Needling the environment

There’s absolutely no knowing what new trend is about to pop up in the world. Take yarn bombing, for instance . If. Like me, you’ve never heard of it before, it’s a subversive new form of knitting. I thought hand-knitting was well over as a creative pursuit, but in European and American cities, knitters are taking it to the streets.
Just like graffiti artists armed with spray cans, they’re out of make their mark on the landscape – but they’re doing it with yarn. Stitch’n’bitch groups are getting together to knit lengths of stuff to wrap around anything they deem ugly or boring. Hand-rails, parking meters, bicycle racks, … you name it , they’ll be layering it with lime green or dayglo orange wool. They’re putting crocheted hats on statues of long-dead city leaders, and artful woolen bows on orange road cones. Trees are being yarn-bombed as well, sometimes wrapped with 'tree cosies'.
Just look at the covered pole in California, done by a knitter called Streetcolor. See www.yarnbombing for more pictures.
Who’d have thought p1, k1, k2 tog could become street language? Of course it’s a gentler kind of protest than tagging with paint as it’s so easy to snip off. And some cities like it so much that they’re actually commissioning yarn-bombers to prettify buildings, fences and even whole parks full of trees.
I hear there’s been a bit of it in Wellington already, so it must be time for Auckland knitters to get out in force. Forget making sweaters for the kids. There’s got to be a statue or two around Auckland that could do with a pink and orange striped balaclava. General Freyberg, presiding over that space on High Street? He could really do with a lacy scarf, I reckon.
What's more (and I'm sure you didn't know this) it's International Yarn Bombing Day on June 11, so you still have time to create something funky. What amazes me, though, is how people find the time. Whenever I've knitted anything it's taken months to complete. So I'm damned if I'd want to spend time prettifying some traffic bollard, only to have it cut off and slung in the trash.

'Bye-bye, typewriters

A milestone moment slipped by the other day. The last typewriter factory closed down. It was in India and was apparently the last one left on the planet, all other manufacturers in the west having closed their production lines years ago. About the only place you’ll spot a typewriter now is in museums or in antique shops – displayed there simply because they’re quaint and look good, joining hand-operated coffee grinders and even corkscrews as things that were once indispensible but are now no good for anything.
What’s astonishing is the speed at which items now arise and die. The typewriter idea lasted for well over a century. I still have wistful thoughts about my first portable, an Olivetti Lettera with a turquoise case. It was so cute! But everything hits the trash heap in time. Take the Flip camera. I’ve had one for a whole 12 months – it was the hottest little thing around back then and was great because you could shoot a movie and plug it straight into your computer's USB port for editing. But just one year later, the Flip has been flicked into obscurity. All because the iPhone, and other smart phones, can do the same job better.
Makes you wonder what’s next for the chop… Personally I hope it's my Dualit toaster. Cost a fortune. Looks all very glam and retro. Worst browner of bread I've ever owned.

The 'flourish over 50' workshop

A woman's middle years are often quite daunting. Why? Because, at around 50, it begins to dawn on her that she's not so valued any more. And until now, she has been. She's been valued overall for her youth - and maybe her beauty too, if she lucked out on that score. But maintenance becomes difficult and costly at midlife. The result: She fears she's sinking into invisibility.
She'll often have been valued at work, too, but realises at 50-ish that a horde of keen and well-skilled younger women is coming up behind her. Her good are her promotion prospects now? It becomes harder to know. That's scary.
She may have been valued as a mother too - but around now her children are in their teens or leaving home. Even they don't need her so much any more.
Does she have a partner? If so, how's that relationship going? If not, does she still have time to find another one?
So what's a woman to do at this crossroads in her life? What dreams does she have now? What's her plan for the next decade?
My friend Janis Grummitt, who's highly skilled at coaxing people in the business of making the most of themselves and their brainpower, is hosting a great day at the end of this month for women looking for self-development at the time of life when they really need it. I'm going to be there too, to present my own take over lunch on flourishing over 50.
Janis calls it 'You Developing You', and says the day's about discovering the secrets of wise women - learning the way we learn best: together. An expert in mind development, she points out (did you know this?) that wisdom potential begins in our brains at around 45 and you can fully flourish in your life after 50. Now that's good news!
It's happening on May 29 at the very pleasant Waves beachfront motel, Orewa, an easy drive north of Auckland. Earlybird price, up to May 21, $125 plus GST. A great day - with lunch included.
For more info contact Janis at janis@workplacewisdom.co.nz or call her in New Zealand on 09 427 4511.
You can see all the info and register online too at this link.

