I couldn't help myself, the steering wheel seemed to have its own volition, swerving through rush hour traffic into the turning lane that would take me to the Quarry instead of home from work. Tired and agitated from a demanding, complicated day in the office I was nonetheless drawn back to TKPT for 'just a quick visit'.
After a weekend's pondering on a possible bypass to the registration challenge that blighted my Friday's work I had to test my theory, just to be able to sleep at night before my next LetterPress Friday. Sure enough, my hunch proved correct and the wooden type and the lead type are very sensibly the same height, which means (theoretically) I can set them together, ink them carefully with different colours and make one print... no registration issues!
Naturally I couldn't stop at just measuring the two kinds of type, I had to have a fiddle and see how they would fit together. Twenty or thirty minutes of happy jigsaw-puzzling ensued until I was assured it would work, but wasn't something to try and complete in a hurry. Back in the car, I discovered my day's tension had slipped away, like the syrupy traffic at 6.00.
Once home I found this lovely email from my dad, sharing part of his life I never knew of:
You reminded me of how I learned to set type in Montauk junior high school. Print shop was the only one I really enjoyed and learned anything useful from. Woodworking and electrical wiring were not my forte. But using the old fashioned type fonts and presses has always helped me visualize the beginnings of print culture.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Steep
Reflecting on my second LetterPress Friday I can see at this point I am learning more about myself than I am about printing. And I'm learning a lot about printing. And cleaning.
Practically the first thing I did when I arrived was devise a filter for the vacuum cleaner nozzle (isn't nozzle a great word?) which enabled me to vacuum the dust out of cases of lead type without ending up with a vacuum bag full of pied type. This was a much quicker and cleaner method than the others I considered (e.g. tipping it all out to brush clean) or tried (e.g. blowing with a hairdryer). It still took the better part of four hours to clean 13 drawers of one cabinet. Oh, but that cabinet is not only usable but positively inviting now (especially since Shonah cleaned the outside while I did the insides).
After that exercise I am, inevitably, much more comfortable with finding my way around the cases of type now. I had imagined that learning to typeset would be like learning to touch type but it turns out that the type drawers are not necessarily arranged identically. The lowercase letters are consistent but the uppercase, punctuation and numbers seem a bit more random. Finished with cleaning for the day, I set four lines of type, in a conveniently generous 30pt Univers (sans serif much like the big wooden blocks I used last week).
Ah, this is what I'd been waiting and working for: An encounter with my text slowed down to a thoughtful search for each letter. Remember your first attempt to write with a keyboard? Imagine that initial hunt and peck exercise slowed by a lack of labels, and the requirement to make sure each piece of type is oriented correctly. Imagine putting together words and sentences backwards. Imagine handling slivers of punctuation the width of matchsticks. Imagine having to insert tiny blocks of lead between words and line to make spaces. It's slow, labourious, painstaking work, especially the first time. Not coincidentally these are the qualities of craft I most like to ground my imaginative work with.
Thanks to Shonah's proofreading (note to self: don't try this without a proofreader who can read backwards) I was ready to try overprinting onto the big grey CAPACIOUS I printed last week. There are a lot of variables to consider in printing and registration was the one I was least interested in, since (perhaps erroneously) I didn't anticipate overprinting to play a big role in my letterpress future. The sugar paper to hand last week when I had my first go at printing is perhaps too rough for the fine detail of lead type, and is such poor quality that I felt little of the perfectionism that drives me when working with $4 sheets of paper. Then there was the mid-afternoon Northland summer heat drying up the ink and making me feel hot and bothered. Suffice to say I wasn't getting the results I wanted and I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't figure out what to change.
Nothing is ever wasted and forty-eight hours of subsequent reflection have milked extraordinary value from my second LetterPress Friday. In response to the technical experience and challenges of the day I have developed a detailed plan for the book that will contain CAPACIOUS and my other powerful words, including paper, structure, size, type and (loosely) colours; and game plan for making it.
