Real guns aren’t toys

A five year-old boy shot his two year-old sister with a gun marketed for children and given to him by his parents.

Caroline Starks, two, was killed after her brother accidentally shot her while playing with his own .22-calibre gun – called My First Rifle. . .

The young boy had been playing with a Crickett gun, specially designed for kids, which was given to him last year.

Crickett guns are manufactured for kids by the Keystone Sporting Arms firm on a web page that boasts of their “child-friendly” rifles. . .

Coroner Mr White later admitted the incident would be ruled as an accident, saying: “It’s just one of those crazy accidents.”

One of those crazy accidents?

Crazy is making and marketing real guns to children too young to understand that playing with them could lead to real death.

Real guns aren’t toys.

Parekura Horomia 1950 – 2013

Parekura Horomia, MP and Maori Affairs spokesman and former Minister, has died.

In his maiden speech he said:

- I’ve been a fencer, shearer, scrub cutter and printer.
– I’ve also worked in the upper levels of bureaucracy in management roles.

As a Maori Member of Parliament I have a dual responsibility.
– I have a responsibility to my people and the wider public.

- Unfortunately, if we look at the statistics for the people I represent the picture is bleak. We feature disproportionately in negative statistics. . .

. . . – The future for Maori is about acknowledging who we are and determining where we want to go. . . 

- Not every Maori will reap the same success as Michael Campbell but we should be encouraging them all to swing that high.

- We have to set an example for the younger generation and I accept that challenge as a new Maori Member of Parliament.

- Let me take you back a few years to the time when I was a schoolboy. I vividly recall walking to school barefoot with my seven brothers and sisters.

- Everyday, whatever the weather, we walked five kilometres to school and back.

- While this may not have been unusual for Maori children, there was a certain irony about this journey.

- Everyday we would watch the empty school bus drive past us and other whanau to collect the pakeha kids that lived a half a kilometre from our school. This bus would pick them up, turn around, drive back past us and take those kids to the school in Tologa Bay.

- As a child the bureaucrats who made those decisions mattered little. All I knew is that I had to walk and the bus was leaving me and the rest of my whanaunga behind.

- I used to dream of being picked up by that school bus. But as I grew older we became more resilient. We went from wishing it would stop to pick us up …to thinking that if it did stop we wouldn’t hop on anyway.

- I relate that story now because Maori are often told we’ve missed the bus. And many cases Maori have not even had the opportunity to get on the bus.

- The irony in all of this is that I’m now the Associate Minister of Education, responsible for school transport!

- So now I’m not only riding the bus, I’m helping to drive the bus with my colleagues, Mr Samuels, Mr Mallard and Mr Maharey.

- As one of the drivers you can be damn sure I’m going to stop the bus and pick up as many Maori as possible. . .

He held the seat of Ikaroa-Rawhiti since first winning it in 1999. His death will force a by-election.

 

Margaret Thatcher 1925 -2013

Where were you when . . .?

The question is often asked about moments in history.

I was on a bus between Auckland airport and the city when the news that Margaret Thatcher had become Britain’s first female Prime Minister was announced on the radio.

The achievement was all the more remarkable because of the class ridden and sexist society at the time.

She was a woman before her time. She studied law, qualifying as a barrister in 1953, the same year her twins were born and made it to the top of the Conservative Party.

Meryl Streep who played her in The Iron Lady said:

“Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics. To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class-bound and gender-phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement.”

She was not a feminist icon because she came from the right and because she firmly believed that merit was more important than gender.

She was however, the Prime Minister who made significant and long-lasting changes to the British economy and society.

The BBC obituary notes one of her lasting legacies was turning renters into owners:

Her term in office saw thousands of ordinary voters gaining a stake in society, buying their council houses and eagerly snapping up shares in the newly privatised industries such as British Gas and BT.

A young English woman told me buying their home had a significant impact on her family and community.

Her father was a miner who was frequently on strike. Once they bought their house her mother wouldn’t let her father strike because she was frightened they’d lose their home if they couldn’t pay the mortgage.

