasing levels and have such conflagrations not lead to the ultimate
cataclysm of nuclear catastrophe. they are naïve. Anyone who thinks that the
narrowness of a rationalistic, mechanistic human perspective can lead us out
of the hell which that perspective itself has created.they are naïve. And
those who see prayer as merely "symbol, not substance". they are naïve.
Prayer is hardly just symbol; it is a mover of hearts, and thus a mover of
mountains.
Mountains we now need desperately to move.
Through the grace of God we are not powerless; according to A Course in
Miracles, moving mountains is small compared to what we can do. War is at
heart a spiritual problem and it can only be eradicated with a spiritual
solution..a solution that lies within all of us.
Martin Luther King Jr. said there is a power in our hearts more powerful
than the power of bullets. He described Mahatma Gandhi as the first person
in the world to take the love ethic of Jesus Christ and turn it into a broad
scale social force for good. (To Gandhi himself, non-violence was not just
the love ethic of Jesus, but rather the heart of all religion and the heart
of reality itself.) On today's geo-political landscape, we see hatred turned
into a political force all around us; the politics of non-violence turns
love into a political force. The question for any conscious human being,
much less spiritual seeker, is, "How can I help do that?" Only the power in
our hearts will be able to eradicate the idea of war, then the reality of
war, from the experience of the human race.
According to Gandhi, the problem with the world was that humanity was not in
its right mind. And arguably, we still are not. War, quite simply, is
insane. For those of us who wish to be part of the solution to war - not
part of the problem -- it is time to change our own minds, to accept a
healing of our own war-like thoughts, in order to create a new field of
possibility. Whether dealing with the transformation of the individual or of
the transformation of the world, only what is changed on the level of
consciousness becomes a fundamental change in the conditions of the world.
For five minutes each day, be a spiritual activist.
You probably already know what to do. Turn off the TV; neither CNN, MSNBC or
FOX know the news. They only know data.
Turn off the bright lights. Put down the newspaper. And go within.
However you do it, turn your attention to the God of your understanding.
Surrender your own hatred, give over your own wars, and ask that this year
you be lifted above the violence that still lives inside your heart.
With your eyes closed, see on one side of your inner vision the Israeli
people. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as you recognize them on
the material plane. Now see a light within their hearts, and slowly watch
that light expand, extending beyond the confines of their bodies. See the
bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their eternal selves.
Now with your inner eye look to the other side of your inner vision, and see
there the Palestinian people. See their physicality, their mannerisms, as
you recognize them on the material plane. Now see a light within their
hearts, and slowly watch that light expand, extending beyond the confines of
their bodies. See the bodies begin to fade before the greater light of their
eternal selves.
Now using your inner eye - your greatest source of power - bear witness to
what happens as the inner light of the Israelis begins to merge with the
inner light of the Palestinians. Bear witness to the merging of their
spiritual selves. Simply watch and focus, for what you focus on grows
stronger.
You are bearing witness now to a higher truth, thus using the power of your
mind to draw a heavenly truth into material manifestation. In the presence
of higher thought forms, lower ones fall of their own dead weight. In the
presence of light, darkness disappears. In the presence of eternal truth,
temporal lies begin to fall away.
In the words of Dr. King, "No lie can last forever." The idea that the
Israeli and Palestinian people are truly separate, or have separate needs,
is simply a lie of the mortal mind. Spiritually, we are all one. Israelis
and Palestinians were created by the same God; in Him they are equal and
they are joined eternally. Only thought forms have separated them. Thought
forms of guilt and separation have been handed down to children born
innocent of such lies, generation after generation; those are the true enemy
here, not either group of people.
As any of us move beyond the fear-based thought forms of separation and
guilt to the truth of our eternal oneness, it becomes easier for everyone
else to do so as well. Let's give up the way-too-easy, so-American way of
chiding either Israelis or Palestinians for their difficulty in forgiving
the past. What both peoples have endured is almost unimaginable, and only
the truly sainted among us should even for a minute consider judging either
side.
We don't have to; and when in our own right minds, we don't want to.
Use the power of your mind to create a new possibility. a miracle in the
Middle East.
As the poet Rumi wrote so eloquently, "Out beyond all ideas of right and
wrong, there is a field. I'll meet you there." So go there now. Such
thoughts are not just poetry, or even symbol, any longer. In the world
that's being born, they're the stuff of a new politics.
No more simply asking, "But what can I do?" Go even further, to "What can I
think? What can I pray for? What can I meditate on?" Pray for the removal of
all walls that separate any of us from any of us, not only on our earth but
also in our minds. Pray for the removal of the guns that still fire within
your own mind as you accuse or withhold your forgiveness from anyone. And
pray that at this perilous hour, those of us whose lives have not been
touched by the horrors of war can be of service to those whose lives have
been.
Dear God, please deliver them.
And dear God, deliver us all.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
a new years begins, enjoy!
"Prospero Ano Nuevo!"
that is what someone posted to my BLOG and so I pass it on.
2009. day 4. hour 1815. just finished watering my new native plantings.
the first hour of this year, I spent with friends from next door and the next street and the next generation.
the second day i sat with friends at the Tin Hut, the very cool local pub, a couple of miles down the road.
we sat out in the garden sipping lemon lime and bitters under an umbrella while looking out over the tauherenikau race course
race day, 2nd january 2009, a full crowd on a glorious day, the traffic poured into the parking lots, the grandstands were bursting with color and energy. marcus at the Tin Hut is prepared with extra staff as he well knows that after the races the locals will pour out of the grandstands, out of the racecourse and into his parking lot and into his pub. A grand way to spend four hours from noon until I shot home and changed hats to present my kiwicafe on air radio show. good company, good dialogue, children, ducks, geese, a turkey or two, goats and good food. nice.
the third day I drove across the mountains to the west coast at plimmerton 45 minutes north of wellington. my dog, kiri, and me played on the beach, wading out into the tiny waves, gazing out over cook strait to the south island. then time with friends, a short side trip to porirua which as a child was known for it's nut house or mental health centre as it would be known today. today porirua hosts a truly great art gallery, Pataka. three exhibitions by three photographers, inspirational. one from iran, one from the australian outback and one from new zealand. then back over the hill and worked on zane grey and me into the night. later that night i enjoyed a great sunset from my garden.
day four, today, slept in, cooked breakfast, drove to ruakokapatuna and relaxed with friends from wellington, eating olive tapenade, green olives, cheeses, french bread and a premier cru chablis. four hours of friendship, looking out over the TK vineyards. this is as good as it gets.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Reflection & Gratitude . . .
Okay Dickie old Chap, some 5 years ago you left Venice Beach on your first venture into the American West, Searching for Zane Grey.
My Leica Lover [ LL ☺ ] text’s me from the South Island of New Zealand today, LL ☺ found a Zane Grey in a used book store, $100 bucks, “is it worth it” LL ☺ asked, nope I said, “I have two copies, I will send you one”.
This week, the fifth anniversary of commencing my Search for ZG’s America I began to edit the 250 hours of footage. There they are, MiniDV, HiDef, DVcam, all laid out, totally covering the kitchen table that has followed me around the World for 20 years now. 250 hours! This is my project for 2009.
No more taking on projects for newbie filmmakers at reduced rates. Now, 2009, it’s my go at making a movie. If I go broke so be it, if it sucks, so be it. I will, at the very least, sleep well knowing I completed my own creative process.
It’s kind of ironic, I have never had a problem taking on others projects and giving them my all, but taking time for me in a creative sense, tough, very tough.
Sure I have taken time for me, indulging myself in stuff, or should I say burying myself in stuff. Never too late to change. Never too old to learn.
I was reading my first Blog notes and love the symmetry of my journey. It brings gratitude to mind.
As I lay in bed this morning I struggled with getting up or surrendering to the process of life, life won and the day has turned out just fine.
