Thematic Photographic: March Madness

I took these photos on Norfolk Island, someone there obviously has a sense of humour (even if their spelling seems a little off, in the second sign). They seemed appropriate for Carmi's theme for the week: March Madness. The rules - if it's taken in March, and if it demonstrates madness, silliness or irreverence, it fits. Anything else I posted today would just be a big whine, so something that brings a smile to my face - or yours - is particularly welcome today.

Earth Hour

Three years ago Christchurch was the first city in New Zealand to officially celebrate Earth Hour. A crowd of 2000 gathered in Cathedral Square to watch the lights go out, while around the city , others were taking part in their own homes.

This year there has been very little mention of Earth Hour in our newspapers, although I believe it is being celebrated elsewhere in New Zealand. There are no lights - and no people - in Cathedral Square - Civil Defence personnel and construction workers aside - and there hasn't been for the last month. Many residents went without all power for a period lasting from a couple of days to two weeks or more. In the south and east of the city, we have an electricity grid that is cobbled together from "extension leads" due to the many breaks in underground cables. Rather than turning lights off, we are being asked to conserve power so that the lights can stay on. Not just for an hour, but on an ongoing basis.

The Earth Hour organisers this year are asking people to go "beyond the hour" and make a more permanent commitment. Perhaps conserving power will cause the citizens of Christchurch to change their habits more permanently. More likely, there will be a rebound in electricity usage once the network is restored, as people indulge in pleasures they have gone without in the meantime.

I'm not convinced that in New Zealand, where we have non-polluting hydro-electric power, greenhouse gas emissions are significantly affected if we turn off a light or two. Of course, some of our power stations are coal-fired, so keeping our consumption down is probably a good thing. However a large part of our emissions come from agriculture. Scientific research into improved farming methods is far more likely to help the planet. And on a personal level, reducing our use of motor vehicles seems to me to be far more important.

Aside from forced savings due to earthquake-hit infrastructure, my biggest change this year will be to leave my job on the other side of town - the one I do two days a week at present. I'll be working more days at my other job, and will be endeavouring to walk to work more often. Not, if I am truthful, to help the planet - though that's a beneficial side effect - but because I enjoy the exercise, and because it's healthy. Ultimately, I think people change their habits more easily if there is some personal side benefit. That's the real challenge - to give people motivation to change their habits, other than the feel-good factor of maybe saving the planet, ten years or twenty years or a hundred years in the future.

Postcards from Norfolk Island

And Another Thing...

One month on...

(References to "today" in this post actually refer to "yesterday". It seems I don't have the automatic post scheduling thing quite sussed out yet).

The more I look at our chimney sitting in the driveway, the more amazed and grateful I am at how far it travelled sideways before landing. By my calculations, about eight feet. It's a potent illustration of just how strong the sideways shaking was - apparently off the usual scale, and several times stronger than in the Japanese earthquake. Of course, in Japan they have other problems. If the chimney hadn't travelled so far sideways, it would have come crashing through the roof into our living room, and done far worse damage.

The sign proclaiming Sydenham is open for business has been taken down. I guess it didn't seem appropriate now that Sydenham is - well - closed again.

I went to the physio today. She is back in her usual clinic at a (sort of) local leisure centre, but the gym and pool are not yet open. Maybe next week. On the other hand, she told me that the city's main Olympic pool may not be able to be rebuilt at all on the same land, as the land is too damaged.

The local library on the other hand is open. In fact it is almost the only library in Christchurch that is. (Hurray for well-designed modern buildings). Which means that the car park is full, and all the streets surrounding it are full of parked cars. I'd walk there, except there is the small matter of the Achilles tendon, which is the reason for being at the physio in the first place. It's finally improving, so I may be able to get to the library in a week or two.

I stopped at a dairy on the way home and looked over the rack of magazines. Oprah has a feature on how not to go shopping when stressed. No problem around here. Finding a shop that is open, driving through heavy traffic taking twice as long as normal, and fighting for a space in the car park or indeed on any street within a few blocks of the mall is all far too much effort to go through just for impulse buying. (Thank goodness there is at least a supermarket open not too far from here).

Gerry Brownlee, our Earthquake Recovery Minister, wants to get the message out that Christchurch is open for business. Yeah right. Perhaps he would like to discuss that over a coffee in the City Mall? (Likely to be cordoned off for a few months to come).

My daughter's blog post on how to survive: I particularly liked the last bit.
The first year: You want normality. This may be in short supply. Salvage what you can and adjust to the rest.

Tuesday Poem: Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon

I was a bit behind the ball this week, and hadn't organised any permissions for Tuesday Poem. I didn't have one of my own in mind either. That ruled out any living poets, any New Zealand poets who had died less than fifty years ago, any from most of the rest of the English-speaking world who died less than fifty years ago, and pretty much all of the non-English speaking world, since I have yet to find a translation that is not copyright (the translators having died less than seventy years ago).

I had in mind to post Siegfried Sassoon's poem Everyone Sang. Sassoon is one of the poets known for his First World War poems, and I assumed at first that he had died in the war, but I was wrong - he died in 1967.

This particular poem seems in some ways the opposite of a war poem. Instead of the horrors of war, it speaks of heightened joy.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing
And I was filled with such delight...

But I wonder if the intense feeling expressed is just the other side of the coin - if the capacity for intense joy and intense horror might go together. In fact the poem itself mentions that horror/drifted away. And a little research suggests that it was written in celebration of the Armistice.

It seems a good time to read a poem that celebrates the end of horror. (Click the link above to read the full poem). It's long been a favourite of mine, even without knowing its history. Here are the last lines of the poem, almost like a prayer:

and the song was wordless;
and the singing will never be done

More Tuesday Poems at the main hub site.

Transitions

I have been digging around in my photo files for photographs of Christchurch buildings. It looks as if many of these will be gone by the time the cordons round the city are removed. Many, of course, are half gone already. Some are considered important enough to save, but it will take large amounts of money and considerable time.

The modern sculpture with the four rotating red sections still stands. It can be seen in this video flyover of Christchurch after the February 22nd earthquake, with buildings in ruins all around it. The large palm tree still stands, too. I photographed the backpackers' hostel behind it about a month after the September 4th quake, which it survived quite well. It too, is now in ruins. The only evidence I have of that is the video I've linked to above. It is a city in transition, although what it is in transition to is yet to be revealed.

For more transition themed photos visit Carmi here

Finding New Ways

As planned I started the day by doing some gardening. The garden has gone rather wild in the last month while I was distracted, but at least it is something I have some control over. By the end of the weekend I hope to have made a significant difference. Then we had a visitor: the EQC rapid assessment inspector. The EQC (government earthquake insurance commission) has learnt from the September quake and they have a much more efficient way of going about things this time. Every house in the Christchurch metropolitan area, as well as some outlying areas, is to be visited over the next two months, starting with the worst affected areas. As it is only a week and a half to two weeks into the process, our area must be quite high on the list.

