Posts by dyan campbell
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Relevant quotes from a story about Anika Moa and her wedding in The Press today
This kind of intrusive press is just weird, and it's never remotely what the fans are interested to know. I love Anika's music and don't need to know anything beyond what she wishes to tell the press.
Leave it to bloggers - and fans - like me - to write about the music rather than the private live of the musician.
Here's what my Canadian friend Scruffy the Yak has to say about Dimmer
Scruffy the YakThose aren't the same videos I sent him, incidentally, I sent Seed and Crystalator (live) but I guess my influence only goes so far...
I sent Scruffy the Yak a million other recommendations... NZ has a lot to choose from...
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That's interesting dyan campbell- I'd always thought of Tom Sawyer as nearing adolesence i.e. 10ish-12ish.
Tom Sawyer is the first book in the series, and the most definitive details regarding the ages of to be found in the descriptions of school. Tom and his friends have slates and chalk instead of exercise books and ink (used after age 9) so we can be certain they are over 6 but under 9. Tom has only just learned how to whistle, and is captivated by his new skill, again something learned by a younger child rather than an older one.
The boy Tom fights in the beginning of the story is "a shade larger than himself" but is wearing "a close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout" and "pantaloons" which means he is almost certainly under 8 years old - the "bubbles" suit of the child-dandy being one step beyond the little frock and pantaloons of toddlerhood, but not yet in the breeches or overalls a boy over the age of 8 would wear. Also the coloured tickets given to the children as rewards in Sunday School were only for the very small pupils - under 9.
In the subsequent books in the series - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - the boys are older - 11 or more. In Tom Sawyer, Detective they are older again (12 - 13) and in Tom Sawyer Abroad they are in their teens.
Mark Twain was vague about details, loose with timelines and pretty liberal in his grasp on reality, but he is careful to include details, that give you quite a precise age of Tom and his friends. How much time passes between the early chapters and the later ones is not clear, but certainly by the time Tom and Becky get lost in the cave, they do seem to be older than they do at the beginning of the book.
(Again, the illustrations in the 2 copies I have support this.)
Again - like in my ancient copy of Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Circus there were no illustrations in my edition of Tom Sawyer. Plus the illustrations do not necessarily match the text. Alice in Wonderland specifically tells a character (the Caterpillar?) that she is 7 years old, but Tenniel's illustrations of Alice make her look 10 or 11.
Milk teeth - in my family - fall out over years (the latest known age was 14
Yipes! Well, in nearly all instances, barring the very unusual, the tooth Tom loses (a front one) would almost certainly make him 6 or 7 years old.
young males in Twain's time could cry without being called sissies;
Oh, not they could not. It was expected that you be manly, and not a cry-baby. Even the March girls in Little Women are exhorting one another to "be a man". The little urchin rescued by Elnora Comstock in Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost wins huge respect by not crying when his terrible sores are bathed in very painful disinfectant. Even in my childhood (1960s and 70s) people would say - even to girls "be a man" meaning don't you dare whine or cry.
older women -again at the time- would wash adolescent males (let's not explore that one too closely)
Gosh, no Islander! Even little pampered English girl Mary Lennox in The Secret Garden is 10 years old when she has to dress herself the first time without the assistance of her Ayah, and her inability to do so at such an advanced age is scandalous, and she is a little upper-class child in England, with servants.
A great big boy of that age or even older in antebellum St. Petersburg would be expected to wash and dress by himself.
other traits - playing childish games, enjoying sweet things, and being cynical about bad gifts (especially knives!)
He's not cynnical about the Barlow knife! He submits to all of cousin Mary's lessons (in scripture) because of the promise of a Barlow knife.
It "costs twelve and a half cents" and it gives Tom "a convulsion of delight that swept his system and shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that".
Just look at the details - Tom and his friends pretend to be pirates, or robbers, and at one point they even pretend to be a paddle steamer on the river. These are little boys.
But the NY Review of Books essay is dead wrong about Tom Sawyer. He learns plenty after running away. He learns that he is indeed loved, and that he loves his Aunt Polly in return. He learns that however sweet it is to be kissed or even cuffed and overwhelmed by the welcome he receives when they turn up at their own funeral, he notices his friend Huck has not one single adult who cares if he comes back from the dead or not - and that detail is perhaps the most telling of Tom's character in that part of the book.
There is not much parallel between Tom Sawyer and Pinocchio - one is an amusing tale written for a wide audience, the other is a morally edifying story for children. Not even closely related... though they both draw on A Pilgrim's Progress if you want to get all literary about things....
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Charles Collodi
Oh no, no no no no. He's all ours. OURS, I tell you.Ooops, sorry Giovanni! I had the 1939 edition from the English publisher "Collins" and they anglicised poor Carlo's name to "Charles".
