text:
Things of 2018
The great rearrangement of 2017 is now firmly established. I am married with two kids, and my life revolves almost entirely around those facts, except for a long window every weekday during which I sit in an office and earn money. I watch in fascination as my now one-year-old children develop, especially when I look at photos from a month or more prior; you don't see how they've grown until the evidence of their past limitations is in front of you.
What else can I tell you? I am a little less lazy but ache a lot more. I would like to own a home but am very happy in my current rental, which provides three bedrooms and a sunny, leafy backyard. I have a good, stable job. My short-term memory is suddenly appalling, a casualty of sleep deprivation. And I still have a need to write, but I'm less interested in writing about myself than ever. Now here are 3500 words all about me.
Writers and podcasters have contributed a lot of morbid fodder to my resting state of mind this year. This is no doubt partly a function of getting a bit older, and of having kids, and of having a minor brush with my own mortality in 2017, but there's certainly never been so much public discussion of The End in my lifetime. The main influencers into my brain have been Cariad Lloyd's podcast Griefcast and Leigh Sales' book Any Ordinary Day, but I feel like death is highlighted in plenty of other places, too. There's also the spectre of climate change, too big and scary for me to sit and contemplate, a large-scale existential threat galloping over the horizon and into plain view.
Tara and I often joke about who will die first. The basic meaning is 'I'm dying first because I don't want to have to be the one to go on alone'. It isn't really a joke, we both mean it. I am starting to think it's a bit flippant, though, when so many people press on after the untimely death of someone they love, and when so many people would give anything to live a little bit longer. In December, I learned that a Twitter friend in their thirties had died, and wrote about how the broader availability of grief is a strange side effect of this age of conceded privacy. We have so much more information at our fingertips now, from details of the latest mass shooting to an online acquaintance's taste in romance novels. It means that death and dying, like everything else, is that much more immediate in our lives, and that much more likely to appear on our radar.
But don't worry! There are no signs of impending doom in this house. Even during these, 'the tired years', as my father-in-law put it, we are all healthy and mostly happy. Although I have often had to substitute calories and caffeine for sleep. The way I see it, that's just part of the deal, something to iron out when I get a minute to breathe.
I tended to return to old favourites in 2018, often long and repetitive electronic tracks (five hours' sleep a night will have that effect). And to my good fortune, three of my most favourite favourites brought out new music during a two-week bonanza in September:
Aphex Twin — Collapse EP (good)
The Field — Infinite Moment (very good)
Orbital — Monsters Exist (not so good)
At this point, I can confidently call The Field (aka Axel Willner) my favourite musician. He's so reliable. Every new release satisfies for many listens; I tend to have my initial favourites, then enjoy more and more of the album until I don't really see any dead wood. It was a pity the new Orbital — after a long hiatus — only sparked intermittently, but I think they had their time in the 90s, and what a time that was. As for Aphex Twin, he's still a genius who makes music no one else could even imagine.
There were a few other new records I found in 2018:
Sarah Blasko — Depth of Field — Blasko's gone all out for hits here and nailed a few. I even heard one in the supermarket the other day. Very catchy tunes in her familiar soulful, whispery voice
Jonny Greenwood — Phantom Thread Original Soundtrack — just love this, listened on repeat for a good while, grand and romantic
Robyn — Honey — glittery, perfect pop with great lyrics and earworm melodies. Tracks seven and eight threaten to sabotage the whole thing but the rest of it is so damn good
Leon Vynehall — Nothing Is Still — what a discovery! The shimmery Brooklyn Bridge on the cover looks at first glance like trees parting in a forest, and that's kind of what the music is like, shifting textures and moods from track to track. My favourite album of the year
Marlon Williams — Make Way For Love — he's got 'it'
I've chucked a track from each of these records into a 'Barns Picks 2018' playlist on Spotify. Bit less variety than previous years, so hopefully your tastes overlap exactly with mine.
https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/1230979649/playlist/3AfEtddCUjsh10w37msHSH
At this point in the devolution of our political discourse, is it more effective to debate with calm reason or to loudly insist your opponent fuck off? We all know by now that arguing politics (or just about anything, especially on the internet) only leaves both sides more entrenched than before, so surely it's better, when faced with abhorrent racism, misogyny, homophobia, or greed, to drop a few choice insults and leave the situation?
I haven't had the opportunity to test this choice in real life. People tend not to confront each other on the street, at least on the streets I walk. I spent a sizeable chunk of 2018 thinking about it, though, especially after recently seeing this unpleasant video, which takes only 23 seconds to summarise where we're at.