Mulling over my feelings, reactions and decisions during the day I had an insight about my art practice. I like to work alone and this is how I've always made the books I care about. When I work alone I have clarity and focus, courage and insight. I set my own pace and rhythm. But I also enjoy company during some aspects of book making. Particularly while learning this new skill I need and appreciate being around people with knowledge who can help and advise me. And I like Shonah and Toa and the other people who hang out at TKPT. So my challenge is to bring into the shared studio all my own clarity and focus, courage and insight, and a commitment to trusting my own pace and rhythm. I have a feeling that if I can achieve that, there will be a ripple effect enhancing many other areas of my life.
Practically the first thing I did when I arrived was devise a filter for the vacuum cleaner nozzle (isn't nozzle a great word?) which enabled me to vacuum the dust out of cases of lead type without ending up with a vacuum bag full of pied type. This was a much quicker and cleaner method than the others I considered (e.g. tipping it all out to brush clean) or tried (e.g. blowing with a hairdryer). It still took the better part of four hours to clean 13 drawers of one cabinet. Oh, but that cabinet is not only usable but positively inviting now (especially since Shonah cleaned the outside while I did the insides).
After that exercise I am, inevitably, much more comfortable with finding my way around the cases of type now. I had imagined that learning to typeset would be like learning to touch type but it turns out that the type drawers are not necessarily arranged identically. The lowercase letters are consistent but the uppercase, punctuation and numbers seem a bit more random. Finished with cleaning for the day, I set four lines of type, in a conveniently generous 30pt Univers (sans serif much like the big wooden blocks I used last week).
Ah, this is what I'd been waiting and working for: An encounter with my text slowed down to a thoughtful search for each letter. Remember your first attempt to write with a keyboard? Imagine that initial hunt and peck exercise slowed by a lack of labels, and the requirement to make sure each piece of type is oriented correctly. Imagine putting together words and sentences backwards. Imagine handling slivers of punctuation the width of matchsticks. Imagine having to insert tiny blocks of lead between words and line to make spaces. It's slow, labourious, painstaking work, especially the first time. Not coincidentally these are the qualities of craft I most like to ground my imaginative work with.
Thanks to Shonah's proofreading (note to self: don't try this without a proofreader who can read backwards) I was ready to try overprinting onto the big grey CAPACIOUS I printed last week. There are a lot of variables to consider in printing and registration was the one I was least interested in, since (perhaps erroneously) I didn't anticipate overprinting to play a big role in my letterpress future. The sugar paper to hand last week when I had my first go at printing is perhaps too rough for the fine detail of lead type, and is such poor quality that I felt little of the perfectionism that drives me when working with $4 sheets of paper. Then there was the mid-afternoon Northland summer heat drying up the ink and making me feel hot and bothered. Suffice to say I wasn't getting the results I wanted and I couldn't/wouldn't/didn't figure out what to change.
Nothing is ever wasted and forty-eight hours of subsequent reflection have milked extraordinary value from my second LetterPress Friday. In response to the technical experience and challenges of the day I have developed a detailed plan for the book that will contain CAPACIOUS and my other powerful words, including paper, structure, size, type and (loosely) colours; and game plan for making it.
Mulling over my feelings, reactions and decisions during the day I had an insight about my art practice. I like to work alone and this is how I've always made the books I care about. When I work alone I have clarity and focus, courage and insight. I set my own pace and rhythm. But I also enjoy company during some aspects of book making. Particularly while learning this new skill I need and appreciate being around people with knowledge who can help and advise me. And I like Shonah and Toa and the other people who hang out at TKPT. So my challenge is to bring into the shared studio all my own clarity and focus, courage and insight, and a commitment to trusting my own pace and rhythm. I have a feeling that if I can achieve that, there will be a ripple effect enhancing many other areas of my life.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Lost blogger found at Quarry
I didn't intend to give the impression that I had run away to America. The last two posts were old poems from my last trip there and I was simply reheating them before getting back in the Bibliophilia kitchen, having realised with shock that nearly a month had passed since my previous post. Poor hungry readers, I'm sorry for neglecting you! But trust me, most of that month would have been even more dreary to read about than it was to live*, so we are moving right along folks, into a fine future!
