Hard News: Revival
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Some of you might find this an interesting read:
pop in the age of the atomic bomb.Just imagine--a callow 13 year old weedy schoolboy in South Taranaki firing a machine gun with live ammunition! It generated a life-long distaste of all things military.
Wait, what? You got to shoot a Bren, and it 'generated a life-long distate'?
My internal 13-year old is now screaming 'does not compute!' at me.
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I got dissonance on that as well, Rich. Still, I wouldn't want all the hoopla you had to go through to actually be allowed to touch a Bren. I think cadets had only recently disappeared from my college when I started 3rd form.
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My internal 13-year old is now screaming 'does not compute!' at me.
Hell yes, we couldn't wait to be given our brief turn on the range at Linton. We were each shown how to jam two live rounds through the holes in the feet into the ground to stop it bouncing around (I always though a couple of sticks may have more safely done the trick but I guess the bullets were more dramatic) and given a few rounds to pop off at a very Asiatic looking target.
The Stens we didn't actually get to fire, just repeatedly strip and robotically reassemble to a stopwatch held by a yelling someone who used to be our Latin teacher but was now a Sgt. Major.
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I got dissonance on that as well,
Different times...
I thought would have loved it growing up as I did awash in all those WW2 comics and Lion and Tiger weekly comic mags.
The reality was much more monotonous, nothing rugged and individualistic about it.
And the weapon recoil..... no one ever said anything about that.
Shooting from the hip while bounding across trenches....yeah right! -
dyan - I'd never heard of Norman Bethune before...must learn more.
You ever come across an ANZer called Rewi Alley? Also esteemed in China for his work there.Oh, yes! Rewi Alley - I've read everything I've found about his work - what an amazing guy. He and Ed Hillary are two of my favourite NZ heroes.
There is a very good movie about Norman Bethune played by Donald Sutherland... (whose own father-in-law Tommy Douglas, was voted the greatest Canadian of all time). The interview I posted above with Adrienne Clarkson (if you can be bothered watching the whole 20 minutes) gives some insight into how clearly the threat of fascism was taken in Canada during the 1930s.
There were rumours that a film was to be made about Rewi Alley, but I don't know if it ever came to much. i will be interested what a filmmaker would make of Hillary's life too - in Nepal his mountain climbing is irrelevant, but the whole country was plunged into mourning when he died.
My sister Shirl (who lives there) says the whole nation came to a halt because of the collective grief, and when she mentioned her sister lived in NZ, Nepalis would go into raptures about how kind, how honourable and how selfless NZers are because of all the schools, hospitals and airfields Sir Ed helped create. Even though I wasn't an actual Kiwi, they were sure I was wonderful because I lived where Sir Ed came from. My sister guarantees any NZer who goes and volunteers at her school will get treated like a visiting god.
I think Sean Penn will be remembered by our generation exactly the same way. His relief organisation is an impressive model of extraordinarly well run aid, (OXFAM - you would learn a thing or two) - Penn has been living in a tent along with his volunteers among the refugees ever since the earthquake in Haiti.
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after we discovered the Chinese worshipped him.
He's still remembered. But one glaring omission from the Chinese version of his-story:
He did not distinguish between casualties, treating wounded Japanese prisoners as well as Chinese.
Mao Ze Dong neglected to mention this 'minor' inconvenient detail in his poem 纪念白求恩 'remember Bethune', which is as far as I know, still taught in schools.
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dyan - there was a film proposed on Rewi Alley after the biography came out, but it didnt attract necessary funding from the proposed script.
And, an interesting sidelight on Edmund Hillary: he undoubtedly did an enormous amount of good among Sherpa communities, but he could be brusque & unhelpful with other ANZ volunteers - almost as though he thought it was *his* patch, and resented ANZers who didnt kowtow.
The volunteers who encountered this side were 2 much respected residents of Okarito, who, in their late 60s, helped with setting up Saga Matha National Park. Gordon had been chair of the National Parks Authority here; Chief Ranger at Franz & Fox, and was also a very experienced builder & building contractor. His wife Esther, a good friend of mine, was an excellent gardener, experienced in getting setting appropriate gardens going where-ever she was.They did not find Ed Hillary helpful, at all, at all.