Hating our jobs

Did you see that recent survey about work that revealed more than 60% of us either hate our jobs or couldn’t care less?
You’d think that maybe bosses and managers might be a keener, but even they weren’t bubbling over with enthusiasm. Nearly 20% of them said they hated their jobs, 48% were neutral and only 28% said they loved what they did.
What sort of way is that to live our lives? Bored, dissatisfied, resentful – whatever mood we’re in, it ain’t no way to be passing the best years of our lives.
What’s gone wrong in the work world? Do we fail to get an education that gives us good choices, or do we just stumble into positions that give us no joy at all and then get stuck there because the bills need paying.
If things are going to get better in the world, wouldn’t it help for us to actually love what we do? Imagine how things would whizz along if more of us couldn’t wait to get out of bed in the morning.
This idea that work is generally miserable is what has led to the tedious cliché about our need for better work/life balance.
What does that even mean – that because life is good then its opposite, work, represents death? The survey is saying that trudging to work does represent a sort of death for most people. What a sad thing that is. Of course work is about money - the stuff we need to get on in life - but it should also feed our talents and satisfy the soul. Work should be a good part of life. Evidently, it’s not.
And the work/life balance idea has to change. Instead, let’s call for better work/leisure balance. Now that’s an idea I can believe in.

Who will the media pick on next?

What a relief it is that this week we’re not all talking about Ken Ring and his earthquake forecasts. Probably nobody’s more pleased about that than Ken. I know him slightly - he seems a nice guy. And I did buy one of his weather almanacs once. I didn't find it hugely accurate, but you can say the same thing about traditional forecasting – whether it’s about weather or finances.
For instance, just as New York’s huge money crisis was looming a few years ago, a TV host called Larry Kudlow (above right) kept on crowing to his audience, "there is no recession out there!' He was completely wrong. Guess what. He’s still one of the top news guys on Wall Street and still has his highly paid job.
What the controversy Ken Ring was really all about was potent combination of public fear, which was understandable, wound up by media hysteria and deepened by our own scientific ignorance. Really, it was the media that flogged the story to a frenzy. Hardly a day went by when they weren’t raving about things Ken had written many months before. They all loved to hate the 'Moon Man' – as they decided to label him.
It’s all one more sign that the news business is becoming ever more feverish and tabloid... like the front page headline in a recent Herald On Sunday that said ‘Wills and Kate Torn Apart – surely it won’t end this way’.
What? Was the world’s most famous couple splitting up?
Nah… the paper was talking about some perforated postage stamps from Nuie featuring him on one side – her on the other. Total tosh.
So…with Ken Ring comprehensively done over by the media, who’s next? Better be careful out there, people. These days, anyone, and anything, is fair game.

Teetering on high heels

Have you noticed how people are re-evaluating things lately? One of my favorite bloggers is Moata Tamaira, a Christchurch librarian who writes really amusing articles for stuff.co.nz
Well, they were amusing back in the times when things were normal, and even now, when things feel not at all normal, she still manages to put a funny spin on life.
Last week, she was on about the changes in her wardrobe – how she’s chucked away her favorite high heels because they’re not just useless on uneven ground but actually feel unsafe. She also talks about how she now walks alongside walls in a state of constant calculation…as in, how sound is that wall? How far would she have to run if it began to topple?
I even find myself doing it here in non-quaky Auckland. I went to a play in the old Mercury Theatre last week, and as I walked up the street I took a long look at its huge rear wall of century-old bricks. I wonder how well that would do in an earthquake, I was thinking.
And then, after Japan, I stood on a hill above a beach and watched the sea do strange things, surging up a creek and pouring back out in a cascade of foam to form a big spiral in the bay - nothing like the huge whirlpool we saw on our TV screens after the big quake and tsunami, but echoing its shape. Nearly 9000 kilometres from Japan, we are, but there was the evidence of trouble far away.
2011 is turning out to be a very weird year, but it’s also making us think about what’s really important…which is people, of course. Always has been. But we seem to need a few shocks every now and again to remind us of that.

We're all heart

Haven’t we come up shining as a community since the earthquake on Feb 22? I saw an interview with Phil Keoghan, the host of top-rating show The Amazing Race, who said the way Kiwis are responding was nothing short of amazing.
All over the country people are desperate to find a way to help. If we can’t be there on the ground, at least we can raise cash – and it’s been happening at schools and shopping centres and in offices and clubs. The money has been pouring in - so much so that you have to feel a bit sorry for anyone who's trying to raise funds for anything else.
Someone from the Red Cross knocked on our door the other night. She was, just coincidentally, taking part in their annual collection. "We have given already," I said, as my husband went to find more cash for her. I felt I needed to explain why I wasn't stuffing wads of bills into her official plastic bag.
"People are so wonderful," she told us. "I'm hearing that at every house I go to, but they'e still giving more when I say it's all going to Christchurch."
Something else I'm noticing: Have you noticed the big surge of the ‘kia kaha’ expression? Everyone’s saying it, from former PM Helen Clark to thousands of wellwishers on Facebook and Twitter.
Most of us know it means ‘stand strong’, but a friend of mine, Makuini Ruth Tai, specialises in deep analysis of the Maori language and she says it really means ‘be strengthened by lighting the breath’.
I like that. In the sports context we all know that you must have deep, explosive breath to sprint, or lift or achieve something mighty. And women know you need breath to give birth, too. So, all the more reason for us to keep saying it… kia kaha!