It is a sort of "triage" - properties are sorted into categories, with a full inspection to be done later. But our visitor seemed to have a very fast and accurate eye for damage - for instance, standing at the door he noticed that our dining room floor was not quite level which we hadn't spotted. He asked if we had a marble, and P found a ball bearing which he placed on the floor, whereupon it rolled quite merrily to the other side of the room. What with the unlevel floor, the fact that we have a door that won't shut and another that won't open (fortunately there are two entrances into that room, especially since it is the toilet!), the chimney that fell down, damaging the eaves, and some widening cracks, he said that he would err on the side of caution and put us into the "severe structural damage" category - a bit higher than I had expected. He did hasten to assure us that the house is quite safe to live in. This should mean a visit for a full assessment within four months, however he then inspected the hole where the chimney fell and pronounced the house not fully weathertight - though temporary repairs had been done on the day - so we have been marked down for emergency repairs with a visit within three days. I assume that will take care of the hole in the roof only, and then we will go back on the four months list.

Later I went for a drive. Before the quake I had signed up for Joanna's poetry editing class. It has been rescheduled and as the original venue is not available, it will be held in a private home. The direct route though, goes right through the red zone. So I thought I would check out some roads while there wasn't pressure on to get there in time. This route skirts the east and north of the red zone. It is mostly OK except for the bridge:

What was normally four lanes - two each way - has become two. It will be fine for access to the weekend workshop, however my idea that it might be a more direct route to work may not be such a good one. I can imagine it getting gridlocked in rush hour (just the same as all the other roads that are still open).

I was very happy to spot this sign on a tree:

I've been to a poetry book launch at the Beat Street Cafe, a lovely friendly little cafe right on the edge of the red zone. It is really good to see things opening again.

Dinner with the family - almost like a normal Saturday night, except that I took my daughter home by car as the buses are unreliable. She says they are OK for coming from her house to ours, as it is at the beginning of the route where they are still running to timetable. Going the other way, she is at the end of the route and it is anybody's guess when the bus will arrive.

The Memorial Service

As I mentioned yesterday, today was a public holiday in Christchurch and a large memorial service was held in Hagley Park. I thought about it, and I didn't go. Suggested transport was bike, walk or bus. My strained Achilles tendon wasn't going to permit either of the first two, and it looked as if the buses would be terribly crowded, as would the event, with insufficient portable toilets for the large crowd. As it turned out, it seems to have been OK. Two of my daughters were there, the other had gone to Wellington for a friend's birthday. Probably because quite a few others stayed away for the same reasons - reports are that there were about 30,000 there or 1 in 10 residents. I did however watch some of the video this evening - the fourteen minute montage of the damage in the city, and a shorter piece showing the clean up afterwards.

There was a reason why the mayor Bob Parker and the TV crews were always shown at the same damaged corner in the September quake. Much of the city wasn't so badly damaged. This time it was different. None of us have been in the central city yet (apart from the rescue crews, the Prime Minister and Prince William), but the video shows street after street with extensive damage. It is rather chilling.

What I did do in the end was go to work. I didn't have to, however the disruption of painters at the office, followed by the quake, followed by two weeks' leave which I had arranged long since meant that I had almost a month's worth of work piled on my desk. I know from experience that this makes me stressed out. And the last thing the city needs at the moment is more stressed people. The sooner I catch up, the sooner I can relax.

Besides, work is about the only thing that it makes sense to do at the moment. In the evenings I find myself feeling a little lost. After cooking and cleaning, that is.

Two whole free days coming up and I have to figure out what to do with it when much of the city is closed. The garden needs a clean-up, and there are other possibilities - I'm thinking of doing a little exploring and trying to find out exactly what is still open - libraries, farmers' markets, and the like. I also need to find more ways to get around the city, as I have some appointments coming up for which the limited routes I have been using won't do.

Earthquake Update: Three Weeks On

I thought it might be difficult returning to work after a week away on a peaceful subtropical island. In fact, it was surprisingly easy. Returning to work after an earthquake was a struggle, as I felt highly distracted. Returning to work after a holiday felt normal in comparison. Something has shifted this week. I no longer feel as if I am living through an event that is continuing to happen - the earthquake, the aftershocks, the rescue efforts. Now it is more as if something has already happened. The city has changed, but this is the way it now is.

Not that things don't change from day to day, but the changeability is part of the way things are, too. For instance, as we neared our home returning from the airport, we found a newly-placed sign on the corner advising the street was closed to through traffic - residents only.

The street didn't look more dangerous than it was when we left. The next morning I found the reason - major construction work down at the other end of the street. It's not clear whether it is the bridge or perhaps the sewage pumping station that is being repaired.

And in our street blue piping has sprung up down both sides of the street. It appears to be a temporary fix to broken water pipes, diverting flow around the many leaks.

Today when I went to work I encountered a major traffic jam where there wasn't one before. The street was down to one lane. A "stop-go" man with his reversible sign let the queued traffic through first from one direction then the other. I'm happy to see it though as there is every evidence that this, and another badly damaged street in the area, are being rapidly repaired and will have a new, smooth surface in a couple of days time.

At work I collected my water bottles which a colleague, who lives in the country, had filled with clean artesian water. News reports are that the "boil water" restriction on the city supply may be lifted by the end of the month. Only because it will be chlorinated, though, giving it an unpleasant taste for drinking. I may keep fetching supplies from outside of the city for drinking, but the chore of boiling water for dishes will come to an end. I'm using the tap water for laundry, and washing, but keeping it away from faces - so it is bottled water for brushing teeth, and I haven't yet come to a satisfactory solution for washing dish cloths, face cloths and tea towels. I soaked them in a nappy (diaper) sanitising solution and hung them on the line without rinsing, but they came out smelling so nasty that I decided I need to find another way. Maybe I will just pile them up till the end of the month.

Another thing that happened while we were away was that a contractor repairing water pipes cut through a 66,000 volt electric cable. Consequently the south of the city (where I live) is reportedly "running on extension cords" and we have been requested to conserve electricity. The capacity is being severely stretched, and people are returning to the city as schools and work places start to reopen. There is a list of things that are OK to use - lights, computers, toasters, showers if short, and various others. There is another list of things that shouldn't be used at all - spa pools, heated towel rails, air conditioners for cooling, among others. A third list is of items that should be used "only when absolutely necessary". It includes electric heaters, ovens especially between 5 and 7 at night, stove top elements, irons, hair dryers. I'm a bit bemused. How do you define when use of an iron is "absolutely necessary"? When the clothes are crumpled? That's business as normal. When they are more than a certain amount crumpled? Only if you are leaving the house in said crumpled clothes? Or only if you have an audience with someone important like Prince William (who was in the city today)?

Tomorrow is a public holiday with a memorial service in Hagley Park. I've decided not to go, but more on that tomorrow, as this post is long enough already.

A Week in the Pacific

"Pacific" seems a very appropriate name for the spot we spent our holiday, given its meaning. We didn't plan our holiday as an escape from the earthquake aftermath, but it was certainly well-timed coming when it did.

Norfolk Island is an interesting little island and it helped put a few things in perspective. It is halfway between New Zealand and New Caledonia, about an hour and three quarters' flight from Auckland (which is an hour and twenty minutes from Christchurch) - closer to New Zealand than Australia, although it is actually a territory of Australia. It has a population of 1800, swelled another 1000 by tourists at peak times. When we were there, we spotted a sign in the Westpac bank stating there were 495 visitors on the island. With only a few plane loads arriving each week, I guess it is an easy matter to count up the arrival and departure cards and do an exact count. No real need for a census, then!