They're all dead now...
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They're all dead now...
I spent 3 months in Nepal in 1975, arriving in early May, less than five weeks after Louise and Belinda Hillary's deaths in the plane crash of 31/3/1975. I recall a number of stories, from those locals who claimed to know, of how emotionally devastated Edmund Hillary had been when he arrived at the crash site. There was a real sense of shared grief and sympathy for someone who'd been seen locally as somehow a bit larger than life.
Just more details that go towards making up the total picture.
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Chris - yes. Have the book (and the "Listener" review, just incidentally.)
I find him ambivalent...I knew his sister and *she* was ambivalent.as, Joe, the couple I knew were really ambivalent towards Hillary. (They, incidentally, guested numerous Sherpas at Okarito in their home.)
And as you say, "Just more details that go towards making up the total picture"
-which none of us can ever know.
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Some of you might find this an interesting read:
pop in the age of the atomic bomb.Pop? Ka-BOOM! surely :-)
But yes, pop music for the boomers - indeed an interesting article, the Beatles/Love Me Do exploding on the scene at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. For this then-10-year-old, the nuclear brinkmanship made the bigger impression at the time. The threat of devastation or annihilation seemed all too credible, but perhaps incredible too, for us so far away in the South Pacific.
So in the week between the 28 October agreement to resolve the Crisis and the USSR shipping the nuclear missiles out of Cuba, the US sent another message to the Soviets and incidentally to us that we were not so far away.
Cecelia from a couple of pages back -
I was born in 1946 and saw the sky light up once from a French nuclear test in the Pacific.
Might this have been in the evening of 2 November 1962? Aurora-like lighting of the northern sky was seen the length of New Zealand, after the US 'Kingfish' nuclear bomb exploded 97 km above Johnston Atoll SW of Hawaii, and the ionic protests of the ionosphere rode the earth's magnetic field directly over NZ.
But although they arrived 8pm-ish I was inside, head in a book (much of my growing up pre-TV - another characteristic of the early-mid baby-boomers), saw nothing of it. There was much buzz at school the next day, both excitement and the counterpoint that it made the sense of global vulnerability seem real.
Does this tally with what you saw Cecelia? French nuclear testing in the Pacific started up in 1966/68, and I'm doubtful of any visible sign of them from here.
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My undergraduate degree decades ago was a double major in history and Asian studies. So I got to study the Long March in which Norman Bethune, Edgar Snow and those other old China hands featured. And NZers were there too -James Bertram, who reported on the Sian Incident with Chiang Kai Shek, had become a Victoria University English lecturer. Kathleen Hall was a very brave NZ nurse/resistance worker. About that time NZ recognised China, one of Kirk's first actions as PM. In 1976 I visited China on a NZ-China Society tour and met an aging Rewi Alley (was part of that large and prominent family - brother Geoff National Librarian, sister Gwen Somerset one of the Play centre movers and shakers). Muldoon visited the same week as we did, and unknown to us there were big riots in Tienanmin (sp?) Square after the death of Chou En Lai (I think that's right, it is late at night). All foreigners in Beijing were efficiently bussed out to a stadium to see an amazing fireworks display, and all was tidy when were we allowed to venture out again.
Of course what we didn't know was that that Cultural Revolution was in full swing and our whole trip was carefully stage managed. Explained why Rewi was quite reticent, as apparently he was under virtual house arrest.
One of the little red books of the time was called 'Remembering Norman Bethune' as he was considered a huge friend of the Chinese revolution.
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Edging back on topic: Josh at TPM sums up the mood of the 'Tea Party' election talking of Sharon Angle's run in Nevada:
she was frightening. Captures as well as anyone the concept of militant ignorance. And there are so many people doing their best to capture it.
Militant ignorance. Victorious- for the moment.
