The Love School

[The Lumière Reader, the online NZ arts journal that took me on as a book reviewer, is scrapping most of its books section to become a film-centric publication. I'm yoinking my first major review from their old site before it gets banished to archivedom. Later I'll write about how I ended up meeting and interviewing this particular author in Wellington.]


For me, reading New Zealand literature is as much a therapy for culture shock as anything else. I moved here from America three years ago, and since then I’ve been looking for local writers – particularly women writers – who can help me figure out what I’ve signed up for. My first project, predictably, was Katherine Mansfield. Last summer it was Elizabeth Knox.

Knox’s latest book, The Love School, was an interesting place to start. It’s a collection of essays, talks, and other non-fictional writing that spans twenty years of her life and career. Reading the book is like having a good long rummage through her notebooks, letters, and snapshots, discovering the memories and experiences that go into novels like After Z-Hour and Dreamhunter. There’s a lot of things to explore here – not just for long-time fans of her work, but for anyone with an interest in writing and New Zealand perspectives.

Yank Abroad

“Don’t you ever read the front page?” a colleague asked me recently.

We were in the office kitchen, and I’d just pounced on the “World” section of the newspaper so I could read about Afghanistan and the American healthcare debate during morning tea. And she’s right, I usually skip the front page – you know, the news from New Zealand, which is where I live and all.

Bright-Sided

In her latest book, Barbara Ehrenreich explains how that motivational poster in your office can lead to detachment from reality, victim blaming, and complete economic collapse.

First, may I just say how much I love smart sarcastic liberal women. I wish they had their own baseball cards so that I could collect them all and trade them with my friends. Which, come on guys: totally marketable idea.

Ehrenreich is the author of Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America. (Here she is discussing the book on The Daily Show.) This is the first book of hers that I’ve read, and I hear from some guy on the bus that Nickel & Dimed is worth a look too.

Bright-Sided was a good chaser to the preachy fantasy story I was moaning about before, and a breath of fresh air after all the political and economic nonsense that’s been going on lately. In a tone that is a combination of seasoned journalist and trusted friend talking for hours over coffee, Ehrenreich tackles the obsessive “positive thinking” culture that often blinds us to our problems instead of helping us fix them.

St. Paul's Chapel

ABC News has obtained newly-released photos of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. There's not much I can say.

I went to New York City for the first time last October. On my second day there, I went downtown and saw Ground Zero for myself. I also stopped for a while in St. Paul's Chapel, the oldest church in Manhattan. It survived the attack and later served as a sanctuary for rescue workers and volunteers.


If you ever have the chance to go to this church, go. It's an amazing place. Love, grief and hope linger in the air and sink deep into you the moment you step inside.

On the postcard I picked up at the door as I left, there's a poem that describes it pretty well:

St. Paul’s Chapel
by J. Chester Johnson

It stood. Not a window broken. Not a stone dislodged.
It stood when nothing else did.
It stood when terrorists brought September down.
It stood among myths. It stood among ruins.

To stand was its purpose, long lines prove that.
It stands, and around it now, a shrine of letters,
poems, acrostics, litter of the heart.
It is the standing people want:
To grieve, serve and tend
celebrate the lasting stone of St. Paul’s Chapel.

And deep into its thick breath, the largest banner
fittingly from Oklahoma climbs heavenward
with hands as stars, hands as stripes, hands as a flag;
and a rescuer reaches for a stuffed toy
to collect a touch;
and George Washington’s pew doesn’t go unused.

Charity fills a hole or two.

It stood in place of other sorts.
It stood when nothing else could.
The great had fallen, as the brute hardware came down.

It stood.

ScienceGate

Okay, this? Is driving me up the wall.

Some top officials of a Nobel Prize-winning climate-science organization are acknowledging the panel made some mistakes amid a string of recent revelations questioning the accuracy of some of the information in its influential reports. [...]

[T]hough they say each revelation itself is small, they worry that the continuing string of them is damaging the IPCC's credibility—not just with experts who question the premise of human-induced climate change, but with the public at large.

I’m definitely angry with the scientists at the IPCC. I’m counting on them to be the rational reliable people in this debate and it does nobody any good when they cut corners and don’t own up to mistakes.

But what really gets me is that every time scientists do admit to a mistake, no matter how minor it ultimately is, the anti-science crowd start screeching at the top of their lungs. This disproves the entire theory! It’s all a conspiracy! Environmentalism is nothing but a cult!

Of course this makes massive headlines, which is all the deniers really want to do – not address the evidence or improve our understanding, but simply shout the whole thing down. And in the meantime scientists have to run around trying to convince the public that they're not evil, instead of focusing on scientific issues that really do need scrutiny and debate.

For the last time, nutjobs – true science is not a religion. It does not attempt to define the great cosmic Truth of the Universe. Science is about gathering evidence and creating, as best we can, a series of models that explain how the world works. If you find a mistake, you fix it. If you want to scrap an entire model, you come up with a better one. Those are the rules. If you’d paid attention in high school Chemistry class, you’d know that.

Gawd.

10 Reasons Sarah Palin Exasperates Me

I’m too lazy to actually write this evening, so here’s another silly list to tide me over. I went all fangirly over Rachel Maddow earlier, so I figure why not get both extremes out of the way.

I think the best place to start would be:

1. This stupid Runner’s World photo, which sums her up perfectly. I’m a runner too, lady. We don’t lounge about in our living rooms in full makeup with perfect hair. And the American flag draped over the chair is tacky and disrespectful, and the two Blackberrys? Why exactly?
2. She single-handedly reinforces the stereotype that women are silly, manipulative bitches who aren’t qualified for positions of power.
3. She makes me feel like a bad feminist. I know I should always speak out against sexism, but when Palin blatantly uses her sex appeal to control people I get so angry that I come dangerously close to thinking she deserves whatever she gets.
4. She gives a fresh new face to intolerance and ignorance, ensuring their survival for at least another generation.
5. She makes headlines in New Zealand all the time, forcing me to explain, over and over again, that not all Americans are like that. I thought that chore was over once Bush left office, but oh no!
6. The winking. And the “you betchas” and the “doggone its” and the doin' the bad sentence structure also.
7. She won’t shut up, and the media won’t stop falling all over themselves covering every word she says, and I’m hopelessly addicted to all of it.
8. Her new gig at Fox News. Actually I’m kind of grateful for that because it’s the one thing she’s done that makes perfect sense.
9. One of these days she’s going to make Andrew Sullivan lose his damn mind, and then whose blog will I read with my morning coffee every day?
10. During the infamous Katie Couric interview, Palin was asked why she didn’t get a passport until the year before the election. She answered, “I’m not one of those [...] who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world. Nooo, I worked all my life.” Seriously, bite me.

And look, I know, I know I’m only feeding the media frenzy and that’s exactly what she wants, but I honestly can’t help it. If Rachel Maddow represents my newly discovered progressive ideals, Sarah Palin is a funhouse-mirror version of my former Bible-thumping, flute-playing, distance-running Republican self. It’s like my subconscious invented her and now she’s burst forth into the world to torment me.

In which case, um, sorry guys.

Wellington, NZ

by Dinah Hawken

In the world of
possibilities why
am I here?

This view has an island
and half a heavenly
harbour in it

If I'm here to give
an inkling
of it with the sky
so finely featured
by mute explosions
of feathers and flowers
I think I'll settle under them
for no reason

I'll fling open my home
to any type of joke
or blessing, to any
random selection of the changeable
and simultaneously
occurring cavalcade
of supra-worldly
worldly
and under-worldly events

that exhibit here