It has been quite a year.
5 Films. My first New Zealand editing gig, ever and it Paid!
I have had no problem embracing new technology, never have.
I have exhibited my photography in 3 venues, I even sold some.
My writing has been published.
All this in Aotearoa New Zealand, Land of my Birth.
I remember my old Athletic coach yelling at me, I was 21 and had made a choice to sail away from NZ, “Clark, you are a quitter, you’ll always be a quitter”. Okay Roy, I heard you ☺!
On reflection, I have never quit and so I have gratitude to the voices of my childhood. This year I was privileged to see my faults through interaction with family members, those moments, uncomfortable as they were, have helped me grow and have helped change my attitudes and more importantly I have been able to set aside the importance I have held to my life and career. I accept, today, that I am only as good as I am doing, right now. The past is but history, to learn from, to accept and be grateful for, to let go. That I am.
I have good health, I continue a reasonable level of exercise. I have no credit card debt. I have enjoyed a positive cash flow these past few moths, the first time in 5 years.
I am enjoying the wines from my vineyard. Bordeaux, Burgundy, a Riesling and a Chenin Blanc. Who would ever have thought me a Vintner? Certainly not me! Now I get to drink what I have grown. Hot damn!
My Radio Show, KiwicafeOnAir, enters its third year. I still don’t know what it’s about but nobody has shot me, yet!
I have even started two books. They will continue to trickle along this year. Three of my short films are showing in the local Art and History Museum.
I have a new home, It’s not a house, like my last one, this is a home. Much the same style as my Californian Craftsman was in Venice Beach. Same Vintage. 1920’s. Cute, funky, simple, and affordable. Organic garden. And all this in a tiny rural community that somewhat reminds me of Ridgeway Colorado where I spent 4 months in 2005, exploring, and hiking, getting to know the locals. Fitting in. That is what I am doing here, fitting in. A friend shared that Featherston, where I now live, is for those who are so over them selves. I can but hope that applies to me today. My journey is lived forward reflecting backward. A nice balance.
So here I sit 6 hours and 8 minutes before the New Year is welcomed in. Gratitude up the Whazoo! Amen.
You worked how many hours?
I just clicked my link to Seth Godin off to the right and this is what I found, now I AM depressed.
Quote:
"The argument of Outliers:
Where you're born and when you're born have an enormous amount to do with whether or not you're successful.
Becoming a superstar takes about 10,000 hours of hard work.
Both of the bullet points above are far more important than the magical talent myth.
Bill Gates, the Beatles, Beethoven, Bill Joy, Tiger Woods--do the math, 10,000 hours of work."
- end quote
I was born June 15 Wellington New Zealand, atop the Windy City.
I conservatively worked out that for 40 years I worked 10 hour days, five days a week, 52 weeks a year = 104000 Hours!
Of course in the real world I worked longer hours, more days, more years. I started earning an income at age 13, milk rounds, lawns, baby sitter, paper delivery, after school in a sales room and on and on and on . . . when I started my own film company in 1971 I edited commercials by day and documentaries by night . . . No wonder I am feeling tired. I believe I owe my children and my body an amends :) oh well.
Happy New Year!
End of year or the evening of the start of a New Year and, if a New Year, who’s? Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Indigenous?
Profound really. The more I study beliefs, philosophies and just good old generic history down through the ages from the days and thoughts of Plato.
Where am I in all of this? It is worth pondering as I get to the last day of the last month of 2008 on the US calendar.
I am listening to Ben Harper, ‘I shall not walk alone’. Very appropriate. Since 1985 when I bought my first basic version in Sydney Australia, I have used Time Design as my Day Planner, Diary, whatever. Last year I screwed up, I ordered the English version, bummer, sort of screwed me for those dates in NZ and the US that I know and love. Ordering from America can be a challenge, they seem to think that living in an English speaking country I would want to identify as British, no way Jose! No Way! My antecedents are Scots via America. I will now identify myself to all and sundry as an SVA! Now my iPod has gone to Hooray for Hollywood! The Benny Goodman 1939 version of course ☺ My tastes in music are, well, eclectic to say the least. But I digress, back to the dates thingy. My Time Design Planner, which originates in Denmark, has a slight problem. Today in Aotearoa New Zealand it is Wednesday, New Years Eve the 31st December but my planner tells me quite clearly that it is Monday the 31st and that yesterday was Wednesday the 30th when actually, yeah, I know, you worked it out . . . it was Tuesday. So this year there is a smile in my planning. Man makes plans and God laughs. Maybe God was from Denmark? Which has Deer, Reindeer. My second ex sent me a cool image of Sarah Palin, good, you know who she is, well there is the Governor of Alaska in front of a trophy head, it’s Rudolph. Bugger!
I have been working out ways of being able to have Rudolph with the Gun and Sarah’s head on the Trophy Wall. I wonder if Michelle gave Barry one of those for Xmas.
3 years ago I was in Colorado at the end of my Search for Zane Grey’s America and the Rockies were full of geriatrics from Florida with a license to kill one Elk. There they would sit, high above . . . fuck Bill Gates, Word just crashed and I lost half this article. Oh well saves me being sued by Dick Cheney and Sarah and you don’t get bored with my whatever . . .
I just saved it, at least what I am left with. I am going to finish this maybe, maybe not, post it and start over in a more positive vein.
I am simply grateful for a truly great year, not always pretty but always moving forward and capped off with Barack and Michelle outing Bill & Hillary. Yes. Please, please, please leave Hillary to be a great Sec o’ State. Stay home Bill, find a nice un-corruptible intern to help write your memoir.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Love and Lafter, forever after . . .
‘Tis the 3rd day before xmas and my true friend said to me,
“ I hope EVERYTHING is well and you are settling down for a big Kiwi christmas. There has not been any blogs for a while
which accounts, no doubt why I am starting to twitch and wink with my left and occasionally with the right eye. I NEED A BLOG. MAN, I NEED A BLOG.”
. . . and so I have no stain of red wine on my conscience, here my dear friend is a BLOGGER entry.
It’s that time of year, Hannukah, Xmas . . . whatever, the grinch is back. Actually I am full of good chair . . . I enjoyed a wonderful day today with five women who visited me, a Director, a Producer, a Post Producer, a young Film Maker and her Artist Mother, what a great time we had, truly. Talking Film. Those who have done, those who are doing and those who dream of doing . . . and will.
We worked a little and chatted a great deal, love and laughter is not a bad recipe for xmas. Not at all. Love and Laughter are great healers, great equalizers and great to give and receive.
Love and Laughter. Which came first the Love or the Laughter?
L&L. LL. It also happens to be a term of endearment with me and a dear friend, the most beautiful gift of all this year. I truly feel blessed.
This year I have worked on 3 short films, one medium length film and one feature film that I am wrapping my involvement with, I have sold some wine, sold some photography and written a great deal of, whatever. My Radio show continues, I am truly blessed. And the year has not ended yet!
In January 2000 and 9, the 7th to be precise, I will be celebrating my third year in New Zealand. Yep, 3 years. This time 3 years ago I was enjoying Xmas in Venice California, 5 years ago I was leaving on my first trip into the American West. A trip to Death Valley and beyond. Now, 5 years later I am about to begin to edit the material I shot on that trip and all the trips I took over the next two years. 200 hours of footage. 22000 photographs. That is on my new year wish list.
Yep, I don’t do New Year resolutions, I am human and when I make plans God tends to Laugh.
Now aint that the truth.
But I do have a “Dear Santa” list and as the saying goes,
“be careful what you ask for”. . .
Dear Santa, what I want for Xmas . . .
