Food Miles

It seems obvious. If we buy food that is grown locally, we can help combat global warming. This is the concept of "food miles" - surely food flown or even shipped around the world must contribute far more to carbon emissions than food grown nearby? I believe it's not as simple as that. For instance, there are two Farmers' Markets held on Saturdays within driving distance from my home. The food is locally grown - more or less - after all the farms are not within the city boundaries, but on the outskirts. The stalls are small. So each grower is driving perhaps 30 km in a small car or van to bring their produce to the market. And if I shop there, it is a longer drive than my nearest supermarket, which is just around the corner. Or even a no-so-close supermarket which I can stop at on my way home from work. I am fairly sure that each kilogram of produce sold at the Farmers Market is responsible for more carbon emissions than the equivalent produce sold at the supermarket - even though the latter may be driven several hundred kilometres to get there. It's the economies of scale - moving a large quantity of produce in a large truck to a supermarket closer to the target market.

I worry about what will happen to New Zealand if the concept of food miles catches on. Or if long-range tourism declines due to fears of global warming. It's what our economy relies on. So I was interested to read some figures in this article. (If you are interested, bookmark it. In the interests of selling magazines, the full text of the main feature articles are not available on line for a few weeks after the issue date). New Zealand farmers are not subsidised, unlike farmers in the European Union and other countries. They have to be efficient to survive. Apparently, in most cases, less total energy is used to produce food in New Zealand and ship it to the other side of the world than to produce it and sell it locally. Another interesting statistic was that half of all the energy used in transporting food is used in the journey from the supermarket to home. To reduce emissions you could choose the locally grown product, or you could combine your shopping list with your neighbour's and cut your trips to the supermarket in half for exactly the same effect. Or you could make sure to stock your pantry well, reducing your number of trips.

You can use a simplistic measure of emissions like food miles. Or you can investigate the true measure by researching all the emissions produced in the lifetime of the product. Unfortunately this takes a lot of research, so it is heartening to see that the UK supermarket chain Tescos plans to do it for us, and label goods sold in their shops with information on their total carbon footprint.

I hope that the world will keep buying our produce, and keep visiting us. Or will New Zealanders become an endangered species, starving at the bottom of the world? Perhaps then the World Wildlife Fund will mount a rescue campaign. One thing is for sure - we can't all emigrate back to Britain.

Poetry Thursday: Not a Red Poem

This week continues to be busy, although I am gradually settling in to working full time. At the moment, P. is a house husband so one of my current delights is coming home knowing that someone else will cook the dinner. And sometimes I also find the laundry on the line. But I have been helping my daughter move house, baking a birthday cake for another daughter, shopping for her birthday present, and taking care of paper work, not to mention trying to fit in regular exercise - all of which leaves little time for writing.

Which is why this week's post is titled "Not a Red Poem". Red was the prompt at
Poetry Thursday this week. But since the prompt is completely and totally optional, I have pulled out a poem from my archives on "white". Who knows? Maybe one day Liz and Dana will post the prompt "white". And maybe by then I will have a "red" poem to post. (I have had a little time to read passages on red in some of my books on "colour" - a topic that intrigues me. I have a wonderful list of names for different types of red. I'm sure a poem is lurking there somewhere).

I always felt this white poem needed three sections for balance. But somehow it seemed determined to stop at two.

White

1

white is proud
she scorns light’s caress
returns all gifts
has no form
does not possess
her own shadows

2

the baptismal gown
the daisy chain
the picket fence
the clean sheet

the fallen petals
the spider’s web
the far mountains
the ghost moon

the sharp fang
the winding cloth
the sepulchre
the bleached bones

Gratitude

Possibly, I should feel anxious right now (see Wednesday post). After all, I am generally a rather anxious person. I get uptight about small things. Strangely, I don't seem to be feel especially anxious. Mostly, I feel grateful.

Here are some of the things I am grateful for (in no particular order):

1. The lovely place where we live. The river and the hills close by, where I can go walking.
2. The fact that our house is so close to paid off that the bit left really doesn't matter.
3. Free internet (courtesy of a son who works for an ISP).
4. Digital cameras - because of all the fun of taking photos without the expense of buying film.
5. Extra paid work just when I needed it (see Wednesday post, again). Granted, it is temporary, but it makes me feel something will turn up.
6. Free internet.
7. Our wonderful public library.
8. A big stash of fabrics, art supplies, etc just in case I should have time in between the extra work to feel like making something.
9. The fact that our trip to the UK in September is booked and mostly paid for, on non-refundable tickets. Can't back out of this one! (The air fares, a bit over half our accommodation, and the rental car are all paid for. We still have to pay for about a week and a half of accommodation, petrol, food - bread and cheese anyone? - and spending money).
10. The fact that writing takes not much more than a computer or a pencil and paper, and therefore is pretty close to free.
11. Did I mention free internet? :)

Poetry Thursday: Beauty

The prompt at Poetry Thursday this week sounded rather interesting. The idea was to describe whatever we thought was the most beautiful thing in the world, but without describing it. I may try it one day, but this post will explain why I didn't have time this week.

I couldn't miss Poetry Thursday, though. So I thought I would offer this small poem by Robert Bridges, on the topic of beauty and craftsmanship, which I have always liked (well, at least for the last forty years or so). It seems as if this week has been full of "hasty days". Perhaps I will have time to think about the prompt at the weekend.

All Beauteous Things

I love all beauteous things,
I seek and adore them:
God hath no better praise,
And man in his hasty days
Is honoured for them.

I too will something make
And joy in the making;
Although to-morrow it seem
Like empty words of a dream
Remembered on waking.

- Robert Bridges (1844 - 1930)

Insanely Busy

I was waiting to explain properly what is going on around here until I knew what's going on. I still don't know what's going on. Not long-term anyway, but I decided it was time to reveal a little about events so far.

I did post about going to Auckland for my uncle's funeral. What I didn't mention in that post was that I knew that when I came back my husband would know whether he had a job or not. As it turned out, he didn't. This of course will shortly cause a radical change in our financial situation, since he was the one with the highly paid specialised IT job and I was the one working part time for average wages (after being out of the work force for many years raising children).

On the following Friday I went to work intending to tell my boss that I would need to look for a second part-time job, or a full-time job, and to ask if he would be my referee. He wasn't there. After I'd been working for a while, the phone went. It was my boss wanting to know if I wanted to work additional hours. Since I've been there seven years and I've never been asked that before, it would have to be one of the stranger coincidences in my life.

Originally I thought it was going to be a permanent part-time job. However it looks as if it will be temporary. There is a full-time person leaving, she has been training me for the last couple of days, and the position is being advertised. So I will have to train the new full-time person. I could apply for it, but I won't. It seems to me as if there is really too much work for one person full-time. With luck they will realise this, and keep me on for a while at least after the new person starts.

In the meantime I'm moving between the two jobs (for different companies - my boss is involved with quite a few) and stacking up as many hours as I can to build up some reserve funds. So my life runs along the lines of "hang out the laundry, go to work, cook dinner, do dishes, iron the laundry and go to bed". Fortunately the adult kids here take turns with the cooking and dishes which means I can fit in a few extras - like my poetry group meeting last night, or taking a walk between work and dinner. But my internet time is severely restricted.

And learning to be super-efficient doesn't seem to be quite the right frame of mind for writing poetry.

Poetry Thursday: The Body Knows

I suspect my body knows a lot. But my body and my brain don't always communicate very well. My brain is apt to make journeys which take it far from paying attention to what my body knows.

I felt this week's prompt at Poetry Thursday - "the body knows..." - demanded that I try and find different approaches to the writing of poetry than my usual brain-driven approach. So I decided to experiment a little. The results, therefore, are more in the nature of an ongoing experiment than a finished poem.

I've been wanting to try drawing myself naked for a while. I finally got around to it. After drawing for a while I wrote by free associating some of the images that came to mind from the drawing session. I'm not a very experienced artist! However one of the resulting drawings was slightly less clumsy looking than the others. I scanned it in to the computer, printed it out, typed out a selection of the words and phrases in a separate document, printed them over the scanned drawing, and then scanned it again. This is the result. To read the words better, click on the image for a larger version. (I thought about cropping the original scan to remove the spiral binding of the sketchbook, but I decided I liked the look and left it in).

