How deeply I heart you

It’s an organ of many parts, the heart. As the body’s workhorse it keeps on busily pumping away more than 100,000 times a day to push blood around our bodies, a job we’re only too happy to delegate and forget about it… until and unless something goes wrong. But over and above all the muscular action we still doggedly persist in thinking the heart is the thing we feel with. We talk about how our hearts get broken or how they swell with pride or how our hearts go out to others in distress. And lately, in the social media world, we’ve begun to use heart as a verb, using either the word or a logo to express how much we love things.  People are hearting everything online from boyfriends and kittens to big, smelly cities. I haven’t yet heard it actually spoken in romantic dialogue though. As far as I know, no movie actor has gazed deeply into someone’s eyes and sighed, "Darling, I heart you". But it can only be a matter of time...   

A Wallow in Yellow

Springtime in New Zealand drives me a bit nuts. So much wind, so much blustery smacking of breezes  and rain against your face. The sun is a bit of a stranger too, with so much cloud skudding from horizon to horizon that we long for weather that's settled and hot. We know it's coming, but just now midsummer seems a long way off.  

But I cheered myself up the other day by taking out my camera on a yellow binge. Nothing like yellow's sunniness to add a dose of cheer to your life. And there's miles of it out there. Marigold, lemon, buttercup, saffron, egg yolk, mustard, cream. So many happy colors. You just need to notice.

The Herald's look-back letter H

The grand old New Zealand Herald, which has been talking to Aucklanders daily since 1863, has been shrunk from broadsheet down to compact size and been given a big revamp. But in one way it’s not so new because while the old masthead has been sidelined, we are still left with one lonely letter, the capital H, printed in what’s known as blackletter font.  

And that’s not new at all. In the middle ages, monks used to fill their days by writing out religious texts by hand, using ink and quill pens to produce convoluted gothic lettering. 

So when Mr Gutenberg invented, in 1455, a way to print words over and over again, using movable type, it was natural for him to copy the monastery style you can see below. . 

He printed his famous bible and showed the world a way to make books available en masse for the first time. 
Blackletter is closely linked with German history and much used by Hitler's lot for nasty propaganda publishing, which is why it fell right out of favour after World War II. 

There are of course thousands of modern, more readable typefaces, but many newspapers, in love with the aura of history and authority conveyed by blackletter script, have clung on to it. 

So even now the Herald still carries a 15^th century echo of Gutenberg. Given how very hard it is to read, we can just be very thankful that graphic designers dropped blackletter font for any other purpose a very long time ago.  

Me and My Car

Depending on how your life works out, and if you’ve had kids, and if they’ve had kids, and assuming you’re all living in the same town, you might get caught up in granny duties at some stage of your mid- or late-life years.

At 60 I thought I’d never be a grandma. Blink. A few years on there’ve been three new arrivals, all accessorised with irresistible smiles. Being on granny duty (let me amend that to ‘calling’ rather than ‘duty’) can be complicated if there’s fair distance between your house and the dwelling of the little people.

So I find myself driving. A lot.

There are two ways to cope. You can mutter darkly to yourself on the motorway about how ridiculous this is and how you’ll have to move closer before you go mad or the rising price of petrol chews up your bank account forever.

Or you can sit back, play some nice music and ponder on the fact that actually you’re so lucky to have a car to get you to the big-hug zone. And how some of your friends have grandchildren growing up 12,000 miles away who they only get to see on Skype, while your trip is only 50ks long.

And that there are some nice cafes and excellent produce shops to drop into
along the way. And that when you get there it really is worth it. Every time.