The obituary sums up Baroness Thatcher’s strength and weakness:

Few politicians have exercised such dominance during their term in office and few politicians have attracted such strength of feeling, both for and against.

To her detractors she was the politician who put the free market above all else and who was willing to allow others to pay the price for her policies in terms of rising unemployment and social unrest.

Her supporters hail her for rolling back the frontiers of an overburdening state, reducing the influence of powerful trades union leaders and restoring Britain’s standing in the world.

She was, above all, that rare thing, a conviction politician who was prepared to stand by those convictions for good or ill.

Her firm belief that deeply held convictions should never be compromised by consensus was her great strength and, at the same time, her greatest weakness.

For many, her philosophy was summed up in a magazine interview she gave in 1987.

“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’; ‘I am homeless, the government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society?

“There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

“It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations.”

The Guardian has some of her quotes:

“Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” – on her election as prime minister in 1979

“To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” – to the Conservative conference in 1980

And from the Global Post:

“My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police.” – Thatcher in an interview in September 1981.

“Pennies don’t fall from heaven, they have to be earned here on earth.”– Thatcher in a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in November 1979.

“Nobody would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only good intentions. He had money as well.” – Thatcher’s response during an interview in 1980 about whether her savage spending cuts would lead to greater inequality in Britain.

 

Pepper 1997 – 2013

Like many farmers, mine wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of a playing dog.

However, our office manager brought two puppies her dog had produced to work one day because someone near-by was going to choose between them.

My farmer told her she must make sure the pups were gone before our daughter and I got home but he was silly enough to tell us about them.

There was something in his voice during the telling which suggested that he could be persuaded to change his view on playing dogs. It didn’t take much and the pup came back to stay next day.

His mother was a golden labrador, we presume his father was a sheep dog because Pepper was black with a flash of white under his chin.

Like most pups he was mischievous, stealing footwear from the back door, playing with the sheets on the clothesline and chewing the bark of a newly planted flowering cherry.

He grew out of those tricks but not out of a propensity to take other people’s food. A painter who was working here left his lunch in a bag by the door, Pepper got there first and by lunchtime all that was left in the bag was the paper the sandwiches had been wrapped in.

Another day one of our staff called to drop something off on her way home from grocery shopping. She left the car door open and by the time she got back to it the cooked chicken she’d bought had gone.

His few misdemeanours were more than compensated for by his friendship and loyalty. He’d look at us with big, sad eyes whenever we drove out the gate and welcome us back with wagging tail when we returned. He’d greet each of our staff when they arrived in the morning, go to check anyone who was in the workshop and always accompanied me on my morning walks.

He was also musical. When anyone played a violin or bagpipes, Pepper would sit up straight and howl in time, if not in tune.

He was always a thousand acre dog. He wouldn’t go into his kennel voluntarily, preferring to sleep in a sheltered spot under a window or roam the garden and the home paddocks where he buried his bones.

For the last few months we’ve been keeping a careful eye on him as he slowed down and showed his age. His nose was still shiny and coat glossy but there was a growth by one eye and he had become very deaf.

It was the deafness and his propensity for sleeping where we parked which worried us and yesterday what we feared might happen, did.

Pepper lay down behind a car and one of our staff backed over him.

She was distraught but we don’t in any way blame her, we’d all had near misses and any of us could have done it.

My farmer took Pepper into the vet who said at nearly 16 he was already three years past his normal life expectancy.

An x-ray showed a broken spine and we took the vet’s advice that the humane thing to do for the old dog was to put him down.

My head accepts that this was the right course of action, but my heart is sad and as I type there’s a big space outside the door where Pepper used to be.

Jane Henson 1934 -2013

Jane Henson, who with her future husband and fellow puppeteer Jim Henson was instrumental in bringing the Muppets to life in the 1950s on a TV station in Washington, D.C., died Tuesday at her home in Greenwich, Conn., after a long battle with cancer. . .

I came across the theme song before I ever saw The Muppets.

One of my flatmates sang beautifully and one night on the way home we stopped to play the flax behind the Otago University registry building in Leith Street- as you do when it’s been raining and you can make a wonderful sound by sliding your fingers along them.