The Last Tuesday Walk

Tuesday morning is when I go walking with my neighbour (and sometimes her dog Bella).
Today instead of walking in our own neighbourhood I suggested we drive out to the beach. It was a beautiful morning. We walked along the beach past Cave Rock, past the mums and small children playing in the sand:


as far as Shag Rock:


and then back along the beach



to where we had parked the car.
Then we stopped at a restaurant and had morning tea - which by that time was really lunch.
After getting home I found that I was feeling rather sad as this may be the last Tuesday morning walk. The reason for that is that it looks as if I will soon be working fulltime. The details aren't finalised yet, so I will wait and reveal more later.
There are going to be two challenges: one is the challenge of the new job, and the other is the challenge of readjusting my life and finding time to work, run the house, and still be creative.

There's New Zealand, and then there's Auckland..

I was up early on Wednesday morning to drive to the airport, where I boarded a flight to Auckland. At about the same time my brother, who had flown to Auckland the night before, was leaving the house where he was staying to drive to Auckland airport. And twenty minutes or so later, my other brother and sister were leaving Wellington airport to fly to Auckland, where we all met up at 9 a.m. Yes, you can fly from Christchurch to Auckland in the same time as it takes to drive across Auckland city.

Technically, of course, Auckland is not one city but three. Manukau city is in the south, and it is where the airport is situated. Auckland city is in the middle, between the Manukau harbour and the Waitemata harbour. And North Shore city is, well, on the North Shore. Which is where we were headed.

I once heard a US city - I think it was Philadelphia - described as having "Our Lady of Perpetual Construction" for its patron saint. Auckland is rather like that. Roadworks and new motorways everywhere, but still they can't keep up with the traffic. I thought we would be able to drive right through from the airport to the North Shore on the motorway, but there is quite a large section from the airport to just south of the central city that has no motorway yet, so we sat in rather slow traffic for quite some distance (not that we sped up all that much when we got on the motorway either). It occurred to me that the "rush hour" is misnamed, as it is the hour when no-one can rush anywhere. And in Auckland, the rush hour seems to be spreading out to take over most of the day. Cars everywhere. Huge suburbs of nothing but houses - no cafes, supermarkets, post offices, corner shops or other facilities - which of course means more cars. And almost everywhere you go, you can see the Sky Tower. The symbol of the Auckland landscape, what uniquely identifies Auckland, used to be the harbour bridge - now it is the casino.

To be fair to Auckland, there are some older suburbs that are wonderful and gracious and close to amenities. (But only the rich can afford to live there). The situation between two harbours means that there are many beautiful spots - plenty of green reserves with birdsong and glimpses of water.

I spent a year living in Auckland over thirty years ago, when we could live cheaply in a rundown suburb close to the City Centre (now gentrified). Before the traffic became almost impossibly congested. I don't think I want to go back.

The reason we were there was to attend my uncle's funeral. The cemetery at least, is in a lovely spot by an inlet in the upper reaches of the Waitemata harbour. He was a navigator in Lancaster bombers in World War 11. As we stood by the graveside, the air filled with the sound of cicadas, and wading birds wandering over the far end of the lawn, an Air Force Orion on a training exercise flew circles overhead. A fitting tribute.

I had a four hour wait at the airport on my return as we all had different flight times. The interflora shop was filled with red roses, and heartshaped chocolates - three small chocolates in a bag for $6. The cafe was selling pink iced heart shaped biscuits. It was Valentine's Day. By the time I reached home, it was past bedtime. It's a good thing that Valentine's Day is not a big thing over here for most people. It has really only arrived in the last few years, pushed by retailers. Not too many people of my generation bother with it.

Poetry Thursday: Prose Poems

I've had a busy week so I was glad of the prompt which enabled me to post an old poem from my files. If it is a poem. What makes a prose poem?

I don't think I can answer this, but I believe that it is not really a question that is specific to prose poetry. The question "is it a poem?" is the same question whether it is a piece of writing that has rhyme and metre, or has line breaks, some sort of metre but no rhyme, or whether it is set out in prose (or any variant in between these).

Is it poetry, verse or a jingle?
Is it poetry, or a political statement with line breaks?
Is it poetry or just a rather strange piece of prose?

I don't know.

The first time I found out there was such a thing as a "prose poem" was at the first every poetry workshop I attended. I was browsing a collection of poetry books that were available for our inspiration, and came across the work of Charles Simic. His prose poems are delightfully surreal. I hope you might consider exploring them. In the meantime, here is my own contribution:

Six Blind Men and an Elephant

This is a joke my children used to tell. They would pick some unsuspecting person and ask “I’ve got a riddle for you. What is the difference between an elephant and a hammerfor?” They were just waiting for the question “What’s a hammerfor?” and then they could say “Banging nails in”. We know this joke pretty well by now, so the other day when my daughter asked “what’s a hammerfor?” I said “Banging nails in” almost without thinking and then she asked “what’s a metaphor?” Of course the thing about a metaphor is that it’s really only useful if we know both the things being compared. So I might say for instance that a book is a magic carpet that takes us to other worlds. You know, and I know, dozens of ways that a book is not at all like a magic carpet and that’s why we can appreciate the point of the comparison. And then there’s the old story about six blind men and an elephant. One of them felt the trunk and said it was like a snake. Another had a hold of the tail. “An elephant is very much like a rope” he said. A third, grasping the leg, declared that the elephant was like a tree. And so on. But anyone who hasn’t seen an elephant is left with the image of a snake in a tree which has a rope hanging from one branch, which really doesn’t help much at all. So when I learnt that atoms have nuclei with orbiting electrons, I thought of planetary systems and believed I knew what was going on. Then I learnt that light is particles, called photons, which made some sort of sense, until I learnt about light waves. So which is it, particles or waves? Both, and neither, depending on the mathematics, and that’s when physics started to get confusing. Somewhere around Stage 2 I was completely lost, which is to say, I could do the maths and come up with the right answers, but I just couldn’t picture it any more. That was pretty scary, because up till then I thought I could get a handle on just about anything. And somewhere in the years between then and now, the physicists stopped talking about waves and particles and started talking about tiny strings curled up in about ten or thirteen directions. Now, when I think of Einstein saying “God does not play dice with the universe”, all I can picture is God playing Cat’s Cradle.

Bruises and Boggarts

I think I have been watching too much CSI. I found myself looking at the bruises on my legs and wondering what the coroner would make of them if I died in an accident today. They are particularly distinctive small bruises in little lines. I must admit, the first time I had them I was stumped for quite a while, until I realised they were from squeezing through the strands of wire fences while I was out orienteering. The more athletic young males of course vault over the fences, barely touching except maybe for a hand on top of the fence post for balance.

This is where we were orienteering on Sunday.



The longer courses went right to the top of the hill, but since I do the "short red" course - technically difficult but not too strenuous - the course setter took us mostly into the forest at the bottom of the valley on the right. Since I'm just getting back into orienteering after doing very little last year, I was grateful for the shortness of the course and lack of significant climb. Nothing comes without a downside and in this case it was lots of boggy swampy ground, and lots of prickles. But overall I was pretty pleased with my efforts which show that all my hill climbing in the last few months is paying off. The winner took 52 minutes, I took 1 hour 22 minutes, and the slowest on the course was 2 hours 30 minutes (someone who got lost and added a big extra loop to the course).

If you'd told me when I was a teenager that one day I'd be competing in organised sport, I'd have laughed. This is because I lack coordination for ball sports, and I can't run. OK, to some extent I believe that anyone can improve at anything they want to if they practice enough. But I also believe in inborn differences between people. And I think I have good reason to believe I can't run. I was a real outdoor kid, often found up trees, loving the beach, able to swim long distances (slowly) and going for long Sunday afternoon walks with my father. I loved the outdoors. But I wasn't speedy. Fortunately I went to a small primary school and there wasn't much in the way of athletics. Once a year we went to the interschool sports day where I would take part in the obligatory running race, finish twenty or thirty yards behind everyone else (and that was the heats, not the final), feel stupid for a little while and then enjoy the day in the sun with my family, with treats such as pies for lunch and ice creams.