For a long time I have wanted to be able to print the text in my books manually rather than photographically/digitally. Earlier attempts to get ongoing access to letterpress tools and experience were unsuccessful, but my entrance to the Te Kowhai Print Trust (TKPT) illustrates the truism that when it's the right thing at the right time everything happens easily.
TKPT is located in a couple of good sized buildings in the Quarry, a fantastic arts complex tucked into the bush a few minutes walk from downtown Whangarei. TKPT has, amongst numerous treasures for print and paper makers, a goodly variety and quantity of lead type, a cabinet of delectable wooden type and a letterpress printing press. I get the impression that things in general have been a bit quiet lately at TKPT (which has been around for 20 years or more) and no one seems to have touched the type for quite a while.
This is me, near the end of my first full day of play and work at TKPT, thrilled to have printed one of my best words. I spend my first morning exploring Cabinet Two, the most accessible of the 5-6 cabinets of lead type, and beginning to clean and sort its contents. I familiarised myself with trays of dusty spacers and furniture (slivers of metal and blocks of wood used to keep the letters wedged in the right place for printing). Some of these were glued into sticky masses by some unidentified substance that proved no match for vegetable turps and a lot of rubbing. Most of the filth was eventually transferred to my skin and clothes as I became intimately familiar with these useful little things.
Unfortunately, the press designed for the lead type needs a bit of fiddling with before I can start printing so I hadn't expected to actually be able to produce anything on my first day. But the lovely Shonah Scott, who was coaching me, suggested that I have a go with the wooden type that can be printed on the fully operational etching press (pictured below).
The wooden type are poster sized fonts carved out of blocks of hard wood, ranging from 12cm sans serif caps down to a cute chunky 4cm Goudy. I have an idea for a large format book, or perhaps a series of posters, showcasing the big wooden type with a poem called Best Words, so I didn't hesitate in deciding to try laying out the first page. Unfortunately, I discovered that these wooden founts come with only 3 'A's and I needed five for what I was planning. No problem, I had a plan B for a layout which is probably more interesting anyway, involving overprinting. So I spelled out CAPACIOUS backwards in the biggest typeface only to discover that it didn't fit the available tray. The nice thing about playing with these big letters is the lack of fiddly-ness in undoing one approach and trying another.
My next layout was good to go, and Shonah showed me how to set up the etching press and roll out the ink. Because I plan to overprint in black, I wanted a light colour for this first layer of text. Shonah suggested grey and I instantly visualised a kind of dull metalic grey that would compliment the letters' size and shape (think old fashioned newspaper posters). This looked grand on the various bits of coloured paper we tried, especially the leaf green.
By then it was growing late, I was pooped and Shonah had places to go and people to see, so we called it a day. I left with the kind of exhausted contentment that only comes from working very hard at exactly the thing you want to be doing. I can't wait for next Friday (my regular day for playing at TKPT) so I might have to pop in during the week and visit with my lovely sheets of CAPACIOUS and perhaps open a cabinet drawer and let some letters run through my fingers.
*No offence to all those lovely people whose company illuminated the general dreariness.
For a long time I have wanted to be able to print the text in my books manually rather than photographically/digitally. Earlier attempts to get ongoing access to letterpress tools and experience were unsuccessful, but my entrance to the Te Kowhai Print Trust (TKPT) illustrates the truism that when it's the right thing at the right time everything happens easily.
TKPT is located in a couple of good sized buildings in the Quarry, a fantastic arts complex tucked into the bush a few minutes walk from downtown Whangarei. TKPT has, amongst numerous treasures for print and paper makers, a goodly variety and quantity of lead type, a cabinet of delectable wooden type and a letterpress printing press. I get the impression that things in general have been a bit quiet lately at TKPT (which has been around for 20 years or more) and no one seems to have touched the type for quite a while.
This is me, near the end of my first full day of play and work at TKPT, thrilled to have printed one of my best words. I spend my first morning exploring Cabinet Two, the most accessible of the 5-6 cabinets of lead type, and beginning to clean and sort its contents. I familiarised myself with trays of dusty spacers and furniture (slivers of metal and blocks of wood used to keep the letters wedged in the right place for printing). Some of these were glued into sticky masses by some unidentified substance that proved no match for vegetable turps and a lot of rubbing. Most of the filth was eventually transferred to my skin and clothes as I became intimately familiar with these useful little things.Unfortunately, the press designed for the lead type needs a bit of fiddling with before I can start printing so I hadn't expected to actually be able to produce anything on my first day. But the lovely Shonah Scott, who was coaching me, suggested that I have a go with the wooden type that can be printed on the fully operational etching press (pictured below).
The wooden type are poster sized fonts carved out of blocks of hard wood, ranging from 12cm sans serif caps down to a cute chunky 4cm Goudy. I have an idea for a large format book, or perhaps a series of posters, showcasing the big wooden type with a poem called Best Words, so I didn't hesitate in deciding to try laying out the first page. Unfortunately, I discovered that these wooden founts come with only 3 'A's and I needed five for what I was planning. No problem, I had a plan B for a layout which is probably more interesting anyway, involving overprinting. So I spelled out CAPACIOUS backwards in the biggest typeface only to discover that it didn't fit the available tray. The nice thing about playing with these big letters is the lack of fiddly-ness in undoing one approach and trying another.My next layout was good to go, and Shonah showed me how to set up the etching press and roll out the ink. Because I plan to overprint in black, I wanted a light colour for this first layer of text. Shonah suggested grey and I instantly visualised a kind of dull metalic grey that would compliment the letters' size and shape (think old fashioned newspaper posters). This looked grand on the various bits of coloured paper we tried, especially the leaf green.
By then it was growing late, I was pooped and Shonah had places to go and people to see, so we called it a day. I left with the kind of exhausted contentment that only comes from working very hard at exactly the thing you want to be doing. I can't wait for next Friday (my regular day for playing at TKPT) so I might have to pop in during the week and visit with my lovely sheets of CAPACIOUS and perhaps open a cabinet drawer and let some letters run through my fingers.
*No offence to all those lovely people whose company illuminated the general dreariness.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The shore of the night
into a dawn as sharply defined
as the edge of the cloud’s shadow
surrendering to a sky the colour of fruit
stretching steadily before us
silhouetting the curve of the earth.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Noisy New York
New York is noisy
we have to raise our voices
talking while we walk
through Monday night East Village.
The moon shines in slivers of a brown sky without stars
But the stores are full of sparkly costume jewellery
In Laura’s loft
even the floors tell stories,
each step a multitonal squeak .
There can be no secret movements in this place
Every trip to the bathroon is heralded by
the spongey floorboards
that bounce like a swingbridge
collecting my stories
to add to their anthology of travellers tales.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Swim Fan
I mentioned a couple a months ago that I have done an about face in my attitude towards home owning. It seems that I am in the process of overthrowing a number of prejudices that I once fiercely cherished and defended. Today's demonstration of this phenomena involves swimming.
Like many kiwi kids I was given formal swimming lessons and by about 7 or 8 years old I could manage a length or two of the school pool in a thrashing motion that bore some vague resemblance to the crawl or sometimes breast stroke or back stroke. I liked hanging out at the public swimming pool across the bridge from our house, but I didn't really do much swimming there, mostly just solitary play, imagining myself as a synchronised swimmer making endless somersaults in the water.
