The Year of the Elephant

The Year of the Elephant by Michele Leggott is this week’s Tuesday’s Poem.

It was chosen by Jeffrey Paparoa Holman and like several of poems linked in the sidebar including his – September Quake – it’s about earthquakes.

We’re okay, we’ll be fine

I had to go into the centre of Christchurch on Monday. I was expecting mess and chaos but there was none.

 I saw some gaps where buildings used to be, I had to make a couple of detours round streets blocked by cranes and diggers, but apart from that it was very much business as usual.

Not PC has a letter from Christchurch and photos which back up my impressions of a city largely doing what it normally does .

It won’t be like that for the people whose homes and business places have been wrecked. But miraculously, they are the minority and everyone is doing what they can to help them clean up and rebuild as quickly as possible.

I talked about this with the friend I met for lunch.

She said, “The aftershocks are getting to us. But we’re okay and when the shaking stops we’ll be fine.”

8/10

8/10 in the Dominion Post’s weekly trivia quiz.

September 15 in history

On September 15:

668  Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II was assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy.

921  At Tetin Saint Ludmila was murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law.

 

994 Major Fatimid victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of the Orontes.

1254 Marco Polo, Italian explorer, was born (d. 1324).

 

1616 The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe was opened in Frascati, Italy.

1649 Titus Oates, English minister and plotter, was born (d. 1705).

 

1762 Seven Years War: Battle of Signal Hill.

 

1820 Constitutionalist revolution in Lisbon.

1821  Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica jointly declared independence from Spain.

1830  The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opened.

 

1831  The locomotive John Bull operated for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.

1835 HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reached the Galápagos Islands.

1851  Saint Joseph’s University was founded in Philadelphia.

1857 William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, was born (d. 1930).

 

1879 Joseph Lyons, 10th Prime Minister of Australia, was born (d. 1939).

1881 Ettore Bugatti, Italian automobile engineer and designer, was born (d. 1947).

 

1883 The Bombay Natural History Society was founded in Bombay (Mumbai).

 1889  Robert Benchley, American author, was born (d. 1945).

1890  Agatha Christie, English writer, was born (d. 1976).

1894 First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeated China in the Battle of Pyongyang.

1916  World War I: Tanks were used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme.

 

 

1928  Tich Freeman became the only bowler to take 300 wickets in an English cricket season.

1931 In Scotland, the two-day Invergordon Mutiny against Royal Navy pay cuts began.

1935 The Nuremberg Laws deprived German Jews of citizenship.

 

1935  Nazi Germany adopted a new national flag with the swastika.

 

1937 Fernando de la Rúa, 51st President of Argentina, was born.

1940 World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shot down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.

 

1942  World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp was torpedoed at Guadalcanal.

 

 

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1945 Hans-Gert Pöttering, German politician, President of the European Parliament, was born.

1945  A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroyed 366 planes and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond.

1947  RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube.

1947  Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077.

1948  The F-86 Sabre set the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h).

1952 United Nations gave Eritrea to Ethiopia.

1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train ran through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58.

1959  Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.

 

1961  Hurricane Carla struck Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour.

 

1962  The Soviet ship Poltava headed toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1963  The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four children killed at an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama.

1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1968  The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship was launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

1969 Iron and steel from local ironsand (titanomagnetite) was produced for the first time at New Zealand Steel’s mill at Glenbrook, south of Auckland.

1971 Nathan Astle, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1972  A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight from Gothenburg to Stockholm was hijacked and flown to Malmö-BulltoftaAirport.

1974  Air Vietnam flight 727 was hijacked, then crashed while attempting to land with 75 on board.

1976 The Rangatira arrived in Wellington from Lyttelton for the last time, bringing to an end more than 80 years of regular passenger ferry services between the two ports.

1981 The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1981 – The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operated it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.

1983  Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigned.

מנחם בגין

1984 Prince Harry of Wales, was born.

1987  United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze signed a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

1993  Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II disbanded Parliament.

2008 Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Tragematopolist – a confectioner or seller of sweets.