1. the focus and motivaton to write, edit my own films and share my photography
2. the finances to do this without using all my own funds
3. the motivation to exercise daily and well
4. the spititual practice I need to live a life of service
5. the woman I need to heal my soul (and to laugh and love with)
6. the friends I need to support me
7. the income I need to be fully self sufficient
8. the attitude and support I need to achieve the above list
Yep, that is it, nothing revolutionary or radical, some of it has already come true, much of it to be real honest and that is why I smile a lot and love a lot and laugh a lot. I would also like for my Tree House to sell, just had to ask for that, sorry God.
And so to all my friends, not just my old pal of 44 years, but to all my friends, including family, I wish you all the same dreams, I wish you a list that costs little in dollar terms and heaps in ‘LIFE’ terms, for that, after all is what it is all about isn’t it? Living. Especially in the now. Life on Life’s terms. Live and let Live. Mindfulness.
And the biggie of all time, thanks to my LA Friend Don, an attitude of gratitude. Also to . . .
D&S,D&MJ,D&D&FAMILY,D,C,B,B,N,L,G,G,J,J,J,P,E&K,C,S&B,S,S,S,S,S,S,E&A,J,R,G&S, J,C,M&I,R,C,M AND SO MANY MANY MORE . . .
Thank you all for adding to my life, for making it worth while, for supporting, acknowledging and, dare I say, loving me in times when I could not love myself or even when I could not love you back.
Whatever your political/religious pursuasion, you did, we did good this year. Thank you. Thank you for those who challenged me and for those who continue to challenge me, you keep me honest.
Thank you.
Just now I walked outside and the first thing I saw was a star in the West, in the Northern Hemisphere it’s in the East, whatever, just don’t forget the old song . . . “When you wish upon a Star”. . . Amen.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
We, finally, Did It!
No "DUH" but I can yell YEEHA!
What a great day for America. Out here in the South Pacific most people mutter "Bloody Americans" but all my friends in the US are echoing Michelle Obama's mantra, sort of " For the first time I am proud to be an American" or words to that effect. I absolutely and totally agree. It is a great day to be an American. I became a US Citizen in December 2003 and so here I am 5 Years down the line and I continue to be one of many. A great feeling. Thank you America. You just changed the World and all who sail in her. God Bless America indeed!
I just posted this with the Christian Science Monitor, one of the few great, impartial news outlets, the full article is as follows.
(Jake Turcotte)
This just in… Barack Obama is the next President
By Jimmy Orr | 12.15.08
E-mail a friend Print this Letter to the Editor Republish ShareThis Get e-mail alerts RSS
In case you were wondering, Barack Obama won the election.
Before you yell out “duh” (or “doy” if you’re from Generation Y) - it wasn’t official yet. Today, 538 electors across the country met to officially cast their ballots. This is merely a step in the Electoral College process. The Constitution mandates that state electors gather and officially vote.
(Now maybe this doesn’t compare with the news of Joe Biden getting a new puppy - but since it’s in the Constitution, it is newsworthy).
So, today was officially that day. So what’d they do?
According to the Electoral College web site:
The electors in each State meet to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The electors record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining original “Certificates of Ascertainment.” The electors sign, seal and certify the packages of electoral votes and immediately send them to the Federal and State officials listed in these instructions.
And the winner is…
The result? Obama won.
In Illinois, it was a single bit of good news in a state mired in controversy.
“We are here today to celebrate a great victory. This is not a victory for one group over another or one party over another or one point of view over another. Today, we celebrate a victory for America,” said Illinois Secretary of State Jason White.
Hold everything
But it’s not over yet.
January 6 is the next critical day. That’s when Congress will meet to add up all the Electoral College votes.
So can John McCain mount the greatest comeback ever and sneak out a win? Never say never, but …. no.
A lot of voters
By the way, over 131 million people voted in this past election. That means that 61.6 percent of eligible voters voted. That’s the highest percentage in 40 years.
The states with the biggest voter turnout? Minnesota was number one with a 77.8 percent turnout followed by Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa.
At the bottom of the barrel? A tie. West Virginia and Hawaii came in last with only 50 .6 percent of eligible voters participating.
What a great day for America. Out here in the South Pacific most people mutter "Bloody Americans" but all my friends in the US are echoing Michelle Obama's mantra, sort of " For the first time I am proud to be an American" or words to that effect. I absolutely and totally agree. It is a great day to be an American. I became a US Citizen in December 2003 and so here I am 5 Years down the line and I continue to be one of many. A great feeling. Thank you America. You just changed the World and all who sail in her. God Bless America indeed!
I just posted this with the Christian Science Monitor, one of the few great, impartial news outlets, the full article is as follows.
(Jake Turcotte)
This just in… Barack Obama is the next President
By Jimmy Orr | 12.15.08
E-mail a friend Print this Letter to the Editor Republish ShareThis Get e-mail alerts RSS
In case you were wondering, Barack Obama won the election.
Before you yell out “duh” (or “doy” if you’re from Generation Y) - it wasn’t official yet. Today, 538 electors across the country met to officially cast their ballots. This is merely a step in the Electoral College process. The Constitution mandates that state electors gather and officially vote.
(Now maybe this doesn’t compare with the news of Joe Biden getting a new puppy - but since it’s in the Constitution, it is newsworthy).
So, today was officially that day. So what’d they do?
According to the Electoral College web site:
The electors in each State meet to select the President and Vice President of the United States. The electors record their votes on six “Certificates of Vote,” which are paired with the six remaining original “Certificates of Ascertainment.” The electors sign, seal and certify the packages of electoral votes and immediately send them to the Federal and State officials listed in these instructions.
And the winner is…
The result? Obama won.
In Illinois, it was a single bit of good news in a state mired in controversy.
“We are here today to celebrate a great victory. This is not a victory for one group over another or one party over another or one point of view over another. Today, we celebrate a victory for America,” said Illinois Secretary of State Jason White.
Hold everything
But it’s not over yet.
January 6 is the next critical day. That’s when Congress will meet to add up all the Electoral College votes.
So can John McCain mount the greatest comeback ever and sneak out a win? Never say never, but …. no.
A lot of voters
By the way, over 131 million people voted in this past election. That means that 61.6 percent of eligible voters voted. That’s the highest percentage in 40 years.
The states with the biggest voter turnout? Minnesota was number one with a 77.8 percent turnout followed by Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire and Iowa.
At the bottom of the barrel? A tie. West Virginia and Hawaii came in last with only 50 .6 percent of eligible voters participating.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Thanks!
What do I think of when Thanksgiving pops into my mind and when that 4th Thursday in November comes around? Gratitude I guess. The concept of being one of many, an American. And what a great time to be an American, a period of restoration faces us.
The Obama Years. Oh My!
I can only imagine that in 8 yeaqrs time we will want to change the Constitution and begin the chant all over, “Four More Years”. These past 8 years have been a trying time for the World, for America and for Me personally. However, We, I, did not give in, the current White House crew did not kill us and that which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.
And so here I am, there you are, all my friends and family, the 4th Thursday in November approaches, for a special treat, I can’t think of a better word, it is also the anniversary of my Fathers birth, he would be 100 and here I am back in the Land of my Birth, the Land of my Father. The Land of my Father’s Father and, I believe, his Father. Before that I believe that my Great, Great Grandfather arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, from America. Go figure, and me an American Citizen. The worm certainly turns. I sit here writing my thoughts on the Founders Day of Thanksgiving, sipping a glass of my own reisling and giving thought to the journey I have travelled over 65 years. At times I didn’t think I would make it, I am sure that some of you thought the same, there are some, I would venture to say, wish I hadn’t, be that as it may, I have, and, for that, I am truly grateful.
Today. And today is all I have. A blessing, a gift, a miracle even. What my travels and travails couldn’t end have given me a rich pallette of experience from which I can now, maybe, sort of, call wisdom. I get to share it, pass it on. Fancy that. Wisdom. Me!
