Posts by Geoff Lealand
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Yes, the Mazengarb Report is quite extraordinary. I refer to it when I teach about moral panics and the students look on with bewilderment, even though I stress that panics about ‘dangerous youth’ persist.
Josephine and I recently had remarkable insights into how local communities can support —and even treasure–vulnerable people, with the death of my sister Diana Golding in Grey Lynn in March. I knew about her growing up years, in difficult times (being born with club feet and diagnosed as schizophrenic in her mid-teens) but much less about her life in recent decades, when she became known as The Queen of Grey Lynn. We were expecting a few people to come to her funeral (having rung people in her grubby little address book) but there were more than 70 crowded into the room. The Grey Lynn Library closed and all the librarians came. There were local shop-owners, case workers, locals who had befriended her, street people, health workers. The two local policewomen came along to pay their respects. People told stories of her and played music. Indeed, after an hour of people standing up and telling stories, the funeral director was giving us frantic hand signals from the back, to draw things to a close.
My sister died with few possessions but extraordinary mana in her community. We had to account for her funeral expenses but it seemed a small price to play. -
Hard News: Friday Music: Record Store Day, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
Bought that recently at Vinyl Countdown in New Plymouth. Isn't that ironic!
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Legal Beagle: All of these things are…, in reply to Psycho Milt,
Because their policies are generally a stream of deranged gibberish?
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Hard News: The perilous birth of the…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I agree with Ian that the Dunne connection is just a little bit too cosy and old boy network. Are there certain topics prohibited around the family dinner table?
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The Feijoa Who Came Inside. Haven’t yet achieved another at 500g ; this one is 400g.
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Great stuff, David! You have been missed 'round these parts.
This is a welcome alternative to the excesses of The Living Channel, which my beloved subjects me to. Last night some fellow seemed to be making a house out of compacted cow poo,
You didn't consider mowing your meadow? Cows up here would appreciate such green fodder.
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Frankie Knuckles. What a great name! Sounds like a character from a Damon Runyon story or a Mickey Spillane novel.
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The new release by SIsyphus, combining the talents of Sufjan Stevens, Son Lux and Serengeti, sounds intriguing.
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Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to steve black,
Yes, and we need journalists to distinguish between polling (randomly selected stratified or quota-selected, representative samples of potential voters) and surveying (self-selected, non-randomised on-line surveys). The new guidelines released by Research Association New Zealand "New Zealand Political Polling Code" are very good.
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I reckon we need a National Feijoa Clearinghouse. The neighbour's lawn is carpeted with small fruit and our big old tree, which requires support for bits heavy branches, is producing large fruit. Several years back we had one fruit which weighed in at 0,5kg.
