Miscellany

On Saturday we looked at the weekend weather forecast and decided to put off "spring" house cleaning and go for a hike instead. Bethell’s Beach was glorious in the autumn sun, the hillside greenery flecked with tawny and mauve plumes of pampas grass. We got back home well before sunset but it was already pretty dark, and the sky was glowing an eerie greenish-black color. It was dead calm, with not so much as a breeze all evening.

I woke up at 6 am on Sunday and saw the first sign – trees wildly thrashing in the wind. By 8 am, it was raining a little. By noon, the remnants of Cyclone Larry had arrived in Parnell. During a mid-afternoon a lull, I went to the U to do some research, but wind gusts almost knocked me off my feet a couple times. The rain poured all day and all night, but then it was over and Monday was hot and sunny.

My research for Ocean Law is going well (knock wood), and my teaching job this term is great. As a Tuakana Mentor in Commercial Law, I’m an extra resource to help Maori and Pacific Island students. (“Tuakana” translates roughly as “big brother.”) I’m doing four hours of workshops and open office hours per week, so even with preparation time, email, phone calls and meetings, it shouldn’t be too time-consuming. The best part is that the students who show up are pretty motivated to learn, so it’s fun, too.

Speaking of fun, check out The World's Technology Podcast. This links to their blog (also on Blogger) and provides links to load up the 'cast. It's a weekly explanded version of tech stories from PRI's The World (public radio news show jointly produced by the BBC and Boston's WGBH).

I'm luddite enough to not have a cell phone, but I love this podcast. Their coverage of "regular" technology news is user-friendly for non-geeks, but they also have really off-beat tech stories. Check out #92, the piece titled "A Force More Powerful," about the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict's video game that trains potential revolutionaries in non-violent strategies for overcoming oppressive/repressive regimes. And #87, about Kiva, a group that raises microdevelopement funds on the internet. For as little as $25, you can lend to a brick maker in Honduras or small farmers in Kenya. They also have excellent music selections.

Cheers,
Sandie

05:25:35 AM

Adeh Shomah Moborak! Norooz Pirooz!
(Happy New Year! and May your New Year be Prosperous!)

Wishing you health, good fortune, and peace throoughout the year.

Cheers,
Sandie

Turning Back Time

Picnic at Wenderholm Regional Park, March 2006
Last night was the end of Daylight Savings Time, and I’m using the extra hour to do some long-overdue catching up here. Four weeks ago Ali and I went camping at Stoney Bay, at the far northern tip of Coromandel Penninsula. It took about five hours to drive there, with the last 1-1/4 hours on an unsealed road. Worth every minute.

Then two weeks ago weeks ago my Aunt Dottie and Uncle Forrest returned to Auckland after touring NZ for almost a month. The night before they arrived I was up until 4 am finalizing the edits on my paper, but the payoff was meeting my editors’ deadline which led, last week, to my first publication.


My aunt and uncle returned to Auckland just in time for my birthday, which we celebrated - thanks to Armaz and Angelique - by attending a concert. The Cologne New Philharmonic’s program began, appropriately enough, with a selection by Vivaldi (also born on March 4th and one of my very favorite composers). It was thoroughly delightful, from the first note to the last.


The next day, before taking my aunt and uncle to the airport so they could return to Normal (really – it’s the name of the town where they live), we visited Wenderholm Regional Park for a picnic and a bit more scenery. By all accounts they loved NZ and had a great time here, and we’re hoping they’ll return again soon.

One of my guilty pleasures these days is Boston Legal, hands down the best TV show ever made about lawyers. It manages to be both deeply insightful and wickedly funny, week in and week out. James Spader performs a weekly tour de force, but William Shatner’s acting is nearly miraculous: I have loathed this man since his days as Capt. Kirk, but, as the obnoxious but possibly Alzheimer-stricken Denny Crane, he has stolen my heart - or at least earned my admiration.

The past two episodes featured Heather Locklear as a cold, calculating gold digger, accused of murdering her elderly and, of course, wealthy husband. Never one of my favorite actresses, I enjoyed seeing her portrayed as a sex bomb a lot more than I used to. Why? Heather and I are the same age. Yep: just lose a few pounds, do a couple sessions with a personal trainer, endure a bit of nip-and-tuck, and that could be me. (Yeah, right.)

It's getting late, so I've left out my new job as a Tuakana Mentor at UoA, my latest class on Ocean Law and Governance, a few bush walks and dinner parties, and this year's Pasifika Festival. But that pretty much brings things up to date. In today's news, thousands of anti-war protesters around the world took to the streets marking the third anniversary of the US’s misadventure in Iraq. An article in the latest Foreign Affairs estimates Iraq’s death toll may be up to 100,000, and, of course, US casualties are heading towards 2,500.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s impossible to turn back the clock.