The humiliation I still remember though was at Brownies. Once a Brownie had passed the initial simple tests like learning the Brownie law and promise, it was time for enrolment. And the enrolment ceremony involved being chased by a boggart. Not a real boggart, of course. Another Brownie was chosen to be the boggart. I had to start at one side of the fairy ring, the boggart started at the other side, and I was chased twice around the fairy ring before running to the centre. The story was that if the boggart caught you, you couldn't be a Brownie. I don't think it ever occurred to anyone that the boggart would ever catch anyone. After all that would mean running 33% faster. But just before I got to the centre, I felt the boggart tag me. And of course the leaders had to pretend that it hadn't happened. So, apart from feeling utterly humiliated that I was so slow that it hadn't occurred to them that anyone could be that slow, I learnt that adults should really think carefully before they threated a punishment that they have no intention of carrying out.

That was all sprinting, of course. Maybe if we had had cross country running at school, it would have been a different matter. All my children seem to have had to run cross country at school, but it didn't seem to happen so much back then.

After I first heard about orienteering and thinking that sounded fun, it took me a while to get into it because I thought I would have to be able to run better. But in fact there's room for all abilities, and good navigation makes up for a lot. When I started, my children were small. Walking round the easy courses with a two or three year old in tow is a wonderful excuse to be slow. I'm not expecting to win anything this year, unless the faster runners in my age group make some huge mistakes in navigation, but I aim to get to no more than 25% slower than the winning time.

Blogger has forced me to upgrade, finally. It seems to be OK. But it works no better with Safari than the old blogger does.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think our finance minister is sleep deprived and hallucinating. His latest brilliant idea is a levy on fixed rate mortgages. The backgournd to this is that the main inflation control weapon in New Zealand is interest rates. When inflation gets too high, the Reserve Bank raises the official cash rate, which supposedly dampens demand and inflation is kept in control.

Unfortunately our high interest rates attract overseas investors, which mean that the exchange rate is high, and exporters suffer. Supposedly the economy is strong but the balance of payments is terrible, because people are rushing to buy cheap imports, and exporters are earning next to nothing.

Supposedly the imposition of an additional levy on fixed rate mortgages will dampen demand for housing, while not offering any additional incentive to overseas investors.

Here's what I don't get: the idea is that a raise in the official cash rate takes to long to flow through, so doesn't decrease demand for mortgages immediately. This seems strange to me, as surely it will decrease demand for new mortgages. It's only the existing ones that aren't affected until they are due for renewal, and surely the government doesn't want to throw people out of their houses? (Oh, I have just figured it out - if their mortgage costs go up, they won't have money for other things like, say, food and clothes, so that reduced spending in these areas will keep inflation down).

Secondly, house ownership rates in New Zealand are at an all time low, and it is predicted that huge numbers of people will never be able to afford their own home. And yet demand increases. That's because of the baby boomers looking to property as an investment. So maybe to dampen demand they could find some measure to increase taxes on property investors, and leave young people struggling to buy their first homes alone? Or maybe even help them along?

As the banks say in this article, this idea will never float, because about 1.2 million people in the country have mortgages, and that's a lot of votes (in a country of 4 million).

And I'm very glad to say that despite interest rates of nearly 8 percent, and house prices that are very high in relation to wages, compared to many other countries, my eldest daughter has successfully managed to buy her first home and will be moving out in a month. (I'll miss her. But I'm happy for her). It's not big, it needs a few repairs, but it is attractive and conveniently sited close to a very regular bus route.

Poetry Thursday: Change

This week's prompt at Poetry Thursday is change.
I'm a little distracted this week by things I can't post about yet. I find myself spending my time on physical work in the garden and the like and not thinking too much. I have written some lines on this week's topic at Poetry Thursday - I'm not sure if it's a poem yet. I decided to post anyway, and to think of this as my writing notebook, and the lines as a very rough first draft.

Somehow I hate to miss Poetry Thursday.

The More it Changes...

With each breath out
I scatter myself to the wind.
The child who shares my name
shares little of my substance.
Each minute a slow burning of molecules,
each inhalation a replacement. Why then do I imagine
that I am her, and she is me? I am my own observer.
I change along with what I observe
and feel myself the same. Every minute I remake
even my memories. Even as they die, my neurons
play Chinese whispers with their successors.

I May Never Need to Read Another Book...

...after spending the evening watching "All the Great Books (Abridged)" performed by the Outwits.

This is part of our city council's Summertimes programme and was therefore free (sort of - the bucket was passed round at the end for donations).


Many people took their picnic hampers, wine, etc and enjoyed the setting in the gardens.


Katherine Mansfield (she was a "short" story writer)


The Trojan horse

Just in case the 76 books covered weren't enough for me, my daughter introduced me to this website:
Book a Minute

(A sample: The Confessions of Augustine: "I was bad. I was very, very bad. Not any more though.")

Proof

For Poetry Thursday

We were invited to write a poem using the language of science. It was suggested fro instance that we start with the formula "let x equal".

My response is a little different. My first encounter with scientific method was in the later years of primary school, when we did small experiments with titles like "How do we know that air exists?". This is when I was introduced to the methodical setting out of experiments in sections. As far as I recall, they were titled "to show", "method", "results" and "conclusion". For some reason this is what first made me fall in love with science.

So, here is my rough draft of a poem based on those four sections:

Proof

To show:
that the (he)art
and love
in spring and the moon
in June
or any other time makes the world go
round or
square or any other
shape

Method:
If there is any since love
is not methodical but
if love be madness
there may yet be method in it

Results:
If love is not blind then
at least it produces
hallucinations of perfection
temporary amnesia
possibly followed by small irritations
assuming unreasonable proportions
and an inevitable cooling which is not measurable
with a thermometer

Conclusion:
which is what we have learnt
(nothing)
or alternatively which is an end
at least until the next time
when it all starts again.

What I Did At the Quilt Symposium

I caught up with my best friend from high school (I stayed with her as she lives just around the corner from where it was held):

went shopping:



(a small corner of the merchants' mall at eight in the morning before it got crowded)



(my purchases)

made this:



(still needing a couple more borders at this stage)

in a class with this tutor

and this:





(a detail of the stitching)

in a class with this tutor, where we also painted and printed on fabric:

learnt more about my sewing machine in a class with Bernina:

took time to look at the sunset:



went to a number of fascinating lectures:

and saw a lot of quilts (which I can't show you, unfortunately, since I don't have the permission of the owners).

I had a lot of fun and I feel thoroughly injected with the quilting virus again!

Mug Swap

A week or so before the quilt symposium I signed up to participate in a mug swap at Create a Connection. And when I returned this is what I found waiting for me:





Not only a lovely teacup and saucer, but also a matching teapot, herb teas, cream filled wafers, a nice card with a message from Melanie and a bunch of her own postcards. Wow! Way more than I was expecting!

To see what other participants received go here

Poetry Thursday: Why I Love Poetry

Yesterday I was sitting in the film room of a girls' high school. On the wall were quotes from a movie, which included one from the character Amélie which went something like this: "I like noticing details that no one else sees".

(I am still unpacking, and haven't yet found the piece of paper I wrote the quote on. I did google the names of the characters and found that the movie was Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain which sounds very interesting - I may try and locate it at a video store).

Back to the quote - that seems like as good a reason as any why I love poetry. The first poems that I loved, I loved for their sounds, their rhythms, their music. But at high school I discovered T.S. Eliot. We studied "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It came as a huge shock to me. Lines like "when the evening is spread out against the sky/like a patient etherised upon a table". It was the way the poet had of looking at things that were different to the way anyone else looked at them, that sent a tingle up my spine.

So, it is not just the details that no one else sees, but the fact that poets look at the details in a way that no one else does. And I like to do this too. I may fall far short of Eliot and other poets I admire, but I love it when suddenly I see something in a new light, in a way that seems to be given to me out of nowhere.