That is where gratitude comes from, allowing myself to make mistakes from which wisdom rises, like Pheonix, out of the ashes.
I have not lived my life alone, I have not lived it in isolation, though at times and especially in recent times, I have felt lonely. It has taken friends, it has taken family, it has taken set backs, triumphs, a whole raft of stuff, to get me here today. There is a book or two, there are memories but it is my friends, first and foremost, those who have never given up on me and those I have not given up on.
Even those who have and I have, they have all added to the list of gratitudes today. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. I love that. The Pursuit of Happiness, happiness itself is not protected but the Pursuit of it is and that, to me, is what Thanks Giving is all about.
Will I eat Turkey this year? I have no idea. It will be the first time in nearly 8 years that I have not cooked and shared a Turkey with family and friends.
Thanksgiving in New Zealand this year, lands on a Friday. I host my Radio Show on a Friday and so I will be sharing my American Holiday with a bunch of Kiwis. I will read a bit from the New Yorker Magazine that arrives as regular as my heart beat. I will play Bruce and Bob and a few other American balladeers. Eyes will roll, “oh, no, not more Springsteen and Dylan, doesn’t he know any others?” well yes, I do and yes I will mix it up a bit. Maybe I will go to, ouch! McDonalds, get a Turkey Drumstick and eat it in the studio as the music plays. Shenandoah! Yes, my fav, both Bob and Bruce have versions in my collection. The Ole Missoura. That to me is America. The America I love. I have nearly completed my 9/11 tome and am talking to Post Houses to complete the Film process. 9/11, it represents the beginning of the New America, death of the old.
Now we have a new President, an African American President of the United States of America. Fancy that. A father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas, what would Dorothy have thought? I am sure she would have sighed with pleasure and felt truly at home with Toto once more.
Michelle in Red Shoes for the inaugral, that’s my money folks.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road and dreams do come true. Sure there are few Wicked Witches in the West (Wing) but then the WWW has changed the way we do our lives and those who oppose will be opposed. Jeez, that third, albeit small, glass of white has me waxing.
So, enough already. It’s getting time for American Airlines to transport you all back home, whether it be families or friends.
This time last year I was in Venice Beach, thanksgiving with the Mountains and Eddingtons and all.
This year, we will just have to wait and see.
Thank you to everyone with whom I have bumped shoulders, clinked glasses and swapped glances :) you are all with me this year. Thank you for adding to the richness of my life, I hope that I have been there for you when called upon. I forgive those who have . . . . :) and I seek forgiveness for those who have . . . . :)
Amen.
. . . and now, since I posted this, a dear friend, Carolyn, has offered to go find a Turkey and cook it for me after my Radio Show on Friday. I can see her stalking a wild bird in the local back blocks, shot gun in hand, BOOM! Got the bird, now for the Pot!
Maybe New Zealand will embrace Thanks Giving. In the small town where I live we are holding a Traditional European Christmas Market on Saturday evening. Last year was the first and there were over 2000 people, that is close enough for me to a true Thanks Giving celebration. I am not a christian, I don't subscribe to the JC mythologies and yet I love ancient wisdom and I love sharing stories, shared experiences, that is the thinking behind my Blog. Yeeha!
. . . and to report further, the thanksgiving dinner with my friends Carolyn, Tina, David and the charming Sophie was simple delicious and elegant. I felt transported, backward in time, to Thanksgiving in Ohio many, many years ago with my American family of the time. And then, tonight, I missed the Christmas Fair as my hotwater system decided to erupt, was I in hot water or what? Time will tell . . .
Saturday, November 22, 2008
ODE - A time to reflect?
William Wordsworth. 1770–1850
Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes, 10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair; 15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound 20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep; 25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea 30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival, 40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning, 45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:— 50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet 55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended; 75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind, 80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came. 85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes! 90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral; 95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long 100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity; 110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest! 115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave, 120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie; 125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live, 135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest— 140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise; 145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized, 150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may, 155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither, 170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound! 175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright 180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind; 185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death, 190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight 195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet; 200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
World Class in the South Wairarapa
News FLASH!
NZ wineries make international critic's top grade
12:54PM Wednesday Nov 19, 2008
Five New Zealand wineries have been rated highly in the rigorously independent Parker's Wine Guide, the mouthpiece of Robert Parker, considered to be the most informed, independent and influential wine commentator in the world.
Hawkes Bay's Te Mata Estate has been given the ultimate Outstanding Wine five-star accolade, along with Ata Rangi in Martinborough, Felton Road Wines in Bannockburn, Pegasus Bay in Waipara and Rippon Vineyard in Wanaka.
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A long day in the trenches working at Ata Rangi during Toast Martinborough. Why would I, a film editor, with a new house to work on, 3 films to work on, a dog to exercise, go and spend 12 hours serving people wine?
Anyhow, after flip flopping for a week or two or three, I finally decided to take on the work, I felt a need to spend a day amongst people, which I did and which I enjoyed. Enormously!
I love observing people. I drove a couple of friends to the vineyard where we were given a pre festivities prep talk. The detail, the production, the quality, all were amazing and truly World Class.
I was assigned to the tree bar, not far from the band and with a goup of people who were all new to me and a better crew I could not have chosen, we meshed and that meshing lasted all day, quite extraordinary. I asked what was expected of us, a non paying gig, and it was suggested we simply see it as helping a friend at a party, good information. Bloody big party mind you, over 11000 people bought tickets, the tickets had sold out in about 6 minutes once they went on sale earlier this year. Amazing. It’s not really about a boozy culture, it was more about friends getting together from all over New Zealand and simply enjoying great food, music and wine in a glorious outdoor setting 90 minutes from Wellington. Trains, Buses, Cars, even shanks pony . . . feet. People turned up early, saving a space for friends who came later. I found it fascinating to observe, somewhat as an outsider, my fellow kiwis. 43 year away, I still have much to learn. I am challenged by that. What constitutes conversation, small talk which I don’t do particularly well, if at all. The start of the day was somewhat quiet. Setting up, getting to know my co helpers, getting to know where everything was, especially the toilets. Lots of drinking calls for lots of urinating, to put it mildly or bluntly. Musicians setting up, umbrellas being opened, bottles of Pinot Noir, Crimson, Reisling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and another red I cannot remember, all being stacked and ice being prepared, bottles being chilled. getting to know the pricing, the sizes of servings, if someone was beyond the pale. I can’t even begin to guess the amount we poured but towards 4PM and closing down time we could have done better with hoses, bottles came, bottles went. Paper francs in wine out. No real money, all exchanged up front and so no pressure. The paying guests carried their glass on a lanyard around their necks, no glass, no wine. We were selling by glasses, a taste or a full glass, the taste was more like a good glass in itself. The glasses had the sizes etched and it was all very fair, no scrimping on value. A few people tasted but not that many. Our Tree Bar was set up under, yep, a large tree and so we were out of the sun but wind and dust both made up for it and I found myself drinking heaps of water. So having to find the loo on a regular basis. Ata Rangi is one of the pioneer Martinborough Vineyards and Clive, one of the owners has much to show for the 30 odd years he has been in the business. A big change from milking cows. I found myself people watching as a way of separating myself from the work, it was long, hot and tiring and yet, totally enjoyable. I saw nobody I would call drunk. A few who were a tad tipsy, maybe a couple who were obvious in their enjoyment but not a great deal of, what I would regard as, drunken behaviour. Some hilarious behavior, the woman certainly made no bones that breasts are part and parcel to being out in public and so their merchandise was quite well presented and enjoyed.