Still talking food on Critical Mass

On Critical Mass today Noelle McCarthy and I started discussing how acts of stupidity become news because of the internet.

We then followed up last week’s discussion on food blogs with:

Plum Kitchen - who loves to eat, drink, cook, read, garden and travel.

Her blog is mouthwatering, well written and enhanced with photos.

As someone who suffers from wardrobe shrinkage I particularly enjoyed her post plum kitchen gets leanish.

Pease Pudding describes herself as a northern English lass who now lives in Muriwai.

Her delight in desserts shows in many of her posts but she also has savoury recipes and shares her eating-out experiences. She too tempts the reader with wonderful photos.

These two blogs are more towards the gourmet end of the culinary spectrum. All Kiwis Can Cook is more inclined to stick to basics.

It’s written by Vicki who lives on a 20 acre property in Martinborough and through her blog she aims to teach people the basics of cooking because once these are mastered advanced cooking will be easier.

Her recipes may be basic but they’re not boring.

Tuesday’s answers – updated

Monday’s questions were:

1. Who said, “Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

2. Name this tree:

3. It’s cielo in Spanish, ciel in French and rangi in Maori, what is it in English?

4. Who composed the Trumpet Voluntary?

5. Name four countries which have compulsory voting.

Points for answers :

Bearhunter got five right (on trust that sky was an unintentional omissions) and a bonus for Fred which earns theis week’s electronic boquet.

Scrubone got a point for trying.

Mr Gronk got two 1/4 and a nearly for Central America.

Gravedodger got three and a nearly with Purcell.

Paul got  two and 1/4, a very nearly but wrong way round for Purcell and Clarke, with a bonus for humour and imagination and a welcome back.

Cadwallader got 1 1/2 and a nearly for Purcell.

David got 3 1/4 and a bonus for knowing more about the boab.

Adam got three and a bonus for confusing me.

Farmer Baby Boomer got them all right and a bonus for honesty.

I have no idea who knows the answers and who resorrts to Google or other sources but I suspect those who don’t get them all right don’t so in light of that I won’t award FBB the electronic boquet.

Tuesday’s answers follow the break:

Is there anything in your past?

Is there anything in your past that we wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the paper?

This is one of the questions every political party should ask prospective candidates.

If the answer is yes, it doesn’t necessarily rule them out, but it should then lead to the next question: should the public know about this?

The answer in David Garret’s case should have been “yes”.

An MP who has such strong views on law and order either has to have a blameless past, or have been open about it and show he’s changed.

Regardless of whether or not he was wrongly convicted, he should have been up front about it.

We can’t expect all our politicians to have blameless pasts and we don’t need to know about every little blot on their copy books.

But it was stupid not to make this public before Garret got in to parliament and became Act’s law and order spokesman.

The incident itself doesn’t look very serious but not being open about it reflects poorly on him and his party.

The name of the motel is . . .

When we fly out of Christchurch early or in late we usually stay in the city to avoid the long drive in the middle of the night.

My flight Townsville to last Thursday took off at 6am which meant checking in by 4.30 but because of the earthquake I only went as far as Ashburton the night before.

The return flight was scheduled to land at 11.50pm on Sunday but I waited to see how much shaking was going on before booking a room. By Saturday I decided it was safe enough, booked a motel through Wotif then phoned to find out how I  got in after-hours.

I hadn’t printed the booking form but knew the road the motel was in and thought I remembered the name.

However, when I got to the door I couldn’t find a key where I was told it would be.

I rang the bell, a man answered, I explained my predicament and he came to the door in his dressing gown. He checked the bookings and my name wasn’t among them.

Oh dear, right road wrong motel.

I went back yesterday morning with some chocolates and an apology.

September 14 in history

On September 14:

81 Domitian became Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his brother Titus.

786  Harun al-Rashid became the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi.

1180  Battle of Ishibashiyama in Japan.

1607 Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland.

1682  Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest schools in Wales, was founded.

1752  The British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).

1769 Alexander von Humboldt, German naturalist and explorer, was born (d. 1859).

1812  Napoleonic Wars: French grenadiers entered Moscow. The Fire of Moscow began as soon as Russian troops left the city.