Having been away from home for nearly a week, I have a heap of things to do (I wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow), so this is a quick post. But I couldn't leave Poetry Thursday without posting a poem, so here is one from my files that seems to fit this week's prompt:

Gridlines

(This poem has now expired)

Poetry Thursday: Off to Play

This week I have been busy gathering bits and pieces for my classes at the national quilt symposium. Tomorrow I'm off for five days of colour and cloth. I haven't followed this week's prompt at Poetry Thursday, though I have noted down some of the phrases offered and may play with them at a later date.

My father is from a longish line of youngest sons, who had to make their own way in the world (as all the best fairy stories tell us). However the eldest sons farmed the same land in Scotland from the 1600s to the mid 1900s. The various branches of the family were in touch until around the second world war or a little later. In the course of my research into the family history, I came across a book of poems called "Duty and Ease". This was published in 1926 on the death of Jessie Miller, whose poems it contains. A few by her sister Mary H Miller are also included. They were two spinster sisters who were born on the family farm near Stirling. The poems reflect the time in which they were written and many of the sentiments are old-fashioned now. Those written during World War I are of course, fiercely patriotic. Some of the poems are also quite charming.

The poem I'm posting here must have been addressed to a soldier, since it refers to "service weapons". However I chose it as my poem this week as it refers to the value of leisure. I'm not sure my week away is quite "indolence" as described in the poem, since I will be taking classes and working quite hard. But I'm sure it will be hard work of a very pleasurable kind and I hope to return next week with "renewed energy"

Ease

Go have some indolence and blissful ease,
Some precious minutes doing what you please,
Go hang your coat of duty on the wall
And lay thy service weapons in the hall.

And let thy laughter ring out strong and clear,
Without the semblance of a doubt or fear,
And make thy heart right merry for a while,
When resting thus upon the wayside stile.

'Twill smooth the folds and furrows from thy brow,
And bring back dimples to thy cheek, I trow,
'Twill make thy faded eyeballs dance and glow
And life-like wine through all thy being flow.

Go stem for once thy serious stream of thought,
And catch the humour with which life is fraught,
Stern duty plods along the toilsome road,
While humour floats above without a load.

Go wag your head, and unto duty say
I will not work to-day but I will play,
I'll meet you on the road to-morrow morn
With energy renewed and fresh hope born.

- Jessie Miller

Five Things You May Not Know About Me

Leonie at chocolate covered musings tagged me for this meme. I have to admit that I can't recall what I have revealed on this blog before and what I haven't. There are things I know that I haven't revealed - that's because I'm not going to! And other things I know I haven't revealed, because they are really rather trivial. So it's a good thing that the word "may" is in there.

1) I used to work as a forensic scientist.

2) I have five grown children, four of whom still live at home (they must like it here!).

3) I can't whistle, but I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue.

4) I once did a firewalk. I am definitely not a mystic and I'm not an adrenaline junkie either. But I'm open to new experiences, if other people are doing it and I think it's safe and rational. This was part of science week at my daughter's school. I got a small blister on one foot.



5) I once had a quilt published in Quilters Newsletter Magazine.

If anyone would like to do this, consider yourself tagged (leave a comment to that effect, and I will come and read it).

On Reflection...

I have been looking over the folder containing my poetry, thinking it was time to make more submissions to various journals. I found myself dissatisfied. Should I send these out again, or should I give up on them as not good enough, and wait till I have something better?

Or is there a third way? It seems to me that these poems could do with a dose of reflection. I need to print them out, carry them around. Read them out loud to myself, listen to the awkward places, let my intuition guide me to better ways of saying what I want to say. And then perhaps send them out again.

Each week I watch for the new topics to go up at one deep breath, Poetry Thursday and Sunday Scribblings. The haiku topic for one deep breath is posted usually on a Sunday evening, or perhaps a Monday. I find myself hoping that it will be Sunday evening, which is Monday here. If it goes up late afternoon New Zealand time, I can look through my collection of photos, find one that fits, write a haiku and submit my link. By this time everyone in North America is in bed asleep. By the time they are up, my link will be waiting to be posted on the site, and I in turn will wake to find it posted, and comments from visitors on my blog.

This week I watched eagerly for the topic, but didn't see it before I went to bed on Monday. And then on Tuesday I got up and it still wasn't there. Or so I thought. Later in the day I checked again, and realised I had missed it because it already had such a long list of links attached that I thought it was last week's post. And so every week I rush more and more to post my link early, so that I will be noticed and have plenty visitors. I do the same with Sunday Scribblings - I always used to post on Sunday, because that is the point, isn't it? And then I realised that more and more people were posting early, and I was getting fewer visitors, even though on Sunday in New Zealand it's still only Saturday in the US. I wanted time to think about the topic, but now if I take part I find myself submitting my link on Saturday evening so that at least it will be there before the next morning. Part of me is uneasy at this behaviour. A haiku is only three lines, but this doesn't mean it should be dashed off quickly. The best haiku are the result of long reflection. If I keep rushing everything I write, how will I write something that reflects who I am, deep down? I have time only to skim the surface.

It seems fitting that this week's topic should be "reflections".



afternoon walk
lingering on the shore line
time for reflection

Bits and Pieces

1) Just to clarify on the previous post, some people seemed to think that all the guests at my imaginary dinner party were my relatives. They are only my relatives when I stated the precise relationship, the rest are unrelated to me. As for having fascinating relatives, well, the majority of my ancestors and their descendants lived quiet lives in rural surroundings or small towns. They were farmers, agricultural labourers, miners, bakers, tailors and other such trades. It's just that I've accumulated a very large database of thousands of people, so someone interesting was sure to pop up sooner or later! No doubt everyone has interesting relatives tucked away somewhere if they look far enough.
(Mind you, I'd love to know more about my Forrester ancestors who are supposedly descended from Robert the Bruce. A Duncan Forrester was Comptroller of the Household at the Court of King James (the second, I think, of Scotland) in 1492. I'll probably never know for sure, because the records are a bit vague that far back. An heir might be a son but he might also be a distant cousin given the Scots' wild nature at the time and habit of killing each other :)

2) My daughter introduced me to Library Elf and I have signed up. Why not check to see if your library is supported? No more overdue library books, as they will send e-mail reminders of your overdue or about to be due books, and notifications of books you have on hold. What a great idea!

3) Here's another good thing: Wild Appetite. Their range of sauces and condiments looks so pretty in the jars and bottles that it is almost a shame to open and consume them. They do wonderful dessert sauces, but I'm forgoing those at the moment. Instead I have their Melanesian Mango pour over and their Capsicum and Apricot Salsa which are great with meats etc. They have stockists in New Zealand, Australia, the United States and strangely, Denmark. The website is a bit tricky at least on my browser - the products that show in the window initially are by no means the whole range, it will scroll down when you figure out how. There are also recipes.

A Dinner Party

This week Deb in her spot as guest editor at Create a Connection asked us to organise a dream dinner party. This is an entirely imaginary event with guests of our choosing from any time or place. My first reaction was to include a number of my direct ancestors and their relatives, those that I had found interesting in my researches and those who I thought would be able to solve various genealogical mysteries.

Then I read on and found that the guests had to fit certain categories - one from each. I was a little disappointed, but then I realised that I could find someone from my family connections to fit each and every category.

Deb added a "girl's night out" theme to her list. I decided to do the same and choose all women. Further, about half of my guests are related to me in some way. Even though I could fill all the categories like this, I decided not to. For instance I could have chosen poets Jessie or Mary Miller for the "writer" category, but although their poems are charming (I may just post one or two sometime), I didn't feel sufficiently inspired by two spinster women living quiet lives in rural Scotland.

So here is my list:

1. Guest one must be someone who is/was creative with words - a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, journalist, etc.

I would invite Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie. Not only is she a fine poet, first published at a young age, but she also writes wonderful non-fiction. She has travelled in Pakistan, Tibet and the Middle East. I'm sure she would have some interesting stories to tell, and that she would interest my other Scottish guests. As a lecturer in creative writing, and mother of a young family, she may also have some useful tips for me, both on writing and on finding the time to write.

2. Guest two must be someone who is/was creative with images - a painter, photographer, sculptor, fabric artist, collage artist, etc.