I'll describe so you don't have to watch it. The scene is, I think, Palmerston North — it isn't clear in 240p. A group of women cross the street holding placards and chanting slogans. They are protesting the then-National Government's sale of government-owned assets. The man holding the camera forcefully tells them to "go back to the commune" and insults one in particular for her appearance. He says all this in much fewer words than I've used here. His tone is jocular, mocking; you can almost hear the smile on his face. He is relishing the opportunity to get stuck into such contemptible people.
Notice how the man's response has nothing to do with what the group is protesting. Their argument does not interest him for a second. He has already dismissed it and moved straight to ad hominem attack. Almost all of the comments under the video on YouTube are positive, calling him a legend and wishing they had the presence of mind to be so profoundly and articulately rude to strangers. The acquaintance of mine who shared the video on Facebook captioned it, simply, 'classic'.
"This might be a dangerous time for politeness," writes Rachel Cusk in her essay The Age of Rudeness. She gives a few examples of situations in which rude or overbearing behaviour is confronted, sometimes rudely, sometimes politely. Her sort-of conclusion is that politeness at least acts as a compass in navigating the world, allowing you to respond consistently to toxic acts and to let them bounce harmlessly away as you continue living your life. If someone is as rude to me as the man in the video, though, or as rude as the man I saw the other day yelling abuse at a fellow Coastlands Mall patron for their poor parking, I'd feel within my rights to take back some of the space they'd snatched with a few angry words of my own.
What does all this have to do with politics exactly? Well, we can tut at other Western democracies as they spiral into ugly, unstable, evidence-denying shitshows and say 'it couldn't happen here'. But it could.
I finally got back into indoor football this year, joining a work team and playing at lunchtime every couple of weeks. Things learned during these fortnightly escapades:
I am not in my twenties any more and cannot expect my limbs to consistently execute skills as instructed by my brain
I am fortunate to maintain decent natural fitness despite limited concerted exercise and regular potato chip consumption
It's more fun to lose alongside teammates who pass the ball than to win alongside teammates who don't
There is always that one guy who takes it a little bit too seriously, even though it is mixed five-a-side and we are all on our lunch breaks
I lacked confidence to begin with, and struggled to trust my body to win one-on-ones or dribble past opponents — and with good reason. As the matches have totted up, though, I've reached a point where I think I'm a half-decent player. I commit at least one clanger per game, for sure, but all of us do.
A more pressing concern now is the broken lock on the shower door at work. No one else uses that shower, so I'm not at great risk of having to frantically hide behind my towel, but I do hope the building manager returns from annual leave soon and sorts it out.
According to my Letterboxd log, I watched 91 films in 2018. My most watched actor was Edward James Olmos (probably because I saw both BLADE RUNNER films in November). My most watched director was Brad Bird (that'll be TOMORROWLAND and INCREDIBLES 2). So I must have hopped around a fair bit.
It was my most prolific film-watching year since university days. The reason for this is the night feed. If I'm not sleeping, but the light has to be low, and I know I'm going to be up for at least an hour, what am I going to do? Simple: watch movies.
Because I love a project, and ways to whittle down the unmanageable gargantuan morass of films available to watch, I jumped the #52filmsbywomen bandwagon this year and cracked #55filmsbywomen in the end. Some things I learned:
It is not hard to find interesting films made by people who aren't sex offenders, bullies, or otherwise problematic in their actions
Plenty of first-time female directors made mediocre films but weren't given another chance easily, unlike their male counterparts
Women seem to me to have a broader appreciation of the breadth of human experience, possibly from empathy conditioned over millennia, and tend to present more complex characters as a result
Seeking out female directors led me to take more notice of who the writers, producers, and directors of photography were
And here are some standouts from the exercise:
THE HOUSE IS BLACK (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad
WANDA (1970) dir. Barbara Loden
A QUESTION OF SILENCE (1982) dir. Marleen Gorris
AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990) dir. Jane Campion
POINT BREAK (1991) dir. Kathryn Bigelow
BANANA IN A NUTSHELL (2005) dir. Roseanne Liang
WHIP IT (2009) dir. Drew Barrymore
FISH TANK (2009) dir. Andrea Arnold
MEEK'S CUTOFF (2010) dir. Kelly Reichardt
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011) dir. Lynne Ramsay
ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (2011) dir. Sarah Smith
ENOUGH SAID (2013) dir. Nicole Holofcener
52 TUESDAYS (2013) dir. Sophie Hyde
ZERO MOTIVATION (2014) dir. Talya Lavie
THE RIDER (2017) dir. Chloe Zhao
Next up, I was going to do 52 films by 'people of colour' but that category is so general in a global cinematic context as to be worthless. Instead, I'll try for 52 films by black directors — the definition of 'black' cinema is tricky but African and African-American movies will be good places to start.