It was populated early on by Polynesian people, who left for unknown reasons. In 1788 it was resettled as a convict settlement - which was closed down in the early 1800s. Another convict settlement followed in 1825 (also closed down). And then in 1856 the island was given by Queen Victoria to the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, when their original home, Pitcairn Island, became overcrowded. About 40% of the inhabitants today are descendants of the Pitcairners. Surnames like Christian, Adams, Qunital, Nobbs are so common that the phone book lists people by their nicknames as well as their actual names. The owner of our accommodation was a descendant of Fletcher Christian - as was another woman we met on our introductory tour of the island.

In Christchurch after the September earthquake there were empty shelves at the supermarkets. The distribution centres in the west of the city had been damaged and goods had to be trucked in directly, which led to delays when stocks ran out. This time round, there were not so many empty shelves as the distribution centres were undamaged - the west being mostly unscathed this time. But there were occasional shortages, and runs on emergency supplies like bottled water, baby supplies and so on. Some supermarkets - the ones that were actually open - had limits on various items.

In Norfolk I was surprised to find quite a large number of items were "temporarily out of stock" at the supermarket. (Only two small supermarkets on the island). I was also taken aback slightly by the prices - about double those of New Zealand or Australia. Everything is either air freighted in or shipped, so it is expensive. We bought fresh milk the first day we were there, and when I went back for more later in the week, they were almost out. That's when I realised that it was a New Zealand brand, and there is one flight from New Zealand a week - so, fresh milk once a week. The rest of the time there is UHT milk in cartons. The whole island is one big cow paddock, but they are beef cattle, and there is no dairy industry. The fruit and vegetables on the other hand are all local and seasonal, apart from potatoes and onions. Apart from cost, strict biosecurity regulations are the reason for the lack of fresh produce imports. This meant that the range available was much more limited than we are used to - and again, it was expensive. With the exception of oranges, which were free from the tree outside the door of our accommodation! (There was also a fig tree - just finishing its season - and a pawpaw tree - its fruit not yet ripe).

Electricity on the island is diesel generated and about four times the cost that it is in New Zealand. So all ovens are gas, and there are no air conditioners. I am used to hand washing dishes, so it was halfway through the week before it suddenly occurred to me that there was no dishwasher in the unit, which would be most unusual for four-star accommodation anywhere else.

So - adequate enough accommodation, but not really luxury, except that it felt like utter luxury to have hot showers with uncontaminated water, to wash dishes without first having to boil the water, and to have access to a swimming pool - outdoor and unheated, but comfortably warm from the sun. There is nowhere in Christchurch to swim at the moment as the pools are all damaged (our main Olympic pool has sunk a metre) and the beaches are contaminated by sewage flowing from damaged pipes.

Of course it also helped that the people are friendly, the island beautiful, the climate temperate and the local fish absolutely delicious.

Photos to follow, and also some more earthquake updates, but I have had too many late nights this week catching up, so will now head to bed.

Tuesday Poem: Related Events by Jessica Fox-Wilson

related events

set one bowl, empty on a counter. count
each breath until you fill it.

sit down, alone in a room. count
each breath until you talk or move.

set two identical bowls, side by side on a counter. fill
one bowl with honey, one bowl with rocks. which
is heavier in your hands?

live your life in your body. on one good day,
how light do you feel? on one miserable day,
how heavy are you?

set three identical bowls, side by side. same
counter. fill the left bowl with marshmallows,
the right bowl with mud. leave the middle empty.
which do you hold?

after your good day, after your bad day, sit
alone in a room. count each breath, until
you cradle yourself in inadequate arms.

fill one bowl with water. find the perfect
place to see your reflection. count
each breath until you dip your fingers
in the water, blur your picture.

one morning, stand naked in front of a mirror.
count each breath until you walk away.

hurl your bowl against the wall. gather
its remains. count how many shards it made.

live through life long enough to be devastated. walk
through life, not feeling your fingers anymore.

glue together the shards of your bowl. re-
construct its original shape. fill your bowl
with water, watch the water trickle out the seams.

try to remember feeling whole.

*****

Jessica Fox-Wilson is a part-time poet and a full-time educator. Throughout her career, she has pursued her twin vocations of unraveling poems and serving college students, with varying degrees of balance, luck and success. She writes about this balancing act at her blog, Everything Feeds Process.

related events is included in her recently published collection, Blameless Mouth. Jessica has worked on this manuscript for the last five years, exploring questions of hunger and consumption from a wide variety of angles, particularly as they relate to women's experiences. Woven through the collection are poems that are based on the stories of Eve, Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Persephone, and others that explore modern pressures to consume more, while leaving us always unsatisfied.

I started reading the collection before the earthquake of February 22nd. I finished it while returning from a week's break in Norfolk Island - of which I will write more shortly - to a city where most shops are closed, and desires are more for dust-free roads, a hot shower and water that doesn't have to be boiled than for the latest consumer objects. It brought a strange shift in perspective. I debated which poem to post from the collection, until I came across this one near the end, and there seemed to be no question any more that this was the one to post. I chose on instinct, but perhaps it is the images of brokenness and wholeness that called to me.

Jessica has been conducting a blog tour to publicise Blameless Mouth. Other stops on the blog tour are listed on her blog here.

More Tuesday Poems are linked to from the main hub site - click on the quill icon in the sidebar.

Earthquake: Day 12

It felt strange this morning to get up and not have to go to work, it made me feel quite restless. I decided that it was OK to do a small load of laundry now that we have water back on, tidied up a bit and then drove the girls to the airport.
Later my brother came over to borrow my preserving kit. This is a large stainless steel waterbath with an electric element in it, and a tap on the side - it hadn't occurred to me, but it will be very suitable for boiling a large quantity of water (though it takes quite a long time to come to the boil) - so he can use it while we are away.

He also asked if he could bring over some laundry and have a shower, although I haven't had a shower myself yet (I've been washing in a small bowl of water) I said OK since he doesn't have water at all. But when he arrived I discovered the water was off again. It seems to go off every day while work is done on the pipes.

D works as a postie and had spent the morning checking out the routes in the hill suburbs, which have been badly hit, to see which were safe to deliver to. He had seen extensive damage, big modern houses which had just collapsed or split in two.

Talking about the waterbath reminded me that I had done some preserving a couple of days before the quake and there were sixteen jars of peaches sitting on the kitchen bench on the day of the quake, waiting until I was sure they had sealed properly before I removed the rings, rinsed off the sticky syrup from the outsides of the jars and put them away. (See photo above). I arrived home convinced that they would be smashed all over the kitchen floor, but not one of them had fallen. It all seems to be something to do with direction - I think they had moved towards the back of the bench while china in cupboards on the opposite side of the room had moved forwards, the doors had flung open and china had fallen on the floor and broken.