Not content with just doing that, the musical flatmate started singing the Muppet Song to our accompaniment on the flax.

I’ve just re-read that and will excuse you if you don’t quite get the picture – or the song. I think it was better at the time than in the re-telling.

My next encounter with The Muppets was television replays when our daughter was young. She loved the programme, not just watching it but singing and dancing with the characters.

It was also a useful tool for letting her know how long a journey would be – the trip to Dunedin was one and a half Muppet shows.

I was very sorry to read of  Jane Henson’s death but I hope those who mourn her will be comforted by the lovely legacy she’s left in The Muppets.

Regrets of the dying

A friend has been told his cancer is terminal.

I am in awe of the courage and dignity with which he is facing his illness and death and his determination to live well until he dies.

I thought of him when I came across this on Facebook.

It is based on a post by palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware who wrote:

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. . .

The five above were the most common.

Ralph Hotere 1931 – 2013

Dunedin-based artist Ralph Hotere ONZ, has died.

The 81-year-old, who is regarded as one of New Zealand’s most important artists, was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand in 2011.

Governor-General Lieutenant General Sir Jerry Mateparae conferred the honour in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Sir Jerry said at the time that the award “speaks of service, merit, endeavour, perseverance, commitment, excellence and, above all, mana”. . .

Born in Northland and of Te Aupouri iwi descent, Hotere’s hometown of Mitimiti played a key role in his work.

He was based in Otago for a number of years.

The citation for Hotere’s Order of New Zealand said that as a painter, sculptor and collaborative artist, he had reacted to social and environmental issues through his work.

His art is dominated by black, both in colour and in the artworks’ titles, and makes extensive use of words, often quoting poets and his conversations with them.

He dealt with key New Zealand historical events such as the Springbok tour, the Rainbow Warrior sinking and the Aramoana massacre. . . 

Only one life

A friend died last weekend.

At his funeral yesterday we heard of many accidents and escapades which could have cost him his life, but like a cat with nine, he survived.

One of those left him in a coma which he wasn’t expected to survive. When he came round he had multi disabilities but he overcame them, learned to walk and talk again and the only long-term impact was a tendency to slur his words.

However, his death was the result of another accident and as no-one knew exactly where he was working it took Search and Rescue a long time to find him.

There are several lessons to be learned from this life cut short.

The biggest is that we all have only one life.

Two years on

At 12:51pm two years ago a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch.

On this second anniversary we remember the 185 people who died and the many others who were seriously injured.

We think of people whose homes and businesses were badly damaged, some irreparably.

We think of people still living in limbo, waiting for decisions, waiting for repairs, waiting to move on.

But two years on as the rebuild gains momentum we can also appreciate the work that has been done, the opportunities grasped and look ahead to better times for Christchurch and Canterbury.

 

 

Richard Briers 1934 – 2013

English actor Richard Briers has died.

 

Critical Mass

Discussion with Jim Mora on Critical Mass today was sparked by:

* A sign that civilisation as we know it is crumbling – Anne of Green Gables has been changed from a skinny red-head to a buxom blonde with come hither eyes. Hat tip: Beattie’s Book Blog.,

* Plain English explanations of 18 scientific occupations.

* 40 things to say before you die (hat tip: Amanda Morrall).

What kills kiwis when

Siouxsie Wiles continues her series on what kills us with a post on changes with age:

This table shows the number of people who die in each age bracket:If you want to live a long life, your chances are considerably enhanced if you’re born as a girl rather than a boy.This shows causes at different ages:

Hakwesby tribute to Holmes

Newstalk ZB paid its final tribute to Sir Paul Holmes by broadcasting his funeral service live and commercial-free.

I was driving home from Christchurch and was moved by the tributes paid by his friends.

Among them was John Hawkesby. TV3 has the  video here.

TVNZ has extracts for that and other tributes here.

 

And that was Holmes

Sir Paul Holmes lived a very public life.

In the last few days of his life and today, after his death, those who knew the private man have shared memories which show a kinder, more generous side than those who knew him only through the media ever knew.

