The Piano

Happy birthday Jane Campion – 56 today.

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Always On My Mind

Happy birthday Willie Nelson – 77 today.

Two talented women

One of North Otago’s talented women, restauranter Fleur Sullivan, was captured in a sylised portrait by another, Donna Demente.

The painting was joint runner up in the biennial Adam Portraiture Award.

 

Gender job difficulties work both ways

Trans Tasman reports the Ministry of Women’s Affairs is seeking tenders for:

a project to explore and develop options enabling it to produce a toolkit to encourage women into traditionally male-dominated trades and trades training. The Ministry aims to improve women’s employment opportunities and choices, including their educational choices, job choices and ongoing training. In 2006, only 1% of all plumbers, electricians, carpenters, builders, fitter and welders, fitter and turners, and motor mechanics were women. Previous work established that the main barrier to women entering trades was women were not exposed to this option and so they didn’t consider it.

 The Ministry may not consider it its business that men’s representation in traditionally female jobs is probably no better.

One unexpected consequence of more dairying in our area  has been a greater number of women involved in farming and farm support.

Many share milkers are partnerships between couples and it’s no longer unusual to have women vets, farm advisors and fertiliser reps.

But it is still not common to find men in what have traditionally been seens as women’s jobs.

Gender discrimination won’t end until society stops regarding particular jobs as men’s or women’s and that will require greater numbers of men in what might have been regarded as women’s jobs as well as more women in what used to be regarded as men’s jobs.

That in turn requires a change of view so that occupations aren’t seen as men’s or women’s but as people’s.

It could be worse

The phrase It could be worse is not necessarily much comfort when you’re dealing with a challenge.

However, while Queenstown people are working hard to protect propery from rising lake levels it could be much worse.

This is what the centre of the town looked like in 1999:

The job would be so much easier if it wasn’t for the voters

I could feel sorry for Gordon Brown.

It can’t be easy being pleasant to people day in and day out, especially when you think they’re talking rot.

There probably aren’t many people in public life who haven’t thought that someone who speaks to them is a bigot.

Sometimes they’d be right.

And who, in public life or not, hasn’t said something about someone in private, that they wouldn’t want repeated to a wider audience?

But regardless of what they think or feel about what’s said to them,  good MPs respect their constituents.

Several years ago I spent most of two days in the National Party’s tent at the Upper Clutha A&P Show. I observed with silent admiration as Jacqui Dean, then the new MP for Otago, listened respectfully to people who gave her the benefits of their opinion on a wide range of matters, not necessarily with the benefit of facts or reason.

After one particularly obtuse bloke had finally stopped haranguing her while she listened attentively, I asked her if she wasn’t sometimes tempted to be a little less restrained.

She smiled and said something to the effect of:  “Whether or not I agree with them, whether or not they vote for me, they’re my constituents and they deserve to be treated politely.”

April 30 in history

On April 30:

313  Roman emperor Licinius unified the entire Eastern Roman Empire under his rule.

1006  Supernova SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, appeared in the constellation Lupus.

 

1315 Enguerrand de Marigny was hanged on the public gallows at Montfaucon.

1492 Spain gave Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

1513  Edmund de la Pole, Yorkist pretender to the English throne, was executed on the orders of Henry VIII.

1651 Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, French educational reformer, Catholic saint, was born (d. 1719).

1662 Queen Mary II of England was born (d. 1694).

1671  Petar Zrinski, the Croatian Ban from the Zrinski family, was executed.

1789  George Washington took the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.

 

1794  The Battle of Boulou was fought, in which French forces defeated the Spanish under General Union.

1803  Louisiana Purchase: The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation.

1838  Nicaragua declared independence from the Central American Federation.

1864  Pai Marire warriors were defeated at Sentry Hill.

1865 ex-Governor Robert Fitzroy committed suicide.

1871 The Camp Grant Massacre took place in Arizona Territory.

1894 Coxey’s Army reached Washington, D.C. to protest the unemployment caused by the Panic of 1893.

 

1900 Hawaii became a territory of the United States, with Sanford B. Dole as governor.

1900  Casey Jones died in a train wreck in Vaughn, Mississippi, while trying to make up time on the Cannonball Express.

 

1904 The Louisiana Purchase Exposition World’s Fair opened in St. Louis, Missouri.

1907  Honolulu, Hawaii became an independent city.

1909  Queen Juliana of the Netherlands (d. 2004), was born.

 

1925 Dodge Brothers, Inc was sold to Dillon, Read & Company for $146 million plus $50 million for charity.

1927  The Federal Industrial Institute for Women, opened in Alderson, West Virginia, as the first women’s federal prison in the United States.

1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

1933 Willie Nelson, American musician, was born.

1937  The Philippines held a plebiscite for Filipino women on whether they should be extended the right to suffrage; more than 90% voted in the affirmative.

1938  The animated cartoon short Porky’s Hare Hunt debuted in movie theatres, introducing Happy Rabbit.

1938 The first televised FA Cup Final took place between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End.

1939  The 1939-40 New York World’s Fair opened

 

1939  NBC inaugurated its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s World’s Fair opening day ceremonial address.

1943  World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine HMS Seraph surfaced in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.

 

1945 World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raised the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.

 

1946 King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, was born.

1947 The Boulder Dam was renamed Hoover Dam a second time.

1948 The Organization of American States was established.

1949 António Guterres, former Prime Minister of Portugal, was born.

1953  In Warner Robins, Georgia, an F4 tornado killed 18 people.

1953 Merrill Osmond, American musician (The Osmonds), was born.

1954 Jane Campion, New Zealand film director, was born.

1956 Former Vice President and Senator Alben Barkley died during a speech in Virginia. He collapsed after proclaiming “I would rather be a servant in the house of the lord than sit in the seats of the mighty.”

1959 Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, was born.

1973  Watergate Scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announced that top White House aids H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and others had resigned.

1975 Fall of Saigon: Communist forces gained control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ended with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.

1980 Accession of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

1988 Queen Elizabeth II officially opened World Expo ’88 in Brisbane, Australia.

 

1993  CERN announced World Wide Web protocols will be free.

1993 Virgin Radio broadcast for the first time in the United Kingdom.

 

1995 U.S. President Bill Clinton became the first President to visit Northern Ireland.

1999 Cambodia joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bringing the number of members to 10.

2004 U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers abusing and sexually humiliating Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

2008  Two skeletal remains found near Ekaterinburg, Russia were confirmed by Russian scientists to be the remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia and one of his sisters Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna.

2009 Chrysler  filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia