Posts by Leigh Russell
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Capture: Ans Westra - Ngā Tau ki Muri…, in reply to JacksonP,
Hi again Jackson, thanks for the links. I saw that the story about the grazing land was coming up and couldn't bear to watch it - so upsetting. Industry and its view of the natural world as a set of commodities makes me sick at heart. Very important to keep tabs on these happenings and to keep making a fuss about them.
That's a nice window into Ans Westra's world in that article! :-)
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The photo is of a young shag which was resting on our beach.
Continuing on the theme of ecological ir/responsibility and the vexed question of what we each can do about it my response is that we can each Do a Great Deal. I've written a whole spread of articles about this many of which I have mentioned in my article Death by plastics ~ what are YOU doing about it?. I'm disappointed but not much surprised that it has not been much read. I was prompted to write it after seeing a trailer for a documentary about what is happening to the albatrosses on Midway Island, a very remote spot in the Pacific Ocean where these majestic birds are dying by their thousands of ingested plastics mistaken for food. It was the most upsetting footage I have seen in years. I thought: do we fold our hands and admit defeat, because we most certainly look to be? NO NO NO! Even if we are defeated we have to try, try hard, and continue trying ceaselessly, to stem the tide of our own waste products and gross stupidity...
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Hi Jackson, thanks for posting this. I had an emotional response to it as my sentiments are similar. It seems to me that we are a careless nation – “Insouciance” could well be our middle name, dragged low into complacency by having such a low population density and being surrounded by so much ocean. How such a large portion of us can smugly agree with the wildly erroneous statement that we are clean and green is beyond me – many can’t even put their own rubbish in the bins provided in our parks and public places. Above you can see what I gathered up at a nearby reserve one afternoon. I filled that rubbish bin nearly to the top (so as to leave room for others with rubbish to dispose of) and then carried the remainder to another bin nearby and half filled that... Ashamed of my fellow humans? Yes.
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Capture: The Castle, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
that’ll be one of those new fangled
dig it all clocks…Can't resist posting **this beauty** as shown on the 'This is colossal' site! :-)
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Thank you Chris, it is indeed a cool crab. Here it is right side up and next to its lodgings. One of its companions is just visible. Okay, so that's enough page space of my beach-side fascinations!
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Chris Waugh,
river crabs
Hello again Chris, on re-reading what you wrote I realise that I had interpreted what you said back to front, and my own crab reference is therefore inapposite! Oh well, a crab is a crab is a crab, I suppose. :-)
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Gudrun Gisela,
Understood, Gudrun! Hope the demo goes well and there is a good turnout. Wish I was there to swell the ranks! Very important to record the context so that the generations to come will be able to regard it with a degree of understanding of the 'Why' and 'Why not'.
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to mark taslov,
When I was in Christchurch just prior to the start of the demolition of Cranmer Courts I took some photographs of that, and of course it is now no more
Thanks for the reply Leigh, I still haven’t been able to get through on that link
Hi again Mark, I am posting a little of the content of my article here since you can't follow the link at present. These photos are only passable, but may serve as a reminder of what was… I was greatly impressed by Mike Hewson’s artwork, which filled door and window spaces with images of people going about their ordinary lives. The other point that stands about about that building is that estimates to restore it were in the region of $40 million. The point I made in my article is that the St Martin’s supermarket – completely rebuilt, cost $20 million, and the construction of another office building of a small number of storeys was cost about the same amount. They both look like concrete bunkers, and the second got the thumbs up from the planning / design panel which presides over these things. Is this the city we want? So the cost of restoring the elegant old stone building was double that? So what! It could have been left standing for however many years until funding and so on had had a better chance of being worked out, and now it is gone for ever. We will never have those sort of buildings again. A proportion of the old buildings were not worthy of being restored but that one had a high heritage rating. Not even the irreplaceable heritage building materials were saved, so these too have been destroyed. First the earthquake, then the great demolition destroyers moved in – equals double destruction.
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Capture: The Castle, in reply to JacksonP,
Hello Jackson, I'll risk causing offence by saying that it is a pretty song, and she is pretty in it. :-) But crumbs, folk songs, with their toe-tapping and memorable tunes can be pretty full-on about death and gravesides and whatnot! I used to sing 'em myself... The one about the Laredo cowboy takes me back to my childhood: "in the grave throw me and roll the sod o'er me", etc...
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Capture: Two Tales of a City, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Hello Chris, thanks for your most interesting reply – local colour indeed! Of course I could be like the renown activist Howard Zinn who complained that the FBI didn’t take him seriously enough, but no really, mine is (mostly) a very mildly tempered set of chronicles! I’ll post a few of the more worthy images I have of Cranmer Courts here later on but for the meantime will leave you and Mark with an image I took of a splendid little upside-down camouflage crab that I came across on the beach the other day… Once I turned it right way up its physiognomy (I love that word!) disappeared completely! May the ‘crabs’ thrive!