 

1829 The Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia,  ending the Russo-Turkish War.

1847  Mexican-American War: Winfield Scott captured Mexico City.

1862  American Civil War: The Battle of South Mountain, part of the Maryland Campaign.

1901 President  William McKinley died after an assassination attempt on September 6, and was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

1917  Russia was officially proclaimed a republic.

1923 Miguel Primo de Rivera becomes dictator of Spain.

1938 The cornerstone of the first Labour government’s welfare policies, the Social Security Act, introduced revised pensions and extended benefits for families, invalids and the unemployed.

1944 World War II: Maastricht became the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.

1947  Sam Neill, New Zealand actor, was born.

1948  Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

1953  Judy Playfair, Australian swimmer, was born.

1958  The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reached the upper atmosphere.

1959 The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashed onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.

1960 The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was founded.

1961 Wendy Thomas, namesake of the eponymous restaurant (Wendy’s), was born.

1971 Jeff Loomis, American guitarist (Nevermore), was born.

1975 The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, was canonized by Pope Paul VI.

1982  President-elect of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, was assassinated.

1984 Joe Kittinger became the first person to fly a hot air balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

1995 Body Worlds opened in Tokyo.

 

1998 Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom completed their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.

 

2001  Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service was held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation’s capital.

2003 In a referendum, Estonia approved joining the European Union.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

Effluvium - unpleasant or harmful odour, secretion or discharge.

Monday’s quiz

1. Who said, “Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”

2. Name this tree:

3. It’s cielo in Spanish, ciel in French and rangi in Maori, what is it in English?

4. Who composed the Trumpet Voluntary?

5. Name four countries which have compulsory voting.

Bad wills bring ill will

One of the sessions at Rabobank’s Executive Development Programme for Primary Producers deals with succession planning.

If it’s done properly there’s no surprises over wills when parents die. They’ve discussed their intentions with their families and the wills reflect them.

It doesn’t matter how much or how little you have and  whether or not you have a spouse or partner and children, you ought to have a will and it ought to be updated regularly.

If you care about your family, it’s one of the most important things to get right so that there’s no ill between them after you’re dead.

Unfortunately a lot of people either don’t have wills, don’t update them and/or don’t have good advice when they make them.

If there’s no will it means inconvenience and delay while the estate is settled.

If it’s an old will it might not matter if there are no doubts the will reflects the wishes of the person who’s died,  and the survivors have no problems with it.

But sometimes, especially with a will that’s never been updated, there are questions over whether or not it’s what what the person who died would have really wanted.

That appears to be the case with the estate of Don Wilkinson, the undercover policeman who was shot but only he would have known if the old will still reflected his intentions.

Most of us don’t want to think about our own mortality and making a will forces us to do that. But this case is a sad reminder of why we should not only make a will but update it regularly.

Even more need for restraint

Every now and then someone from the left reckons it’s time the government relaxed its Presbyterian approach to public spending.

The government, sensibly, hasn’t agreed with that and the Canterbury earthquake makes it an even worse idea.

Duncan Garner interviewed Finance Minister BiIll English on The Nation:

DUNCAN     Does that mean you have to cut back in other areas though Mr English. I mean as you’re going into next year’s budget, election year budget, clearly money that you thought you had, you haven’t got now?

BILL    Well I think what it means is that if anyone had an idea that we could let up on tight management of the government’s finances, then this event means that we can’t.

The earthquake is a reminder of the importance of healthy public finances to ensure that unexpected events don’t jeopardise necessary services.

September 13 in history

On September 13:

509 BC – The temple of Jupiter on Rome’s Capitoline Hill was dedicated on the ides of September.

122 The building of Hadrian’s Wall began.

 

533 General Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeated Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimium.

1213  Ending of Battle of Muret, during the Albigensian Crusade to destroy the Cathar heresy.

1503 Michelangelo began work on his statue of David.

1504 Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issued a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built.

 

1584   San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid was finished.

1743  Great Britain, Austria and Savoy-Sardinia signed the Treaty of Worms.

1759 Battle of the Plains of Abraham: British defeated French near Quebec City in the Seven Years’ War.

1808 Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians.