I’ve made a small video about this modern driving dilemma. Hope you enjoy…

Why China should be on your to-do list

It’s easy to think of reasons why China might not be on your places-to-see list. It’s so big and so foreign, huh? All those vast cities, language you don’t understand, food you might not warm to?
I’ve just done a quick whizz through Shanghai and Beijing and I can tell you those excuses simply don’t stack up. If there was ever a time you should dip a toe into China, it’s now.
We’re talking, after all, of the land that’s pretty much holding the world’s economy together. We need to understand it better and you can only do that by putting feet on the ground.
These are two huge cities – each of them home to more than five times New Zealand’s population. China has more than 160 cities of more than a million people. It is also arguably the country of biggest contrasts.
It’s pulsating and pushy, confronting and confusing, surprising and surreal.
You can see a Ferrari nudging past a man straining to haul a handcart loaded with bricks. Within a block of your hotel there’ll be people buying squalling fighting crickets housed in little grass cages – or choosing the upholstery colour for their Bentley.
You can wander the Forbidden City in Beijing, with its vast squares and pavilions, and be charmed by a moment with a happy modern mum and her son (see picture) all dolled up in Angry Birds T-shirts.
You can feast in an elegant Shanghai restaurant one night and next day see a man with hens in a cage on his push-bike, cutting feathered throats on the spot for customers wanting fresh birds.
But then, in moments, you’re in a beautiful shady park watching someone painting poetry on the ground. He daubs characters in water with a long brush, writing words that will quickly fade and evaporate. It’s called water calligraphy and its contemplative, ephemeral beauty is a lovely thing to see.
Here are some other things I hadn’t expected:
I felt safe. I strolled alone on busy streets at night without any qualms. Crime against westerners is almost zero. In Shanghai, the locals keep taxi receipts because they know if they leave anything in a cab they can call back and have their items returned. That says a lot in a city of 23 million (at last count).
I was charmed. Many locals are quick to give you friendly smiles, even when you’re wandering past them with camera in hand. They’ll also soon let you know if they’d rather not be photographed, but it’s usually just the wave of a hand, not a snarl. The hotels I stayed in had staff who were eager to please and their English skills were humbling.
I was beguiled. Life, at least in summer, is so much lived outside. They come out en masse in the mornings to do tai chi, keep fit, dance, sing and talk. People gather in parks to lustily belt out traditional songs, led by passionate conductors. And they sleep outdoors, everywhere, with open, vulnerable faces, confident of being left alone to dream. Check out this site for proof.
I was delighted. Modern China does city style with pizzazz, using bold graphics and art and smart design. And while its older residential tower blocks may look grim to us, its new major buildings are state-of-the-art and hotels as sassy and eco-savvy as any you’ll find anywhere.
I was impressed. It’s hard to be otherwise when you ride the train between the two cities, ripping through farmland at 300kmh. It does the 1318kms (for $NZ187 in first class) in a little under five hours. That’s further than Auckland to Invercargill – and the run is so smooth it sets up no more than a tremble of fluid in your water bottle.
And the food, oh the food! From upscale Peking Duck to cheap street eating, you’ll find eye-rollingly good tastes to savour.
Then there’s shopping with no limits, except the size of your wallet. And the chance to be naughty in ways now forbidden at home – like smoking in elegant bars or sidecar-biking without a helmet.
China, you’re big and smoggy and crowded and loud. But oh, there’s so much to like.
* Thanks, Air New Zealand, for taking me there. They're now flying direct to Shanghai five times a week, return fares from 1662.

Stand up for 'Mum and Dad'

I’m starting to get so antsy about the constant use of Mum and Dad as an adjectival phrase. You know the one. We hear about the Mum and Dad entities all the time. Mum and Dad investors. Mum and Dad retailers. Mum and Dad franchise holders. Mum and Dad ratepayers.
The Americans have their own version, as in Mom and Pop. In Australia they just call them battlers. I suppose it’s taken over from that older all-encompassing phrase ‘the man in the street’ which never worked either because it ignored women. Whatever, paternalistic words like this always come out of the mouths of people in smartly tailored suits, who work in splendid offices, drive (or get chauffeured in) gleaming new cars and who never come across as being part of any sort of family.
It always feels like they’re talking down to the rest of us. When they say Mum and Dad you know they’re referring to rest of us out here who are just members of the masses - possibly undereducated, needing advice, liable for manipulation, needing to be told what’s good for us.
I get the feeling from such authority figures that they think Mums and Dads are a bit thick and dour and very ordinary. And as we all know, that sure ain’t the truth.

Scary onscreen

These are dark times we live in, at least if you’re watching popular movies or TV.
The vampires of the Twilight saga saturated modern media for a while, and then they got booted out by the warriors of the Hunger Games, in which young people in an imaginary society not too removed from our own are selected to fight to the death.
Teenagers  flocked to Hunger Games and a friend of mine took her daughter to see it – and hated it. She hated what she saw as its glorification of death – and feared for how it might affect more sensitive teens.
I doubt you’ll have see any comments like that from professional reviewers though. I figure they’ve mostly become so immune to fictionalized violence that they can’t see any harm in it.
The mood of these movies is very dystopian. Dystopia is of course the opposite of eutopia. If an ideal society is eutopian, then a dystopian one is a place where everyone’s having a miserable time - a bit like what's happening in Spain now but with murder and monsters as well.
There’s also plenty of dystopia on TV, as in the recent Terra Nova series, and let’s not forget UK series Being Human, which features people who have an alarming tendency to turn into ravening beasts.
True Blood is back on our screens too. Shape shifters abound there, with multiple fangs slipping out of the gums of a host of Mississippi vampires, all the better to plunge into tender necks.  
The biggest new monster on the block is  Prometheus. Its director  Ridley Scott is the guy who scared the bejesus out of us with Alien, as you may recall.
It’s a long time since that ghastly critter gnawed its way out of a crewman’s chest in the first Alien movie. Want to guess how long? 1979. Can it possibly be 33 years? Sigh.
Have you noticed how dark these movies are - as in literally dark? So many deep shades and shadows and blackness. Sunlight hardly gets a look-in.
My current question is whether, at five, my grand-daughtet is too young for the latest Snow White iteration, Snow White and the Huntsman.
I just took a look at some it on YouTube. Oh yes,way too young.
I see it has an M rating - "suitable for mature audiences" but still unrestricted.
Sure, I'm mature all right, but this movie could give me nightmares…  