I noticed some of the stacks of china were leaning off kilter this evening so I unlocked the cupboard (which we locked after the quake to keep the doors from opening in aftershocks), Just as I straightened it up we were hit by a loud rumble - a 4.8 aftershock, the biggest for a while.

I'm looking forward to getting away for a break. The cordon around the central city is to be reduced slightly tomorrow, I wonder how things will be when I get back?

I noticed that my readership stats were up by 300% last week. There must be a better way to achieve that than an earthquake!

Earthquake: Day 11

I thought I would start with this photo of my office taken before my boss and his wife started to tidy it up. The chair in the foreground is where I was sitting when the shaking started, I wasn't too worried at first as I tend to think "oh, another aftershock, it's a bit bigger this time". So the first thing I tend to do is put a hand on the monitor to steady it. Then all the file boxes started to fall down on my desk, and the filing cabinets behind me tipped out and the cabinets started to tip forward, at which point it seemed a really good idea to duck under the desk.
When it all stopped and my boss said "That's it. Go home" I actually wondered about tidying up because there was so much stuff on the floor I couldn't reach the door - in the end I just climbed over. I still didn't realise at that point just how bad it had been.

Today I worked half a day, it was supposed to be until 1 pm but by 12.30 we had both had enough. So I had lunch and set off on my errands - warrant of fitness for my car, foreign cash etc. At the bank I said "do you have any Aussie money?" and the teller looked worried and said she thought they might have run out, however she managed to find me some, all in $10 notes. We are leaving for a week in Norfolk Island on Sunday. Two of my daughters are going to Palmerston North while we are away. My brother has just returned from Wellington to go back to work as a postie. My cousin has gone to Queenstown. About 20% of the population of Timaru - a small town about two hours drive south - is from Christchurch at the moment. And in the worst hit areas of Christchurch about 40% of houses are empty. No wonder it was decided to cancel our census, due March 8th. It would have led to some very strange results. Some of these people will come back, others have had enough and have left town for good.

I have been trying out different routes to get from our side of the city to the less damaged northwest - dubbed "Shower City" because they have power, water and sewage all intact. I decided this time not to choose the nearest bank because the nearest open one for me is the nearest open one for about half the population. It made more sense to go a bit further and find one with shorter queues. In the car park about two thirds of the cars were bright and shiny, and one third were covered in fine dust. It was a hot windy day and by late afternoon my eyes were hot and itchy - more than I can ever remember them being. I wear glasses which should be some protection but I hear that wrap-around sunglasses are being recommended, as well as dust masks.

I took these photos on my way back home.

One of the cordons stopping people from entering the city - I feel sorry for these soldiers, it must have been hot boring work. You can just about get some glimpses of damaged buildings from here but it's not very clear. I didn't notice till I looked at the photos later that there is a flag in the photo, and it is at the top of the flagpole. All the other flags around town are flying at half mast. This one is inside the cordon and must have been like that since before the quake.

This is the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament just north of the cordon a couple of blocks from the first photo. When the soldiers saw I was taking pictures they said I could go closer, if escorted, so one of them walked the hundred yards or so up the street with me to directly opposite the cathedral, where I took the photo. I think they were bored with standing around and were glad of something to do. There are cordons within cordons - there is another just north of this and I'm pretty sure there was no way they were going to let me go any further, even if I'd asked.

When I got home I was on rabbit ferrying duty, as the pet rabbits are going to stay on my other daughter's back lawn while the two younger ones are out of town. Between delivering and setting up the hutch, and the second trip to transport the rabbits, we made a trip to the supermarket where we filled up the boot of the car with goods to take to the Food Centre in Aranui, a low income area on the badly affected east side of the city. The TV cameras haven't ventured here much - all the focus has been on the business district and the rescue effort there. But there are people still without power, water and sewage, and many of these people also have no transport and are ill-prepared to know what is going on and how to get help. Our donations were gratefully received and in return we were offered water, and bread, which we declined.

Earthquake: Day 10

I slept much better last might, although I did wake a few times - including being woken by a sharp aftershock at 2.55 am, followed by another 4 minutes later.

I had a physio appointment in my lunchbreak. I was chatting to the physio about her workplace and she told me that their other clinic at Pioneer Stadium is now open. The gym, however is still being used as a Welfare Centre by Civil Defence, and the pool is out of action until inspected and repaired if necessary. It was not too bad, she said - QE II pool, the city's (only, I think) Olympic sized pool has sunk a metre and will have to be demolished and rebuilt. There is nowhere to swim at the moment - thinking of a relaxing day at the beach? Think again - the water is full of sewage from broken pipes.

Not being able to swim is trivial really compared to what some households are going through. 22,000 households remain without power and many more without water or sewage.

I arrived home to find that the emergency teams had got around to us and given us a green sticker, which means our house is officially safe to live in. Yay! It's an imaginary green sticker - in residential areas, only the red stickers are actual physical stickers.

P has been cleaning out the fish pond which was choked with weed. The water level was getting perilously low. So I suggested emptying the rest of the rain water in the barrel into the pond, as it now contains too much silt to use for dishwashing. The fish pond is still low but not quite so much. The tap water, which is still unreliable, is chlorinated and fish don't like that. I've cleaned out the rain barrel so that if it rains again we can collect clean water.

I have just been to get petrol, and a small sized rabbit hutch, so the girls' rabbits can go to a foster home while we go out of town for a break. I managed the rabbit hutch, however I planned to get discount petrol at our usual supermarket, which had re-opened, but now it is closed again - cordoned off with soldiers guarding the cordon, and engineers in the car park.

Earthquake: Day 9

Services are beginning to be restored in some areas. When we hear that, we tend to assume it will be in the north and west. However, I was pleased to find that mail is being delivered again in our area. There doesn't seem to be a week's worth of mail, though. Normally we would receive something every day, so after a week there should be more than one item in the letterbox, surely? I guess there is a really big backlog at a sorting depot somewhere.

We are not so fortunate with the mail for Takahe magazine, whose box lobby is behind the cordon. So we will have to go to the Mail Centre at Orchard Rd, near the airport, to retrieve the mail from there, and anything that arrived in the box between Sunday 20th when it was last cleared, and Tuesday 22nd, may have to wait weeks or even months before we can access it.

The news is suggesting that the CBD may not be open until Christmas.

The buses are also beginning again on some routes. We thought that would be the north and west, but the Orbiter, a wonderful service which does a circular route round the city, via many schools and malls, is also resuming. The route will not be so much an "O" though, as a "C" with one segment of the route inaccessible. Still, it means my eldest daughter who works at the university and doesn't drive will actually be able to get to work when it reopens, so that's a big plus. And perhaps having buses running will help with the congestion on the roads.

At the same time, the cancellations are starting to appear. The Ellerslie Flower Show, of course. Siobhan Harvey was planning a launch of her poetry book at the South Library on 8th March - now cancelled. And I had to point out that MCB, where she planned to deliver some copies to be sold, is in the Science Alive building which is behind some serious safety fencing (though my daughters tell me that someone is being allowed in to retrieve the turtle).