Thanks largely to the beneficence of family, 2018 saw me get a new phone, two TVs, and a Blu-ray player. Of these, the Blu-ray player is both the most exciting and the least used. We just don't get time to watch many movies. But it has been fun starting yet another collection of physical media about to lapse into obsolescence. How, in the all-digital age, will we display the books and movies that mean something to us? It's so interesting to walk into someone's house and cast an eye over their bookshelf and their DVDs, and these displays are such effective shorthand for saying 'this is who I am'. Are we going to lose that, too, along with the bookstores and video shops?
As for the phone, I didn't need a new one, but the old one was getting a bit old. It is nice to have a chosen app open as soon as I press the icon, or register a keypad press in real time. Of more concern now, though, is how we are going to raise our children to have a positive and active relationship with screen-based technology. It hasn't been difficult to leave the phone in my pocket and focus on the kids once I get home from work, but as they get older and more aware of the myriad capabilities of these revolutionary devices, it would be nice for them to see them as objects of freedom and not limitation, and an augmentation to the physical world around them rather than a replacement for it. Keeping the kids away from such devices forever is not going to help with that.
The more pertinent issue may be that my attitude to technology is itself already becoming obsolete, so pushing that stance on my kids could be more damaging than I ever intend it to be. Many schools already demand most kids work on laptops or tablets; the future world of work is likely to require high-level computing facility, including the ability to code. I will do my best to pay attention to my growing kids and keep an open mind as technology advances (and hopefully doesn't eat us all).
My wife was shocked when I told her that if I had to choose between books and movies, forsaking the other for the rest of my days, I'd choose books.
"What! But you're Barns! You're the movie guy!"
Yes, that has been true for a long time. And I think I still understand movies better than books. But where movies are more fundamentally concrete — you can't imagine different images or sounds than those presented on the screen — there is infinite possibility in a book: a world to disappear into, a character to examine closely, a story to carry you along, all projected in the cinema of the mind. Books are magic, books are philosophy, books are time travel. I'll never be able to read everything I want to, even if I were to devote all my film-watching time to books. I find this thought comforting.
In 2018 I continued my reading programme, begun the previous year, of reading almost exclusively works written in years ending in the same numeral as the current one. That meant a master reading list of books from 1918, 1928, 1938, etc., all the way up to 2018, on which I tried to include a half-decent variety of voices.
My goal was to polish off 52 books — one a week. I managed 78. Pretty pleased with that, especially considering 51 were novels or non-fiction. You can view the entire list of 78 here.
Some highlights from my 2018 reading mission:
'The Rehearsal' by Eleanor Catton (2008)
'In Watermelon Sugar' by Richard Brautigan (1968)
'A Wizard of Earthsea' by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
'Things Fall Apart' by Chinua Achebe (1958)
'Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World' by Snigdha Poonam (2018)
'The Player of Games' by Iain M. Banks (1988)
'The Fifth Child' by Doris Lessing (1988)
'The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids' by Alexandra Lange (2018)
'Plumb' by Maurice Gee (1978)
'Never Anyone But You' by Rupert Thomson (2018)
'Unaccustomed Earth' by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008)
'Normal People' by Sally Rooney (2018)
'Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety' edited by Naomi Arnold (2018)
And some disappointments:
'Young Adolf' by Beryl Bainbridge (1978)
'Finn Family Moomintroll' by Tove Jansson (1948)
'Running Wild' by J. G. Ballard (1988)
'The Public Image' by Muriel Spark (1968)
'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting' by Milan Kundera (1978)
'Snap' by Belinda Bauer (2018)
'Everything Under' by Daisy Johnson (2018)
'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho (1988)
The 'year ending in x' rule is working well for me so far, so I've got a heaving 2019 reading list to keep me occupied. Happy reading to all the other readers out there, and put some recommendations in the comments — I've got plenty more lists to fill.
Much of our 2018 was spent at home, wedded to routine. For most of the year, the closest we came to travel were two housesitting stints at my brother's place in Wellington — more a transplantation of the routine than leaving it behind, but still exciting, especially our visits to Khandallah pool in summer, sun-dappled and frothy with kids.
In October, we undertook our biggest expedition with kids yet: a long weekend away in Taranaki to introduce them to Tara's relatives. Granny — Tara's mum — joined us to share the load. We anticipated carsickness, restless anger, wariness of so many unfamiliar faces, and no sleep at all; it turned out that a little less sleep than usual was the worst of our problems. They were equally tolerant of long rear-facing journeys and fussing relatives. The great Taranaki Maunga, which is to be made a legal personality, loomed watchfully over us, drawing our fascination whenever it appeared. "Wow! You can see Taranaki from the bathroom window!"