I would invite Isabella Miller Morley. She was the daughter of my greatgrandmother's cousin, and together with her husband, artist Henry Morley, she lived in Stirling, Scotland. An exhibition of their work was held their at the beginning of last year. While his works were the main part of the exhibition, she was also an artist and talented metal worker. Many well known artists visited them at their home "The Gables", including Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Apart from the family connection, I would be interested in how she combined artistic pursuits with raising a family at a time when it was less easy than now (if it is ever easy).

3. Guest three must be someone who is/was a performer - an actor, singer, musician, comedian, acrobat, etc.

I had trouble with this one - performance is rather immediate, and we know less of performers' own personalities than we do for writers, artists etc. Then I decided that I would ask a broadcaster. Radio journalist Kim Hill who used to host "Nine to Noon" on national radio in New Zealand a few years back. She was just such a fantastic interviewer, I'm sure she would get the best out of the rest of the guests.

4. Guest four must be someone who is charting/charted new territory - either in the physical sense, like an explorer, adventurer, or astronaut, or someone like a groundbreaking scientist or inventor.

I would ask Victorian woman traveller Mary Kingsley, who travelled in Africa at a time when it was thought shameful for women to travel alone. (The article I have linked to gives too many fascinating details to readily sum up).

5. Guest five must be someone who is/was a leader of other people - perhaps in the area of politics, like the literal leader of a country, or perhaps a leader in the area of religion, military, business, or even a great philosopher or teacher, or an inspiring athlete.

I would invite Chrystal MacMillan. A daughter of another of my greatgrandmother's cousins. She was the first female science graduate of Edinburgh University, campaigned for the right to vote for female university graduates and founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Possibly I would find her a little earnest. But since she's a relative, she's forgiven if that is the case. Besides, the overall mix of guests would ensure lively debate.

6. Guest six must be someone from any field who you believe is/was underrated and under-appreciated by most people, but whom you admire.

I would invite my greatgrandmother Jessie Finlayson Miller. I feel she had a hard lot in life. All her female cousins made "good" marriages - they married professional men, such as teachers, ministers, wealthy merchants, an obstetrician. They were well-educated and so were their children, and achieved in numerous areas. My greatgrandmother on the other hand was fatherless at twelve and an orphan at eighteen. The eldest of the family, she had four younger brothers. Together, they continued to run the family farm. Then Jessie married her mother's cousin, a baker. Several years later he went bankrupt. She appears to have masterminded the plan to run away from Scotland, managing to save some of the family treasures in the process. Unfortunately there was another bankruptcy in New Zealand. With eight children to raise, and a husband who drank somewhat, she had a hard life, but she did a fine job. She was intelligent and resourceful, and I think could have achieved much if she had had the opportunity.

7. Guest seven is a wild card - your choice! Is there someone you'd like to invite who didn't seem to quite fit into any category, or was there a category where you'd have really liked to invite two different people?

Tia (Anna) Bates. One of the most truly fascinating of my relatives. She was the cousin of my paternal grandmother, although I don't think my grandmother knew of her existence. Her father (my greatgreatuncle) emigrated from Scotland to the United States and then to Peru. Tia as a separated woman in Peru ran a guest house for many years, which was frequented by celebrities including the princes who became Edward VIII and George VI of Great Britain, Clark Gable, and Noel Coward who wrote a seventy line verse in tribute to her. She is also apparently mentioned in the Journals of Thornton Wilder. The link is to her obituary in Time magazine.

Bonus: Uh Oh! The dinner party is just about to end, and all your guests are about to disappear, and you realize that you've forgotten to ask one important question of one of your guests. You just barely have time to squeeze in that last question, so quick! - what was the question and who did you ask?

Well, I'm sure with Kim Hill present I've just had to sit back and listen to all the fascinating stories. And hopefully I've filled in some of the missing places on my family tree, too. But in case I've forgotten, I want to ask my greatgrandmother what happened to her brother Thomas, the one whose death I can't trace.

Thursday Cliches

I was thinking about the topic at Poetry Thursday this week, cliches, and I realised that the very first post I made on this blog was a poem which takes a cliche and pokes a little gentle fun at it. It also explains my blog title.

I was going to link to it, but I can't seem to figure out how to find a permalink for old posts (if anyone can tell me, feel free to leave a comment!)

So here it is again:

Portrait of the Poet as a Young Girl

She tried hard to be like the others
She struggled to catch a ball
She never quite managed a cartwheel
After much practice she stood on her head

When she grew up she turned to science
She thought she would turn the world upside down
After a while she realised
that the world had stayed in its proper place all along
and she was still standing on her head.

**************************

(And yes, I am being a little lazy about Poetry Thursday today, but I'm busy digging into my cupboards for fabrics and metallic threads and fabric paints and all sorts of other pretty things to take to the quilt symposium).

More Poetry Thursday here

Tuesday This and That

1) I noticed at work that whenever I try to type "clams" it seems to come out as "calms". Calm as a clam, maybe? I could do with some of that...

2) I am gradually getting supplies together for the quilt symposium which starts in a week and a half. One of my classes requires pre-cut strips in fortyeight different fabrics (24 of each of two colours). I am going with blue and orange. These colours make me feel happy!



I also need pre-cut squares of various black and white printed fabrics. The chook fabric is one I just couldn't resist.



3) I've walked on this track quite a few times and never spotted this character before. I wonder what he did to suffer the penalty of being turned to stone? No wonder he looks a little grumpy.

Kissing

"Kissing" is this week's prompt at Sunday Scribblings. This is a piece of fiction which might be a short story, except that I'm not really sure how it should end. I feel the ending lacks a little oomph. Feedback would be appreciated.

*********

Jenny didn’t think much of kissing. She liked to cuddle up on her mummy’s lap when she was tired, and she didn’t mind a hug in the morning, but mummy tried to kiss her sometimes and that was just… icky.

“Uck, it’s all wet” she would say, and wipe her cheek. Mummy didn’t try so much any more. The aunties still did, though. They weren’t Jenny’s aunties – mummy and daddy only had brothers. They were mummy’s aunties, and they were quite old. When mummy took Jenny to visit them, they always said “What a big girl you are getting” and planted a wet sloppy kiss on her cheek before she could wriggle away. Besides, they gave her lollies, so she couldn’t wriggle too far away, or she might miss out.

Lately, mummy seemed a bit different. She still let Jenny curl up in her lap before bedtime, and she still read her stories. But she didn’t seem to want to play tag and hide-and-go-seek in the garden so much. And they weren’t visiting the aunties on Sunday afternoons quite so often. Instead, mummy would go and lie down for a nap.

“We’re going to have a baby” mummy told Jenny. “But not for a few months yet, and I’ll still have plenty of time for my big girl”.

To tell the truth, Jenny wasn’t all that sure what a baby was. Her parents would have been very surprised if they had realised this, but it was true. The new subdivision where they lived was an expensive one, and full of executive families with older children. Jenny was the youngest there, and she wouldn’t start pre-school for another few months. Her best friend was David-next-door who was six months older than her. Jenny’s cousins were older than her too. The only time she had heard about babies before was when they told her,
“Oh, don’t be such a baby”. Apparently it had something to do with complaining.

Jenny did know that mummy’s tummy was getting bigger. After a while it was harder to curl up in her lap. Mummy said the baby was growing in there. She told David-next-door.

“Mummy says there is a baby growing in her tummy. How does it get in there?”

David-next-door seemed to know a lot of things.

“The daddy puts it in there” he said. “It grows from a special seed that the daddy puts there”.

“How does he do that?” Jenny wondered.

“Dunno” he shrugged.

Jenny thought about it some more. When she ate dinner, her tummy felt full. Food gets in your tummy through your mouth, she thought, so that’s how the baby gets there too. If daddy put the baby in there, it must be something to do with kissing. Mummy and the aunts kissed her on the cheek, but Daddy and Mummy kissed on the mouth sometimes. Usually when they thought she wasn’t looking. He must have been putting a special seed in mummy’s tummy.

The next day Jenny said to David-next-door “Kiss me”

“Kissing’s ucky” said David.

“Yes”, she said, “but you have to.”

“I won’t”

“If you don’t, I’ll tell your mummy who trampled her flowers”

“Well…” He gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“No, you have to do it on my mouth, like mummy and daddy do”.

“Yuckkkk!!! No way!!!”