1812  War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison was ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows.

1814 – Francis Scott Key wrote The Star-Spangled Banner.

1847  Mexican-American War: Six teenage military cadets, Niños Héroes, died defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec.

1848  Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage  survived a 3-foot-plus iron rod being driven through his head; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulated thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions.

1850 First ascent of Piz Bernina, the highest summit of the eastern Swiss Alps.

1857  Milton S. Hershey, American confectioner, was born (d. 1945).

1877 Stanley Lord, captain of the SS Californian the night of the Titanic disaster, was born (d. 1962).

1882  The Battle of Tel el-Kebir  in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War.

1894 J.B. Priestley, English playwright and novelist, was born (d. 1984).

1898  Hannibal Goodwin patented celluloid photographic film.

1899  Henry Bliss was the first person in the United States to be killed in a car accident.

 

1899  Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya.

1900 Filipino resistance fighters defeated a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine-American War.

1906 First fixed-wing aircraft flight in Europe.

1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne began between Germany and France.

1916 Roald Dahl, British writer, was born (d. 1990).

1922 The temperature (in the shade) at Al ‘Aziziyah, Libya reached a world record 57.8°C (136.04°F).

1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commenced.

 

1923  Military coup in Spain – Miguel Primo de Rivera took over, setting up a dictatorship.

1933 Elizabeth McCombs became the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament.

1935  Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ended the International Railway (New York – Ontario).

1941 David Clayton-Thomas, Canadian singer (Blood, Sweat & Tears), was born.

1943  Chiang Kai-shek elected president of the Republic of China.

1943 – The Municipal Theatre of Corfu was destroyed during an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe.

1944 Peter Cetera, American musician (Chicago), was born.

1948  Margaret Chase Smith was elected senator, and became the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

1952 Randy Jones, American musician (The Village People), was born.

1953 Nikita Khrushchev appointed secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1956 Anne Geddes, Australian photographer, was born.

1956 The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland was closed.

 

1956 – IBM introduced the first computer disk storage unit, the RAMAC 305.

 

1964  South Vietnamese Generals Lam Van Phat and Duong Van Duc failed in a coup attempt against General Nguyen Khanh.

1967 Michael Johnson, American athlete, was born.

1971 Chairman Mao Zedong‘s second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao fled China after the failure of alleged coup against the supreme leader, the plane crashed in Mongolia, killing all aboard.

1976 Craig McMillan, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1987  Goiânia accident: A radioactive object was stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and leading some to die from radiation poisoning.

1988  Hurricane Gilbert, the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere to that date.

1989  Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu.

1993 – Public unveiling of the Oslo Accords, an Israeli-Palestinian agreement initiated by Norway.

1993 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands with PLO chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing an accord granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

2007 The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted.

2008  Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston and surrounding areas.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Word of the day

 Macarism – pleasure in another’s happiness; a beatitude.

Can we laugh yet?

One of the wonderful signs of human resilience is the ability to laugh in the face of great difficulty and to find the seeds of comedy in disaster.

In light of that, and the previous two posts, I hope it’s not too soon to share New Zealanders appeal unintelligibly for help after urthquake which starts:

World governments admitted they were ‘baffled’ last night after the New Zealand government issued a ‘fully incomprehensible’ message about an ‘urthquike’.

And finishes:

Julia Gillard, the newly-reelected prime minister of New Zealand’s English-speaking neighbour Australia, welcomed the US response. ‘She said it was ‘terliddle terlate yabladdy drongos’, Mrs Clinton said. ‘My translators tell me that means ‘God bless America.’

You can read the whole thing at News Biscuit.

Good news is good news

When the house stopped shaking last Saturday morning we turned on the television and radio.

It was too soon for local TV programmes but the BBC told us there’d been an earthquake in Canterbury, National Radio followed, relaying text messages and emails before reporters got to work.

Soon after TVNZ had pictures.

Heeding messages not to phone or text unless absolutely necessary, we waited for news from friends further north.

