The day Congress decided to begin an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, cable news network MSNBC ran a documentary on world-wide protests by millions of young people. It featured the real life impacts of climate change almost everywhere in the world – from Paris where a prolonged heatwave had killed dozens, to Kabul, where determined women marched (with men guarding them), and most pitifully, in little Guatemala.
Why would anyone think I’d vote for them if they give me a leaflet I don’t want! Look – it says ‘NO CIRCULARS’!” I consider explaining that local body election leaflets are actually not ‘circulars’, or indeed, advertising at all. They are instead an important part of the democratic process. But I fear a bureaucratic distinction will be lost on this vehement elderly woman intent on keeping her letter box clear of bumf, and for that matter, on most others whose letterboxes are firmly labelled as to what can and cannot be posted within.
TVOne News led with it. At first glance The New Zealand Herald looks like it did too. Last month, the newspaper had just two words on its front page: IT’S ON! Which we already knew so it hardly qualified as news.
Both media outlets were covering the same story, the Rugby World Cup. Thing is the Herald wasn’t – well, not exactly. The front page,usually the pride of newspapers, was a wrap-around. At its bottom was a line which proudly proclaimed that this was an ad for the chain store Harvey Norman… The real Granny Herald hid inside, shamed perhaps by its commercial needs.
Our Kiwi friend loves her new home in Australia’s Sunshine Coast except that… one morning when she opened the doors to another glorious day, she saw this on her back deck… a python. It basked on the desk railing, all 3-4 metres of it, and sent our friend scurrying back inside.
Apart from people, letterboxes are the most pedestrian sights on any street. Without a second glance we walk past every one except our own, which is perhaps the way things should be. But like everything else post-digital, letter boxes are no longer the proud receptacles of mail – handwritten letters, invitations, birthday cards and their more sombre messages of condolence.
Winter lingered like an unwelcome visitor, but finally Spring arrived – one little step after another.
Jasmine scented the air on crisp mornings in the lull between seasons; daffodils thrust dreary winter aside, lambs gambolled in Auckland’s Cornwall Park and in the burbs, pink cherry blossom brightened the streets – on days when it wasn’t raining!
Last year Freedom House, the much respected freedom watchdog issued one of its most compelling reports: Democracy in Crisis. The global report warned that democracy faced its most serious crisis in decades.
So what was its call to arms this year? Democracy in Retreat.
Picture this: An 80-year-old grandfather of four children – three boys and one girl – is picked up from his central city flat by his only son every Sunday. He drives him through suburban streets which he can now barely recognise. The once lush avenues of bungalows and villas seem gap-toothed here and there. Or they sport towering new townhouses which block sunlight from their neighbours.
When was the first time you felt, umm… elderly? Well okay – old? It’s not as if it’s something that happens often because we live in a self-made reality, now and in the past.
But it’s right there if we bother to look: on the car radio Magic FM specialises in music for the ‘oldies’ – that same music which revolutionised the music world when we were in the Swinging Sixties, is now a commercially viable lullaby for early baby boomers.