Hot time in the city

Coming soon once more - Cirque de Soleil. Its latest incarnation, Saltimbanco, is bound to be flashy, bright and wonderful.
But it’s nothing new. Imagine the excitement in Auckland 126 years ago as Woodyear’s Electric Circus unloaded piles of crates onto the wharf downtown and got ready to stage its latest spectacular.
“Now, larger and better than ever – returning after an absence of 13 months of unabated success,” shouted the newspaper ads. The circus had 30 “lady and gentleman artists” from five continents, “a marvellous troupe of Japanese and a superb stud of trained horses and fairy trick ponies”.
Eyes must have goggled at the “monster marquee”, big enough to seat 5000 people, and – wonder of wonders – “brilliantly illuminated”.
Even Queen Street had no electric light in 1885 (it was still two years away), so this was some treat.
You can hear about exciting Auckland life in the 1880s next month when I give a couple of talks, A Hot Time in the Old Town, at the Auckland Library and Takapuna Library. It’s my way of contributing to the Auckland Heritage Festival.
Passion, intrigue, flirtation, murder, gossip – it sure was a lively place back then.
Come along and I’ll reveal the mischief your ancient rellies got up to, and you can ponder how similar or different your scruples are today.
It’s yours for only $5 to cover light refreshments. Auckland City Library, Sep 19, 5.30pm to 7pm (book at 307 7764), or Takapuna Library, Sep 21, 6pm to 7.30pm. Book at 486 8469 or by emailing Helen.woodhouse@aucklandcouncil.govt.nz
PS The lovely illustration is from an 1885 issue of The Auckland Star, accessed through that great digitised resource, paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

The air over there

Sometimes you hear news items that are so unbelievable you think you’re hearing things. For instance, last week’s newsbite that the United States is spending $20 billion a year on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, 20 billion with a ‘b’. Apparently it’s more than NASA's entire annual budget. Of course there are untold tents and buildings over there that need to be heated in winter and cooled in summer, many of them no doubt containing temperamental computers that need a stable, dust-free environment in which to work. It’s easy to scoff over this. The troops who sweated through desert warfare in World War II got by without air con, after all. But we’re all getting soft when it comes to climate control. Once you’ve had a car with air con you never want to go back. Shopping malls are popular right now not for what’s on sale but because they’re warm and dry. But $20 billion for air? No wonder America’s giving all the appearance of going broke.

Starry, starry sites

It’s a rare newspaper or women’s magazine that doesn’t include horoscopes in its mix of content. Sceptics will keep on calling astrology a load of old tosh, but most readers probably give their ‘sign’ at least a quick scan.
Astrology is a bit like the romance genre – people love it but will rarely admit to it. So it’s not surprising the internet is teeming with star-sign pundits.
Astrology.com, a lively American site, has of course long been established and aspiring newcomers must find it almost impossible to find a domain name not already taken, which is why clunky monikers like Astrogrrl, StarIQ and AstroPro are everywhere.
There’s a world of difference, though, between sucking up quick star-sign tips or celebrity snippets and ordering up a full personal chart. Professional astrologers take their art seriously.
www.astro.com As one of the earliest online astrology sites it was thus able to score the plum ‘astro’ domain name. Its content comes in considerable depth. Set up in 1996 by Swiss company Astrodienst, and founded by a physicist with training in astrology, it’s set up in seven languages and scores 6 million visitors a month. Browsers can access free short reports on current conditions in their lives by submitting their time, date and place of birth. But pay around $US50 and you can order a range of highly detailed documents. It’s also for professional astrologers seeking tools and software for different types of chart calculation.
www.astrologyzone.com New Yorker Susan Miller's site is mega-popular. She writes copious, free monthly forecasts pointing out the aspects and alignments that may light up or darken your life, somehow fitting her flood of entertaining words in between penning annual books and calendars and making public appearances.
www.jessicaadams.com This Australian writes for the Sunday Star Times, and Cosmopolitan, and has one of the prettier sites around. Heaps of freebies here, too with weekly, monthly and annual forecasts on tap – plus podcasts as well. Want more depth and detail and you can pay for extra info, such as a 30-minute MP3 audio report for $A5.99.
www.donmurray.co.nz For fearless predictions, look no further than the site of New Zealand astrologer Don Murray. Murray pulls no punches and writes site updates every few days (click on ‘news’ on his home page). He says there’s “definitely no cup in October” for All Black captain Richie McCaw, and John Key is also up against it later this year battling “Pluto-Venus negativity’.
There’s bad news for Obama too. Murray reckons that in 28 years of study he can’t remember a more demanding six months than the US president has in front of him for the first half of 2012. As for Kate and Wills…they’re okay for a few years, apparently, but then it’s not looking so rosy after all. Damn. Just when we thought there was something to smile about…

How deeply should one bow before him?

I’ve been intrigued lately to hear radio advertising for the forthcoming visit to Australia and New Zealand of former British prime minister Tony Blair, who is of course these days hardly the most popular bloke in the UK. They’re calling his Auckland-only gig, ‘an audience with Tony Blair’. Ooh-er. An audience! Isn’t that what you get if you go see the Queen, or the Pope?
My understanding is that a meeting with the luminaries above usually comes free of charge. No such luck with the man who was once so fresh-faced and bright-eyed that they used to call him Bambi. If you care to trot along to Eden Park to join him for dinner (which is of course described as a 'banquet') and listen to him speak on leadership, negotiation and innovation, your basic ticket price is a thousand dollars. Chuck in a further $500 and you can meet him over a cocktail and have your picture taken with him. Smarming, groveling and forelock tugging optional, one assumes.

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.