Lit hits

Book lovers used to talk about things literary but now the literature word itself is being chunked down into 'lit' genres... as in chick-lit, that disparaging little term used for lightweight reads aimed at women. No attention is ever paid to how hard it is to actually write an engaging, lightweight read. Never mind, also, the big money such books make for the publishers. Women are, after all the major buyers of books and popular fiction does best of all. Despite that, chick-lit is considered by critics to be fluff and therefore mockable. I hear farm-lit (also known a rural-lit)is very popular in Australia, where they love novels set in places where there’s lots of open space, grass and animals. Dinner at Rose’s – written by New Zealand vet Danielle Hawkins is a case in point, just published in Australia and new Zealand. And the other day I got introduced, via Bitch Magazine to priv-lit – standing for self-help books. Priv-lit, suggest Joshunda Sanders and Diana Barnes-Browooks, is a first-world kind of con-job because poor people in real need of help don’t have time (or money) for reading about self-help; they’re too damn busy trying to survive. Good point, gals! In other words, it’s only the privileged who have the luxury of taking time out to spend money on 'finding themselves'. For an example of priv-lit look at the immensely popular memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which Joshunda and Diana suggests could just as well have been called Wealthy, Whiny, White. Interesting that these 'lit' genres are all books for women. Nowhere yet have I seen mention of footy-lit, fish-lit or auto-lit. 'Bout time, isn't it?

How much does it help to share the pain?

When terrible things happen, how much raw pain do we want see shared in the world? How much of other people’s pain, especially strangers’ pain, is it good for us to take on?
We probably all discussed these tender topics when we saw the pictures of the beautiful Weekes triplets, killed at only two years of age in the shopping mall fire in Doha.
We cringed at the horror of it. We wondered how their parents could ever cope with such a terrible loss. How could they stand going back to their apartment to face three empty cots, all the toys, the clothes, the emptiness?
We saw staunch, stunned grandparents leaving on the first plane out to get to Qatar as fast as they could. God, what a terrible journey it must have been for them.
People are quick to speak of the parents’ loss when children die too soon, but grandparents have a dreadful burden too, grieving not only the shock absence of beloved grandchildren but having to comfort the bereaved parents as well, one of whom is your own child. Always your child, even if they’re hitting middle-age. Their pain is your pain.
That private pain spilled into our living rooms as the shattered parents sat down before TV cameras to give an interview, somehow finding in their bruised hearts the ability to be gracious about Qatar and to refrain from blaming anyone.
At least one friend told me she couldn’t bear to watch any of it.
In the same week, news bulletins showed us the wrapped bodies of children butchered in Syria. That, too, was dreadful, but we cared about this family because they’re Kiwis, part of our larger ‘family’. We are affected like we were when Pike River exploded and Christchurch crumbled, but the Weekes tragedy is unique in its poignancy.
The triplets’ very lives were miraculous, only made possible by IVF, born achingly early, born because they were so very wanted and because Jane Weekes, especially, must have gone through hell to even bring them into the world.
Journalists squirm a little (if they have a well-tuned sense of ethics) when such stories crash into our consciousness. When TV1 brought us the interview, news bosses were obviously conscious some viewers might see it as intrusive. It wasn’t our idea, they asserted. The Weekeses offered to do it, they said. News anchors talked a lot about 'paying tribute'.
On Breakfast, Petra Bagust struggled not to weep and said, a bit desperately, that it was a chance for the parents to 'celebrate their children’s lives'.
Oh, I thought, but did they really want to do that in front of the whole nation, stared at by all those millions of us who did not know them before, and now feel desperately sorry for them, but can’t really do anything to ease their pain or make it right?
A tragedy like this is utterly wrong. It will leave a wound for the longest time in the hearts of those who know the family well and love them dearly.
None of us can know what we'd do at such a time. Choose privacy or disclosure? Quiet mourning or open grief, recorded in close-up by a camera on someone’s shoulder?
I hope the interview helped Martin and Jane Weekes. I hope that the huge sorrowful sigh that went up from the whole country might, in some indefinable way, help this family and others who are grieving in a thousand ways for their own separate tragedies.
Perhaps, somehow, sharing such loss is a sort of glue that helps us stick together.
Or maybe seeing strength in others gives courage to the rest of us. It's about the only small gleam of light that can shine out of such a sad space.