By high school my aversion to sports of any kind was pretty much complete, wearing a swimming suit was a source of humiliation, and my long, thick hair weighed a tonne when wet and took at least 4 hours to dry. So all in all, swimming became a rare and not very attractive activity. There was a brief interlude of early motherhood when taking my daughter to the pool was an excellent thing to do, but sitting in the toddlers pool doesn't really count as swimming for grown ups does it?
Fast forward through a couple of decades of excuses (I don't like the chlorine, the water's too cold, I won't have time to dry my hair properly etc) to January 2007. I had spent New
Year's Eve alone with a hole in my foot from falling on a pronged garden tool that afternoon. For the next two weeks I avoided walking, usually my main exercise, and while I was lying around I brainstormed alternative exercises that wouldn't involve my left foot in any weight-bearing commitments. The idea of swimming swum up from the depths of my imagination, and somehow avoided being snagged on all the reasons I didn't like it. Helpfully, the weather in Northland this month is exceedingly hot, and the idea of immersing myself in a cool, refreshing body of water suddenly had unprecedented appeal.
I found an enthusiastic buddy (with spare goggles), a mutually convenient time and made my first visit to the public pool in Whangarei. I swam six lengths of the 25 metre pool that day, with plenty of rests in between. It took a few lengths before I remembered how to co-ordinate breathing with all the arms and legs flailing about, but eventually it got easier. I was so satisfied with the experience that my buddy and I made a regular swim-date. The second visit was harder work somehow but I made it to 11 lengths (over 1/4 km!) and have set a goal of 16 for next week.
Yes, the chlorine is yucky, yes my wet hair is like wearing a horse on my head for the rest of the evening, yes I'm self-conscious about my hirsute thighs and flabby torso... but now the pleasure of of moving through the water towards my goal of increased fitness carries more weight.
Like many kiwi kids I was given formal swimming lessons and by about 7 or 8 years old I could manage a length or two of the school pool in a thrashing motion that bore some vague resemblance to the crawl or sometimes breast stroke or back stroke. I liked hanging out at the public swimming pool across the bridge from our house, but I didn't really do much swimming there, mostly just solitary play, imagining myself as a synchronised swimmer making endless somersaults in the water.
By high school my aversion to sports of any kind was pretty much complete, wearing a swimming suit was a source of humiliation, and my long, thick hair weighed a tonne when wet and took at least 4 hours to dry. So all in all, swimming became a rare and not very attractive activity. There was a brief interlude of early motherhood when taking my daughter to the pool was an excellent thing to do, but sitting in the toddlers pool doesn't really count as swimming for grown ups does it?
Fast forward through a couple of decades of excuses (I don't like the chlorine, the water's too cold, I won't have time to dry my hair properly etc) to January 2007. I had spent New
Year's Eve alone with a hole in my foot from falling on a pronged garden tool that afternoon. For the next two weeks I avoided walking, usually my main exercise, and while I was lying around I brainstormed alternative exercises that wouldn't involve my left foot in any weight-bearing commitments. The idea of swimming swum up from the depths of my imagination, and somehow avoided being snagged on all the reasons I didn't like it. Helpfully, the weather in Northland this month is exceedingly hot, and the idea of immersing myself in a cool, refreshing body of water suddenly had unprecedented appeal.
I found an enthusiastic buddy (with spare goggles), a mutually convenient time and made my first visit to the public pool in Whangarei. I swam six lengths of the 25 metre pool that day, with plenty of rests in between. It took a few lengths before I remembered how to co-ordinate breathing with all the arms and legs flailing about, but eventually it got easier. I was so satisfied with the experience that my buddy and I made a regular swim-date. The second visit was harder work somehow but I made it to 11 lengths (over 1/4 km!) and have set a goal of 16 for next week.
Yes, the chlorine is yucky, yes my wet hair is like wearing a horse on my head for the rest of the evening, yes I'm self-conscious about my hirsute thighs and flabby torso... but now the pleasure of of moving through the water towards my goal of increased fitness carries more weight.
