Under a pohutukawa tree by Susan Grimsdell
Auckland’s largest pohutukawa tree and perhaps the oldest, as it’s thought to be at least 170 years old, is in Dove Myer Robinson Park. It’s a wonderful sight to see, and I advise anyone reading this to go there and gaze up at it in awe because it’s not going to be there much longer. It lives on the edge of the footprint set aside for the memorial to the people who died in the Erebus air disaster in Antarctica in 1979. Lack of protection The roots of pohutukawa trees are vulnerable… Read More
The tale of the sealion and the shark by Susan Grimsdell
Recently a sealion was bitten by a great white shark and lived to tell the tale. Well, the sealion didn’t tell it, a reporter did. A feel-good story The tone of the news story was very upbeat – a happy story told entirely from the perspective of the sealion. If it had been told from the shark’s perspective it would have been quite different. Perhaps it might have been told like this: “There has been an unprecedented and alarming increase in the risk of extinction of great white sharks. According to “Nature”… Read More
After the gold rush by Trevor Plumbly
‘Helpless, helpless’ (Neil Young) Neil was scarcely boy-next-door material; he looked like someone had abandoned him in a doorway: overlong hair and a face that charity would describe as ‘lived in’. But the guy could write! He was the high priest of the folk/druggie followers (see ‘The needle and the damage done’). Vocally he wasn’t much, but then neither were the others; the message was more important than the melody. They were heady times with newly discovered drugs, rights, sexual freedom and social wrongs to identify with, from racial discrimination to nuclear… Read More
NZ farmers’ protest by Susan Grimsdell
Taking to the streets Hundreds of farmers recently took to the streets in their expensive tractors. The vehicles are big bullying things, and that makes me think the drivers are too. Sitting way up high, big wheels, the whole rig shouting – “I’m big and powerful and rich so get out of my way.” As far as I could make out, that was the essence of their protest – “This government is telling me what to do. I won’t have it. It’s my land, and I’ll say what happens to it.” Farmers… Read More
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