i AM nobody

it’s friday, the last work day of another week and here I sit, slowly starting my day, deciding to write but what, tell it as it is, JD Salinger died this week, but then so did many many other people  . . . 

"Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and for every else to rave about me doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash." 

but that piece rang my bell. do i relate or am i just being, what? perverse, feeling somewhat sorry formyself? I do enjoy the concept of being a nobody but I also miss the applause, quite a dilemma but then it’s not new, i have struggled with that all my life, “who do you think who you are” today they are not my brothers or parents words, they are mine. I am the one who bloody well holds on to the negative barbs from the past and it doesn’t serve me or anyone actually. So my fine feathered friend, Richard, Dick, Dickie, whatever and whoever i answer to is who ever i am at any given point of time. To write is to speak and to speak, for me, is to write.

Just got back from a 7 day road trip with my lovely lover Emily and for two days we have beavered away at rearranging what is becoming ‘our’ home. It’s not just a house anymore where I stored my overcrowded stuff, it is ‘our new home’. a place for love to happen, for creative journeys to take place, a place where honesty is paramount and vulnerability practiced on a daily, minute by minute basis.

. . . and for me, ‘dick, ‘richard’, ‘dickie’, whatever, it is a place for me to continue my journey, to explore life through my creative endeavors of film | fotography | filosophy.

but first things first, breakfast . . . bacon, eggs, toast and a cuppa t! 

Not all bad, then in comes the laundry, read parts of Denis O’Reilly’s new Blog posting and wondered at the issue of p and gangs and pakeha and a whole bunch of other kiwi stuff that effects people’s lives, that prevents people from truly living the ‘kiwi dream’ they seem stuck more in ‘the great kiwi nightmare’, oh well, as they say in the US, “have a nice life”.

. . .  so what was I going to write? oh yeah, just got back didn’t we, muy lover and me, from a 7 day road trip. 

featherston - napier - te puia springs - auckland - matakana and home via taupo. Driving my new landrover, secondhand actually, a 1994 landrover discovery, which completes my family of landies over the years. first there was the 1974 series 3 88” wheelbase, then a brand new 1976 range rover, a brand new 1993 nas defender 90 and now, a 1994 discovery tdi.

The funny thing is that i have helped create television advertising for all these models from 1976 to 1996 and now i am attempting to make a film about my two year journey in the Defender 90 aka Pakeha. Know your product I guess. I love landrover as a brand and only hope like hell they can keep their shit together and not lose the plot. My lovely lover learned to drive in a Landie but is a Toyota fan, oh well, take what you like and leave the rest :)

Napier, a dreadful Motel on the foreshore, great coffee at Ujazi Cafe, a quick show and tell tour of ‘the ‘hood i grew up in’ and then north breaking for a great conversation in Wairaroa with a cinema owner who has been trying to get local councillors to support his concept. but nope, fairly typical kiwi entrenched status quo negative no go. what is it about those who stand for council and then do nothing, that’s the nickname of the South Wai Council, “the do nothing council”. Sad but true at times. Councils who talk about sewerage systems for 20 years and the price continues to rise while they dither trying to find the ‘perfect’ system. Recycle the shit, it’s that simple. 

Anyhow the meeting in Wairoa was awesome and i wish I had taken my small video camera, broke my golden rule, never leave home without it!

North along the great eastland coast line and a quick phone call to te Puia Springs as we loaded up with diesel fuel, to book a room. we spent two days there and experienced a great window on local maori thinking and more grist to the mill that my thinking is very much in sync with maori. they are as challenged in communicating their thoughts openly and as honestly as i am. They see pacific islanders as big an issue as i do. they rolled their collective eyes when I mentioned hone harawira, oh well. but it was great to sit around the kitchen table to hear and share stories. we are all one under the skin indeed. We used the hotel as a base for exploring ruatoria, the waiapu river both the upper reaches and the river mouth on the north side. TikiTiki finally got explored. All the way the weather was socked in but with cloud breaks we were treated to magical late afternoon light and shade. Love my Leica. We left late the next day, ask my lovely lover :) but miscalculated the time and, after a long, long drive on roads less travelled were finally booked in to a hotel in auckland on the foreshore at 11pm, originally they told me no rooms were available but then after looking me over decided i had money :) yeah right. 