“I’ll tell!”

David gave in. Fortunately Jenny seemed to be satisfied with a very quick kiss. And just then she heard her father calling “Jenny!” and it was time to go home. She had left toys on the living room floor.

“Time to pick up your toys before dinner” her father said.

“No” said Jenny.
“No?” her father was astonished.

“I can’t” said Jenny. “Mummy doesn’t pick things up any more, you do it for her. I can’t pick up my toys, you have to do it for me”

“Mummy gets tired, and she can’t bend easily because of the baby” said Daddy.

“That’s why I can’t”, said Jenny.

Daddy didn’t quite understand. “Because of the baby” said Jenny. “David kissed me. I have a baby in my tummy so I don’t have to pick up toys any more”.

For more Sunday Scribblings go here

Summer At Last!

I've been reading in the paper that globally, 2007 is expected to be one of the hottest years of the last 200 or so. 2006 was pretty warm also. But locally, many places in New Zealand had their coldest December on record. On the other hand, in the last few days, December's cold and wet have been left behind, and the sun has been shining.

My daughter is staying for a few days, and my studio is also our guest room. Since she works shift work, I waited until she got up this afternoon before heading for the computer. Now that I'm here, I find the sun has warmed the upstairs room so much that all the things I planned to do seem like too much effort. If the sun has indeed arrived to stay, maybe I need to move the computer downstairs for the rest of the summer.

We have extended family coming for dinner, and I have a pavlova in the oven to go and check on shortly. So this is just a quick post with some photos of my walk around the estuary a couple of days ago. Mostly lately I've been walking up and down a nearby hill, which is a rather bare grassy landscape with sheep and magpies. My fitness campaign means that each time, I try and jog a little further before dropping back to a steady walking pace. It was a pleasant change to take my camera, forget about fitness, and just stroll round the estuary. It was low tide, so the birds were mostly far away across the mudflats, but I photographed these among others:

A heron wading in a small stream



Two swans glide past the end of the jetty (or are they Canada geese?)



By the roadside at the end of the walk, in the dry grass, a sudden blaze of colour

Christmas Lilies

These lilies are known in New Zealand as Christmas lilies because that is when they bloom.

The prompt at Poetry Thursday this week on gumball poetry intrigued me, and I planned to write a poem inspired by it. But life intervened - just as I had to start work again after Christmas the visitors started arriving. I guess their holidays are longer than mine. So I have been hostessing, and other things, instead of writing.

Instead I pulled this poem about Christmas lilies out of my files. The summer I wrote this we were having a drought. This year we just had our coldest wettest December on record. Almost like a nothern hemisphere Christmas. So it's good to have this poem to remind me that summer still exists! (It has been sunny since yesterday when I started work again. I wonder if it will last till the weekend?)

Christmas Lilies

On the twelfth day, Christmas is almost through.
At the deserted garden centre I buy lobelia fulgans,
gazania, red-frilled lettuces
and hope they will survive the heat.

Christmas lilies sprawl across the bare patch
I plan to fill. As I lift and bunch them,
anthers laden with pollen paint
bright strokes of yellow across my shirt.

I tie green armfuls to stakes with soft bands,
trowel holes in the earth, place my purchases,
firm the soil around them

and pray, as near as I know how, for rain
and that some bright gold lingers,
as the year lurches into winter

Haiku: New Year

Later this month I will be going to the New Zealand national Quilt Symposium. It's time to go over my class needs lists. For one class in particular I have to pre-cut many strips of cloth, so that I arrive ready to start sewing.

It seemed a good way to start the New Year.

shifting patterns
cloth of many colours
- a new year begins

For more haiku on the theme of New Year go to onedeepbreath

Destinations

I haven't been posting much over the last few days. I had all sorts of things planned to do while i'm on a holiday break, and then I was offered two weeks free trial to Ancestry. As a passionate genealogist, it has been keeping me very busy.

T.S. Eliot wrote in his "Four Quartets"
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Researching family history, to me, is a search for the place where I started. We are all shaped by those who came before us in ways we can't imagine. The majority of my ancestors came from Scotland. I treasure my Scottish ancestry. And yet I am not drawn to bagpipes, tartans or other popular images of Scottishness. I don't believe they were part of my ancestors' lives. The tartan as we know it is a 19th century invention, and kilts were not worn by the lowland Scots. I don't know what it is about Scotland that calls to me, but later this year I will be making a journey there to see what I can find out. Perhaps to "know the place for the first time". I feel like an explorer in the labyrinth, gathering up the threads that have been left for me by my forbears, following their trail back to all the places they left well over a hundred years ago.

They came from all walks of life - farmers who owned their own land, agricultural labourers, a schoolteacher, a lamplighter, coal miners, tailors, bakers and many others. They left for all sorts of reasons. I wish I could talk to them, but wonder if we could understand each other if I did. Not because the language and accent would be difficult, but because their world view would be different. I don't think that concepts such as self-fulfilment would be very familiar to them, whereas ideas such as duty are less popular now.

So, visiting Scotland is not a final destination on my quest to "know the place where I started for the first time". But it is one more step on the journey. I'm trying to keep an open mind about what I might discover, so that I am not disappointed. I don't think I will be.

More Eliot:
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from....

We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.

Oh, and if anyone would like a free trial at Ancestry, let me know - I can send an invitation.

"Destinations" is the topic at Sunday Scribblings this week.

Oh Yes, It's Thursday

I'm in holiday mode, which means I don't really remember which day of the week it is. And I don''t have to remember, until next Wednesday when I go back to work. Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day and the day after are all public holidays in New Zealand. Only a few work on the days in between and many offices shut altogether. The shops, though, are closed on Christmas Day only, and the next day the sales start. I'm not sure how these are different to the pre-Christmas special offers when everyone competes for the Christmas shopping dollar. However, it came in handy because just before Christmas, I did a huge mountain of laundry, and then discovered our dryer wasn't working properly. So we have bought a new one at 20% off.

Oh yes, it's supposed to be summer. Someone forgot to tell the weather masters. Finally, though, we have had two nice sunny days in a row, and I have started exercising again after all the holiday food. I took a walk up the hill today and remembered this piece that I wrote a month or so back when I had one of my fitful attempts at writing a poem a day. This is today's contribution for Poetry Thursday:

Rapaki Track

A hawk lifts over the ridge
and skates in tight circles
on the blue rink of the sky.
Serrated wingtips blade the air.
He is searching for movement
but there is only the white stillness
of the grass in the wind,
water running in the cleft
of the valley. He circles and
circles and then spins off northwards
towards the city. A plane
is rising in the east to meet him.

I didn't see a hawk up there today, but I did see another wild species - a bagpiper. I think he goes up there regularly to practice, I've seen him before. And by the river, before I reached the hill, this fellow posed for me - he let me get as close as about a metre away before he flew off.

Joy to the World

Firstly, I have another photo of the pohutukawa tree, or at least the top of one which was the best I could do on the steep hillside below the university in Wellington. It is not, as David thought, a bottlebrush which is an Australian shrub that is considerably smaller. Also, the pohutukawa blossoms are rounder and softer than those of the bottlebrush, which are quite stiff. Some will be covered in blossom even more thickly than this in the weeks to come.



Last night (Christmas Eve) I headed off to "Carols by Candlelight". It has been an annual tradition held in this city for the past 46 years. When I got there something seemed a bit odd. I looked around for people passing out song books and candles and couldn't spot any. Where was the band? Where was the compere? Were they running late? Shortly someone stood in the centre of the gathered crowd and started calling out carols, which people started to sing a little raggedly. Some had brought their own carols and songbooks. When I asked someone near me what was going on, he said the event had been cancelled, so we were having a "do it yourself" singalong instead. Why was it cancelled? I'm not quite sure, it seemed to be something to do with all the rain we had had, and the fact that the ground was too wet to put the stage up.

Stage? I didn't grow up here, but holidayed here with aunts and uncles regularly as a child. I do remember attending once or twice, when we came at Christmas, and I'm sure there was no stage. The essential ingredients are a crowd, songbooks, candles, a Salvation Army band, and someone with a microphone (I think it was the bandleader) to announce what we were singing next.