The rest of the country and people overseas waited too for the inevitable stories of tragedy and found it difficult to believe when they didn’t come.

Homes were destroyed and treasures broken; people were injured, but few seriously, and nobody was killed.

The media went in search of trauma and despair and didn’t find it.

As Jim Hopkins concluded his column (which is worth reading in full):

The real story of our earthquake is that it has done so little damage and caused so little grief. The real story of our earthquake is that only 400 people in a city of 360,000 needed special shelter.

The real story of our earthquake is a hundred thousand unsung acts of kindness, publicly evidenced by all those Facebook recruits in Sam Johnson’s Student Army.

Which brings us back to Tuesday’s question. The host in Auckland was interviewing a helper at the Addington Welfare Centre. She said 189 people had stayed overnight and expected more may arrive.

“You must have heard some tragic stories,” said the interviewer. The woman paused. She appeared to know what was expected of her and did her best.

“Well, some people are worried about their pets,” she replied.

When we build a monument to mark this violent event, those are the words that should be carved on the plinth. Not to minimise or trivialise the damage done but to put it into context and to celebrate what is, in truth, a great escape.

“Some people were worried about their pets”. Carve that in stone and let the words reflect the strength of the things we’ve made and the resilience we’re made of.

The bean counters who seem to have too much sway in the media think that bad news sells.

They may be right and to report only positive stories is a form of censorship.

But good news is good news and it’s been a pleasant change to read, hear and see so much of it in the past week.

10,000 comments

The 10,000th comment on this blog was made last evening.

10,000	Comments
10,000	Approved

Thank you Scrubone for that one and thank you to all who contributed the other 9,999.

I read all of them and appreciate most of them – even many of the ones I don’t agree with.

That which doesn’t kill you . . .

Months after our second son died I was feeling awful.

I took myself to my GP with a long list of symptoms, convinced I had at least one very serious illness.

He listened to me carefully, examined me thoroughly then said, “The only thing I can rule out 100% is prostate cancer, but I can see no signs of any physical problem. I think you’re suffering from grief.”

He asked me if I remembered feeling like this after the death of our first son, and I said no. But later that day I thought about it and realised I had. The pain of losing our baby had become physical the first time but it hadn’t immunised me and I was feeling similar symptoms the second time.

There is no instant cure for grief, it’s not so much an illness you get over as a process you go through and we all go through it differently.

When people find out about our children a lot say, “I couldn’t cope.”

Most of them are wrong because most of us can and do cope when life throws us from the bowl of cherries into the pits.

We may not always cope well, but we cope as best we can and most of the time we cope well enough with our own resources and the love and support of family and friends.

Most isn’t everyone though, some people don’t cope and need professional help.

That’s the reasoning behind sending counsellors to Canterbury to help people deal with the psychological aftermath of the earthquake.

But Christchurch doctors are warning that hyping up natural fear and distress may do more harm than good.

Pegasus Health chairman Martin Seers said staff had been in touch with international experts who said “medicalising” people’s responses after a natural disaster could be harmful.

“We’re increasingly worried about the hyping up of people’s natural distress and think that will start creating mental illness instead of solving it,” he said. . .

. . . Canterbury psychological health earthquake response team spokeswoman Dee Mangin said most people were experiencing some psychological and physical symptoms of stress.

Mangin, who is also Pegasus’ mental health spokeswoman, said GPs wanted to put a clear message out that this was normal and healthy and did not mean people needed professional help.

Talk of PTSD was premature and unhelpful. “We know that most people will not require help or counselling to recover from what is a normal and healthy stress reaction to an extraordinary event,” she said. “Inappropriate intervention can do more harm than good for these people.”

This doesn’t mean no-one will need help and what the doctors are saying shouldn’t be interpreted to mean those who need help shouldn’t get it.

It doesn’t mean everyone won’t feel a range of strong, negative emotions including anger and despair. These are normal reactions to abnormal stress.

But most will be able to cope with what they’ve been through, the on-going difficulty of getting back to normal and the feelings associated with all that.

 Friedrich Nietzsche said, that which doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. 

He could have added that most of us don’t know how strong we are until we’re tested.