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Hilary - a probably irrelevant question: did "Robin Hyde' show up at all in your studies? (And Gwen needs a biography all on her own.)
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@Hilary:
after the death of Chou En Lai
Zhou Enlai died on 8 January 1976.
Muldoon visited from 28 April to 5 May, and met Mao Zedong on 30 April.
Mao died on 9 September, and apparently Muldoon was the last overseas leader to meet him.
Quite a few spontaneous protests took place in April 1976, ostensibly to mourn Zhou but in reality they were protests against the Gang of Four. -
dyan - there was a film proposed on Rewi Alley after the biography came out, but it didnt attract necessary funding from the proposed script.
It's a shame the film never got off the ground, because it's a fascinating story about a NZer who should not be forgotten - but I can see how it would be incredibly expensive to film,
He's still remembered. But one glaring omission from the Chinese version of his-story:
He did not distinguish between casualties, treating wounded Japanese prisoners as well as Chinese.
I only just heard it - Adrienne Clarkson mentions that in the interview I posted, as well as other facts I hadn't known. I knew Bethune was a driving force behind Canada's public health system, but I was surprised - and impressed that such a pragmatic man was responsible for setting up an art school for the very poorest children in Canada during the depression. As Adrienne Clarkson said, many of these children would have not even enough to eat, but Bethune felt it was important that "beauty be in their purview". It is a shame none of the people running health or education in this country are neither public health geniuses nor motivated by a genuine wish to provide help to those who need it most.
And, an interesting sidelight on Edmund Hillary: he undoubtedly did an enormous amount of good among Sherpa communities, but he could be brusque & unhelpful with other ANZ volunteers - almost as though he thought it was *his* patch, and resented ANZers who didnt kowtow.
But it isn't really out of character for people who do extraordinary humanitarian work... Albert Schweitzer whose humanitarian commitment is well known, was prone to rages and even punched volunteers who particularly enraged him. And it's interesting what Adrienne Clarkson says about Bethune - that the traits that made him most disliked in Canada - impatience, bossiness, unswerving resolute vision - these were all the traits the Chinese most admired. They interpreted his bossy nature as a sign Bethune knew exactly what he was doing, they interpreted his famous impatience as commitment and his resolute vision - which Canadians found arrogant and dictatorial - was very much appreciated in China. Bethune was also known to fly into rages and hurl medical instruments at colleagues if things didn't go well in theatre, and that did not endear him to anyone on the receiving end of a flying instrument.
Sean Penn is a famously provokable and bad tempered actor, and I am sure in the decades to follow there will be accounts of his unpleasant behaviour. In the meantime I am hugely impressed with everything he has accomplished and how much more he intends to do.
By the way, if anyone reading this has access to medical supplies (if you are a rep for a drug company for instance)
Sean Penn's organisation desperately needs the following:The following medical supplies are needed to fight the outbreak of cholera in Haiti:
Ringer’s Lactate 1000cc IV bags
IV fluids
Ciprofloxacin 400mg IV bags AND 500mg tablets
Tetracycline tablets
Oral rehydration salts
Stool sample containers.
Tylenol suspension for children
Amoxicillin suspension for children
Pedialyteand the website is here J/P Hatian Relief
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Thanks Islander and Stephen. We were in Beijing on May Day 1976. Probably a good day for a protest. Was an incredible dust storm too I remember while we were there. My sister was there later in the year when Mao died.
Robin Hyde's China connection came up too - might have been in the English course I did at the same time. Con Bollinger was our English lecturer and James K Baxter dropped in as guest speaker from time to time (for English 1 !)
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But yes, pop music for the boomers - indeed an interesting article, the Beatles/Love Me Do exploding on the scene at the same time as the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962.
Reminds me of a compilation CD I picked up at the recent Chch Library book sale - Songs of Peacemakers, Protesters and Potheads, with tracks by The Byrds, the Yardbirds, Scott McKenzie, Electric Flag, Sly & the Family Stone, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Steppenwolf, Country Joe and others...
I also got Shrew'd, a compilation of NZ women's music which is a wee gem.
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