Hine E Hine

Day 8 of New Zealand Music Month – Kiri Te Kanawa with Hine E Hine:

Do I Ever Cross Your Mind

Happy birthday Billy Burnette – 57 today.

For Your Love

Happy birthday Paul Samwell-Smith – 67 today.

Did you see the one about . . .

A new literary genre – Quote Unquote on reading matter for the more mature.

Feliciy Ferret – Quote Unquote disects a media rodent  – prompting Cactus Kate to Bow to the Master.

I guess we’ll never know then – Something Should Go Here on the worst thing about censorship

Return of the Wowser – Bowalley Road diagnoses the alcohol problem.

RIP Fair Go – Brian Edwards has good reason to be in mourning.

Last Words Nana – Craft is the new black on living, and laughing, until tomorrow.

Water waste

When we crossed the Rangitata and Rakaia Rivers last Friday they were in flood, braids joined as the water flowed bank to bank.

The occasional high flow can be good for river health, flushing it out but I don’t think it needed as much as it was getting last week to do that job.

Diverting some of the water at high flow into storage would provide water for recreation and irrigation without doing any harm to the river.

May 8 in history

On May 8:

589 Reccared summoned the Third Council of Toledo.

  

1450 Jack Cade’s Rebellion: Kentishmen revolted against King Henry VI.

1541  Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River and names it Río de Espíritu Santo.

1788 The French Parlement was suspended and replaced by the creation of forty-seven new courts.

1794 French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Générale, was tried, convicted, and guillotined on the same day in Paris.

1821 Greek War of Independence: The Greeks defeated the Turks at the Battle of Gravia.

1846  Mexican-American War: The Battle of Palo Alto – Zachary Taylor defeated a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war.

1861  American Civil War: Richmond, Virginia was named the capital of the Confederate States of America.

1877  At Gilmore’s Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opened.

1886  Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton invented a carbonated beverage that would later be named “Coca-Cola”.

1898  The first games of the Italian football league system were played.

1899 The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin opened.

1902  In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupted, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing more than 30,000 people.

 

1914 Paramount Pictures was founded.

1919 Edward George Honey first proposed the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, which later resulted in the creation of Remembrance Day.

 

1927  Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French warheroes Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli disappeared after taking off aboard The White Bird biplane.

1933  Mohandas Gandhi began a 21-day fast in protest against British oppression in India.

1942  World War II: Gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebelled in the Cocos Islands Mutiny.

 

1945 Hundreds of Algerian civilians were killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre.

1945 – World War II: V-E Day, combat ended in Europe. German forces agreed in Rheims, France, to an unconditional surrender.

 

1945 End of the Prague uprising, today celebrated as a national holiday in the Czech Republic.

1946  Estonian school girls Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel blew up the Soviet memorial that preceded the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn.

1963 Soldiers of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem opened fire on Buddhists defying a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, killing nine.

 

1970 John Rowles hit number 1 on the charts in New Zealand and 20 in Australia with Cheryl Moana Marie.

1970  The Hard Hat riot in the Wall Street area of New York City: blue-collar construction workers clashed with anti-war demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War.

1972  Vietnam War – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon announced his order to place mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation.

1973  A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota ends with the surrender of the militants.

 

1976  The rollercoaster Revolution, the first steel coaster with a vertical loop, opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

1978 First ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.

1980  The eradication of smallpox was endorsed by the World Health Organization.

 

1984  The Soviet Union announced that it would boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

1984  Corporal Denis Lortie entered the Quebec National Assembly and opened fire, killing three and wounding 13. René Jalbert, sergeant-at-arms of the assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he later received the Cross of Valour.

1984  Thames Barrier officially opened.

 

1987  The Loughgall ambush: The SAS kills 8 IRA members and 1 civilian, in Loughgall, Northern Ireland.

 

1988  A fire at Illinois Bell‘s Hinsdale Central Office triggers an extended 1AESS network outage once considered the worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history and still the worst to occur on Mother’s Day.

1997  A China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 crashed on approach into Shenzhen’s Huangtian Airport, killing 35 people.

1999  Nancy Mace became  the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel military college.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Cheryl Moana Marie

Day eight of New Zealand Music Month.

It’s 40 years since Cheryl Moana Marie by John Rowles became number 1 in New Zealand.

Consultation fatigue

An email alerted me that a discussion document was available for perusal and gave me instructions on how to download it.

 

The instructions didn’t work. Perhaps it was due to the incompatibility with our computer, possibly it was the inability of our rural telephone lines to cope with the task or more probably it was my incompetence. Whatever the reason I gave up on technology and requested a copy by post which arrived, as promised, a couple of days later.

 

I read it from the foreword at the front to the appendices at the back but finished little wiser. There were lots of  general statements with which reasonable people would be hard pressed to disagree. There were a couple of points with which I had a philosophical problem but they were non-negotiable.  

 

There was also a whole lot of  good intention couched in bureaucrat-speak. And there amongst the linguistic equivalent of candyfloss was a list of meeting dates.

 

One of these happened to be in Dunedin on a day I had to be there anyway so I turned up at the appointed time to listen and as I listened I had a very strong feeling of déjà vu.

 

This wasn’t surprising because I had done this before. It was at different places and different times over different issues but it was the same sort of process: they write, we read; they call a meeting, we attend; they talk we listen; we ask questions, they answer; we offer opinions they talk some more. Then we all go away and in the fullness of time they make decisions which appear to take little or no notice of our contribution.

 

The first time I was involved in such a consultative process was when I was a Plunket mother with a baby who is now in her 20s. That was over social welfare. It was followed by a variety of meetings and musings over mutations in the health system and there were also discussions on education.

 

Sometimes I was consulted as a member of the public, sometimes as a representative of a group,  sometimes it was as a rural woman.  Sometimes nothing happened as a result of the consultation, sometimes it did but I don’t think it ever bore any relation to anything I’d submitted.

 

Sometimes that was my fault because my views were ill founded or impractical. Sometimes it was because regardless of the merit of the suggestions, there wasn’t the money to implement them. And sometimes I got the feeling it was because the process of consultation was a naked emperor.

 

It sounded good, created a lot of  excitement, cost a lot, promised much but delivered little and when it was all over there was nothing to show for it. In the light of this I’ve developed a submission which is simple and has universal application: I want stability, accountability and flexibility.

 

Stability because I’m sick of the waste of time, energy and money which comes with changes rather than improvements; accountability so we know who’s responsible; and flexibility because different people and different communities have different needs.

 

If this could be accomplished as efficiently as possible at the least possible cost, that would be a bonus. And if it gives us something that lets the people who actually do things get on with doing them without the need for further consultation that would be even better.

Today in history . . .

Events of historic importance and interest happened today . . . the post covering some of them will appear some time later today.