Matakana the next day and booked into our motel and changed for my sister’s 70th birthday lunch at Heron’s Flight. What a great rolling, roiling, emotional experience, taking photos, hiding behind my lovely leica lens but having a great deal of fun. Collapsed in bed and after a late brekkie the next day schlepped south to taupo. 

Now that, there, Taupo is a place i/we could live. 

Our whole interaction with the locals in hotels, apart from the snooty Hilton, cafe’s, shops, art galleries, was simply awesome and i found the attitudes to be so sincere and friendly as to feel I was on another planet. The town of my childhood holidays, fishing, camping, cycling and hiking. 

Lake Taupo, simply awesome. 

Yeah, I could live there quite easily and the relationship i am enjoying with my lovely lover makes that entirely possible.

. . .  so there you have it, the neville brothers are singing “no choice” “our sons and daughters” on my ipod, the birds are quite vocal outside, i have just spoken to my sister in mairangi bay and the sun is shining in a brilliant clear blue sky, not at all bad, not bad at all. 

i love the thought that i AM a nobody and i love that idea, amen.

Web Search results :)

Taking responsibility for our community's health.

“When you want to foster more responsible behavior in people, you can’t just legislate more rules and regulations,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.” “You have to enlist and inspire people in a set of values. People need to be governed both from the outside, through compliance with rules, and from the inside, inspired by shared values. That is why shame is so important. When we call a banker ‘a fat cat’ for taking too big a bonus, we’re actually being inspirational leaders because we are telling them, ‘You are behaving beneath how a responsible human being should behave.’ We need to inspire the village to shame those who betray our common values.”

I copied this from today’s New York Times, an article by Thomas Friedman, ‘Father Knows Best’. This refers to the Nigerian would be, could be bomber who’s father, a prominent banker, blew the whistle on his son. Much like the son who, in New Zealand has called for his father to face the truth and hand himself in to police after escaping jail.

From this article comes the concept that communities really are the begin all and end all of social behavior. What is acceptable in Featherston reflects the overall values of all Featherstonians.

"The men looked frightened. Taken in handcuffs after United States Marines found caches of Kalashnikovs, bomb-making material and opium during searches of their homes in a major offensive against the Taleban, their future looked bleak.

But just 48 hours later the prisoners were brought back to their village and freed into the care of local elders.

The extraordinary scene was one of the first examples of the new US policy of "reconciling" the Taleban being implemented.

It is modelled on how Sunni nationalist groups in Iraq (the so-called "Sunni Awakening") were persuaded or induced to turn their backs on al Qaeda, an initiative now seen as a major turning-point in that war."

This idea has, I believe, been used on occasions in New Zealand. It is an idea that, in retrospect, could have been used when my grape pickers came back at night and stole my possessions. Rather than being sent to jail, work of a restorative nature, working for the victims, that is me, with legal oversight and community involvement, seems to me to be a step in a change of direction. We find it too easy, I have found it too easy, to simply say “fuck you, you did the crime, now do the time”, many of these young men come from backgrounds of instability and we need to be cognizant of this fact, in fact by our silence over the years we have helped grow dysfunction. Yes, they all sound like trick words, dysfunction, denial and such but they are the words that best describe a reality we are so quick to dismiss, or in modern parlance, to ‘diss’.

Once more I bring it to the attention of our community leaders, our Mayors, our Councillors, our Police, the ‘Justice’ System and to community groups that tut tut those who step outside the law. The responsibility for a healthy, safe and vibrant community begins with me, with you, with all of us, it’s that simple and that difficult. Accepting that the system we have doesn’t work, with New Zealand having the second highest incarceration rate after the ‘big’ bad boy, America. We so like to point the finger, such an English trait, we so like to take no prisoners, a Scottish trait, that we have lost sight of our humanity and that for the lowest on the totem or even the highest who fall, we have no love or tolerance or even forgiveness. It is after all, human to err. We all fuck up at some point in our lives and it’s as though it was a game, to point at the Tiger Woods of the world as “Gotcha!”

I read the Times today and thought about it a great deal. For a Father to ‘dob’ in his son truly takes courage and a commitment to change. Someone has finally said “Stop, enough”.

Food for thought as we enter a new decade.

GoMA

Dear GoMU, I need to take time out and ask myself quite clearly and slowly what is it that I wish to do with the rest of my life, today. A big part of me feels isolated here in Aotearoa and I feel that in some way I am spinning my wheels. Should I move to Wellington or would that distract me even more?