The whole day was very well organised and this was the 17th year of it’s activities. It was great to see a large portion of 11000 people pass our way, drinking wine, eating food. The food, phenomenal, tents presenting a variety of classy and very tasty foods, whitebait fritters, asparagus, homemade meat pies, deserts and even l'Affare from Wellington set up a full cafe. Groups of friends from all over New Zealand, some dressed as teams or with a theme, many had repeated appearances from over the years. Groups arrived early, with big sun hats and big breasts very obviously on show. Oh I think I already mentioned the breasts, very nice. I served wine from the bar, pouring glass after glass and then took time to walk around with a basket serving wine to the picnickers spread all over the grounds, followed by a long period of being back up service to the Tree Bar, simply clearing up and cleaning up. All in all it was a great deal of fun. Just doing, no thinking, sort of chop wood, carry water kind of an exercise. The sort I like. At the end I really just wanted to split, come home but, for some reason, I stayed on, clearing up, eating some food and then staying for dinner. I was wiped, I felt anti somewhat social but know I wasn’t, I was simply quiet, in my own thoughts, observing others wind down in their own style and manner. I was not really open to trivial dialogue, or at least what I consider trivial conversation that, quite frankly, bores me stupid. And so I stayed posiibly an hour longer than I wished. I finally made my farewell and left. Now I am home and happy, listening to banal New Zealand radio. I have had a good day, I drank very little and am pleased for that. So now it’s time for bed and sleep and dreams. Thank you for a great day Clive and the Ata Rangi crew, Richard.
Can we trust the food chain?
"say Betty, do you realise our milk is being compromised!"
In New Zealand it seems, and much of the World it appears we have a problem, a food problem.
A crisis of trust.
What food and what products in general are safe, when the label says ‘Made in China’ or even Made in New Zealand?
Or more specifically, when it says Product of New Zealand, does that mean it was made in New Zealand of New Zealand produced content? And not of New Zealand product but made elsewhere? We desperately need clarification.
Aotearoa New Zealand, that clean green, 100% natural bastion of all things english, has a Trade Agreement with China, negotiated by and put in place by the long gone Labor Party. Personally I do not believe New Zealand is a part of Asia in the way that Australia is or Taiwan is :) I personally believe New Zealand to be a Pacific Nation and a South Pacific Nation in particular. Being part of the Pacific Rim, I believe we would be, our agriculture, our environment and our society would be better served by closer ties with California where the present Republican Govenor is doing a heroic job in instigating strict environmental laws. Why, California is even being sued by the Bush Government in Washington for having gone too far in trying to clean up their environmental act. If I install Solar Panels, why can't the excess power, excess to my needs, be fed back into the power grid? And why aren't there subsidy's to help me become more green? All good and reasonable questions.
New Zealand’s new John Key led National Government could well send a team to Sacramento in Ca. and talk to said Govenor, otherwise known as The Terminator. There is even talk that he may become Barack Obama’s Environmental Overlord. Not bad for a skinny kid from Austria. But seriously, we have a serious issue with food integrity here in 100% Clean Green Godzone.
I am seeing New Zealand labels being used on Chinese products, garlic being one. I have just written to the Company involved and will report back on my findings. Food is a huge issue. Food and Trade. Free Trade does not mean a Free Ride.
Surely not.
I truly hope John Key has his eye on the ball as Arnold does in California.
Trust is at issue here and nothing comes closer to trust than the integrity of the food we are sold.
More will be revealed.
Addendum; over the past few days, hours I have been corresponding with a New Zealand food producer with factories in China. he was/is concerned that another chinese factory is producing a similar product and using his lablelling to have it accepted in New Zealand. The producer approached Foodstuffs who suggested he go quietly into the night and not to rock the boat. Sound familiar? Do Not Rock The Boat! That sounds like the Nia Glassie Case all over again. I have written to Foodstuffs for clarification . . . more will be revealed.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
WWW or WTF or SYM or F's
Kay S. Hymowitz
Love in the Time of Darwinism
A report from the chaotic postfeminist dating scene, where only the strong survive
Autumn 2008
Earlier this year, I published an article in City Journal called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” The piece elicited a roaring flood of mailed and blogged responses, mostly from young men who didn’t much care for its title (a reference to Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land) or its thesis: that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes.
------------------------to read the complete and fascinating article, simply click on the above headline: WWW
In fact, some people would wager that the Darwinian answer to dating chaos is our future normal. “I have lived in many places, countries, and cultures,” Douglas Gurney from Montgomery, Alabama, writes. “This is a worldwide phenomenon. The behavior of men is simply a response (which is actually a quite logical one) to the changing behavior of women. Simply put, men are a breeding experiment run by women. You reap what you sow—and when a man can sow all he wants and leave the reaping to others, well, why not?”
Saturday, November 15, 2008
We all have our own version of Truth, don't we?
Truth in a Time of War
Leonard Bernstein
By way of instant apology for the rambling remarks that follow, let me certify that I have just returned from three weeks of conducting abroad, involving eight cities in seven countries, with two different orchestras, and juggling five languages. I have come here tonight to make a report on this journey—not because anyone asked me to—(can you imagine anything more boring than a recital of maestronic statistics?)—but rather because I learned something on this tour that I want to share with you.
That would still not be sufficient reason to stand here talking about myself. The point is that what I learned I want to share with you, men and women of Harvard, which is where I learned to love learning. That’s why I’ve come back here tonight.
Okay, on to some statistics. The first two weeks of the three were devoted to a tour with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra—a journey that began in New York City on September 13th (you see, only moments ago!) and proceeded the following day to London, then to Munich, then Pompeii (!), Paris, Zurich, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. This whole tour was in celebration of the 50th birthday of the Israel Philharmonic—which is, in a way, even more miraculous than this three hundred and fiftieth birthday, given the perilous circumstances of the orchestra’s origin in 1936. (It was then called, humbly enough, the Palestine Symphony Orchestra, which is how I first came to know it, many years ago.) For this present jubilant occasion I wrote a special birthday piece for the orchestra I had known and loved so well, a piece called Jubilee Games, designed to celebrate with numerous and vociferous trumpet calls their joyous Jubilee year. Those of you who know your Leviticus will immediately understand what I’m talking about, and even those of you who don’t, but who do know your Constitution, or even the inscription on our Liberty Bell, will understand equally well the excitement and liberation of “Jubilee.”
And don’t think that Harvard wasn’t constantly chiming away in my head in consonance with this Jubilee all during the tour. You see, exactly 50 years ago, as the gods would have it, 50 beautiful autumns ago, the Israel Orchestra was born, and I entered Harvard and took up residence at Wigglesworth Hall [actually, Bernstein enrolled at Harvard in 1935, not 1936]. It was tercentenary time then; and what’s more I had just come freshly from another tercentenary, namely that of the Boston Latin School, from which I had just graduated in 1935. So bells were ringing all around me, for two solid years. And they’ve been chiming ever since, and indeed did so, loudly, on the Jubilee festival tour last month, from St. Paul’s in London to Notre Dame in Jerusalem.