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I remember thinking this NY Review of Books essay on Pinocchio was quite good too, on the differences between film and original book. Was always my favourite of those early (1930s-60s) Disney films as a kid, for reasons I wouldn't want to psychoanalyse.
Anyway, the essayI read the essay with great interest, as Pinocchio and Tom Sawyer were two favourite books from childhood - I never saw the films based on either book, which seems to have been a good thing.
The essay was really not very good. I don't think that NY Review of Books person actually read Tom Sawyer, as many of the points the author makes are wrong.
How can Tom be "seriously delinquent"? He's between 6 and 8 years old, if the reader pays attention to descriptions of his teeth (some missing, some wiggly) and the fact that fallen teeth can be traded as currency (for a pinch beetle from Huck). Tom still plays with a hoop and bat, is given a highly prized Barlow knife that "can't cut anything", steals sugar and jam, still needs his cousin Mary to help him wash and he cries when he feels sorry for himself, which is often. When Tom, Huck and Joe run away to Jackson's Island, they are pretending to be pirates. Mark Twain's character Tom Sawyer is a very little boy.
There are actually very few parallels between Twain's and Collodi's books - and as Victor Hugo said, there are only really six stories, just told different ways.
Charles Collodi was writing a book - however filled with adventures - that was essentially one of those morally edifying tales that were intended to persuade children that being lazy, bad tempered, selfish, cruel and irresponsible was not an easy path, usually ending in "a hospital or a prison" as Pinocchio's cricket friend tries to warn him. Mark Twain was writing a comedic adventure about a little boy and his friends, filled with gentle satire and wry observations about life in a small town. There is nothing intended to be edifying to children, though adults of the town are gently pilloried and sent up as a little judgemental, sentimental and hypocritical as the occasion rises. For instance, at the sorrowful commemoration of the death of murderer Injun Joe Twain writes of the townfolk "they had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging".
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I think that's for us to decide. If it looks like a Duck and Quacks like a Duck then it could be a member of the ACT Party.
No, Steve, if it looks and quacks like a duck, and is lame in the bargain then it's the Labour party... if it gnaws through everything you need and craps in all your provisions, that's the ACT party.
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Today my mother died. But someone will have to explain it to me: I didn't read Camus for the lolz.
I wondered about that too, but I think Danielle was trying to refer to "la petit mort" where Camus says "Maman est mort". The first means "the little (feminine) death" and is a colloquialism for orgasm, the second means "Mother died" and doesn't have anything to do with orgasms. So maybe I missed it too.
If this is a colloquial confusion, it's not as unfortunate as confusing "haut le coeur" with "haute couture", one translating as "high the heart" and the other as "high sewing", but the first meaning "dry heaves" and the second meaning "fancier and much more expensive than ready to wear".
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The age of consent in Canada is fourteen. That's four years of keeping your eyes shut.
Not quite Emma.
Age of Consent in Canada is 16
Beginning May 1, 2008, the age of sexual consent in Canada is 16 years old.
The age of consent in Canada is the age at which the criminal law recognizes the legal capacity of a young person to consent to sexual activity. Under the Criminal Code of Canada anyone under the age of 16 cannot legally consent to any form of sexual activity, from kissing to intercourse. It means that adults are criminally liable if they have sex with someone under that age. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.The law has a "close-in-age" exemption of less than five years, which permits teens to engage in consensual sex with a partner who is less than five years older as long as the older partner is not in a position of trust or authority and the relationship is not exploitive.
The age of protection for exploitive sexual activity, such as sexual activity involving prostitution, pornography, or a relationship of trust, is 18. The age of consent for anal sex is also 18.
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Same with anthems. Not to say I wouldn't prefer we had a far cooler one of each.
Sacha, NZ has the coolest and most beautiful anthem ever.
Trinity Roots - Home, Land & Sea
By the way, how do you all make the image appear with the link?
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meaningless age categories (eg the undifferentiated 55+ category--which assumes a 56 year old has the same interests as a 76 year old!).
The age categories aren't meaningless - but they are important to media execs in terms of what we will purchase. The age categories are relevant to advertisers - and the execs don't care about anything beyond revenue.
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Also... I am aware that this thread, and Angus's constant hammering of it, are causing some distress to people. I can lock the thread off should people feel it necessary.
Well I can only speak for myself Emma, but I'm extremely grateful to you for both bringing this up and arguing it out, point by point. Any distress I feel is at my inability to frame a coherent argument because I'm quietly chewing my desk blotter...
Having said that, Angus, I don't think you are a troll, and much as I think your argument is a steaming pile of... disputable opinions, I do respect you coming here, arguing your point and being pretty civil. Considering what kind of argument you're making anyway.
But that is the appeal of PAS I think - and however heated the arguments get, the exchange of ideas is the whole point.