Paul Smith

Last week a French journalist, Gilles Jacquier of France 2 television was killed in the Syrian city of Homs – the first journalist to die this year.

Jacquier’s death provoked a moving tribute from French President Nicholas Sarkozy who said he was doing his journalist’s duty of “telling the truth about what is happening.”

“This reminds us all of the difficulties of the journalists’ profession, the dangers which they risk, and at the same time the importance of what they do, in regimes which are as they are, in situations which are as they, having courageous men and women to tell the truth of what is happening." 

In the first of this series, Brian Viner was travelling – all the way to Australia - and on his airline ticket noticed a  number…

We join him where he left us in his first installment.

Colin James (Otago Daily Times)

It was 1978 and I was living in a farm worker’s cottage on my cousin’s sheep farm near Feilding. What a blissful life it was after four turbulent years in Canada and the US.

Then what normally would have been a non-event in my rural idyll took place – the day of the triennial election...

We drove at speed to the nearest polling booth – the Colyton School Hall. It had just the one booth.

Being the true gentleman, my cousin beckoned his wife to vote first. He accompanied her.

“Sir, sir – you can’t do that. It’s a secret ballot”, said the astonished polling clerk.

“But she’s my wife – aren’t I entitled to know how she votes?”

Brad Page

Every time someone has a crack at NZ First MP Andrew Williams for his alleged urinating against a tree in a public place while he was mayor of North Shore City, I feel more and more sympathy for him – or at least his predicament. Clearly, if letters to the editor are any guide I’m not alone.

Most men, if they’re honest with themselves, will remember times when they got ‘caught short’. For me and my ‘Woolworths’ bladder’ it’s been more times than I care to remember...

• Bugged by bugs
• Bills
• Sunshine cities
• Unattainable Barbie bodies
• Bad language day
• Countdown to Doomsday
  
• Luddites
• The Occupy movement

Graham Reid

Just a guess, but the hygienically pretty town of Mount Shasta on the side of the snow-capped peak of the same name in northern California has more post-hippie residue - herbal healers, clairvoyants and metaphysical mentors - than anywhere else on the planet.

And they are the normal ones.

In Mount Shasta, population around 4000, there are those who believe a mysterious race called Lemurians live inside the mountain.

These mystical beings are, apparently, survivors of the ancient continent of Lemuria which - stop me if this sounds familiar - was in the area now covered by the Pacific Ocean.

Read more…

http://www.elsewhere.co.nz/travelstories/262/mt-shasta-california-feeling-the-space/

We had an easy, late start in the morning and completed our journey to Madras at a leisurely pace.   

A short distance out of town we passed a bullock cart and saw a man sound asleep in a hammock slung between the axles. The gopuram on the temple at Kanchipuram rose far away in the dusty distance.  It’s hard to believe all that we’ve seen and done since visiting there on the first day of our journey.

Graham Reid

Didn't build it, they didn't come...

So this was to be the site of a city to rival Singapore, this short crescent of white sand fringed by palms and mangroves, and looking onto a deep channel towards a nearby island?

On a quiet day – and every day is quiet at this place at the tip of Queensland not far from Cape York – this place has a certain escapist appeal.

A few come to launch boats warily in the crocodile inhabited waters and go fishing, but mostly no one comes to remote Somerset – because there's no reason to come, unless you don't want to be disturbed.

• Anti-Vietnam War protestors greet US Vice President
• 'Montego Bay' hits number one
• 19 killed in Strongman mine explosion at Runanga
• Hone Heke cuts down the British flagstaff - again
• Massive earthquake hits Wellington region
• Floods devastate Southland
• Peter Snell breaks world mile record
• Bookies banned from NZ racecourses

Things were better in our day. Simple things like the weather. When we broke for summer holidays the sun reigned and we lay and baked in its rays without fear. Every babyboomer can recall endless summers and frosty winters armed by coal fires in those good old days. 

Unfortunately Science has little time for nostalgia. Science in the form of our Climate Centre NIWA, has this to say:

‘NIWA's long-running 'seven-station' series shows NZ's average annual temperature has increased by about 1°C over the past 100 years. 

Maybe, but our summers were better – weren’t they?

KIWIOSITIES Babyboomer nostalgia baby boomer culture

An A-Z of  New Zealand traditions & Folklore by Gordon Ell                

(Published  by New Holland)

Dry Towns

In a summer as wet as this one, we need a dry story so here it is from the pages of Kiwiosities:

The consequence of the Prohibition movement was that some Parliamentary electorates in New Zealand voted against the sale of liquor in their area. Towns in these places were widely known as dry towns. One such, Oamaru, experienced more than 50 years of Prohibition before its largest ‘private hotel re-opened under the control of a community licensing trust in the early 1960s. The ‘liquor vote’ was taken triennially (at the same time as the Parliamentary election) with the choices being Continuance, Prohibition or  State Control (a community licensing trust). Those options were discontinued after the 1987 General Election. The remaining dry areas voted for Restoration or No Licence.  Only Eden, Grey Lynn and Roskill in Auckland, and Tawa in Porirua remained dry after the 1993 General Election. Three ‘local restoration polls were held at the same time as the 1999 General Election, when the last three areas, Eden Roskill, and Tawa, ceased to be ‘dry’.