It was all bells and beauty, Hatikvah in our hearts, enraptured audiences—except for one thing: security. We were, after all, the Israel Philharmonic, streaming from airport to airport, concert hall to hotel, public place to public place; we were the messengers of music (that is, beauty, therefore truth) and everywhere around us was something called terrorism. That was also a truth—not perhaps so absolute as Plato’s Aesthetic Truth, but a formidable reality nonetheless. Paris had just undergone a relentless storm of terrorist abuse, and we were en route là -bas. I need not tell you about airports—Heathrow, Leonardo da Vinci, Athens, Vienna—everybody’s favorite headlines. We were therefore heavily guarded; wherever we went there were Carabinieri, Sicherheitspolizei, La Sureté Nationale, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the charming Swiss Army. I could go nowhere without a personal bodyguard, not even for a walk down Piccadilly or the Champs Elysées. I visited the breathtaking ruins of Pompeii, after 15 or 20 years; what a joy, but again attended by a helicopter overhead, soldiers with ferocious dogs on chains, and chummy plainclothesmen in Italian silk shirts concealing stomachs of pure fatal metal. Guns. I hate guns. What a great way to see Pompeii. The next day I swam in the Bay of Sorrento, carefully cruised by two poliziotti. What fun. What was happening was that day by day, going from triumph to triumph, from one set of old friends to another, from joy to joy and sunshine to sunshine, an invisible character gradually came into being, slowly and steadily developing a special identity called The Enemy. I had never before been so aware of this metaphorical being, The Enemy; but the more protection one has, the more danger is implied; the stronger the defense, the greater must be the threat. At one point I suddenly realized that this is the way the world lives, is practiced in living—existing in terms of an enemy. It’s exactly the target that Jesus aimed at all his life, and Buddha too, and Freud; and Gandhi and Martin Luther King: trying to make this invisible creature unnecessary. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Turn that other cheek. Meditate: Is there truly an enemy, a serpent, devil, PLO terrorist, Libyan hit-man, Communist agent, Bolshevik bomber, Belfast Blackie...(why, in Belfast the blood runs in the gutters in the name of the Prince of Peace). Of course there is an enemy; reality says so. Only meditate, say the great teachers: Is there really? Or do we create him?
Such thoughts accompanied me unremittingly through to the end of our Israel Jubilee tour, which ended in glory in the world’s most beautiful city, Jerusalem, where for three days I meditated on the nature of “The Enemy.” The next day I was in Vienna, to rehearse, perform, record, and film a difficult new program, with a whole new orchestra, my Vienna Philharmonic. Tough; rough schedule; but that’s my problem. On the one hand I breathed a sigh of relief; security was off; I could take a walk without a cop, or fierce dogs, no chorus line of Carabinieri. On the other hand, I was after all in Vienna, the capital of a country which only a short time before had elected a certain Kurt Waldheim to the presidency, I had been barraged by mail protesting my return there, implying that an abrupt and highly publicized cancellation would have some far-reaching political effect. Nonsense. Who am I to have political effect? I just work here, don’t push me; I’m a simple, hard-working maestro. Well—maybe some little political effect, but certainly not from the negative action of canceling a visit; how passive, what a non-action. Far better to go and face the situation—which is not such a bad one, given that unbelievable orchestra which plays like one hundred angel-fingers growing out of my hands, and which not long ago made me an honorary member (and I’m the only living conductor to have that honor), so I’m proud of them and close to them and spiritually somehow akin, whether we play Mozart or my own Kaddish Symphony (the best performance of Kaddish I’ve ever heard, by the way)—so, like I’m saying, its like not so tough, this Vienna situation, know what I mean, not so tough, Okay?
Reverting now to the English language (forgive me, I can’t imagine what possessed me) we are now in Vienna, free to walk, but not free of that haunting concept: The Enemy. Especially here in Vienna, after that gruesome election last May, there is universal enmity; it is a city divided against itself, or else as some think, it is a city at loggerheads with the whole rest of Austria. Whichever is true, everyone is someone’s enemy—although you’d never really notice it. The streets are full of happy young people, the sun is shining, the museums are thriving, and there’s music, music everywhere. Still, the present chancellor of Austria, a vigorous, personable, youngish man named Franz Vranitzky has called new elections in November. This is very brave for a popular chancellor and the current leader of the Socialist government to do, but he must, because there is an enemy in the air, and it must be confronted: if it is real, and strong, it will be recognized and fought with democratic debate; if it is not, then it must be dispelled for the ghost it is, whatever its name.
Now I will move swiftly along, since this is all a bit more than you care to hear so late in the evening. I arrived in Vienna on Monday, and found an invitation to dine alone with Chancellor Vranitzky on Friday. Now that very Friday night was going to be Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year. Roth Hashanah ushers in not only a hopeful new year, but also a special 10-day period of penitence, re-evaluation of self and others, prayer and meditation on one’s relationship to God, and a lot of forgiveness, culminating 10 days later in the holiest of holidays, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
And so, upon arrival, my moral computer began whirring away, and I conceived what I regard as the champ idea I’ve ever had, namely to invite Vranitzky to my hotel suite for a real Jewish New Year feast (catered, of course) and to invite as well the great ex-Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, now old and out of power, but my dear old friend whom I’ve always regarded as a major statesman of the world, as opposed to just a splendid politician. Now Vranitzky is not Jewish, but Kreisky is, although he has been incredibly misunderstood by his fellow Jews and has taken a lot of drubbing at their hands. In short, they both accepted, and arrived punctually at 8:30 on New Year’s Eve. What they did not know was the really tricky part of my plan, that is, to invite for coffee and liqueurs at 10:30 two political enemies, bitter enemies, the bitterer for having been former close allies, now not on speaking terms for three years, who are also close friends of mine in Vienna. And their ladies.
Now, being a hostess is not exactly my forte, and here I was trying to conduct a social symphony, if you will, of amazing complexity, especially when it would get to that tricky scherzo at 10:30; but I was possessed, and inspired with the notion of exposing this concept, this Begriff [idea], that we call “enemy,” and returning it for good, for constructive action. I will spare you the details; suffice it to say that it worked. Not mere politeness by any means; we got down to all the toughest problems, but without a harsh word, nor a melodramatic exit. Of course the talk quickly turned to the Waldheimer syndrome, and to Kreisky’s possible involvement with him (he had proposed him in 1970 for secretary-general of the UN)—which led us inevitably to the banality of evil (for Waldheim himself is so wormy a figure that he is beneath discussion)—which led us in turn to the adagio, slow movement of our New Year’s symphony—socialist ideology, which had for 13 years, under Kreisky, made Austria a model of neutral democracy—in one of the toughest spots on earth, the easternmost outpost of the Western world. We spoke of the morality of socialism, working so well with capitalism both domestic and foreign, the ideology of equality—a word one hears a lot but doesn’t yet quite comprehend. Which of course led us to Moses and Plato and Christ, to say nothing of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Freud—all of whom have been institutionally corrupted by greed and power. But especially we talked of Jesus (Austria is a fiercely Roman Catholic land)—and only naturally, because it was Rosh Hashanah, the time of re-assessment, repentance, and forgiveness. Love thy neighbor. Turn that other cheek—Kingdom of God, Prince of Peace—love, God, peace: words which have gotten so overused they sound like Muzak, easy listenin’, nice wallpaper.
So there we were, a roomful of putative enemies, engaged in warm debate, deep rapprochement, and even some pretty funny stories, some witty rejoinders. In short, it was a smash hit. Kreisky, being the oldest, left first, surrounded by his security; as I walked him to the lift he said, “Lenny, this was the best evening I’ve had in two years.” My heart leapt up; Hope! Happy New Year! Perhaps a re-united front for socialist ideals! After all, that’s the only way to combat the neo-Nazi disease that produced Alzheimer—I mean, you know; and the disunity of that once-united front is certainly what elected him, or gave him the disgraceful impulse to run, in the first place, as candidate for president of Austria. Enough of this Rosh Hashanah story; I think I may have done my bit, without a press conference or a single interview.
That was exactly one week ago tonight, and when they all had left around 2 A.M. I sat and mused on words, and the decline of language. Love, Peace, War. So overused we barely know what they mean anymore; like love: Is love a concept from the Gospels, from Plato, or that impossibly repetitive word in any pop song? “All you need is love, love, love...” Meaningless. Religion: are we talking about prayer, charity, faith, or militant fundamentalism? Enemy: that old word we can’t live without. We can all conceive of a personal enemy; a jealous lover, a bitter rival, and so on; but that big-concept word—THE ENEMY—is it not invented and constantly re-invented to give us something against which to fight? Could we have a thriving economy, or even a modest affluent society, without this perennial reason to build our arsenals? Would we be in space without an enemy to beat there?