I have a tendency to fill my life with stuff and this gets in the way of clear thinking, I am easily distracted and find it hard to motivate myself without a deadline or a plan. Earlier this year I set about digitizing my Zane Grey material and was focussed for two months and then took on a couple of  outside projects. These were good for me and I had a great deal of fun. Then a couple of months ago I went to work on ZG and found I had lost all the Media. Even when found, it wouldn’t open and so I am faced with starting all over again. It’s not that I am lazy, I just seem to get lost, my energy seems low and I am not motivated to do what I know needs to be done. I guess I need a plan to which I can hold myself and to be open to support from others, from Emily. Now why do I find that so hard, to have found a woman I love who supports me unconditionally. It’s scary I guess.

I just changed Dear God to Dear GoMU, sort of like GoMA or MoMA, sounds good actually. 'The God of My Understanding'.

Anyhow, I need a plan. I just read a piece by Cassandra Gaisford the artist, whose work I own, a motivational piece. Maybe I will look at that again and draw from it, maybe I will search out the book.

As a child I was a dreamer, maybe I need to simply acknowledge that I AM a dreamer and that is ALL right. I know I am challenged by my own thinking and I know I have been challenged by doing much of my life alone but now, today, I know I cannot do any of it alone, it’s that simple. Surrendering to the process is not easy and it is a daily practice that I need to pick up again. And so, for today, I am going to practice relaxing and go with the flow, do what is in front of me and not push. Don’t just do something, sit there, here is a quote from Father Leo;

“I rather like the idea of having New Year resolutions; it’s just that I’m not very good at keeping them.  I’m the kind of person who buys the shorts and running shoes, extravagantly shows the purchases to everyone, then doesn’t run!  The intention was good; however the follow through…awful.  That’s me.”

And so I get to identify with another human being, that is the importance of fellowship aka healthy friendship, I am not alone, I am not the only person afflicted with a dis-ease. Not the first and certainly not the last. This is simply my journey and like any journey, a good one to read is The Hobbit, it is fraught with danger, usually from our selves. Go figure :), anyhow, just for today, I am writing, I have enjoyed chatting to John and to Duncan, I have exercised, done the dishes, cleaned my teeth. So all in all and, it’s only 11:14am, I am doing just fine, time to cut myself some slack I guess :) Amen. 
from GoB, aka Grumpy old Bugger :)

The Kiwi Film Company Pty, Ltd,. 1971 - 1987

30 years ago, 1979, my company, The Kiwi Film Company Pty, Ltd., became a Corporate Member of AWARD. To become a Corporate Member was to commit to 7 years of support for the Australian Writers and Art Directors Association. AWARD was founded that year to encourage the commission of a high standard of design in the communication arts. It was all about the stimulation of higher standards.
And as was stated amongst it’s aim, “that’s all it’s about.”
We were among a rarified group of companies that represented the very best in Australian Advertising. The Kiwi Film Company was only one of two film companies that were corporate members, and the only film editing company. The other Corporate members included The Campaign Palace, John Clemenger, Connaghan and May, Magnus Nankervis and Curl, Ogilvy and Mather, George Patterson, Schofield Sherbon Baker and USP amongst others.
Most of these companies have been swallowed by foreign conglomerates but Kiwi continues as Richard Clark’s kiwicafe.com.
Home to my film editing | photography | writing
I mention all this as I don’t often talk of my ‘Australian Period’ 1964 to 1987 23 years of bloody hard work, many mistakes, high achievement, disappointment and reward. I was a film editor to the Australian Film Industry, specializing in advertising commercials for both television and cinema. We, as a company, left an indelible mark on the industry and opened the way for others to start similar companies and basically we changed the face of editing as it applied to commercials, for ever.
Kiwi Films was an editing boutique of the highest order with a standard of excellence second to none. It wasn’t until I moved to New York in 1987 that I began to get an inkling of what we had achieved and I can now say, with considerable comfort and pride, that we were one of the first anywhere in the World to create an editing boutique that offered full service to advertising agencies and film companies. It allowed creative directors, art directors and writers to more closely craft their work the way it was conceived. It sort of cut out the middle man. That didn’t sit totally well with some directors and producers however the truly talented ones fully supported this step as it freed them to concentrate on the production and direction elements of film. We guarded their interests for them while offering a direct link to Ad Agencies. At least that is how I saw it. We did very, very well as a concept if not financially. I smile at that as it has taken me years to become aware and accept that I am a creative entity, not a businessman. But that was then and this is now and we did well for all our stumbles.
And so I guess having picked up a copy of the 1979 AWARD Book has triggered in me the desire to ‘tell’ my story as a film editor. I will work at this ‘story’ over time and share it on my Blog, and so feel free to contact me with any corrections or your own views and memories. After all, even though I took the first step, I certainly didn’t do it alone, no way Jose!