A long-lost hugely useful speech mark

You know how it is when you write something that’s both amazing and baffling. There you are, bashing out an email and the only thing you can do to express surprise and wonder is to slap in a string of exclamation and question marks at the end.
You’d think there’d be one mark that says it all – and there is, the interrobang. It was invented, I’m amazed to report, a whole 40 years ago by an American advertising executive called Martin Speckter, but for some reason, the interrobang’s never taken off. It's an elegant combo of two different devices that’s just perfect to slap after all manner of sentences, such as ‘He did what?!’ or “She wrote off your mother’s new car?!”
There should be an interrobang on every keyboard if you ask me. In fact there is one in your Microsoft Office suite of fonts, but only your average geek is likely to find it there, more’s the pity. (Look in Wingdings2 if you're wondering.)

Ancestor stories

I'm a bit obsessed right now with delving into old newspapers to find ancestor stories. Motivated largely by that old saying,''those who forget history are doomed to repeat it', I've been searching for tales from yesterday that still speak to us today. Reason: I love talking to crowds and it's great to find real, entertaining stories about real people who've gone before us.
Their DNA is inside us, after all. Well, not actual DNA, as in being flesh-and-blood descendants of people who lived in earlier times, but story DNA...the tales that tell us how things got done.
All around us is the evidence of things our forbears put together - roads, buildings, artworks, hospitals, houses and all the rest. We rarely think about the people who put sweat and energy into the communities we live in today, even though our own efforts are also going into leaving behind places that succeeding generations will inhabit.
We owe it to ancestors to know at least a little about what they did in their short time on earth, and to keep our ears pricked for things they did that might inspire us. And teach us useful lessons.
Lately, I've learnt about Ewen and Alex Alison, brothers who started ferry services on Auckland harbour back in 1881.
Ewen was the boss. He fought off the effects of a worldwide recession and beat off stiff competition from an undercutting rival to reign supreme with his paddle steamers. He ran his company for 53 years (!), was the first mayor of Takapuna and set aside reserves and parklands for people to enjoy more than a century later.
I've done this little Animoto movie about my love for old stories. Halfway through it, you'll spot one of Ewen's elegant steamers, named the Britannia. It carried 800 passengers and could run at 12 knots.
What a fine ride it must have been on the Queen Street to Devonport route. The lowest return fare Ewen ever set was two pennies or 'tuppence' as they said then. It was set in a price war with his rival, one George Quick.
The moral of the story (still relevant today): Don't ever go into a price war without first ensuring you have the biggest war chest.
PS Most of the photos in this video are from the Auckland City Libraries Sir George Grey collection. The sketches are from a lively 1880s newspaper, The Observer, accessed via paperspast.govt.nz - a fabulous resource for researchers.
PPS The man who wrote the quote about being doomed to repeat history was George Santayana, a Spanish-born American author of the late 19th/early 20th centuries. He put it in a book called Life of Reason. Clever chap.