Gradually things got fancier. Someone decided to add a "celebrity" compere. And a soloist or two to interrupt the crowd singing. Fortunately they save the real hype for "Coca Cola Christmas in the Park" (sponsored by guess who?) which comes a few weeks earlier and is mostly a family pop concert with a few Christmas songs like "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and if very lucky, one or two which actually mention the real reason for Christmas.

Anyway, it turned out last night that not even the essential ingredients are essential. We had a crowd, some of whom had candles and songbooks they had brought with them.





We had a self-appointed compere but no microphone. We had a soloist: a French tourist who gave a vivacious and extended impromptu solo, all in French. Few understood it, but she was loudly applauded. Halfway through, a trumpeter appeared to accompany us. (Presumably he went home to fetch his trumpet when he found the band was absent). We all enjoyed it immensely. It felt like the true spirit of Christmas.



When I was moving around to get a better view of the trumpeter, I noticed this window directly behind the crowd. It is the window of a hotel which is further away than it looks, because I was using the zoom. I thought it made a beautiful backdrop to the scene

New Zealand Christmas

Normally the shops here go crazy the day before Christmas. However I headed to the supermarket today for some last minute items and was surprised that I didn't even have to queue at the checkout. My daughter who works at a different supermarket was actually sent home because they had rostered on more staff than they needed. I guess the fact that Christmas is on a Monday is making it less rushed for everybody - finish work on the Friday, then there is still a whole weekend for that last minute shopping, instead of a few hours late at night on Christmas Eve.

On the other hand, the weather is giving me problems. It has been raining and raining, and then raining some more, with a few fine interludes in between. I did a huge pile of laundry, put it in the dryer which I don't usually use in summer, and then found out that the dryer wasn't working. Christmas Eve is not a good time to get it fixed. So I ended up stringing up a line on our patio, which is open at the front but otherwise covered, and "decorating" the front of our house with a load of laundry. It gives new meaning to hanging up the Christmas stockings.

When we were in Wellington last week I took the opportunity to take the photograph below. One of the things I miss in Christchurch is the pohutukawa trees blooming at Christmas. We are too far south for them to thrive - although there are a few, if you hunt them out. This tree is also known as the New Zealand Christmas tree because it blooms so profusely with bright red blossom around Christmas time. As it was a little early, not all of the trees were blooming yet, and those most thickly covered seemed to be out of reach of my camera, but this will give you a taste.

Almost Christmas

As I said in my last post, I have been crazy busy in the past week. Only a little of this was truly Christmas related. I was also involved in mailing out the latest issue of a literary magazine. This includes a complex mixture of renewals for individual subscribers, invoices for libraries and book shops, contributors' free copies and so on. There is still a little tidying up to do but it can wait till after Christmas.

There were end of year barbeques (in the rain) and at work, I did extra hours to clear everything away before the end of the year, since I won't be working between Christmas and New Year.

Now I find the house has grown dust bunnies in the meantime, so this weekend is a time for hurried housecleaning before Christmas Day, when I hope to be ready to relax.

In the meantime I am having brief fixes of blogging, visiting a site or two, or making a brief post, as a break from the housework.

The photos below are of a Christmas tree that I encountered last year in a shopping complex in Wellington. The shells on the tree are polished paua shell - a New Zealand shellfish similar to abalone. I thought it was very effective, although the photos don't quite do it justice.

Is It Thursday Already?

I am crazy busy this week, so I am very quickly posting a poem from my files for Poetry Thursday, and I may catch up in a day or two.
Just as well that this week's prompt was "do what you like".

Z

points both east and west
a Byzantine ziggurat
a jazz riff, Dizzy Gillespie on a trombone
it’s a double puzzle,
a blazing breeze,
a horizon zigzagging to the zenith,
an awkward couple,
a figure 2 sharpened
catching z’s in a double bed
all knees and elbows

More Poetry Thursday here

Don't Rain on my Parade

As I've mentioned in previous posts, we had a quick trip to Wellington this week for my daughter's graduation. Although she lives at home in Christchurch, she studied for her library degree by correspondence with Victoria University of Wellington (the only university that offers it), while working parttime in a library here.

The "summer" weather has been very erratic lately, so we were relieved to have a perfect day - neither too hot, nor wet - since the graduands parade through the city before the ceremony.

They were led by the Scots College pipe band



Followed by men in silly hats



More men in silly hats (the purple squashed thing on the left was a particularly splendid example, unfortunately this photo doesn't do it justice)



The MLIS (library) students wore hoods described as "champagne with fuchsia stripe". Actually their hoods were more like sailor collars - much easier to wear than the true hoods that some of the students with other degrees wore.



At the end of the parade, all the students released their balloons in Civic Square.

Poetry Thursday: On the Street Where You Live

This week's prompt at Poetry Thursday set me thinking about streets. At first, I didn't find much to inspire me in the town where I currently live. Sure, we have a whole bunch of streets named for poets: Tennyson, Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shakespeare. All very dead and very English. I suspect the streets in Christchurch are just too darned polite and well-behaved - laid out in nice grids with pretty English looking front yards. Maybe I live in the wrong part of town. I have to admit that the hot winds we have been having this week aren't so polite, but they don't inspire me to poetry. They just make me tired.

Then my thoughts turned to Wellington, where I grew up, and I started to find poetry. The street where I spent my childhood was called Tai Paku Paku Rd. This is a Maori name which means, as far as I can ascertain, "gentle murmuring waves". If no one has ever put it in a poem, they should have - it sounds poetic, right off the bat. Actually, like many Wellington streets, it is not. That is, it starts off with good intentions at the crest of a hill. You can drive a car down and round a bend, and all of a sudden, about where our house was, the street runs out, in a turning area with a great view of the harbour. But the name doesn't. It continues down a zigzag footpath where there are more houses, and then it become a set of steep steps cut into a sandstone cliff, all the way down to the harbour, where it is signposted just like any real street.

Grass St was another street like that. It was the street my music teacher lived on. There was a short stretch of real street leading away from the waterfront Esplanade, and then a zigzagging path up the hill, through the pohutukawa trees. I could get off the bus at the bottom and make the steep climb, or I could stay on the bus while it took the long way round up the road to the top of the hill (I usually bussed up and walked down).

Poet Lauris Edmond lived on Grass St in her later years. When I read her autobiography, I realised that I was constantly almost bumping into her, but not quite. She moved to Grass St after I had grown up and stopped learning piano. I think Grass St made it into one of her poems, though I can't locate it just at the moment. She taught at my small primary school a few years before I started there (and it did make it into one of her poems). Also in her poems are Mount St, where a small historic cemetery jostled up against the university, and the wonderful Spanish sounding streets which give their names to cable car stops : Salamanca Road, Talavera Terrace. (Spanish always sounds poetic to me. The suburb where I grew up also had a Spanish name: "Miramar" - "behold the sea"). The closest I came to Lauris, I think, was when we bought our second house, and rented our first to a group of flatmates which included one of her daughters - though it was mostly done through an estate agent. We never met until I heard her at a poetry reading and had a book signed. We probably only exchanged a few words. But nevertheless, in her poems and her autobiography, there are the scenes of my life.

Our second house as mentioned above was in Happy Valley Road. This was a long road running up a valley from the sea, populated at the bottom and top, but with nothing but scrub covered hills in the middle section, too wild to really be called "countryside". Poetry seems to have been following me: when I recall Happy Valley Road I always think of Jenny Bornholdt's poem "Instructions for How to Get Ahead of Yourself While the Light Still Shines". You can find an audio of it here (scroll down to the Audio section).

I'm writing this on Tuesday night and will post it on Thursday night, after a quick trip to Wellington for my daughter's graduation. Maybe I'll find time to work on some poems of my own about Wellington streets. In the meantime, if the Bornholdt link isn't enough, here is a link to another street poem - a rather long one - Galway Kinnell's The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World.

Thursday postscript: I didn't think I would get a poem written - but I did:

Lunchtime in the Cemetery

In Mount St the dead jostle up against us
They are not ours. We deny them
elbow room, picnic on their rooftops.
"Meet you on the five nuns", we say
as we head to our lectures and laboratories.
We lunch on sandwiches, fruit, and each other.
We compare notes, finish last-minute assignments,
study various sorts of chemistry.
Just as our crystals absorb moisture from the atmosphere,
so we absorb the sunlight.
We are becoming deliquescent.