But don't forget to appreciate the wonders where you live. When you come northbound over the hill at Pukerua Bay, either by car or on the train, and you round the final corner below the village's pōhutukawa canopy, Kāpiti Island hoves into view — dark and magnificent in the Tasman Sea, its zigzag skyline dominating the vista. Depending on the weather, you might only see parts of it, or not see it at all. If we had had a Hokusai, I could imagine him painting thirty-six views of Kāpiti.
I couldn't count the number of people who told me that raising kids gets easier. True, the first couple of weeks of constant floundering through sleep-deprived fog were as intense as anything I've experienced. Once you have the basics of bottle sterilisation and nappy changing down, though, it's just a stream of simple tasks. Relentless, but uncomplicated. Things have only gotten more complex — and, to my mind, much more challenging — as they've gotten older. The highs are higher and the lows lower. And still 10+ years before they become teenagers. It really is a rollercoaster!
The hardest part of all has been the maintenance of my marriage, and our mental health. Both recede into the background very quickly when you're faced with two needy infants and only two pairs of hands. It's lucky, then, that I'm married to Tara, in whom I have a firm ally dedicated to preserving what we have and improving what we lack. We are in it together, sometimes in battle with one another — usually over stupid shit like who's less tired and therefore better placed to do the night feed (and not the way you'd expect; we are always fighting to keep the other person in bed) — and taking brief moments where we can to actually look at each other.
Maybe this is where it gets easier. Maybe we'll get some time back for us, in increments, over many years. In the meantime, the blessing of young kids is their immediacy, how they force you to deal with what's in front of you and not some imagined future catastrophe (not that this stops the terrible daymares descending in idle moments). And then, when they're finally in bed, we talk to each other about the day and prepare to do it all again tomorrow, together.
(Together! Man. Who am I kidding? Tara is the one who is home with the kids. She does by far the hardest job; I come home and pitch in for a few hours before bedtime. I do wish we could switch places for a while. She's so good, though, so conscientious in crafting the best possible childhood for our kids. I can only admire her work.)
We've had plenty of support along the way, but especially from Nana (my mum) and Granny (Tara's mum), who have given up a day each week to come up the coast and help. The best indicator of how successful this has been is in the kids' excitement whenever they show up, and the tears when they leave. They bloody love them. Our first year as parents wouldn't have been nearly as fun and coherent without them.
What next? Another bum change. Another night feed. Another train commute. Adelante, as one of our hosts in Spain used to say whenever there was a moment of silence. Forward.
Filed under Biography, Books, Film, Links, Music, New Zealand, Parenting, Politics, Sport
Tagged as art, family, fragments, health, journal, media, movies, Music, politeness, politics, travel
A lot changed for me in 2017. I got married. I got my driver's licence. I moved out of Wellington. I became a father. I had a brush with mortality. Each of these big changes begat dozens more smaller changes, and from the outside, it might seem my life has been upended and rewritten.
My inner life, however, is largely the same. I still like to read, write, and watch movies, albeit with less tolerance for violence and misery. I still dwell on things a bit more than I'd like. Bottle feeds at five a.m. are part of my life now, and the logistics of keeping the roof over our family – going to work, power bills, rubbish collections etc. – fall largely to me, but the piles of books on the floor and incomplete manuscripts on the computer (and dearth of new blog posts) show I am still fundamentally quite lazy.
Still, nothing ever stays exactly the same in your mind. I'm not sure if it was having kids, or just getting older, but I am quicker to anger than ever before. I have become far less tolerant and forgiving of unpleasant behaviour, and I've started to speak up more against it. I even began to relish the opportunity to tap into my ire, mostly on other motorists. Actually, this new tendency to anger may be solely attributable to my spending a lot of time – several days if you add it all up – behind the wheel of a car. But, with politics and #metoo and the intersection between them, there was plenty to get angry about in 2017.
It never lasts, though. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away. The constant shrinking and expanding of life abides.
At the back end of 2016, two months before the wedding, I told Tara a mole on my left ankle had become itchy. Increasingly catastrophic discussion of maladies and death followed, at the end of which she set out an ultimatum: there would be no marriage unless I got a mole map before the wedding date. I'd meant to get one for years, but here at last was an effective motivator.
The session began with a quick brief on what the melanographer was looking for: asymmetry, jagged margins, six millimetres or more in diameter, different colours. "Down to your underwear and we'll get started," she said. It wasn't that uncomfortable; I'm a lot less worried about other people seeing my body than I was at 16, when surgeons at Greenlane carved five ugly lumps out of my body and left unsightly scars behind, or at 19, when a consultant and six student doctors poked and prodded at me on a bed in Christchurch Hospital. On both of those occasions, the surgery and the skin check, it was all just a precaution. I assumed this time would be the same.