Among them, was this one from Jim Mora, on Afternoons, and posted on the show’s Facebook page:

Sir Paul Holmes is dead, and many will speak about him, because many knew him, and knew him well. He was always a very gregarious man, with many loyal friends.

My contact with Paul in the last decade’s been sporadic, a few meetings, always warm ones; a little bit of communication, thank goodness, before he died.

And others will sum up his life more artfully than I can, in fact they’ve been doing it for a little while, and I know Paul read some of these. How many people get the chance to do that? I must say he has been the paramount broadcaster of my generation, the best one I heard or saw in those years when he was in his prime, and I don’t think I’ll see a more skilful one in New Zealand in my time.

I’m not trying to turn this tribute into an “I knew Paul” soliloquy, because many knew him better and are more entitled to speak of him really, but back in the 1990s especially we were friends, and I spent a number of Christmas Days with him and his family, which are special memories.

I remember a trip to South Africa with him, and his doing a live cross on television back to NZ and the technician watching him and saying to me “He’s good this guy, isn’t he.” He was good.

But it’s true that the paths of glory lead in the end only to the grave, and we are remembered most usefully often for our personal not our more illusory public qualities.

When I was at a low ebb in my professional affairs once, or as Paul himself used to say with a chuckle, “repositioning”, he did something for me, and I tell this one story to illustrate the generosity of him. There are similar and probably more spectacular stories. Columnists have called him sentimental in recent writings, and I suppose you can use that word, but it was sentiment born out of his own knowledge of hard times, which few know about now.

Paul calls me up one day and says “Jimmy, let’s have a coffee”, and I had not a lot else on my plate. He says “I’ll pick you up in 20 minutes.”

So he does, in one of those fancy cars he was fond of, the Jag or the Saab I can’t remember, and we head to Newmarket.

And Paul says “Listen can you come with me, I’ve just got to see a bloke for a minute” and we walk into Saks on Broadway.

And he goes up to the guy at the counter and they chat while I wait for him, and then the guy comes up to me and says “Mr Holmes has suggested we fit you out in a suit.”

And I say “No, no I can’t.” I was adamant I couldn’t accept that amount of largesse.

And Paul Holmes, with that irresistible persuasiveness of his said “Jimmy, it’s an investment for me, you can pay me back, you can write my speeches.”

I don’t know in the end how useful the speeches were. I do know how useful that suit was to me. But of course it wasn’t about the suit. It was about friendship.

I never paid him back that well. We were staying in Sydney once at the Hilton, checking in quite late, and they got the rooms mixed up and gave me the penthouse suite with the butler and Paul the regular room 5 floors below. A clerical error which neither of us knew till we got to our rooms. He didn’t mind. I can think of people who would have.

In all the time I worked with him or for him there was never a cross word from him. He treated people with respect. He had so many skills, and professionally I’ll choose to remember his time on the Holmes show, at his peak as a broadcaster, when he could handle any situation on air with more adroitness than I’ve ever seen.

Lives are ambiguous, as someone once said, so tributes are often trite. When someone as complex as Paul Holmes dies, it’s hard to say what you really feel.

I feel, and of course so do so many NZers… sad, and we have for weeks and weeks now. He did a lot of good, as we know, but it was more than the money raised for charity which is usually mentioned, it was the gift he had for ennobling others in their lives, for honouring them, for seeing the greatness in ordinary people. That’s why he did so well, and that’s what I will remember him for most.

God bless Paul. You weren’t a tall totara, but you were mighty, and you will be mightily missed. Thank you for that big heart and all the good you did for person after person. And condolences to your family on this most difficult of days.

When someone has been very ill, death can bring relief. But that doesn’t diminish the grief..

Sir Paul lived a very public life and his is a very public death.

There will be comfort for those closest to him in the tributes from so many people, but there will also be the difficulty of sharing private moments with the public.

Dealing with the loss of someone you love is never easy, it must be even more difficult to do it when the country is watching.

No Samaritans for diabetic in need

A diabetic man who was believed to have been lying on a park bench since Sunday died soon after an ambulance reached him on Monday.

Delta drainage foreman Evan Woodrow said  . . . A Delta worker arrived at the park yesterday morning and telephoned emergency services after he saw Mr Caley lying unconscious on a bench outside the changing rooms. . .