Annie Proulx was to speak on March 17th, I had planned to go but that is cancelled. The Press were planning a mini writers festival in May to replace the September festival cancelled after the earlier quake. It hasn't been announced as cancelled yet, but I'm not hopeful. The university has cancelled their April graduation ceremony. The Canterbury Poets' Collective has postponed their autumn series (at which I was scheduled to be a guest reader) until October. The venue for that one is behind the cordons, too. There just aren't many venues available at the moment, and inviting guest readers to visit the city right now would be a big ask. Many, many locals have also left town.

Even so, today felt remarkably normal. Except that I was really, really tired - but I stuck it out at work, because I felt that if I went home and slept during the day, I'd be even more likely to wake at 4 a.m again tomorrow, and the cycle would start again. Actually, I think work is the best thing even though it's hard to get into it at times, and I am trying not to spend too much time on news websites.

I was trying to figure out an appropriate answer to "how's your house?" or "how's your family?" I tend to say, the house is good, it has some damage but it's still liveable. The family are all safe. And of course, we are lucky - our house is not buried under a ton of rubble, or flooded with muck and silt and listing off its foundations because of ground subsidence. Our family are physically fine. But at any other time, if the chimney fell down, cracks appeared in most of your external and internal walls, the driveway developed several big cracks, and yours was the only house it had happened to, you wouldn't think it was "OK". And if family members moved to sleep on the couch just to be handy to the doors, and avoid being upstairs, you wouldn't think they were OK.

The constant coming and going of helicopters overhead is easing off. First it was the news media, then the engineers checking the stability of hillsides - there is an ongoing nervousness about possible rockfalls - and there is also the group flying in hot food to people in eastern suburbs where the roads are too bad to get in easily on the ground. Helicopters, soldiers manning cordons, rubble in the streets - no wonder people are comparing it to a war zone. At least no one is shooting at us.

It was a windy day, whipping the dust from the rapidly drying silt into fine eddies. Our barrel of rainwater that we were heating to wash dishes has developed a fine film of silt over the surface. So we are now using the tap water, which has to be boiled. It takes a long, long time to fill a large saucepan full as the pressure doesn't look like improving any time soon.

Odd bits of good news, such as the pigeon which was rescued alive from the rubble of the Cathedral tower, after being trapped for nearly a week. Can one hope that there will be similar survival stories to come for one or more of the human casualties?

Here is David Howard's moving elegy for Rhys Brookbanks, a young poet listed as missing in the CTV building.

Earthquake: Day 8

My current car was bought in March. Which means that the registration, insurance and warrant of fitness all fall due at once, at the beginning of March. I had it in my to do list when the earthquake struck, and I really wanted to get it sorted as it is no time to have anything uninsured.

The insurance company office that I usually pay at is behind the cordon, and our local post shop where I would normally pay the registration is closed. So, in my coffee break I tried to ring the insurance company to pay by telephone with my credit card. I rang the freephone number and first got a recorded message saying how busy they were - which I expected - but then instead of being placed in a half hour queue, it switched to a busy signal. Looking in the phone book for the branch numbers didn't achieve any better results - every single one including the ones in the outlying country towns just came up with a busy signal. I tried the internet - took about ten minutes to load the main page of the insurance company, clearly contacting them online wasn't going to work very well either but at least the front page had a list of which branches were open.

So, at lunchtime, (just after observing two minutes silence at 12.51 p.m), thanks to an understanding boss, I headed off on an adventure. The nearest open branch was in Riccarton, it was very busy there but the car park of the big mall was closed with cranes and men in fluorescent jackets obviously conducting an inspection. I managed to find a half a car park - let the car stick out at the end into the no parking area and headed for the insurance office where they were surprisingly unbusy, and paid the bill.

Then on the way back I headed to the nearest open Post Shop and joined the queue which stretched as far as the door and a bit more. Clearly patience was required. However, mission accomplished - the car is now registered. And the warrant of fitness lasts a few more days, so I will put that one off to another day.

All in all my half hour lunch break stretched to about an hour and a half, but I will still be paid.

We had a lot of phone calls at work in the morning as it had come over the radio that the police had evacuated 65 houses in Bowenvale which is where we were. But we didn't really spot any action, we were on the wider flat part of the valley and I suspect the problem was on the hillsides, there have been concerns about a number of hillsides and cliffs which are threatening to crumble and take houses with them. I later heard that Bowenvale Avenue was closed, but when I went to drive home, it wasn't. Unless perhaps they were referring to the top end, further up the valley.

Other than that, just a normal day at work! With running water even, though as it has to be boiled, I took my own drinking water supply, to avoid pressure on the amount available.

This evening P and I went off to our normal supermarket, which I had heard was now open. It's on the edge of the cordoned off area. The street has been reduced to half width with fences around dodgy buildings. And just north of the supermarket is the cordon with soldiers on guard to stop anyone from going through. As it turned out, the supermarket has limited their hours in the meantime and it had closed. They also had a sign up that due to safety considerations no more than 400 people would be allowed in at once. We drove back home, slowly, watching for steps in the railway overbridge, and holes in the road so large that the word "pothole" really doesn't quite fit.

Tuesday Poem: Songs and Dances of Death

Songs and Dances of Death

What they did not know
was that the curious fertility of the soil
came about because they stood
on an ancient battlefield.
Sometimes, they would turn up old bones
and once, a skull. They took it to the priest
for burial and returned to their ploughing.
At night they told the old stories.
If you had asked "Can't you hear
the dead crying out?" they would say
"It's only the wind in the wheat."

*****

All summer I read of these things.
In my garden the weeds grew lank.
It rained often. On the path
I could barely make out a small bundle
of feathers and bones.

*****

In the museum there is a dark blue
velvet cloth. It has covered many at their burials.
As well seek them in the night sky as here,
their trace as faint.

*****

It is because of their deaths that we have come.

*****

This poem is not a sarcophagus.
This poem is not a mausoleum.
This poem is a brown cardboard box
sufficient to bury one dead blackbird
found on my garden path.

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

I had decided not to post a Tuesday Poem this week, and then at the last moment I thought of this poem and changed my mind. Not an earthquake poem, but its mood seemed appropriate. The event is huge, a "brown cardboard box" is all that I feel able to offer. It is another poem that results from my genealogy researches, and was published in our anthology, "The Chook Book" in 2004.

For more Tuesday Poems go to the main Tuesday Poem hub.

A New Sort of Normal

Today I got to go back to work at my other job, almost as if things were normal. That is, if normal includes slowing down to 20 kph to drive through clouds of fine dust rising from the rapidly drying piles of silt. Or coming home at lunchtime to use my own primitive santitation facilities, rather than overload the boss's primitive sanitation facilities (we work from his home).

The good news is that the water came back on at his place in the morning, not very good pressure, but over the course of the day it got better and he even has water on upstairs now - it still has to be boiled, but tomorrow I won't have to rush home at lunchtime. Here, however, the water is still very low pressure and makes little difference to anything much except that we can probably get away with flushing the toilet once a day or so, as long as no surface sewage appears anywhere in the neighbourhood.

And I managed to reschedule my physio appointment that I didn't quite get to last week - the clinic where I was supposed to go is closed, but I was able to visit the same physio at a different clinic in the same group.

