The return of the Jed

How very weird it is that one overwrought and half-baked pastor from a Florida church that has 50 in its congregation (down by half from where it was a few days ago) can nab headlines around the world with his intention to burn copies of the Koran as his very own ridiculous and inflammatory way to mark 9/11. Outraged protests from a host of world leaders is not enough to stay the hand of Pastor Jones, who is presumably revelling in the attention. Ah well, what can you expect from someone who is the spitting image of The Beverly Hillbillies' Jed Clampett? All he needs is the hat. And probably the gun.
If you're too young to remember Jed be advised that the scriptwriters of this classic '60s comedy gave him some very good lines, including this put-down of his dim-witted son, Jethro: "If brains was lard, that boy wouldn't have enough to grease a skillet." Seems like a good retort for Mr Jones.

The power of stories told by dads

As Father’s Day has rolled round this year I’ve thought not so much of my own father but of my father-in–law, Richie, because I’ve also been thinking lots about the importance of family stories.
Richie told us a story the night after his wife Hilda’s funeral. It’s interesting how funerals bring out tales of days gone by. A key gets turned in our hearts at such times, and the door opens and out flow words that need saying.
He talked about the hard times in his early life and of a morning when he was just a small boy, living on the family dairy farm on the slopes of Mt Ngongotaha. It was a dark, freezing morning, early 1920s. Richie’s dad was out with the cows, as usual, when his mother came into the room he shared with his brother. They were still in bed.
“She looked so odd,” Richie remembered when he was himself an old man. “She came in and said, ‘I’ve just come to say goodbye, boys’. And then she turned and walked out of the house.’
Little Richie knew something was very wrong. He got up and raced out to the milking shed. ‘Dad, Dad!’ he cried. ‘Mum’s gone.’
A lifetime later, he could still remember the stricken expression on his father’s face as he ran out of the shed and down the frosty hill after his wife and brought her home again.
When I heard that story I felt for her. I wondered if, desperate to escape the hard-scrabble farming life, she just had to get away. But then, where would she have gone? Was she really going to leave her boys behind? How would she have made it on her own? Divorce was a great scandal then and social welfare non-existent.
Did she simply go back with a leaden heart and get on with things, because there was just no other option? Whatever, she stayed, and between them they raised a fine family.
You start to feel the impact of stories like that in midlife, because it’s only then that we’ve been through enough of our own dramas to know that life rarely turns out as we expect it to.
Of course even though we think we’re just ordinary, all our lives are rich with drama. But most of us cover up our hot-point moments because we think they’re too private, too painful or maybe too embarrassing to share. And yet it’s so vital for us to reveal them, not just because they can help other people cope with trouble, but because unloading our old hurts can be good for us too, leaving us feeling lighter and stronger.
“I used to think I’d be able to change the world,” one friend told me with rueful smile. “Then I realised I couldn’t do that. Then I thought you could change yourself, and came to see that wasn’t possible either. The good thing about getting older is that you finally begin to figure who you are in the big picture of things. I think now that what life’s all about is just being the hero or heroine of your own story – and sharing it with other people.’
Richie’s gone now too, but thanks, Poppa, for sharing. And thanks to all dads everywhere who’ve sat down with their families sometime and told them a true-life story, straight from the heart. Not enough blokes do that. And they’re stories we need to hear.

Seeking "letters to Lindsey"

I’ve done lots of media jobs in my life but never hosted a TV show. But now I am. I figure I’m the oldest trout on the telly! Well, in this country anyway, as opposed to the United States where it seems possible to carry on forever if you’re Barbara Walters, who is 80. So at 65 I’m a mere chicken. And an increasingly wise one! It's what happens when you've been around a few years.

Anyhow, the show is Letters to Lindsey. Think of it as an agony aunt show with ‘uncles’ as well as ‘aunties’, who sit around our table and answer problems sent in by viewers. Our panellists aren’t just there because they’re good talkers but because they’re experts in their field. The weekly show is on Triangle TV in Auckland, 7pm Fridays, and on Stratos (channel 89 on Sky and 22 on Freeview) across the country, 8pm Saturdays.

Here’s a brief video promo.

We’d welcome emails about any problem that’s getting you down. We’ve been running for only a few weeks but have already canvassed a wide range of dilemmas – from drug addiction probs through teen pregnancy woes and employment and migrant issues. This weekend the programme’s all about sex and intimacy. Next week: where are the new heroes and role models for kids to look up?

The world's full of problems, of course, so if you’d care to share a burning issue (treated anonymously, of course!) my producer Deb Faith would love to hear from you. You can either send it to me or directly to her at info@tritv.co.nz

Speaking of letters (of the alphabet) is language misuse driving you nuts? Me too, sometimes. So you might enjoy www.loginisnotaverb.com, the work of a man who cannot abide how we’re messing with new words like login, carryout, lockdown, signout and checkout, not to mention that ubiquitous little verb, text, which of course used to be a mere noun.