Friday, January 19, 2007
New Bo*bs at last!
Back by popular demand! Always good for a giggle, the Bo*b Book has been out of stock for ages because I had misplaced the master copy and couldn't make any more once they sold out.
But, somehow in the orgy of sorting and packing that has characterised my summer thus far, the necessary bits rose to the surface of swirling cauldron that is my life right now. So, just as soon as I could park myself at a clean table for a few uninterrupted hours I started making more Bo*bs.
For new readers unfamiliar with this book of mine read here for more a detailed description.
Loyal readers will remember this playful, toylike celebration of breasts, and its even more educational brother, C*ck Book. Both are available at Tuatara on Bank St in Whangarei or at a special blog-reader's price of only NZ$25 inc p&p if you order contact me directly.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Spent Packing
The theme for my 2006-07 summer is packing, which I have been doing pretty much continuously for the past month. At Hukeranui, at work, at Te Horo... for moving, for storage, for travelling, for constantly evolving situations that are keeping me on my toes. Frankly the packing part is getting a little old but no doubt there is some important karmic lesson in all this that will come clear in retrospect, once I finally achieve my ultimate goal of staying in one place for good, or at least years, with all my things there with me (not in boxes scattered hither and yon).
I recently did my annual tarot reading for the coming year. The card in the signifier position (where I'm at right now) was 4 Stones (pentacles) which Carol Bridges summarises as 'basic survival'. "Oh yeah!" I wrote in my journal when I saw it. At this time I'm looking after all my needs very adequately and am making satisfactory progress towards achieving my various goals but I'm not putting much energy into everything else including blogging, emailing, telephoning etc.
It looks like I will be a bit more settled, and at least partially unpacked, by late February but until then I suggest you maintain low expectations of Bibliophilia (and other forms of communication from me). Readers inclined to worrying about my well-being (I know who you are!), please don't. I am happy and well and having fun being agile.
I recently did my annual tarot reading for the coming year. The card in the signifier position (where I'm at right now) was 4 Stones (pentacles) which Carol Bridges summarises as 'basic survival'. "Oh yeah!" I wrote in my journal when I saw it. At this time I'm looking after all my needs very adequately and am making satisfactory progress towards achieving my various goals but I'm not putting much energy into everything else including blogging, emailing, telephoning etc.
It looks like I will be a bit more settled, and at least partially unpacked, by late February but until then I suggest you maintain low expectations of Bibliophilia (and other forms of communication from me). Readers inclined to worrying about my well-being (I know who you are!), please don't. I am happy and well and having fun being agile.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Tuataras and Wetas
A highlight of my recent visit to Wellington was visiting the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. There is always something new to see there and this time it was the two tuatara. This was my first encounter with them 'in the wild' (not inside) and I have subsequently decided that I have finally identified my totem animal. I am actually a tuatara. Like them I don't really move very fast and I like to be warm.One of my companions on this visit was my nearly-five year old niece, Zita who was also a huge tuatara fan. She would happily have spent the whole time squatting down and watching them doing nothing at all except that most of the older and all of the younger members of the party had much shorter attention spans.
Zita is refreshingly unsqueamish about insects. She loved the weta hotels at the Sanctuary and told me that her favourite insect is a cicada (though butterflies are good too) and her least favourite is a bumble bee. Her mother said she can spend hours watching ants on the concrete path.
When I finally returned to Hukeranui, I found this weta watching paint dry under its feet. This photo is for you, Zita.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Do the dishes
One morning I rode my breath
into the presence of God
and (not wanting to waste the opportunity)
I asked, what should I do?