The third good thing was that my two younger daughters arrived back from an overnight stay at Rangiora, a country town just to the north of here, with a big bag of freshly washed and dried laundry. So the evening was spent first putting books back on shelves (after I hunted on the floor for all the little lugs that plug into the holes in the uprights to support the bookshelves) and then ironing the freshly washed clothes. Our bookshelves are braced to the wall, but some of the shelves are moveable, and most of those crashed to the floor during the quake along with all the books on them.

Sadly, I heard that our local supermarket, just two blocks from here, is so badly damaged it has to be demolished. All the staff have lost their jobs. I'm hoping the same won't apply to the pharmacy, bank, cafe and Post Shop that are our other local shops, but I'm not very confident.

A couple of links:
firstly, one to show that the locals have a sense of humour

and secondly, the government earthquake appeal site. Apparently the amount of damage is greater than that done by Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, and I was going to mention that the first night we had the power back on, we were watching the news on TV and the presenter commented that the weather had turned cold, and it felt like mid-winter. Clearly she hasn't ever been in Christchurch in mid-winter, because the temperature was close to 20 degrees C (about 68 degrees F, for Americans). Probably an Aucklander!

Earthquake: Day 6

Last night I was reading blogs and news sites and read on my daughter's blog that she had her water back on, and that her cat had put in an appearance (I don't know where cats hide in earthquakes, but they generally take off for at least a day or two). So I was happy for her, and also a little bit jealous. Then I read another blog, from someone in the next suburb over in the other direction, who mentioned very casually getting his water back on, as if it was rather normal, and I started to feel totally pissed off. If there was water on in one direction, and water on in the other direction, what about us? I tried to tell myself I was being irrational, but I went to bed feeling very stressed out, anyway.

When I got up this morning I was feeling more or less over myself. After all, even if there are people in the city better off than us, there are still very many a whole lot worse off. You can't after all be much worse off than being dead. Or having someone you love dead. And then some of those who have lost loved ones have also lost homes and jobs.

D stayed at her house last night because she wanted to be there for her cat, she had been sleeping over each night up till now for some sisterly support. In the morning she headed back on foot, she texted me that she was running late so I went part way to pick her up, we loaded deck chairs into the car and headed off to the South Library where our church and another local church were holding a service outside on the lawn. You can see from the photo that it was a lovely sunny day, and it felt really good to get together. There was a large congregation including quite a few people from other churches, or no church, who just felt the need. And also a large contingent of news media people - D was interviewed beforehand by a television reporter, and I was interviewed afterwards by a radio reporter. But then, they probably interviewed lots of people and picked someone else with something more interesting to say for their shows, rather than my rather dull babbling :) Here's the report on Stuff and in the New Zealand Herald - the latter includes a photo of our service.

And it was great to see that our beautiful library building was green stickered meaning that it has been assessed as safe. It is however, closed till further notice. Presumably it is needed for more urgent purposes in its role as City Council Service Centre.

Then we headed home pausing on the way to take the photo in the previous post.

In the afternoon I decided to do some cleaning up, I am taking this rather slowly. However I decided it was time to get on with it, and to trust that not everything put back on shelves would end up on the floor again. So I borrowed the neighbour's vacuum cleaner (since ours seems to have died in the quake) and cleaned all the potting mix off the upstairs hall floor, put the cacti outside, since there is no chance they will be watered inside at the moment, put the bookshelf back in its proper place against the wall and put all the books back. The hall looks even tidier than normal. I tidied and vacuumed the bedroom as well before returning the cleaner - and figured that the reason why my wardrobe door wouldn't open wasn't that the door frame had warped, as some of our doors have, but because something was stuck behind it - so I have rectified that problem, and now I can get at my clothes properly.

Only somewhere around half a dozen rooms to go (not counting the offsprings' bedrooms, which are their own problem).

I feel a bit lazy and guilty about the pace of my cleaning up when I read of the huge efforts that people like Helen are having to put in to clean silt up from their properties.

My boss contacted me and confirmed that I could go back to work tomorrow if I wish, however he will give me extra time at lunchtime to come home, as he has no water either. I guess he feels that if one has to use makeshift toilet arrangements, it should be in one's own home. So we will see how it goes. I'm sure I'll feel better with something useful to do. His daughter who normally works for an accounting firm in the CBD (on the sixteenth floor of her building - it must have been terrifying) is also going to help out.

Actually, we do seem to have some water now. There is water coming out of the downstairs taps, slowly, but nothing in the upstairs bathroom, the pressure must be too low. I'm beginning to think it's not going to be a matter of either "water" or "no water". Several neighbours have discovered broken water pipes on their lawns or in their gardens, and I suspect as each of many, many breaks are found and fixed, the water will increase in pressure, a little at a time.

There's also a rumour that we are going to get a Portaloo in our street tomorrow. This could be a good thing or a bad thing - it may well mean that we are in for a long wait to get the sewage properly fixed.

Thematic Photographic: Letters

This one is for Carmi's Thematic Photographic. Anything with letters in it, is what he asked for this week. I was tidying up some stacks of old newspapers (a couple of weeks old) after tuesday's quake and kept seeing articles on the recovery of Christchurch from the September quake. And then on Friday I passed this sign on the way home, the road was busy at that point, but I had to go back and take a photo as it was so ironic. The sign was erected after the September quake to let people know that despite the presence of damaged buildings, many shops were back to normal operation.

The second photo is taken from the other side of the sign. The pile of rubble was a historic stone church. The presence of the bulldozer indicates that this is what is described as "cleaning up". After the first quake, it was hoped to repair many of the historic buildings, now many of them are beyond repair and are coming down for safety. From here north, the streets are again closed off, the business owners who were just starting to get their livelihoods back again have no income.

Rebuilding Christchurch, One Sandcastle at at Time

When an earthquake occurs where the soil is sandy, the shaking compresses the ground and forces ground water mixed with sand and silt up through the surface layers of soil, this is called liquefaction. It results in vast areas of sand and silt on people's properties, which is being dug out and dumped on roadsides for later collection by council trucks.

Our street is not too bad, this is the next street over from us. My daughter decided that all this sand was just crying out to be made into sandcastles:

They won't last long, even if they have to wait a bit before the trucks get round this way, the aftershocks will take care of them. But for a while, every car that passed held a person with a smile on their face, as they saw what she had been up to.

Earthquake: Day 5

The last couple of days I have managed to get to work, I have two jobs, one is suspended till next Monday at least but my usual Wednesday and Friday job is very near the airport and I went there yesterday, and again this morning because I had some serious catching up to do (both for earthquake and non-earthquake related reasons).

I was a bit concerned about possible congestion on the roads, however it wasn't much of a problem. I couldn't take my usual route which goes through the cordoned-off area, instead I headed first west then north to avoid the central city. The first crush of traffic - people trying to get home - and the second crush - people trying to leave, or buy essential supplies and petrol - seemed to have settled down. And I found a different world out there - the further I got to the north-west, and away from the south-east, the more normal things looked. There was some damage - the occasional wall that had fallen down, even one or two chimneys - but basically, I saw very little difference from before. I had expected the newly painted walls at work to have cracks in them, but in fact everything seemed totally undamaged.