Who Am . . . I

In November 2009, Hone Hawawira was asked to repay some travel costs after skipping a taxpayer-funded conference in Brussels to go sightseeing in Paris. "How many times in my lifetime am I going to get to Europe? So I thought, 'Fuck it, I'm off. I'm off to Paris'," he said. In a subsequent email exchange with a member of the New Zealand public who had criticised Mr Harawira's actions Mr Harawira lashed out at white people, stating "White motherfuckers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bullshit....And, quite frankly, I don't give a shit what you or anyone else thinks about it. OK?". Harawira's letter was heavily criticised by the media, other members of Parliament, and the majority of the New Zealand public.

Personally I loved Hone's outburst, we need more of it. The reaction from Pakeha has been predictable to say the least. Outrage.
I can hear it "see that's what the black bastards actually think of us, the ungrateful bastards and after all we've done for them. Lazy bloody Horis!"

Or am I being racist in propagating that stereotypical reaction. I know from my own family those words are an accurate portrayal. However I also know there are many Pakeha like me who are totally sympathetic to the Maori cause. When I left New Zealand in the early 60's this country was part and parcel of a fading British Empire. When I returned to Aotearoa 43 years later the Queen is till seen as the Sovereign Head of this country. Personally I do not recognize the Queen as my sovereign ruler or the Crown as a law to which I am responsible. I am not an activist in the conventional sense of the word. Maybe I am a chicken shit for not being so inclined. All I know is that I have a point of view that was denied me as a child growing up in New Zealand. However, as an adult living in Aotearoa I now know I have a voice. It's my own. Others, like Hone, have their voice, which I will fight for.

And that is why I say we need more outbursts like Hone's. I am a card carrying member of the Maori Party. As far as I am aware I have not one drop of Maori blood, no Ngati anything, heaven forbid, my Mother would roll over in her grave or wherever her ashes are buried. My family does not appear to be inclusive of Maori in their dialogue with me and so, sadly but healthily I stay away from the topic. However I am frustrated as where to go for the dialogue I need. I can learn so much from books but it is the life experience, the exchange of culture and spirit and thought that will truly give me a base upon which to build my own acceptance and understanding of both Maori and Pakeha. The acceptance of myself as a Kiwi, a New Zealander. I need that so that I feel part of this place.

For the past 20 years I have lived in America and always felt part of that Place, wherever I travelled. I never felt that in Europe or Asia or Australia and I have yet to feel it here, back in Aotearoa. Maybe this says more about me than anyone else but I do know others who share my experience and this allows me to accept and trust my instincts and my vision.

I am open to other's ideas, as long as others are open to mine. Life is about community and community takes involvement and co-operation and shared experience. That takes story telling which I love.

So for now this is a draft as it needs more work, more depth, more input. amen.

Now I am going to publish. I need to share this, I need feedback, come what may :)

18 months on and nothing has changed!

The Huffington Post
DECEMBER 5, 2009

This is the print preview: Back to normal view »
Dr. James HansenDirector of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Posted: June 23, 2008 05:57 PM
Twenty Years Later: Tipping Points Near on Global Warming

Today I testified to Congress about global warming, 20 years after my June 23, 1988 testimony, which alerted the public that global warming was underway. There are striking similarities between then and now, but one big difference.

Again a wide gap has developed between what is understood about global warming by the relevant scientific community and what is known by policymakers and the public. Now, as then, frank assessment of scientific data yields conclusions that are shocking to the body politic. Now, as then, I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 percent.

The difference is that now we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.

Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control.

Changes needed to preserve creation, the planet on which civilization developed, are clear. But the changes have been blocked by special interests, focused on short-term profits, who hold sway in Washington and other capitals.

I argue that a path yielding energy independence and a healthier environment is, barely, still possible. It requires a transformative change of direction in Washington in the next year.

On June 23, 1988 I testified to a hearing, organized by Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado, that the Earth had entered a long-term warming trend and that human-made greenhouse gases almost surely were responsible. I noted that global warming enhanced both extremes of the water cycle, meaning stronger droughts and forest fires, on the one hand, but also heavier rains and floods.