Some time later
the answer rose up warm through my soles
on the cold wooden floor:
Go do the dishes
So I did and then, and later,
I noticed it was always the right thing
to wash the dishes
as an expression of love and gratitude
a sensual pleasure
a social solution
the end of a string to lead me out of an impasse
After a lifetime of resisting and resenting
dishes as punishment and oppression,
this humble task became my calling
and my relief
my meditation
my prayer
my blessing
Thich Nhat Hanh says:
Washing the dishes
is like bathing a baby Buddha
Rabbi Abraham Hayyim said:
My most important job is to make sure
that no trace of food remains on the dishes
And Rabbi Shmelke confirmed:
Now you know everything you need to know
Rabbi Kushner says
Allowing oneself to be nothing means that
when we are done with our sophisticated-sounding sentences,
the dishes must be washed.
Beyond nothing-to-think is life-to-be-lived
To clean the dishes with kavanah, mindfully,
is to wash away ego
Hineini
Here I am,
feet on the floor, hands in the sink.
Here I am,
Pulling my attention back and back and back to this act.
Here I am,
restoring beauty and order,
washing away what hides the divine spark.
Tikkun olan
© January 2006
Monday, December 18, 2006
Tapu te Po
At a reader's request, here are the words to O Holy Night in Te Reo Maori, thanks to Pauline and Joby of Pehiaweri Marae in Whangarei.
NB The te reo is sung in parts, harmonising and overlappping where the /slash/ indicates. Also the last word of the 5th line is cut off of my photocopy so I'm not 100% sure I've remembered correctly. And, of course, it is not a straight translation of the English.
Tapu te Po
Tiramarama mai ra
Tenai te Po/ a te Kai whakaora
He Ao hara/ He Ao Aroha kore
Tu mai ra koe/ hei whaka-tau I au
Nga Tumanako O Te Ao Katoa
Puawai i-te/ ata ko te Ao hou
Wha-kanuia
Ina/ nga reo Ana-hera
Tapu/ te Po
Te po/ a Ihu
Te po/ Tapu rawa
He Ao
Ao marama
(and in English)
O Holy Night
O Holy night!
The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour’s birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth.
The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees!
O, hear the angel voices!
O night divine,
O night when Christ was born;
O nigh divine!
O night
O night divine!
Friday, December 15, 2006
The sweetest thing
Here's a message put on Al's back yesterday by his grand-daughter, Jessica. He wrote "not knowing it was there I headed for Paraparaumu & wandered about with it there, wondering at the ghosts of smiles crossing peoples faces."
NB All the grandkids call him Fafa.
NB All the grandkids call him Fafa.Sunday, December 10, 2006
Fouling Persons Take Charge!
A new sign by the river stopped me on a walk last week. I had to read it several times, using various techniques such as cocked head and squinting alternate eyes, to try and make sense of it. The Whangarei District Council line at the top is pretty straightforward but it's all downhill from there.
Looks to me like the (possibly foreign) sign writer was unnecessarily stingy with punctuation. And the graphic seems an ill fit for the text: the picture suggests 'no dogs allowed' but words suggest- eventually, with persistance and imagination- that dogs are ok if under the control of a (fouling or otherwise) person.
Looks to me like the (possibly foreign) sign writer was unnecessarily stingy with punctuation. And the graphic seems an ill fit for the text: the picture suggests 'no dogs allowed' but words suggest- eventually, with persistance and imagination- that dogs are ok if under the control of a (fouling or otherwise) person.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Hikurangi Carnival
Last Saturday was Carnival day in Hikurangi, and also the annual Santa parade. I went along for the farmer's market and ended up having such a good time I stayed for the parade. Hikurangi is little country town usually so sleepy as to be almost comatose. However, for this occasion almost all the shops were open. All but two of them are second-hand/junk shops but there is also a superette and a wee bakery.
It was a great place for people watching:
But my absolute highlight of the parade was the Hikurangi School percussion band where the instruments were mostly homemade. There were kettle drums out of barrels, and a variety of instruments made out of corrugated PVC pipes. The older kids played very well as they marched along, reminding me of Strike, an excellent percussion group I've seen in Wellington. The littlest kids walked behind carrying colourful fish on long bamboo sticks.