Ambulance staff told him the man was diabetic and were in disbelief that a member of the public had not called emergency services earlier, he said.

A man approached the Delta crew yesterday morning and told them he had seen the man lying there on Sunday, Mr Woodrow said.

”The joker told me that he [Mr Caley] didn’t look well. Why didn’t somebody do something yesterday? They could have walked over and if he couldn’t talk, you would have rung an ambulance, wouldn’t you?”

Would you?

None of us know if we’d be a good Samaritan or if we’d walk on by, until we’re tested.

But I’d like to think I would try to help, especially if like the man who saw him on Sunday, I thought someone looked unwell.

Patti Page 8.11.27 – 1.1.13

American singer Patti Page has died.

Her biggest hit was Tennessee Waltz but the one I remember her for was this:

Norman Schwarzkopf 22.8.35 – 27.12.12

US Gulf War commander, General Norman Schwarzkopf has died.

I heard him speak more than 10 years ago and can still recall two of his stories.

The first was about his family dogs.

One was small, the other big. Schwarzkopf said the small one was the boss because he’d never looked in a mirror and thought he was the same size as his kennel mate.

The second story was about coming home to school with the news he’d got 95% in a test.

His father asked, “What about the five percent you didn’t know?”

Schwarzkopf said that was a valuable lesson in the army and he made sure those he commanded concentrated on learning what they didn’t know rather than just practising what they had already mastered.

It’s a mark of his power as a speaker that I cans till recall these stories after more than a decade.

Apocalypse not now

If you’re reading this the world hasn’t ended as the Mayan calendar foretold, Armageddon hasn’t happened,  the apocalypse wasn’t now.

But thinking about the end of the world, or at least of our own lives, occasionally isn’t without merit.

The deaths of our sons taught me in a way nothing else had before, that life is fatal.

It also taught me the importance of making the most of it.

Of course life has a propensity for getting in the way of good intentions and I don’t always live up to my own expectations.

But my boys’ legacies are a greater appreciation of life in general and mine in particular, with the abilities, experiences and opportunities they never had.

Since the world hasn’t ended it’s given me another day to count my blessings and enjoy the summer solstice.

I hope you’re able to do that too.

It could happen here too

A police car blocking the entrance to a side street caught my eye as I was driving along North East Valley in Dunedin yesterday.

When I got closer I saw a police officer with a rifle and other armed officers further up the street.

With the news of the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the USA so fresh I thought something like that might be happening here too.

The ODT report on the armed offenders alert doesn’t say much but it sounds more like a drug bust.

The nature of the alert in Northumberland St, which runs off North Road, has not been confirmed.

However, Fire Service decontamination units were at the scene.

Ambulance units also attended.

The school shootings have revived memories of others in the USA and elsewhere, including here.

Debate on compensation for David Bain is a reminder that his family were all killed in that way and the 22nd anniversary of the Aromoana massacre has just passed.

We can be grateful that our citizens don’t have the same access to assault weapons as the citizens of the USA but mental illness is universal.

This story by the mother of a mentally ill teenager  I am Adam Lanza’s Mom is heart breaking but it could be happening here too.

 

 

 

 

 

How long?

The bereaved parents club is one no-one asks to join.

Today its ranks have been swelled:

A gunman killed 26 people, 20 of them children between ages 5 and 10, in a shooting on Friday morning at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., about 65 miles northeast of New York City, the authorities said.

The gunman, believed to be 20, walked into a classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where his mother was a teacher. He shot and killed her and then fatally shot 20 students, most in the same classroom. He also fatally shot five other adults, then killed himself inside the school. One other person was injured in the shooting . . .

It is against the natural order of things to outlive your children.

It is difficult enough to make sense of the death of a child as a result of illness or accident.

Today so many families, and the teachers and other children who witnessed the horror, are faced with the impossible task of making sense of a senseless act of violence.

The pain is not yours alone she said & you will see it in their eyes when they do not think you are watching.

How long will it take? I said & she put her hand on my chest and we did not speak.

Story People by Brian Andreas.