My testimony two decades ago was greeted with skepticism. But while skepticism is the lifeblood of science, it can confuse the public. As scientists examine a topic from all perspectives, it may appear that nothing is known with confidence. But from such broad open-minded study of all data, valid conclusions can be drawn.

My conclusions in 1988 were built on a wide range of inputs from basic physics, planetary studies, observations of on-going changes, and climate models. The evidence was strong enough that I could say it was time to "stop waffling." I was sure that time would bring the scientific community to a similar consensus, as it has.

While international recognition of global warming was swift, actions have faltered. The U.S. refused to place limits on its emissions, and developing countries such as China and India rapidly increased their emissions.

What is at stake? Warming so far, about two degrees Fahrenheit over land areas, seems almost innocuous, being less than day-to-day weather fluctuations. But more warming is already "in the pipeline," delayed only by the great inertia of the world ocean. And climate is nearing dangerous tipping points. Elements of a "perfect storm," a global cataclysm, are assembled.

Climate can reach points such that amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes. Arctic sea ice is a current example. Global warming initiated sea ice melt, exposing darker ocean that absorbs more sunlight, melting more ice. As a result, without any additional greenhouse gases, the Arctic soon will be ice-free in the summer.

More ominous tipping points loom. West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are vulnerable to even small additional warming. These two-mile-thick behemoths respond slowly at first, but if disintegration gets well under way, it will become unstoppable. Debate among scientists is only about how much sea level would rise by a given date. In my opinion, if emissions follow a business-as-usual scenario, sea level rise of at least two meters is likely within a century. Hundreds of millions of people would become refugees, and no stable shoreline would be reestablished in any time frame that humanity can conceive.

Animal and plant species are already being stressed by climate change. Species can migrate in response to movement of their climatic zone, but some species in polar and alpine regions will be pushed off the planet. As climate zones move farther and faster, climate change will become the primary cause of species extinction. The tipping point for life on the planet will occur when so many interdependent species are lost that ecosystems collapse.

The shocking conclusion, documented in a paper2 I have written with several of the world's leading climate experts, is that the safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide is no more than 350 ppm (parts per million), and it may be less. Carbon dioxide amount is already 385 ppm and rising about 2 ppm per year. Shocking corollary: the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation.

These conclusions are based on paleoclimate data showing how the Earth responded to past levels of greenhouse gases and on observations showing how the world is responding to today's carbon dioxide amount. The consequences of continued increase of greenhouse gases extend far beyond extermination of species and future sea level rise.

Arid subtropical climate zones are expanding poleward. Already an average expansion of about 250 miles has occurred, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, Australia and southern Africa. Forest fires and drying-up of lakes will increase further unless carbon dioxide growth is halted and reversed.

Mountain glaciers are the source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people. These glaciers are receding world-wide, in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains. They will disappear, leaving their rivers as trickles in late summer and fall, unless the growth of carbon dioxide is reversed.

Coral reefs, the rainforest of the ocean, are home to one-third of the species in the sea. Coral reefs are under stress for several reasons, including warming of the ocean, but especially because of ocean acidification, a direct effect of added carbon dioxide. Ocean life dependent on carbonate shells and skeletons is threatened by dissolution as the ocean becomes more acid.

Such phenomena, including the instability of Arctic sea ice and the great ice sheets at today's carbon dioxide amount, show that we have already gone too far. We must draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide to preserve the planet we know. A level of no more than 350 ppm is still feasible, with the help of reforestation and improved agricultural practices, but just barely -- time is running out.

The steps needed to halt carbon dioxide growth follow from the size of fossil carbon reservoirs. Coal towers over oil and gas. Phase out of coal use except where the carbon is captured and stored below ground is the primary requirement for solving global warming.

Oil is used in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture the carbon. But oil is running out. To preserve our planet we must also ensure that the next mobile energy source is not obtained by squeezing oil from coal, tar shale or other fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel reservoirs are finite, which is the main reason that prices are rising. We must move beyond fossil fuels eventually. Solution of the climate problem requires that we move to carbon-free energy promptly.

Special interests have blocked transition to our renewable energy future. Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link. Methods are sophisticated, including disguised funding to shape school textbook discussions.

CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature. If their campaigns continue and "succeed" in confusing the public, I anticipate testifying against relevant CEOs in future public trials.