Yesterday morning, I felt very muddle-brained and inattentive, but by the afternoon I was beginning to calm down and feeling the benefits of focussing on the work rather than recent events. What's more, no shakes! When I arrived home, I was greeted by a large (4.4) shake just after I walked in the door. There were about six more in the next couple of hours. I asked "has it been like this all day here?" and was told yes, they had been feeling small shakes all day. It's about fifteen kilometres from my home to my work, and the difference it makes is amazing. Clearly, most of the aftershocks are centred close to Tueday's original shake, nearer to this side of town.

On the other side of town - the work side - shops are open as normal. Here, there is very little open. Presumably, even if undamaged, not being able to provide toilet facilities for your staff is a big problem for a business. I bought one or two items the first day. We haven't needed to panic buy, due to my husband's habit of stockpiling emergency supplies - now proven to be very worthwhile. This morning, with power back on, there was even a loaf of fresh bread baking in the breadmaker.

This morning I went back to work very early, the nature of the work means that other staff are there very early on a Saturday, and I don't have an office key, so I headed off to do a few catch-up hours about six a.m. when I knew the office would be open. My eldest daughter* couldn't sleep, and had some shopping she wanted to do, so she came along with me. While I worked, she wrote on her laptop, napped, and filled up water bottles. Over there, they have flushing toilets, and running water that, I am assured, comes from a different well from the city supply, and doesn't need to be boiled.

After I finished we headed towards home, stopping off for supplies on the way - pet food, fresh fruit and vegetables, and hardware supplies. In the hardware store it was quite clear what items were the best sellers - tarpaulins, ropes, water containers. I heard someone ask for hand sanitiser, but she was told they had sold out. D was looking for an electric kettle to replace one that had broken in the quake, she couldn't find one. So we went to another store - they didn't have any for sale, but did have one out the back that "we aren't using" - and gave it to her for nothing. We bought buckets, torches that charge by hand winding and therefore don't need batteries, and will also charge a cell phone - we hope not to need these, but they were quite cheap and it seemed a good idea to add them to the emergency kit. D bought dust masks which I hadn't thought of - but given the amount of sand and silt on the roads that is rapidly drying out, I think it was an excellent idea - we expect to be walking and biking quite a bit in the next few weeks, and it is going to get very dusty out there.

Among the fresh fruit I bought were some surprisingly cheap oranges - surprising that is until I noticed they were all a rather odd shape, slightly flattened - rather as if something heavy had fallen on them!

Again, no shakes that side of town, but we have felt plenty of small ones since we got back home.

According to the paper, around 800 Portaloos (portable toilets) have been distributed to areas of greatest priority. I'm not sure what that means - either you have water and sewage connected or you don't, so I can't help wondering what the criteria are. The only ones I have seen are at some council flats, which seems fair enough as there are a large number of elderly there, and no gardens to dig a hole in. My daughter's friend suggested that if there was raw sewage coming to the surface, those areas would be higher priority, which made sense to me. The problem is supply. In the September quake, all streets with no sewage received Portaloos within a few days - if not one per household, at least one for every few houses. Many of these areas still have them nearly six months later as their sewage is yet to be repaired - and is probably now a good deal worse. But now half the city is without water and sewage, and there are no more to be had in New Zealand, so 900 are being flown in from the United States. So, thanks to my American readers for sending us your toilets!

I'm not a person who is comfortable not knowing what is going on, I'd really like to know if we can expect to receive at least one for our street, and when. Supposedly there are a hundred teams going out from house to house checking on residents' needs and safety, including in our suburb, but we haven't seen anyone yet - the task is huge.

Today I decided to clean up a bit - in the upstairs hallway the bookshelf came down, and with it a large number of cactus plants in pots. I had picked up the bookshelf and put the first couple of rows of books back to make a clear path down the hall, but the other two rows were still on the floor, along with a lot of potting mix. So, I switched on the vacuum cleaner, it went for a moment or two, then stopped. It seems something happened to it when it fell over in the quake. My husband has taken it apart and cleaned it and fixed up a couple of things, whether it is working or not I will find out when he puts it back together again. Otherwise there are plenty of good neighbours who will lend me one, I'm sure.

*I have three adult daughters, and two sons. Mostly randomly referred to here as "my daughter" or "my son", since it doesn't usually matter which is which for the purposes of describing what it's like here. Two daughters and a son currently live at home, eldest daughter has her own house a few kilometres away (also damaged), but has been spending quite a bit of time here, and the other son is in a student flat near the university, and has power and water, and no damage at all.

Earthquake Update

It wasn't long after I got back from my friend's place last night that the power came back on here. The feeling of joy was indescribable. Everyone in the house rushed for their computers to contact all those who had sent messages asking if we were safe. Also, it was just in time to save the contents of our very large deep freeze from having to be thrown away - or cooked on a massive neighbourhood barbeque.

Above you see the chimney mentioned in yesterday's post. As you can imagine it took quite a bit of effort to move it aside enough to get the EQC inspector's little red car out of the driveway. Yesterday, my husband also moved his out, it was a delicate operation and it is now parked on the street side of the chimney. My own car wasn't trapped because I wasn't at home when the earthquake happened. I was at work about three kilometres away, still on the most damaged side of town but a little further from the epicentre. When the quake started, file boxes started falling in front of me, all the drawers fell out of a filing cabinet behind me and the whole thing fell forward, and I ducked down under the desk. I have to say, I must be getting old, my reactions are not all that fast, and if I'd been under a falling brick wall, as some were, I don't think there's much chance I'd have got out of the way in time.

My rather shaken boss told us, "That's it for today. Go home". I was actually a bit reluctant, we were getting big aftershocks and I wondered if it was safe. I phoned home and got no answer, and figured everyone must be outside. So I started driving, things didn't look too bad although there were some cracks in the road, then all of a sudden the car took a bit of a swerve and a small tree fell of a bank on the opposite side of the road. The car straightened up and I kept on, till I reached an area not too far from home where there was a lot of flooding and silt across the road. Even though cars were driving through, slowly, I decided to go another way, but I encountered another very flooded and silty area. I was a bit worried as I knew that areas bordering rivers tend to suffer more damage and I had to drive along beside the river - so decided to leave my car and walk a couple of blocks home, through a back lane, avoiding the riverside. I had to take my shoes and socks off and wade. My already strained Achilles tendon did not appreciate that at all...

That's when I saw the chimney in the driveway, and yes, everyone was outside and very reluctant to go back in due to continuing aftershocks. It was several hours before we braved it much, although we did duck in and out very quickly a few times to retrieve items - such as my iPod, to listen to the radio (unfortunately the battery didn't last very long). And to answer the phone, which was my sister-in-law ringing from the North Island. So I told her we were safe and that I wasn't staying in there to talk for long. We did eventually go back in a few hours later, and the house does seem to be OK i.e. not in danger of falling on top of us, although there is significant new cracking.

I also went back to get my car, having spoken to a few neighbours about the best route, and was able to drive it the rest of the way without too much trouble. I took my camera when I went to fetch it and took a few photos, and also later walked up and down the river a bit, not too far because of my sore tendon, and took a few more.