Part of the Mount St cemetery

More Poetry Thursday here

Haiku Monday

This week's theme at onedeepbreath is "containers".



a small square box
of many coloured papers -
worlds not yet folded



a jar of buttons
from discarded garments
fastens memories

Getting Busier

We are definitely into the silly season of December. So, maybe my posts will be shorter this month. For today:

1) We had a real live donkey in church this morning.

2) I went out with my husband this afternoon and made a good sized dent in the Christmas shopping, and

3) I also bought some new trousers. Not only did they turn out to have a special on the trousers I wanted, a free top with each pair, but I managed to fit into a size smaller. Yaay! Seems my changed eating habits are actually working.

Are You a Maximiser or a Satisficer?

I think I got those words right...They come from an article I read a while back. It's to do with how you make decisions. Maximisers gather all the information they can, analyse it carefully and try to make the best possible decision. Satisficers collect some information, then make a decision that is "good enough", and are satisfied with that. They don't mind if they didn't buy the best possible house, or get the cheapest possible deal on their new computer, or whatever. Satisficers are happier (though maximisers might not think so). That's because they are not always worrying that they might have got a better deal if they'd looked harder.

I was thinking about it because I've been running around trying to sort out our holiday bookings. We looked at various ads (lots of earlybird specials at the moment for travel to Europe next year), looked at online booking prices and I went to a certain travel agent, who advertises "lowest airfares guaranteed", to see what he would offer.

The lowest airfares guarantee is slightly misleading, because he gives the same price as you get booking with the airline direct, online. And then he charges a $50 service fee each. However, he came up with a good rental car deal which we couldn't match searching online. So we decided to book the airfare and the rental car with the travel agent and pay the fee. (Ignoring all the other things he was trying to sell, like prepaid bed and breakfast, travel insurance - definitely not the best or cheapest, and tours in Singapore where we have a stopover).

The only thing was that the formatting of his e-mail invoice got scrambled in transit, and I failed to notice that there was a 1.5% addition for paying by credit card. So I paid by credit card, for the hotpoints, then realised we had been overcharged (he also accidentally charged for the insurance we didn't want, and refunded it).

When I replied on his e-mail, he realised what a mess the formatting was, and agreed to refund the credit card. So now I have to go in and pay cash. But we could have booked online for the same price, paid by credit card, and got the hotpoints. And I am sick of running around. So, I am trying to remind myself that I'm very happy to be having this trip, and if I've messed up and not got the best possible deal by finding another travel agent who would accept credit cards, too bad.

On the other hand, with my new camera, I was quite content to spot one that I love, at a good price (special birthday deals at my husband's favourite photo store), and just enjoy it, without comparing dozens of cameras and reading heaps of online reviews. I am happy with it! If there's a better one, I don't want to know!

So, in regards to the opening question, I guess I'm a bit of both, depending on circumstances.

Poetry Thursday: A Poetry Meme

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was

Apart from nursery rhymes, and hymns, many of which are really poems (being a Presbyterian we sang a lot of psalms, which are classified in the Old Testament as "poetry") - the first two poetry books I owned were "A Child's Garden of Verse" by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Golden Book of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer. I think the latter came first. So probably the first poem is from that book - "The Tale of Custard the Dragon" by Ogden Nash, which I loved and still do. (If you follow the link on the Poetry Thursday site you will find that this meme came from Cam, who recalls the same poem, coincidentally).

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and........

Well, I was never made to memorize any poems in English. I do still recall a good chunk of one I had to learn in French - la Fontaine's fable of the fox and the crow (Le Corbeau et Le Renard). I loved memorising it. No problem.

3. I read/don't read poetry because....

I read it of course, because I love it. And because the best poetry hints at all sorts of layers of meanings. And because - well, just because I love poetry and I always have

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is .......

Probably many different poems on different occasions. Maybe Jane Kenyon's beautiful Let Evening Come. Or, if I am in a more light-hearted mood, it might be Billy Collins's Introduction to Poetry

5. I write/don't write poetry, but..............

I do write poetry - but I don't think I work at it hard enough or consistently enough. (Enough for what? Good question. Maybe, enough to satisfy myself that I am living up to my own expectations)

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature.....

With poetry I can browse and dip into it more, and also go back and re-read favourites. It is a very different experience from the "straight through" of a novel.

7. I find poetry.....

In books, at readings and on the internet! Especially at Poetry Daily

8. The last time I heard poetry....

was at a book festival in September. I was alternately amused, moved, stimulated and bored. I particularly remember Bill Manhire reading his poem Erebus Voices which commemorates the victims of an air crash in the Antarctic. (It was written to be read at a memorial ceremony). Bill Manhire is a poet I haven't particularly liked in the past, but his more recent work seems to be more accessible. This one is particularly moving.

9. I think poetry is like....

This reminds me of having a new baby, when everyone clusters around trying to decide who the baby is like. I always said of mine "she is like herself" or "he is like himself". There is so much variety in poetry, I don't know how to begin to answer this question.

More answers to the meme at Poetry Thursday
No poems of my own this week, but if you follow the links you will find several very fine poems.

Ten Photos I Want to Take with my New Camera

1. A really nice sunset, without any houses, power lines etc in the way. I can almost but not quite get there from one spot on the upper level of our house. I could climb the hill of course, but then I'd have to come down in the dark and I think that would be risking a sprained ankle on the rough track.
2. Pohutukawa blossom. Otherwise known as the New Zealand Christmas tree, because it is bright red and blooms at Christmas. Unfortunately it isn't seen much this far south, and sometimes at Christmas I get a little nostalgic for the North Island thinking of pohutukawa.
3. A harbour scene with fishing boats and their reflections. Yes, my tastes are a little chocolate boxy at times. We have a harbour not too far away, but most of the wharves have been closed off to public access - unlike Wellington where they sensibly have made public parks along the waterfront.
4. A squirrel. Preferably a British red squirrel and preferably not in a zoo. Because I've never seen one, and I think they are really cute.
5. A Chinese market.
6. Two old toothless men playing Mah Jong in the street. (Can you tell I want to travel?)
7. My daughter at her graduation (coming up soon!). This is her third degree, but she missed graduating in person the other two times because she was travelling.
8. Since she's graduating in Wellington, I'm looking forward to nostalgic photos of my home town. Maybe the cable car (and maybe the pohutukawas will be in bloom).
9. My greatgreatgrandparents' gravestones. I'm hoping that when we get to Scotland next year, they won't be vandalised or weatherworn beyond readability (I do know which churchyard to find them in).
10. Macchu Picchu. One of my dream destinations. Not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, because I am bored with photos of grasscovered hillsides and the flowers in my garden, here is something else - an impulse shot that I think turned out rather well. (Bonus points for accurately identifying what it is).

I Haven't Forgotten...

...that I have a blog, it's just that the Christmas silly season seems to be starting around here. And I have a new camera to play with. Lots of zoom and what-all else. For those who care about such things, it is a Panasonic DMC-FZ50. It's more expensive than I intended, but it looked so good that I couldn't resist - so far I love the big manual ring controls on the front for focus and zoom, just like an old-fashioned film camera - very easy to use.

There will be photos here when I figure out how to get them from the camera to the computer, I probably need to set up new cables since I'm not sure that the ones for my old camera fit. At the moment though I am doing boring things like taking the same photo on different apertures just to see how much I can blur or sharpen the background - not necessarily pretty shots, just whatever is around.

In the meantime Fiji is or isn't having a coup. I couldn't believe it when I picked up the paper on Friday and saw "Fiji's coup postponed for rugby game". Well yes, I could believe it, actually. I'd believe it in New Zealand, too, except that we wouldn't be having a coup in the first place. I'm not sure that we even have enough military to stage a coup, even if they were that way inclined. They're probably far more likely to say "she'll be right, mate" than to try and overthrow the government.

Every time I read the military commander's name I think "Bananarama".

Hopefully I'll post something soon for onedeepbreath, and Poetry Thursday will be along soon, too.