Conviction of ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal CEOs will be no consolation, if we pass on a runaway climate to our children. Humanity would be impoverished by ravages of continually shifting shorelines and intensification of regional climate extremes. Loss of countless species would leave a more desolate planet.

If politicians remain at loggerheads, citizens must lead. We must demand a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. We must block fossil fuel interests who aim to squeeze every last drop of oil from public lands, off-shore, and wilderness areas. Those last drops are no solution. They provide continued exorbitant profits for a short-sighted self-serving industry, but no alleviation of our addiction or long-term energy solution.

Moving from fossil fuels to clean energy is challenging, yet transformative in ways that will be welcomed. Cheap, subsidized fossil fuels engendered bad habits. We import food from halfway around the world, for example, even with healthier products available from nearby fields. Local produce would be competitive if not for fossil fuel subsidies and the fact that climate change damages and costs, due to fossil fuels, are also borne by the public.

A price on emissions that cause harm is essential. Yes, a carbon tax. Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is needed to wean us off fossil fuel addiction. Tax and dividend allows the marketplace, not politicians, to make investment decisions.

Carbon tax on coal, oil and gas is simple, applied at the first point of sale or port of entry. The entire tax must be returned to the public, an equal amount to each adult, a half-share for children. This dividend can be deposited monthly in an individual's bank account.

Carbon tax with 100 percent dividend is non-regressive. On the contrary, you can bet that low and middle income people will find ways to limit their carbon tax and come out ahead. Profligate energy users will have to pay for their excesses.

Demand for low-carbon high-efficiency products will spur innovation, making our products more competitive on international markets. Carbon emissions will plummet as energy efficiency and renewable energies grow rapidly. Black soot, mercury and other fossil fuel emissions will decline. A brighter, cleaner future, with energy independence, is possible.

Washington likes to spend our tax money line-by-line. Swarms of high-priced lobbyists in alligator shoes help Congress decide where to spend, and in turn the lobbyists' clients provide "campaign" money.

The public must send a message to Washington. Preserve our planet, creation, for our children and grandchildren, but do not use that as an excuse for more tax-and-spend. Let this be our motto: "One hundred percent dividend or fight! No more alligator shoes!"

The next president must make a national low-loss electric grid an imperative. It will allow dispersed renewable energies to supplant fossil fuels for power generation. Technology exists for direct-current high-voltage buried transmission lines. Trunk lines can be completed in less than a decade and expanded analogous to interstate highways.

Government must also change utility regulations so that profits do not depend on selling ever more energy, but instead increase with efficiency. Building code and vehicle efficiency requirements must be improved and put on a path toward carbon neutrality.

The fossil-industry maintains its stranglehold on Washington via demagoguery, using China and other developing nations as scapegoats to rationalize inaction. In fact, we produced most of the excess carbon in the air today, and it is to our advantage as a nation to move smartly in developing ways to reduce emissions. As with the ozone problem, developing countries can be allowed limited extra time to reduce emissions. They will cooperate: they have much to lose from climate change and much to gain from clean air and reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

We must establish fair agreements with other countries. However, our own tax and dividend should start immediately. We have much to gain from it as a nation, and other countries will copy our success. If necessary, import duties on products from uncooperative countries can level the playing field, with the import tax added to the dividend pool.

Democracy works, but sometimes churns slowly. Time is short. The 2008 election is critical for the planet. If Americans turn out to pasture the most brontosaurian congressmen, if Washington adapts to address climate change, our children and grandchildren can still hold great expectations.


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#ffffff

I am white, I am a Pakeha from Aotearoa, my cars number plate reads efefef, #ffffff is the color white. I thought you may be interested in this nonsense . . . or not:)

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

Racist or simply stupid? You decide.

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

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

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 & . . .

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" :)

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.

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.

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

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 . . .

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

and back to Inspiration!

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/time-wastes-too-fast/

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

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

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.

Jill Bolte Taylor - Stroke of Insight.

This is bloody awesome . . .

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!

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.

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.

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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):

Notable events for June 15, 1943:


Daylight information for June 15, 1943 in Gisborne, New Zealand:More

Phase of the Moon:Large image

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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

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.

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!

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.

School Lunches . . . .

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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'

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

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 . . .

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.”

Fascism of the Airwaves!

"Over time, the space of free expression has shrunk." –Lawrence Lessig
click on the Title . . . .