It was a great place for people watching:
- the four old women line dancing
- the voluptuous woman in a low cut top exposing most a large, colourful squid tattooed on her right breast
- the bikers with fancy motorbikes, some with handlebars at head height (don't their arms get tired?) and a couple of huge powerful tricycles
- the police on horses decorated with blue and silver tinsel
But my absolute highlight of the parade was the Hikurangi School percussion band where the instruments were mostly homemade. There were kettle drums out of barrels, and a variety of instruments made out of corrugated PVC pipes. The older kids played very well as they marched along, reminding me of Strike, an excellent percussion group I've seen in Wellington. The littlest kids walked behind carrying colourful fish on long bamboo sticks.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Sagittarian seeks stable home
It is commonplace to hear or read New Zealanders saying 'Housing prices are so high now, I feel sorry for anyone trying to buy their first house these days'. The sympathy is always offered by someone who already owns a house with equity that has increased by many tens of thousands in the past three years and that I assume they would try to sell for the highest possible price (who wouldn't?).
I appreciate your sympathy, really I do. I thought you might be interested to know what it feels like to be in the position of wanting to enter the property market from scratch right now.
My tight budget is entirely oriented towards this goal yet no matter how disciplined my saving, house prices rise faster than my bank balance. Every week I cycle through hope, disappointment and despair as I come up with a new scheme for purchasing a property on a shoestring, investigate the realities of said scheme and face yet again the apparent reality that even the most distant and divey of super-cheapies are out of my reach and to feel minimally safe, comfortable and able to get to work and back in less than a day is way, way beyond my means.
When I tell real estate agents how much I think I can afford (and I always exaggerate slightly), they laugh and then hang up the phone as fast as possible. This was without exception until Val from Kamo Real Estate cold-called me this week and said she liked a challenge and told me she'd been in the same position not that long ago. I am now in a hope phase thanks to her and Mal, the tutor of the home ownership course I am taking.
My current hope phase is perfectly in tune with this week's Sagittarius horoscope from Rob Brezny: "Be ready to imagine the unimaginable, see the unseeable, and think the unthinkable... with the most optimistic attitude possible... the almost unbelievable prospects coming into your sphere are interesting and invigorating."
The apparent reality of the housing market presents as a blank wall but I choose to, have to, decide to, believe that there is a chink somewhere for an optimistic Sagittarian willing to imagine the unimaginable, see the unseeable and think the unthinkable.
Bring it on home!
I appreciate your sympathy, really I do. I thought you might be interested to know what it feels like to be in the position of wanting to enter the property market from scratch right now.
My tight budget is entirely oriented towards this goal yet no matter how disciplined my saving, house prices rise faster than my bank balance. Every week I cycle through hope, disappointment and despair as I come up with a new scheme for purchasing a property on a shoestring, investigate the realities of said scheme and face yet again the apparent reality that even the most distant and divey of super-cheapies are out of my reach and to feel minimally safe, comfortable and able to get to work and back in less than a day is way, way beyond my means.
When I tell real estate agents how much I think I can afford (and I always exaggerate slightly), they laugh and then hang up the phone as fast as possible. This was without exception until Val from Kamo Real Estate cold-called me this week and said she liked a challenge and told me she'd been in the same position not that long ago. I am now in a hope phase thanks to her and Mal, the tutor of the home ownership course I am taking.
My current hope phase is perfectly in tune with this week's Sagittarius horoscope from Rob Brezny: "Be ready to imagine the unimaginable, see the unseeable, and think the unthinkable... with the most optimistic attitude possible... the almost unbelievable prospects coming into your sphere are interesting and invigorating."
The apparent reality of the housing market presents as a blank wall but I choose to, have to, decide to, believe that there is a chink somewhere for an optimistic Sagittarian willing to imagine the unimaginable, see the unseeable and think the unthinkable.
Bring it on home!
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