Colin James

Chris Horan

I imagine most people who saw the clip of the American soldiers urinating on the dead bodies of their enemies were dismayed to some degree. The words outrage and anger were bandied about in the media. I did not feel outraged. The word that most closely describes the way I felt was crestfallen; sadness tinged with disappointment.

Yes it’s a cooking column and don't try and tell yourselves you don't like cooking columns because I know you love them. Must do as every New Zealand magazine I pick up, or when I switch on our TV, we have a cooking feature.

A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, provides even more reason for people to read a book or do a puzzle, and to make such activities a lifetime habit.

Brain scans revealed that people with no symptoms of Alzheimer's who engaged in cognitively stimulating activities throughout their lives had fewer deposits of beta-amyloid, a destructive protein that is the hallmark of the disease.

While previous research has suggested that engaging in mentally stimulating activities - such as reading, writing and playing games - may help stave off Alzheimer's later in life, this new study identifies the biological target at play. This discovery could guide future research into effective prevention strategies.

Read more:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120123163348.htm

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?”

• Recycling
• Rubbish
• Free the whales
• Helping the Nepalese
• The heart and silkworms
• Time for change
• Go for it!

Memory’s a jade so don’t take this recollection as gospel, though it tells us something about what has happened to our country and to us. In the late 1980s, a large accountancy practice here had a ‘Foreign Desk’. An accountancy firm with a Foreign Desk? The only workplace I’d seen legit foreign desks was as far removed from accounting as it was possible to be – in newsrooms. But no, there it was, and its role was to interest potential purchasers in the new New Zealand.

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.

• Trevor Chappell bowls underarm
• ‘The greatest middle distance race of all time’
• Hawke's Bay earthquake strikes
• First woman to swim Cook Strait
• The Treaty of Waitangi is signed
• Liner Wanganella refloated after 18 days on Barrett Reef
• First fatalities on a scheduled air service in NZ
• Cook completes circumnavigation of North Island
• End of free school milk
• Charles Heaphy recommended for VC
• Maori soldiers sail to war

KIWIOSITIES Kiwi babyboomer culture

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

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?