Kate Haworth is a great lecturer- warm, funny, thoroughly at ease with her content and abe to express ideas powerfully – with humour, and with diagrams, pictures and props. On the first night of Auckland Writers’ Festival Week she presented her ideas about the need for us to move , world-wide, towards Doughnut Economics. She […]
Friday 15 March 2019: a day to remember with pain
March 19, 2019 by Leave a Comment
You will all have heard about the terrorist attack on Muslim people praying in two Christchurch mosques last Friday, 15 March. Our hearts go out to the families who have lost dear ones, and to all Muslim people in Aotearoa, whose hopes for a safe country to live in have been so cruelly shattered. E […]
A Capital Visit
February 19, 2019 by 1 Comment
Charmaine’s cousin Audrey had her 90th birthday at the end of January , and we took a trip to Wellington/Whanganui-a-Tara for her party. We have quite a few lesbian friends in Wellington whom we hadn’t seen for some time, so we stayed four nights, and caught up with several of them. Our AirBnB purpose-built cottage […]
Waitangi Day on Awhitu
February 19, 2019 by 1 Comment
For almost thirty years we’ve spent Waitangi Day on the Awhitu Peninsula, mostly at Tahuna Pa, near Waiuku, for a celebration of Ngaati Te Ata young people’s achievements, and sports and music. This year was very different. We were invited to the opening and blessing of an ancient path at the Manukau Heads at 5am […]
…and finally, a good place to stay…
December 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment
…a small town whose population increases from 3000 to 10,000 for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year, every year, but outside this peak Christmas period offers a lively, diverse community, every outdoor activity you can think of , and outstanding places to stay, to eat, and to explore: Whaingaroa-Raglan As part of […]
Celebrating Women…
November 18, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Renée … novelist, playwright, and inspiring older woman (in her 90th year) has just been awarded a Prime Minister’s Literary Achievement Award ( with a $60,000 koha- so well-earned!)… An excellent item on the NZ Herald website includes the lovely photo above by Rosalie Phillips for the Otaki News. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12144016 We have many fond memories […]
Celebrating Te Reo
November 18, 2018 by 1 Comment
We’re still enjoying the upsurge in use and acknowledgement of Te Reo Maori. And we urge you all to read the excellent article on page 112 of the September-October issue of New Zealand Geographic. Kennedy Warne’s essay, A Flash of Fire: what a difference a name makes , explores the differences between Maori and English government […]
Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori
September 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment
A change of heart and mind is sweeping Aotearoa… Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Maori language week), usually the time for a few token efforts by Pakeha journalists and newsreaders, has become a nation-wide celebration. In Wellington, Auckland, Manukau, Rotorua and Gisborne, parades of thousands took to the streets. We joined ‘Hikoia […]
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