Once upon a war…
Who says the elderly aren’t worth listening to? Just think of some of the gems they can casually reveal in conversations about what it was like when they were schoolkids. Here’s one:
Category archive: Nostalgia
A worthy career…
So you’re an idealist and you want to make a difference by reducing suffering and making the world a better place.
Social work seems like a good place to start. You invest your time, hopes and a significant portion of your financial security in study and training. Along the way you decide which branch of social work would suit you.
On being secular…
Climate change, the future of work and bog standard racism should be enough to be getting on with. But no, a political party for religious fundamentalists is about to torment us by adding its peculiar ecclesiastical code of conduct to the various tribes in parliament.
Autumn – raking leaves and a bit of navel-gazing!
Never mind the Pin Oak leaves swirling in a sudden backyard leafstorm – those russet layers of red and gold are the stuff of deferred gratification: raking them in the backyard, in the pale autumn sunlight. And forget pulling out the spent summer crops, trimming trees and the other gardening chores.
Most can be ticked off as done and dusted but the one I’ve put off longer than usual because it’s been such a gloriously golden farewell to summer, is cutting back our grapevine.
The Delusions of ‘Dolphins’ in the City of Sails
Four years ago my life was tipped upside down after making a rash phone call to my friend, Barry Copeland. We had just attended a small protest on Queens Wharf where we learned of Ports of Auckland’s 90 m expansion plans to Bledisloe Wharf. When I saw the extent of the port’s proposals, it touched a nerve. That evening I called my architect friend and said: “Barry we’ve got to do something about this”.
How did I get here?
I had just celebrated one of those ‘big’ birthdays. I found myself musing, “How did I get here so quickly?” A question that surprised even me! I had hit the end of one decade and was starting another. While moving through the previous decades had been pretty effortless, this one felt different. The realisation that most of my life is behind me. Now the future is not sometime out there but is right here, right now!
“This is not us…”
“This is not us” is the phrase many of us have used after the shock of the Christchurch Mosque massacres which claimed the lives of 50 Muslim worshippers. It may come as a surprise to Kiwis, but that sentiment is being challenged on a leading US website, Buzzfeed.
Australian Buzzfeed reporter Hannah Ryan, found examples of Muslims who had been discriminated against or were the victims of hate speech – and actions.
Religions, social media – and free speech
Television cameras and interviewers were present on Christchurch’s last vigil for the 50 Muslims who’d been slain a week before. A young Muslim woman said the “Free-speech people” had a lot to answer for.
She used the expression ‘free-speech’ people once more in the interview, clearly in the belief that the law allowing free speech was partly to blame for the massacre. Or did she? Was she referring to the hateful, divisive and unregulated racists ensconced on social media?
Tolerance – and ‘us’…
The Prime Minister was right to announce to the world that in New Zealand we are all ‘us,’ but although it made us feel virtuous to agree with her, we know that’s not true.
You could say that, in general, we have tolerated Muslims, but they will tell you about being held in Customs for longer periods than other New Zealanders and that they have a harder time than European immigrants trying to get their parents to visit from places like India and Pakistan. And that feels like discrimination.