It was a ball at the Peter Pan

We’ve got a new gizmo at our place – something that converts old 35mm slides and negatives to digital format.
Genius! For years I’ve kept looking at dusty boxes of slides lurking in wardrobes and told myself to throw them out. Keeping them was pointless because who has a clunky slide projector any more?
But we never did chuck them.
I’m glad now because I’ve been having such fun finding treasure. Sure, 80% of the shots do need to be dumped – all those many nameless lakes and mountains and party scenes full of people you can barely remember. Out they go.
But there are delicious images as well. I’ve found ancient holiday snaps that bring back so many memories. And shots of my now grown-up daughters that remind me of their baby years.
And pictures of me, too, that reveal an utterly different time. Take this one. I’m the girl in the middle, looking a bit tipsy in my black lace. I’m 18 or 19. I’ve gone mad for scarlet lipstick. The black eye-liner was the sort that went on shiny and could be peeled off in a tissue-thin strip. My hair: roller-set and sprayed stiff with lacquer.
I marvel now that I was once so good at sewing I could whip up this tricky ball gown with ease. It’s backless, as I recall, and has a long, white, bell-shaped skirt of something silky, possibly a fabric called sharkskin.
I may have gone shopping in the ground-floor fabric department at Smith and Caughey’s. It had everything from chunky tweeds to fine satins and there was a long wooden bench where you could perch on stools to graze the pattern books from Vogue, Butterick, Simplicity and McCall’s. I once had boxes full of paper patterns.
We’re at the Peter Pan Cabaret at the top of Queen Street, Auckland. It has a big dance floor. There’s a live band, with blokes in tuxedos playing saxophones.
I have a small glass of something sweet. Gin and lemonade? Can’t remember. Possibly Pimm’s. Light shines on the neck of a tall brown beer bottle in the foreground. Booze packaging is pretty basic in the early 1960s.
That’s my friend Sue. Note her long kid gloves, unbuttoned at the wrists, the fingers tucked away to expose her hands. That’s how girls do it, all the better to hold your cigarette. Almost everyone smokes.
Sue and I are junior reporters at the Auckland Star, the city’s daily afternoon newspaper. Handsome Bill (nice guy, but we’re just friends) works in sales for BOAC – short for British Overseas Airways Corporation.
The Peter Pan, the Star and BOAC are long gone from Auckland’s business scene, though the airline lives on as British Airways.
Do you have old slides? Rescue the fun ones. Digitise them. Print them. And, most importantly, caption them.
As future mementos they’ll only work if people know the context – and get to understand there was a long-ago time when young women wore gloves almost to their armpits, thought that smoking did no harm, and could make just about everything in their wardrobes.

* Lindsey hosts Let’s Talk on Triangle TV in Auckland, airing 7pm Fridays. This year’s season kicks off on Jan 27 and focuses on books, media and arts - all about what's hot on paper and on screen.

Take up your oars

As we settle into the first week of 2012 I’m thinking about rowboats.

Tidying up some old stuff I came across notes I made at a ‘Business and Consciousness’ conference in Mexico. It was a long time ago – 1999, I think, the year in which we were all worried about how Y2K might shred our lives, just as now there’s a heap of fretting about the arrival of the fabled 2012.

Not that we should worry overmuch – I can still remember people being nervous of 1984 because of George Orwell’s bleak novel of that name. It's interesting how we've always stayed afloat despite all the angst.

I heard lots of high-impact speakers in my 1999 week in Acapulco, and one guy (whose name I can’t remember) did a whole session on that folk song we all know so well and probably sang in rounds at school or around campfires: Row, row your boat, gently down the stream…

He made me think of it in a whole new way, pointing out that every line is worth considering in terms of being good advice for living life well.

Here’s the guts of what he said:

Row, row, row your boat – Do what you’re good at. And keep doing it until you reach your desired destinations, whatever they may be.

Gently down the stream – Go with the flow. Do not flail, panic or mess about. Seek out smooth water. Avoid getting sidetracked by exploring minor side streams. Don’t get caught up in overhanging trees or submerged obstacles. Be wary of whirlpools and scary rapids. All can impede your progress.

Merrily, merrily, merrily – keep a sense of humour at all times. Laughter makes everything better and eases all your dealings with other people.

Life is but a dream – don’t take everything so seriously. Much of the stuff we think is important, such as ambition and success, is just an illusion.

It’s hard to argue with any of that. Basic rowboat philosophy works.

I looked into a rowboat often in 2011. Twin grandsons arrived and for a few weeks, while they were still small enough, they slept together in a beautiful cradle boat hand-made by my husband. Sailing ship carpenters used to make little boats like this for times when an infant arrived during long sea voyages. The boat would be slung from ceiling rafters to rock the baby with the movement of the ship.

Our grandbabies are pictured here at two weeks old, frowning and sleepy. Nine months later, they have of course graduated to individual cots. The cradle boat is empty again, waiting for a next small body to be soothed to sleep inside it.

Then, as the year turned over, I was nudged by yet another rowboat reminder. Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes (author of a long-ago much admired book, Women Who Run With the Wolves) is a prolific Facebook updater who has 25,000 followers, including me.

She wrote a lovely New Year’s Eve piece about what she calls ‘the little red rowboat of the heart’ and of how important it is to choose what to row toward, and to do so diligently and daily.

She went on: “I love that the word 'diligently' has the word 'gently' in it. For though sometimes the rowing must be fierce to pierce the riptides or to row up the downside of the escarpment of a huge green wave, even then, often the gentle insistence of the heart 'to keep going' is what allows us to continue in any weathers.”

Dr Estes writes so well. Let’s hope all our rowboats carry us serenely and strongly through whatever 2012 will bring. Propelled, of course, by our own strong arms and a keener than ever sense of direction.