Then there are the adjectives which have become nouns, like creative and corporate. Sigh. One's pedantic nit-picking can go on.

Nutting out great story lines

I just went to a terrific one-day seminar - Christopher Vogler's 'The Writer's Journey' Workshop. It's so great when someone is able to make things fall into place for you.
I've known for years about the work of the late Joseph Campbell, the much admired scholar/historian who wrote The Hero With a Thousand Faces. It's been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I kept looking at it thinking "I must get into that" but never did. After a few half-hearted attempts to penetrate his academic prose I put it back on the shelf. Which was fine except that I found myself, for the second time, with a novel at the 30,000 word mark and stuck on how to proceed.
Vogler, who has heaps of Hollywood script-writing and doctoring experience, demystifies Campbell with his own work. He's written a series of books which outline the essentials for every great story, whether on paper or screen. I raced home from his workshop dived into a novel with Vogler's notes in hand, analysing it at every step to see how well it conformed to Campbell's formula (which he worked out from studying ancient plays and myths going back thousands of years). Twelve hours later I was thoroughly convinced. And was intrigued to realise that in writing my first two published novels I had instinctively followed the magic pattern.
You don't need to attend a whole workshop as Vogler, bless him, has put the basics online as a free download.
It contains the text of a career-changing memo about story that he wrote to his Hollywood bosses way back in 1985. Mr Vogler is a nice guy. As we talked during a break I told him how much I enjoyed hearing his opening address. He talked about how reading Campbell's work was a huge revelation for him - so big that it was as if he felt an arrow of purpose shooting through him from 20 or 30 generations back - and that in that moment he knew exactly what he was here on Earth to do. Lucky guy - lots of us spend a whole lifetime trying to figure that out!
His breakthrough moment has been extra important to him, he said, because he's had no children, and the fact that his books are out there helping others with the secrets of good storytelling is hugely important to him in the sense of legacy. So... back I go to my manuscript...
Thanks to the great gals at the Romance Writers Association of New Zealand for bringing him to New Zealand!
See him here too

Go the girls in graphics!

With the internet so full of moving pictures it’s good that the web also hosts an older form of visual entertainment – comics and cartoons. They may be dominated by boy power (zap! kablooey! aaargh!) but cool trends are arising that are just as much for girls as for guys.
Back when Superman ruled there were female figures too, such as Wonder Woman — “beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules, and swifter than Mercury”. So far, so Grecian.
We’ve moved on. Check out http://sarahzero.com for an online graphic novel that is updated every few days. Its creator works “without elves, fairies or wizards, without pirates, ninjas or zombies, without monkeys, penguins or dinosaurs, without sad girls, cat girls or robot girls”.
A Toronto designer simply named Stef draws Sarah Zero, who is a feisty redhead “struggling to find love and validation on the internet”.
Graphic novels and comics both tell stories via sequential art, but paper comics are shorter, usually less than 30 pages, while graphic novels can go on for 600 pages – or be online for years. At www.girlgenius.org there’s a story staring another feisty heroine, Agatha Clay, that’s been running since 2002.
Its creators, Phil and Kaja Foglio, recommend it for teens and up, pointing out that it contains “lots of running around in Victorian underwear, occasional innuendo, a certain amount of violence and the occasional ‘damn!’"
Canadian cartoonist Kate Beaton has a brilliant little site at www.harkavagrant.com, chock full of comic strips that poke subversive fun at figures as famous as Jane Austen, the Wright Brothers and the Kennedys.
At www.lillicarre.com artist Lilli Carré has a quirky page full of sparse black-pen drawings that shift and vibrate, along with pages from her books to browse and enjoy.
If all of this makes you think that here’s a field in which you, too, can play, here’s a really useful blog, http://dw-wp.com, where the ‘dw-wp’ is short for Drawing Words and Writing Pictures. It’s been set up by cartoonist Jessica Abel to help others learn cartooning skills and get published. Don’t think you have to be a great artist. Some of these sites reveal that it is the possession of a sharp wit, not ace drawing ability, that makes for the most engaging comics and cartoons.
* This text is from my 'Webmistress' column in Next magazine, September issue, published Aug 16. Check out the mag's Facebook page too, at Next Magazine NZ.< .

Pudding, glorious puddings

You know how it is when the friendly waitperson offers the dessert menu – and everyone hesitates? No-one wants to be first to mutter, “Oh, go on then”, even if you are secretly hanging out for crème brulée or chocolate mud cake.
Or pudding.
Yay, pudding! Winter is the right, the only time of year to eat puddings in all their creamy, stodgy, comforting glory.
Naturally, the web is laden with them. It amazes me that cookbooks still sell in their thousands when all you have to do is Google “pudding” and a million recipes fill your screen.
Ah, but can you trust them? That’s the question. Which is why we do still want books and magazines full of recipes by our favourite cooks. And why we’ll never discard the yellowing, grease-spotted pages of our mothers’ recipe books.
My Mum’s Lemon Delicious Pudding is still my favourite, preferably scoffed with melting vanilla ice-cream. Others swoon at the thought of rice pudding, and bread-and-butter pudding. All sweet, soft and golden.
But puddings weren’t always like that. If you live in Labrador you might sometimes have a traditional ‘Jiggs Dinner’, a roast-meat Sunday feast that also includes salted beef, boiled veges and pease pudding. I had no idea what pease is and found it's hummus-like stuff made of split yellow peas, cooked with water, salt and spices and, sometimes, a bacon or ham joint.
It’s also known as Pease Pottage and there’s a Pease Pottage Village in Sussex - so-called because the locals used to feed pease pottage to convicts being transported from London to the South Coast.
Then there’s Scotland’s Red Pudding – which shows how keen the Scots are to exclude anything remotely green from their diet. You can get Red Pudding, a true artery clogger, only at chip shops. It’s a sausage-shaped lump of various ground meats, suet, spices, fat and colouring, dipped in thick batter and deed fried.
You can’t ignore Black Pudding or Blood Pudding, a sausage made from cooked blood and eaten all over the planet. And White Pudding, which is similar but contains no blood, though it may have brain matter instead. All of which is a vegetarian’s nightmare.
Turn then to a true sweet-pudding lover’s paradise – a British hotel devoted to after-dinner delights.
The Three Ways House Hotel in the Cotswolds hosts a weekly pudding club where members are expected to eat a full main course and then sample and vote on the delights of seven puddings. You can browse the club's “pudcasts”, contribute your own puddings to their “Wikipudia of Recipes”. You can even stay in one of their luxury pudding-themed rooms. The Spotted Dick and Custard Room, anyone? I'm not kidding. That's it at the top of this blog, complete with spotted bed cover.
The most famous pudding of all is the one trotted out at Christmas. If you’re keen to do a Christmas pud in the most traditional way, you can find Mrs Beeton’s recipe here at Jane Austen's World.
Actually, with all its suet and shredded carrot, it doesn’t sound too appetizing at all. I’m off to get lemons. Now, where did I put Mum’s recipe book?
This article also appears in the August issue of Next magazine, on the Webmistress page. Become a Next fan on Facebook, too. Look for Next Magazine NZ

Online evolutionaries

With great hair, perfect makeup and huge CVs, they’re the world’s new powerful females. But forget tired old feminist notions. This lot still want to change things, but differently – via conscious evolution. Not heard of it before? You will.
The movers and shakers are mostly American – hence the big hair. But they have big minds too and have been chipping away at this idea for years.
At evolve.org you can meet the maven of the movement, Barbara Marx Hubbard. “Conscious Evolution is a new worldview that is now emerging rapidly,’ she says. “It acknowledges that humankind has attained unprecedented powers to affect, control and change the evolution of life on Earth.
In simple terms, it means that we must improve our ability to use our powers ethically and effectively to achieve a positive future.”
In other words it’s about working with others to do good, rather like your local Lions Club.
But the visionary Barbara and friends are thinking big, driven by the conviction that the whole planet is royally stuffed and right now is our last chance to rescue it.
The web is quaking with sites devoted the cause. Marilyn Nyborg is pushing Women Waking The World. Kathy Eldon is heading the Creative Visions Foundation. Dr Elizabeth Debold teaches Evolutionary Enlightenment, which is about discovering the “explosive emergence of a new women's spiritual liberation”.
The Feminine Power Global Community – tinyurl.com/2cdabuq – is keen to tell us all about "the three power bases of the co-creative feminine”. The push is to reach for “the power to change your life, the power to realize your destiny and the power to transform the world.”
Whoo, heady stuff. Aspirin, anyone? There’s a tide of similarly urgent prose out there.
Jean Houston at tinyurl.com/25ve8jp says it’s about “all of us together co-creating the human and social changes needed to make a better world.”
I feel like shouting back, “Jean! Love your work, but co-creation? I can barely co-create a coffee date. The world is a tall order!”
Having been to a few of her events I know she’d come back at me sternly with her favourite saying by Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
For more, check out the gals at Women on the Edge of Evolution. At tinyurl.com/2dhr535 they offer hours of info for free.
And for one of my favourite takes on changing your world go to a wise bloke, influential author Peter Russell. He works with lovely images and calming words. Enjoy at tinyurl.com/2exkq99

This story (and more) is from Lindsey's Webmistress column, in the July issue of Next magazine, out now.