Another word, truth. Truth? Well, one almost gives up. Since I’ve come home a noble man named Bernie Kalb quit his job as official spokesman at the State Department, on the grounds that he could no longer lie, officially lie. What was the defensive response from Foggy Bottom? The following worse-than-foggy quote from Churchill: “In time of war, the truth is so precious, it must be carefully attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Now that was a glorious sentence when Churchill said it, but to use it in the current context of planned disinformation is simply obscene. Note the not insignificant modifier “in time of war.” Is this time now, this moment, a time of war? Is this a period for Alien and Sedition Acts, counterrevolutionary measures, saving the world for democracy, yet a third time? Hardly. Only when convenient for the powers-that-be to say so. How often, and how gladly those same powers pronounce this a time of peace, in fact, when convenient. “Look at our nuclear arsenal,” they speechify proudly. “Has it not kept the world at peace for 40 years?” When it serves their purpose. Good Lord, we even have a missile called a Peacekeeper. How sly and crafty we are, and stupid too, as we go on debasing the language, honoring ambiguity in prose instead of in poetry, maundering, mindlessly preachifying. Love. War. Hate. Peace. God. Patriotism. Rambo. Way back before the First World War, specifically the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire and Company, certain visionaries saw the debacle coming, Kafka, von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus; they perceived it through the degradation of language, the hypocrisy of official speech. Are we doing the same? This is a deep question to ask ourselves in this period of self-reflection and forgiveness. Take the word Marx, for instance, Karl Marx, once regarded by all thinking men as a philosopher of the first magnitude, continuing and furthering the wisdom of Socrates and Hegel and . . . Marx? Today just a four-letter word. Today, even to discuss his philosophy of class struggle, except as the mark of the enemy (The Enemy!) is to expose oneself to the epithet: “soft on Communism.” How soft do you have to be to be thus accused? Piano? Pianissimo? Mezzo-piano? How about mezzo-forte, which might permit a sensible, unbiased appraisal of democratic socialism, or social democracy, or even—heaven forgive me—just plain socialism. How else are we ever to understand that great chain of hands that once encircled our Western world: Bruno Kreisky, Willy Brandt, Harold Wilson, Sadat, Allende, Olof Palme? All down, out, or simply murdered. Is not this worth our most vigorous thinking, our most Jeffersonian debate? Yes, but not if we wish to maintain the enemy, and remain forever in the dualistic, Manichean world of good and evil, bad guys and good guys, us and them, serpent and angel, gods and devils. Long live the enemy, and we’ll all get rich!
I warned you, hours ago, that these remarks would ramble. Jet lag is merciless; statistics are worse. But somehow I have arrived back at my main point: that I have come here tonight to share with you something I learned on this fantastic three-week journey abroad: first, that I have never loved my country so profoundly and caringly as I do now; second, that because of that love I feel more than ever the compulsion and responsibility to re-examine our automatic enemy-concept; and last, that this is a great time to do it, during these 10 days of prayer and reflection.
There is a charming legend about this penitential period: It is said that on Rosh Hashanah, New Year’s Day, the golden Book of Life up there in the sky is inscribed with the name of every single human being, along with his or her destiny for the year: who will live and who will die, who by fire and who by water, who will prosper and who will not. But there are 10 days within which one can change that inscription for the better—by prayer and the practice of good deeds. Charity and faith can avert the evil decree (you see, it’s all just another version of Corinthians, chapter 13). In other words, it’s now or never, because on the 10th day, Yom Kippur, the big book is closed and sealed for the year. Sorry folks, that’s it.
So here we are on the eighth night, and I want to make my own public confession of faith, hope, and charity. You see, a couple of years ago I had a bit of a falling-out with my esteemed and well-loved friend Derek Bok. I won’t bore you with the story, but the rumpus was basically about a book written and published at Harvard and blessed with a sizable preface by President Bok. I read and hated this book and became quite exercised about the preface, which didn’t exactly endorse the book, but the presence of which, up front and center, by so distinguished a thinker, gave the book a certain cachet I didn’t think it deserved. Dare I mention its name? Living with Nuclear Weapons—the title alone was discouraging enough. Well, I got real mad and, in a self-righteous huff, stopped further contributions to the Harvard scholarship fund I had established years before. I was wrong to do so; and even though Derek and I have never debated the matter publicly or privately—never even had that lunch we promised each other—nevertheless I have sinned, I re-examine, I re-evaluate, and I hereby return the withheld funds. There is no enemy; there is the American principle of free debate; fighting against an invented enemy is wasteful; fighting for ourselves and one another is constructive, is sharing—otherwise known as love.
Let me leave you with the thought that we all have until Monday night to meditate, rectify, re-assess, and get that celestial inscription changed. Try it, it’s worth it. And, as we say, shana tovah, a good year, and hatimah tovah, a good inscription. Bless you.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Suddenly, everything old is new again!
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance".
Cicero 55 BC
Roman author, orator and politician (106 BC - 43 BC)
In who do we trust?
Home > Books > Non-fiction > Self-help > Relationships
This is what I came up with when I went to explore Horoscopes on TradeMe, the HOT New Zealand selling & everything site.
Started by basic kiwis who became multi millionaires in selling the site to Fairfax in Australia, bugger. Bugger Fairfax. If New Zealand had any locally owned media it would have, yeah right dickie dream on, stayed in kiwi hands. New Zealanders are great innovators. Great ideas people. Great #8 Fencing Wire Proponents, aka, ‘G8FWP’. They can make, design, invent, something, anything, out of nothing. Take Hamilton the Jet Boat designer, all he set out to do, according to legend, was to get water from one place on his property to another, at a higher level. The rest is history.
Religion and Marriage follow the same pattern, making something out of nothing.
Anyhow, that is not what I wanted to say, ADD kicks in when I am writing, ADHD in fact . . . what I wanted to say, to refer to, to point out, is the ‘self help’ quotion of the lead in.
Self Help is big business. Williamson, the Rajshneesh, Freud, the scenery is littered with Books, Videos, Groups, Followers . . .
No, it wasn’t invented by a kiwi, as far as I know.
Self Help. Two very interesting words.
In the days of the desert, in times gone by, long, long ago, old men, wise men, young men, foolish men, strode out into the desert. Driven by a question? “Why didn’t my souffle rise?” I bet they actually meant why didn’t my Sufi Rise?
No wonder they got weird and wonderful Menus.
Out, far away from the Pyramids, or maybe directly beneath them, but far away from wife and foe, not necessarily the one and same but possibly, far, far away they would go, out into the sands of time and get down on their knees and look upward, don’t ask, and call out, HELP! In my case, if I was there I would scream it out. My God sometimes appears as if deaf. But they would ask for HELP! No self, other than them, out in the desert, alone, at night, with all sorts of creepy crawly bin ladenny things to pluck at their faith. HELP! Simple really. But to add SELF in front of it, is asking, simply asking for trouble. Weren’t we the ones who got ourselves into this shit, why would we ask the victim/perpertrator to fix what they fucked? Good question.
I only had one glass of my own Pinot Noir/Burgundy before I started writing but it was a good glass and at the end of all my tapping of keys, maybe I will, just maybe, another glass, albeit smaller that the red wine balloon I drank.
Self Help? No, I do not ask myself for help, no I am definitely not God. I talk to God. That is what they did in the desert. Asked another for help. Then, they listened. Yep, listened. Once help is asked for, we need to listen, meditate, be open. Listen. If we are so busy explaining what it is we want we don’t get to L.I.S.T.E.N!
It seems so simple. Ask! But it’s not, no, in fact, it’s fucking hard, it’s hard fucking work! It takes practice. Practice takes time. To ask an unknown entity that goes by the name of God, man, that is one giant leap of faith.
Christopher Hitchens doesn’t believe in God. God know why I threw his name in there, cause I don’t I am sure I had an idea but it withered on the vine of life.
