Posts by Tess Rooney
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"Loved Bob’s incredulity at how the media didn’t back up CNN at the press conference."
This is a bit scary actually. I'm assuming the media will be concerned about losing access to Trump, but it means that he controls the narrative.
FOX NEWS - 'fair' and 'balanced' and approved by the Trump...
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I'm dreading the next four years. For people who rely on the Affordable Care Act it's going to be deadly. Having the Republicans in control of the US government is going to be terrible, especially for poor and marginalised people.
I just hope the professional diplomats can soothe down international conflicts, but Trump is so ignorant and undisciplined who knows what he will launch the US into.
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Up Front: Five, in reply to Emma Hart,
People are treating the victims of the quakes the same way they treat victims of domestic violence. You don’t really want to do anything, you don’t want to feel bad about yourself from not doing anything, you just want to get on and pretend it hasn’t happened. So you minimise the damage.
Reading The Press about the Pike miners I saw the exact same attitude towards the families who lost someone.
"It's time to move on."
"They need to let go."
"It's too expensive."
"But it's a lovely place to be buried."
"People who die at sea don't get their bodies back to be buried."How can anyone tell a grieving person - it's time to move on, you have to let go? Who are they to tell someone how to grieve and what to feel? Not because they want the other person to feel better either, but because they wanted the activism to shut up and drop it. They were sick of reading it in the paper and seeing it on the news.
We're the same with the babies and children killed by parents and caregivers. If we actually cared as a country we would vote in the party that promised they would give CYFS and other relevant agencies proper funding to save these children and help their parents/caregivers. I mean it's not like parents are waking up saying "Today I shall beat little Jane to death." It's often a reaction because a whole pile of terrible, horrible things have lined up to create that moment where they lash out. And we could stop that... if we cared enough... but we don't.
Do you think that this is what humans really are? I mean, as a Christian I read the Old Testament and people happily kill men, women and children with nary a thought. In fact it's joy that we won and they died. And it's not like Greek ancients were different. (Sorry, I'm pretty limited to Western ancient history so if someone knows of a culture that's different my bad.) Do you think we have some kind of modern veneer of empathy for others? Deep down as long as we are alive and thriving the other people can just go to hell?
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Up Front: Five, in reply to Sacha,
I know!! Why?
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Up Front: Five, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
I sort of feel guilty about Christchurch. I lived there from age 1 to my late 30s, (I grew up in the east) we moved to Greymouth in 2007 and so missed the quakes. I feel guilty that I avoided my hometown’s suffering.
You ask about Heather Duplessis-Allan… Something I’ve noticed, being here for Pike River and knowing people very closely involved with it, both management and miners, people outside your area often don’t care deeply about local issues.
As Bernie Monk and the families have fought to get their men out, attitudes have hardened. Initially it was all gung ho to return the bodies of their husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers, now it’s “can’t you just let it go?”
People care in a kind of shallow “oh that’s sad, I hope people are ok” kind of way, but when it comes to caring to the point where it costs them something, maybe time, money, or comfort, then the caring dries up very, very fast.
I was so naive before the CHCH quakes and Pike River, I thought NZ would care and then do things to actually help. The Government should have stepped in and helped people with insurance difficulties, they should have prioritised getting people in warm, dry, safe homes. They should have supported Christchurch schools, instead of trying to close them.
So yeah, of course Heather Duplessis-Allan has no idea that suburbs are just empty land now. What’s Dallington to her? Same with the National leaders and John Key, it's not their family members underground, it's not their brothers/fathers/husbands who go to work in a dangerous environment with inadequate safety legislation.
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A few days ago I happened to be staying at the Wellington YHA for one night when the Sevens was on. It was horrible to hear the dunk guys cat call women on the street from their rooms. It was really disgusting stuff.
I don't know if men were ever different, but the thing that got me was the barely concealed vibe of loathing towards these women who they didn't even know. I personally have never experienced that before.
I was grateful to stay in our tiny room (with the curtains closed) and avoid being on the streets. I was worried for the safety of women out that night with so many drunk men around. The YHA staff were good and they dealt with people who behaving badly inside, but it wasn't a pleasant night.
When I was at uni in the 90s and we would have our end of lectures stein at Canterbury, I don't remember stuff like this. I didn't feel unsafe even with all the drunk guys. Maybe I was just lucky then and I missed the bad stuff happening. Maybe unis are still safe havens, I really don't know. What I do know is that I will avoid Wellington central when the Sevens are on in the future.
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I adore, ADORE, all those authors, especially Raymond Chandler. I think I've read most Agatha Christie (also from the library), and I own quite a few of Chandler's books.
Chesterton's Father Brown series isn't bad either.
I love it when the killer is someone I never guessed, but who it makes perfect sense for it to be.
My personal reading go to when I just want something fast and easy is Mills&Boon Intrigue. Some of them aren't even badly written, and given I also read for pleasure Homer, Dante, Murasaki, Henry James, etc. people can go jump about my M&B enjoyment.
I've been moving into horror lately. I read The Exorcist and The Haunting if Hill House, both of which I liked. I also like old gothic fiction, Ann Radcliffe and Horace Walpole.
Wilkie Collins is brilliant, but I've only read The Moonstone and The Woman in White.
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Heh, I met my husband in the UCSA building as well. Thanks for the reminder.
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"When you move away from a place that's meant a lot to you, it stays unchanged in your head."
This, totally and utterly this. Whilst I rationally understand that the building needs to go, and that it isn't "mine" there is a part of me that is devastated by the loss of the UCSA building. Despite changing flats, changing majors, changing boyfriends, the LCR was home and a stable, unchanging focus for my life at university. Losing the LCR is a concrete (very concrete) reminder that my youth has gone and is never to return. In my head I can pretend to be young and 22, but sadly the external reality speaks truth to my youthful pretenses.
For those of us who were social outcasts at high school, to find not only a group of like minded friends but a place to be was so wonderfully satisfying. To belong somewhere was a true joy.
Anyway, some memories:
Definitely remember the pickle, gross, but in a scientific inquiry sort of way. The carpet... whoever designed that carpet needs some kind of industrial engineering award. It could soak up everything, and yet still look the same. Yes, it was a bit sticky, and the design was dreadfully ugly, but it kept on carpeting when all other woolen floor treatments would have surrendered and fallen into corroded holes. The phone, every time it rang there was the communal cry of "first year" so that some poor youngling would have to go and answer it. The conversations, I think every person in the LCR did Phil101 purely by dint of being part of the conversations of the day. The trees by the river just by the (second story) LCR balcony where one day, looking out the window, there was a very sleek, very healthy rat that was just sitting there on a branch looking in at us.
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I'm genuinely shocked that people would avoid women writers. How is that even a thing?
Classic books by women I love, "Passing" by Nella Larsen, anything by Sigrig Undset,I love Rumer Godden. Virginia Woolf of course.