Here is one of the streets I had to wade across to get home:

This is the local volunteer library, it had been fenced off since the September 4 quake as it had a crack in the wall, which has now fallen down.

The nearby road bridge with a large hump in it. During a quake, riverbanks tend to move inwards towards the river - apparently the two sides of the river moved inwards here, compressing the bridge and forcing it upwards. Road workers have since flattened this hump. Traffic was moving very slowly, bumper to bumper, as people tried to get home. My daughter who had been given a lift from the university, stopped at our place. She decided to stay a bit longer and let the driver continue alone, although she was going in the same direction. About ten minutes later, D set off walking, and it was only another ten minutes or so before she passed the Good Samaritan in the car.

In general, biking and walking were by far the best ways to get around in the first couple of days (and I discovered that though my biking skills are rather rusty, it didn't hurt my strained Achilles, so I will probably be doing more biking for a while).

There are of course far more dramatic photos around than mine. But I don't have either the time or inclination to go round taking photos of the worst damage - these are people's lives and homes, and it is my beautiful city that is so badly damaged. And of course, there are cordons around the whole of the central business district.

For more, visit Jim Tucker's photostream (Presumably he has some sort of credentials that allowed him in the area with the worst damage).

My daughter also has Flickr photos (Not as dramatic as Jim's, but still interesting). She also has a couple of new blog posts at her Dreamwidth blog. (Link is to the whole blog, not the individual post, so you can scroll down and read them all).

Here is the technical stuff at Geonet, the New Zealand earthquake information website.

There is so much more I could say, I will stop here for now...

Normal Service Will be Resumed as Soon as Possible

Just to let people know that we are safe, the earthquake was centred about half way between our house and the port of Lyttelton so we are in one of the worse off suburbs.
The EQC (government earthquake insurance) assessor was at our house inspecting for damage from the previous quakes. He was on the roof, gave our chimney a shove and pronounced it sound, and was halfway down the ladder when the whole city started to shake and the previously sound chimney sliced neatly off and landed in our driveway behind his car, stopping him from getting out.
That was quite convenient since he and his assistant were able to cover the hole in the roof and make it weathertight before they went. (They did manage to move the chimney enough to get the car out).
For the first day we were getting aftershocks every 1-3 minutes. Quite stressful. They are still very frequent. My brain feels quite fuzzy at the moment so don't expect anything very literary in this post.
Our suburb has quite a lot of damage to roads and bridges. There is silt everywhere from liquefaction. Our house has quite a lot of new cracks but we think it is not in immediate danger of falling down. We have no power, water or sewage. I have just heard on the news that water supply is back to 50% of the city, I don't know if that includes us. Earlier I heard that there was no water in 80% of the city and no power in about 40% of the city.
We have enough emergency supplies of water at the moment and half a barrel full of rainwater - we hastily pushed the barrel under a piece of broken spouting the first night when it started to rain. We have a gas barbeque and gas cook top. We have an old style phone that still works - the modern cordless phones don't work when the power is off.

I am at a friend's house where she has power, typing this on her laptop. I have photos on my camera but won't try to upload them at the moment. My own computer slid to the floor, so I'm not sure if it is working or not - I won't find out till the power comes back on. No word on when that will be.

Because search and rescue was a priority this time, other things like getting power, water etc and checking how people were doing were a bit lower down the list but it looks as if they are getting on to it now.

I haven't tried to go very far, there is a lot of traffic congestion with many roads closed. Tomorrow I may try to get to work, I normally work near the airport on Wednesday and Friday, it will be a big detour to get there on the other side of town but things are relatively normal there and they have showers. I never thought I would appreciate that quite so much.

My daughter has hiked to a friend's place where they have water, power and sewage, she was going to write a post for me, so if you are reading this D, you can still add that link to your blog for more information.

Computers and Writing Routines

We have painters and carpet layers at work this week (that is, at my Wednesday and Friday job - I have a different job on the other days). On Wednesday when I arrived everything was being packed into boxes, and to add to the chaos, my computer had refused to start and was off site for repairs. So I gathered a few files and took them home, where I was able to do some work by logging on to the new computer database which is hosted at the head office in another city. Today I arrived at work with a car boot full of files, to find that our main room had been emptied out, and staff were perched in any odd corner they could find. I tried to find a corner for myself, but there was nowhere left. My computer is the server for some of our databases, and it needed to be close enough to the others so they could stay plugged in. An hour or two in a small room that was going to be taken over by the painters by noon was all I could manage. So I did the essentials, gathered up more files and headed home again.

Even though the database looks exactly the same, it feels strange working on my computer at home. It set me thinking about the importance of place in routine. When I am at work I focus on work, I get absorbed in what I am doing and the time often goes quite quickly. On my home computer it seemed different. I was more inclined to check my personal e-mails, take a few minutes here and there to look at websites, get up and walk around and so on. I did work longer into the evening though, which made up for all the mini-breaks.

Still, it seems that the work computer triggers work thoughts, and the home computer triggers thoughts of surfing the internet, checking e-mail, and playing sudoku. Poetry is another matter. I've been trying to set up a regular poetry writing routine but I don't have a particular poetry writing place. I remember a questionnaire put out by the now inactive site Readwritepoem, and one of the questions on it was "what's the strangest place you ahve ever written a poem?" When it comes down to it, all my poems are written in the same place - in my head. I might start off by free writing, but most of the work seems to get done while I am driving or walking or gardening. When I get to pen and paper, or the computer, I am setting it down, rather than actually writing. That's all very well, but what do I do if nothing comes? I can't help feeling that there is something I could be doing to prompt poems to show up in my head more regularly, but I'm not yet sure what it is.

So, what about you? How do you write, and where?

Tuesday Poem: Roses, by Sue Wootton

Roses

St Valentine's Day has been and has gone,
another year without roses. We both know
that no bouquet could cut it, nor any bunch
of gathered roadside weeds tied with a bow.
A dozen long-stemmed lilies splashed with blood,
our mingled A! and O! My love, such wounds.
The heart is a deep mine, riddled with shafts.
Down we fall, lost and cold in catacombs,
blind, choking, stricken faces stiff as masks.
In the dark the cage waits with its winch. Come,
I give you roses: ten dozen blood-stained words,
garden-grown, imperfect. The little bird
in its cage within a cage is singing for its life.
Up! Up! Ring the bell! Clang the bars! Husband. Wife.

****

I fell in love with Sue Wootton's poem "Roses" when I first came across it in the Christchurch Press as the weekend poem. It was later included in her collection Magnetic South. A number of Sue's poems use the sonnet, or other traditional forms. Writing in form can so easily seem sing song, when we are used to poetry that sounds more conversational. We no longer accept the twisting of word order to fit the form, so that it seems to me that a good poem in form is much harder to achieve than it was a century or so ago. And yet, I love it when it is well done, as it is here.

Sue says of this poem: "the sonnet Roses is composed of 'ten dozen blood-stained words' Arguably an imperfect count (as the poem admits) - you have to count the title and each separate part of the three hypenated words."

It seemed a perfect poem for the day after Valentine's Day - as long as you are not too sentimental!