Okay, that is perfectly okay, seriously, you are still a human if you don’t have any concept of God or even, a God, any God. Good. Notice I said “a God” not simply God.
We all, certainly I own my own beliefs, have something. Without a belief and a trust in that belief, that ‘some’ thing, and a surrender to that belief,
( read, if you will, The Collected Writings of Harry Teibout )
then there are questions coming out of our mouths like there is no tomorrow, oh didn’t I mention that before, there really is no tomorrow, only this tiny moment, this nanno second, that’s it! Period. There is no tomorrow. No not a kiwi invention either. Kiwis simply live as if there were no tomorrow, not always pretty.
A belief in a power, an entity, far greater than my self. I am comfortable with that, most days. At times, well at some times, it truly challenges me, especially between 5AM and 7AM NZ Daylight Savings Time, DST, which for me is a crock.
Day Light Savings?
Definitely not a Kiwi idea. What the hell are we saving it for.
In my book, the sun comes up every 24 hours, has been doing so for countless years of time. 6000 years if you are a literal fundamentalist. Every day, at varying times the Sun rises in the East. It streams in my window. It enters my soul, it fills me with life, energy and ideas. At the end of the day it drops down over the horizon and you could say my soul dies, to be born again the next time the sun rises. I have heard this to be, and I love the concept. The Sun of God. Fancy that.
Mind you, I don’t simply leap out of bed and go “AH HA!” I am alive. Nope, most days, or it seems that it’s most days, I simply lie in bed and think, oh oh, Dickies in trouble. I think! I don’t remember to ask God for help. I think I can do it by Self Help.
I gave up being God a couple of days or years or even lifetimes ago. Today I believe, I trust, in a Power far greater than myself.
A Higher Power. HP. I ask for help because of and by my self, I have no clue. I am powerless. Over pretty much everything, people places and . . . things!
So, no matter that the government thinks that they can play God, they ‘legislate’ for Day Light Saving. That’s DLS but I, personally, think they are on LSD.
Light Saving Dudes! Certainly not Life Saving! All the time espousing that we live in a Christian Society. How can one be a Christian when one doesn’t believe God is in charge. So leave the bloody Sun alone. Hands off the Sun of God. The cows have no clue, the sheep have no clue, I have no clue. Don’t fuck with nature. Play with Nurture if you think we need help from the academic pointy heads who run the bureacracies called Government Departments.
The concept of a Public Service is surely an oxymoron.
Were the 12 disciples public servants? And, if they were, why were they limited to 12? The Public Service is out of control. It’s the largest single employer on the face of the Planet. Bigger than General frigging Motors, The General to those in the know or who are stockholders. Or part of the US Treasury who are about to bail them out. Yes! Bail Out The General. B.O.T.G!
What we need, today, is a General Bail Out, for every one. A bloody G.B.O. Close to G.O.D. but no cigar, not yet at least.
GOB Smacked, rather that GOD Smacked.
So, where am I going, what am I saying, is this new, is this known, NO/YES! It’s been around for countless centuries but we are the Animals Who Never Learn. Yep, simple AWNL. Sort of like AWOL but not quite. Just one letter shy. And that is after one glass of my own wine. No I did not make it from water, I grew the grapes myself. Voila, The Wrath of Grapes. TWOG! Or Two Go for those of you who enjoy word play. Not bad, two words in one. Time for another Glass of Pinot/Burgundy. Cheers.
Ps, as I saved this I thought, yeah, it’s a Full Moon tonight, most people think the Sun shines out of their A . . . ‘s, so isn’t that a Full Moon. ‘Night.
Sunday, November 09, 2008
It is an issue so complex . . .
'Saying the unsayable': John Sutherland on Toni Morrison
By John Sutherland
Published: November 8 2008 02:00 | Last updated: November 8 2008 02:00
The epithet "first" hangs like a lead albatross around the neck of high-achieving African-Americans: Jackie Robinson, first African-American major league baseball player of the modern era; Colin Powell, first African-American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and, of course, there's Barack Obama.
The objection to the f-word is that it carries with it the smug implication that the field is level; African-Americans have just been slow in catching up. Now they have and we're all post-racial. Glory be.
Toni Morrison, who in 1993 became the first African-American to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, has never bought into the notion that African-Americans are simply differently pigmented whites, slow out of the starting blocks, but coming up fast on the inside lane.
Her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), whose heroine, Pecola, prays every night to God to make her Shirley Temple-beautiful, probes at the racial inferiority complex which - more than any slave-driver's whip - keeps the black man and woman under. You must understand before you can lose it, the novel asserts. And it's a long time losing.
The Bluest Eye is set in Depression America - midway between emancipation and now. Morrison has always believed you must go back to find the truths that haunt the present, a thesis that finds its highest expression in her masterpiece - and the work that won her the Pulitzer Prize - Beloved (1987). And the past, her fiction asserts, is more real for the black American because, like Christian's pack in The Pilgrim's Progress , they more than others, must carry it through life. You can only be authentic, in Morrison's analysis, if you know where you and your people started from.
Morrison's artistic project has been to create a new literary idiom for who - and what - she is. The best place to start on her body of work is the 1992 novel, Jazz , the midpart of a trilogy that begins with Beloved and ends with Paradise (1999). In Jazz Morrison invents a style daringly analogous to the one indubitably African-American art form.
The language of Jazz riffs, interplays, and runs fluidly into itself. One doesn't read it - it carries you along. "I got quiet," one of the characters says, "because the things I couldn't say were coming out of my mouth anyway." That paradox - the unsayable being said anyway - could stand as the epigraph for all Morrison's fiction.
John Sutherland is emeritus professor of literature at University College, London
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Saturday, November 08, 2008
3:12 AM in the Deep South, South Pacific that is!
2:45 AM
Orion sits to the East of my bedroom window
As I slept a hand, white, crept under my arm
I was not shocked, I simply said
“Satan be gone”
Who was it?
Who’s hand?
My cat, Amigo lay at my back
My dog, Kiri lay to my front
It was neither of these
And so, here I sit
2:48 AM
Yesterday I was given a square of canvas
Upon which
I can create
To return to Aratoi, the gallery, for whom I make films
At times
A blank square of canvas
On this do I paint a hand
A white hand
I am American
More than I am New Zealand
2:51 AM
today I vote in New Zealand
last week
I voted in America
I voted for a true African American
Barack Obama
Father, a Kenyan
Mother, from Kansas
Born, Hawaii
Soon to reside in
The White House
Slavery is dead
White Rule has come to an end
As we know it
Imagine, a Black Man in the White House
A Black First Lady and Family
The metaphors, the trauma, the shock of the new
In God We Trust!
2:55AM
Orion still sits to the East of my bedroom window
It sits as I write
Above and beyond my right shoulder
3 years ago today I was camped in Colorado
Orion sat to the South West
Today, this morning, it sits
To the North East, my world is turned upside down
A Black Man is President of the United States of America
America has a Black President
52% voted for 47% against
Think about it
A majority of Americans voted for a 180 degree shift
2:59 AM
The World awakes to a new Dawn
A Brave New World
Hope is a small town in Arizona
Hope resides in the heart of America
And, Americans
I salute Barack Obama
Hail to the Chief
Yesterday it hailed golf balls where I live
White Hail Stones
The Gall!
Today
3:02 AM
I ask myself
“what can I do today, to make this a better world”
Today I get to vote a New direction for New Zealand.
That is what I can do, Vote!
Vote and I have a Voice
No Vote, no Voice
3:04 AM
Today, for the first time, I left before I could,
the first time in 65 years I get to vote
In the Country of my Birth
Imagine that!
3:05 AM
Land of the Free!
Tristram Hunt, a British historian, put it this way: Mr. Obama “brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to — that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen.”
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