Posts by Chris Waugh
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Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good"…, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
Take good care down there. Apparently a big part of the trouble at a highway interchange not far from here on July 21 was pretty similar - so much rain falling in the river that it flowed back up the storm water drains. Keep an eye on that and stay safe.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Islander,
The sixpence had a huia on it….
If you have a Waitangi crown, it is worth a lot of money…Most of my old coins were found one way or another - it's amazing what shows up if you've got an eye open for it, and how many of those old coins were still in circulation (still legal tender or not, I don't know) when I was a kid. I think I may have a sixpence or two back in NZ - unless my mum, acting on what I told her when she was here last to throw out all the stuff I have stored at her place, just keep my books, disposed of my old coins. But I'm pretty sure I don't have a Waitangi crown, that would be far too expensive for my methods of acquisition.
Sounds like you had a pretty awesome grandfather. Knowledge is such a powerful thing.
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More flowers, these were planted at the entrance to the courtyard of Laogu’s* country house.
And another lotus, in the Guishui River, Yanqing county town.
*a kind of aunt. Chinese family words are very specific.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Peter Alsop,
Did you also know ‘Maoriland’ was the first cable (then-twitter!) address for the Dept of Tourist and Health Resorts?
I didn't know that. Can't say I'm surprised, the name does seem to have been quite widely used back in the day, the Maoriland Worker, for example.
Of course, googling "Maoriland" now gets an awful lot of hits about land ownership, the Land Court, and so on.
In __Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, performed in the years 1814 and 1815, in company with the Rev. Samuel Marsden, Principal Chaplain of New South Wales__ (they really knew how to do book titles back then!) Volume 1, John Liddiard Nicholas tells an interesting anecdote on pages 10 and 11 about a discussion between Tippahee (Te Pahi) and the governor of New South Wales and other colonial dignitaries. Tippahee had protested that sentencing a man to hang for stealing a pig was cruel and unjustly severe. He explained that stealing an axe or other essential tool would deserve the death penalty, but not a pig, which he'd probably stolen out of hunger. The Governor explains the law about property rights, and that the punishment for theft is death. Nicholas reports Tippahee's reply thusly:
"Then," said Tippahee, "why you not hang Captain ----?" pointing to the commander of a vessel, whose name I do not immediately recollect, but who was then sitting at table;-- "Captian, he come to New Zealand, he come ashore, he tihi (stole) all my potatoes -- you hang up Captain ------"
Nicholas then explains that the company were quite impressed with his logic, all but the captain, who had indeed sent a crew ashore to steal the potatoes.
It's odd, the mixture of admiration and respect for the Maori, the disgust at the treatment they were subjected to by the crews of many passing ships, and the patronising contempt for the savages. And yeah, "no Native problem" indeed.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Hebe,
I find the Maori posters a bit creepy and disrespecting
Agreed. But it seems to be a bit of a theme in NZ history. For example, old coins:
Centennial half crown with a Maori maiden taking centre stage.
One shilling, 1947, warrior poised ready to strike.
Thruppence, 1933, two mere.
Just for contrast's sake, one penny, 1949, with what looks to my eyes to be a tui. Of the four old NZ coins I have with me in Beijing, 3 feature Maori motifs. Oops, make that 4 out of 5 - I missed the 1950 half penny featuring a tiki. Will attach photo forthwith.
I find it hard to believe that Maori would've had anything like the place in mainstream NZ society in the 1930s and '40s they do now, and if we're honest, we've still got an awful lot of wrongs to right. And in 1940 there would've probably still been a lot of people with personal memories of the Land Wars, plenty more with stories told by their own parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. One wonders how they would've felt looking at that centennial half crown.
Like the posters, the coins seem to me to be another thread in the old Pakeha narrative of self-delusion: "Oh, yes, we treat our natives very well here, much better than the Australians, Americans or Canadians, not to speak of the South Africans. See how they like to sing and dance to welcome guests!" Or is it, as Peter says in the original post, also about creating a sense of national identity. Dunno. There would seem to be a book in figuring that out, if it hasn't been written already.
ETA: 1940 South African thruppence. Interesting comparison. I don't know enough about South Africa to decipher the patterns. My old Australian coins invariably stick to the fauna (and no, not the Aborigines, regardless of what their legal status may have been at the time).
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Hard News: The Mega Conspiracy, in reply to DexterX,
What were they smoking??
The original author? Marketing speak.
The translator? Dunno, but they had the good sense to give me the original Chinese as well so I could retranslate the worst bits.
The FBI? Check the evidence room, see what's missing, or perhaps replaced by a DVD labelled "Kubrick".
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Hebe,
That retro-innocence vision of NZ as a South Pacific paradise is comforting.
Sadly not retro. I still meet plenty of North Americans and Europeans who still think the South Pacific is a paradise on earth populated by noble savages and all that bollocks. It's an interesting attitude to see in an historic context, but it's not comforting when it's in people in their 20s and 30s actually talking to me. That Gauguin fellow has a lot to answer for.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Hebe,
Love them; I wish I could get reprint posters of these.
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Page 31 of A First Year in Canterbury Settlement by Samuel Butler. I love the description of the conversation.
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Speaker: Selling the Dream: The Art of…, in reply to Russell Brown,
if that helps.
Indeed it does, thanks, although Google has no excerpts or reviews.
This one also looks fascinating. Good thing I'm on holiday, damn internet has so many tangents to follow.
I found mine in a Wellington second-hand bookshop. Which is actually where I found most of my favourite books.
Which reminds me of a couple of markets I haven't visited in a while. Trouble is, my wife is getting frustrated with how much space my books are occupying. Need to move to NZ, win Lotto, buy a farm, and convert the barn into a library...
