We had an unexpected opportunity in late April to visit the Gibbs Farm Park in Kaukapakapa, north of Auckland. On earlier journeys we’d glimpsed from the road Bernar Venet’s corten steel cluster (called 88.5° ARC x8) but were even more impressed by Neil Dawson’s beautiful Horizons and Maririjke de Goey’s The Mermaid, above… […]
A Pakeha Failure…
May 19, 2015 by 5 Comments
How ignorant and stupid can a Minster of Social Development be? Anne Tolley has set up a so-called Expert Panel to make recommendations on “Modernising Child, Youth and Family” (CYF) . 56% of the children for whom CYF is responsible are Maori. So of course you would expect that at least half the panel would be […]
Anzac Day: Celebrate or Commemorate?
April 19, 2015 by 4 Comments
I’m alarmed about the extent of the commemorations of Gallipoli, which are beginning to verge on celebrations. Celebrations of what? Of men from New Zealand going to Turkey to try and kill other men they’ve never met and have no personal reason to hate? Of their bravery in the face of death? Of their loyalty to […]
Sky City Melt-Down?
March 17, 2015 by 1 Comment
Sky City melting? the long hot summer, women’s rage, a new anti-gambling government? or is it just time to pull that hypodermic syringe out of the sky?
Women’s Days …
March 17, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Every day we see strong women, creative women, women changing the world for the better. Almost every day we’re also confronted with images of women demeaned or brutalised. So for International Women’s Day, March 8, we are featuring some of the women we’ve seen this month. The appalling… Franklin Plumbing – which used to be a strong New Zealand […]
A cautionary tale…
February 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Our HP All-in-one Desktop has suddenly died, without any warning-and it’s not even two years old. So we’re working from a laptop and web mail only. Thank goodness for Earthsong expert Grant, who has eventually found all the files (but no directories) and saved them on an external disk to be re-labelled and transfered to a new HDD. […]
Charmaine in Sydney
January 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
My birth mother, Pat Tapper, turned 90 on 27 December 2014. I went to Sydney between Christmas and New Year to celebrate with my extended family there. Pat is in good physical health, but has memory loss. Mostly, she knows when she is surrounded by loving family members, and always holds her arms out for […]
Mr Turner – hilarious??
January 18, 2015 by Leave a Comment
We went to see Mr Turner, a film about Joshua Turner, the painter, which has been very positively reviewed. David Larsen of The Listener described it as “one of the funniest films I’ve seen this year” and as “hilarious”. What we saw was a film about a man, albeit a painter of genius, suffering Asperger’s […]
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