Cheers,
Sandie

'Bartenders Without Borders'

I'll do some backfilling on what's been keeping me away from the blog soon - I promise. In the meantime, I'd like to invite you to share a virtual pint of green beer with me, and read this item from the New York Times:

March 17, 2006
When Latvian Eyes Are Smiling
By THOMAS LYNCH
Milford, Mich.

LAST year they opened a new Irish pub on Main Street here. O'Callaghan's they call it, and it's owned by two Palestinians who did it up in high Paddy style, with snugs and dark hardwoods, Guinness and designer lagers and a couple of imported boyos behind the bar. The décor came from Dublin in a kit. The lads came on their own from Wexford to pull pints, pour shots and give out with the brogue-y chat that separates an Irish pub from every other kind.

Market research has shown that suburban Americans, like Parisians and the Japanese, find getting a little tipsy in an Irish bar is more agreeable — kinder, gentler, cuter somehow — than the shot and beer dispensaries where sad men sip up their sedation in privacy and silence. Folksy calls of "Slainte!" and "Failte!", a dart board on the premises, some blarney and stews and beer-battered fish, tin whistles and a table quiz, a big screen with hurling or rugby games all conspire to make the consumption of fermented depressants anything but depressing.

It is an illusion, of course, a faux reality, but it's market savvy, and the Palestinians are packing them in. How very Disney, I say to myself, how very American — like going to Vegas to experience Venice, a kind of dude ranch for the wannabe "faith and begorrah" sorts.

But in West Clare, where I summer in the ancestral cottage that was left to me, between the North Atlantic and the River Shannon's mouth, the authentics and realities are shifting too.

My local is the Long Dock in Carrigaholt, an estuarial village of 600 with a castle, a small fishing fleet and an influx of seasonal visitors. It's the real thing, the Long Dock, a genuine Irish pub with turf and flagstones, Armitage Shanks urinals and a history of famines and festivities. I've been going there for decades now, and though I quit the "top shelf" and pints years back, I love the fresh catch and local chowder, the company of friends and strangers.

Though the Long Dock is owned by a family named Lynch, two Lithuanians work the bar; a pair of Poles wait tables and Latvians in the kitchen turn out continental versions of the local fare. They come for Easter and stay till summer's end, returning home flush with money the way poor local farmers, a generation back, used to winter in Glasgow and Liverpool and London, working to keep body and soul together.

Like the young of Carrigaholt and its surrounding towns, the young of Krakow and Vilnius are coming and going as they please now, citizens of the European Union and the global villages. Bartenders without borders, they travel light between cultures, common markets and currencies, picking up the languages, finding in the eyes of strangers the shared lights of humanity.

In this they resemble St. Patrick himself. The son of Romans stationed in Britain, he was kidnapped in his youth by marauding Irish who sold him into slavery to a Druid master. Given to visions and important dreams, after years of contemplative indenture tending sheep, he got free of his captors, took Holy Orders in France, thence to Rome where he was given his mission: to return and convert the "pagan" Irish from their worship of nature and its elements. It was early in the fifth century, and the sun and the yew tree and the river all seemed sacred still.

The local holy men were unenthusiastic about Patrick's zeal and brought their own powers to bear against him. Still the Irish became, in the fullness of time, according to the ancient texts, "docile to the faith."

It helped that Patrick was a deft metaphorist and could bridge the gaps between beliefs, finding connections in what seemed disparate themes. The Celtic cross was one such compromise — Patrick's overlay of the circular symbol of the rising sun (a god in Druid theology) to the cruciform of the Christian's risen son of God. Both were signs of second chances. Then there was the shamrock, which the saint famously used to explain the Trinity — that mystery of the many and the one, of unity's embrace of diversity. The man had a knack for difficult mysteries, for sorting the sames and differents.

And here are some more glorious and sorrowful mysteries: how race and nation, faith and place, define and divide us endlessly; how ethnicity makes fast friends of strangers and also poisons the well of humanity; how religion calls us to worship and so miscalculates our Gods. If there is only one God — as all Muslims, Christian and Jews believe — then isn't the one we believe in one and the same? If there is no God, aren't we off only by one? And if there are many, aren't there plenty to go around?

Consider the shamrock. Consider those famous 40 shades of green Ireland is said to have. It's Disney, an illusion, a fake Irish bar. The world we live in is 40 shades of gray, and in each of them still 40 more.

The barkeepers know this in Milford and West Clare, in Boston and Baghdad, in Dublin and Darfur, wherever they are — it's always the same human thirst and hunger, the same longing for the shared feast and safe harbor, the home fire and known place, the common table and place at the bar. The green beer and blather, the old songs and good craic notwithstanding, until all are safe in their own place, a Great Day for the Irish, or the Americans, is just pretend.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Cheers,
Sandie