'Possible melanoma', said the words on the report, referring to a lesion on my inner left forearm. Tara used to call it my yin-yang mole because it had a dark part curled around a light part. We were both rather fond of it. Left unchecked, it could have killed me. Out it came: first in a tight excision, then with a 5mm margin, just to make sure it hadn't spread deeper or wider. (The mole on my ankle — the one that sparked all this — was fine, unremarkable.)
I have a ten-centimetre scar where the yin-yang mole was, much bigger and more obtrusive than the original lesion. The skin around it is numb or hypersensitive depending on how it's touched. I feel like a fraud even using the 'c' word, given how minimally it had invaded my body and how easily it was treated, but I did have cancer. It sat right there on my arm on hot summer days. Please, keep an eye on your skin, and get it checked if you are in any doubt.
All that was nothing compared to my wife's pregnancy. She carried two babies (and two placentas and a whole lot of amniotic fluid and double her usual blood volume, a good 15-20 kilograms) for 38 weeks, suffered nausea throughout (don't believe anyone who says it always stops at 14 weeks), lost all her fitness, and ultimately endured major surgery to bring them into the world. She assimilated knowledge of the many possible disasters that might befall her and the children along the way, and she managed these risks with regular adjustments to her behaviour and routine, even if it meant giving up something she loved.
It's the most impressive physical feat I've ever observed up close. And then came the trials of breastfeeding and sleep deprivation, which she is bearing mostly with aplomb. I am in awe of her and her incredible body — forever changed, still recovering, but incredible above all.
This year, I made an effort to hear a good amount of new music. I have this subscription to Spotify, which gives me access to more music than I could ever possibly listen to, and which includes virtually all new releases, even obscure ones. Keeping up with the latest has never been easier.
So, here's a playlist of some of the best music I came across in 2017. A real mixture. You should be able to find at least one thing on here that you'll like.
Particular favourites included:
Bedouine – ethereal, Americana-tinged folk by a Syrian-born Armenian; an effortless listen
Blanck Mass – an old favourite, new album World Eater was billed as harsh and abrasive (and this being Blanck Mass, it often is), but it is less of a punch to the face than his previous record and contains many thrilling, spine-tingling moments of beauty
Charly Bliss – Pixies-esque, harsh-edged, incredibly addictive punk-pop that is rougher than the bubblegum bounce its vocals might initially suggest
Grizzly Bear – a five-year wait since the last album, and was it worth it? Well, they're as tight as ever, but such perfection can feel cold at first; it took me a while to warm to this and once I did, it wouldn't get out of my head
H. Hawkline – perhaps my album of the year, certainly my favourite discovery of 2017, catchy guitar pop in a crystal-clear Welsh accent, all sounds trimmed clean
Kendrick Lamar – finally listened to this guy and he is outstanding, a percussive and lyrically complex rap artist, in his element as a strong black voice in a year of necessary protest
Public Service Broadcasting – Every Valley, a concept piece about coal mining in Wales, is their best record yet
Slowdive – shoegaze is back with a dreamy new masterpiece from some old hands, I tended to restart this immediately after it finished
But if I had to pick one song, it would be 'Big Enough' by Kirin J. Callinan, featuring Alex Cameron, Molly Lewis, and Jimmy Barnes. Silly, earnest, and ridiculously catchy, with Barnesy delivering a best-ever scream, it's like they made it just for me.
Finally, I got to see one of my favourite bands live this year, and that was Pixies. My expectations were not high; it's a long time since their peak, Kim Deal isn't part of the band any more, and their new songs are fine but have none of the thrill or menace of their old songs. But then they wandered out onto the stage and fired up with Gouge Away, one of my favourites, and blazed through a 30-song set with barely a five-second pause between each song. I was carried away.
A lot happened in politics this year. We got a new government in New Zealand. Donald Trump became president of the United States. Both of these events were dramatic and surprising reversals of the status quo – perhaps not a complete upending of it, but the landscape is undoubtedly changed. And it was all many of us could talk about.
Me, I was personally struck by a couple of political things in 2017. First, during the interregnum, Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter went on Morning Report and explained she was not a party delegate so would not have a vote at the Greens' conference to determine their approach to coalition negotiations. Genter is a prominent public face of the party; she's been in Parliament since 2011, is third on the Greens list, speaks for the party on transport and women's issues (among other portfolios), and has been touted as a potential future co-leader. She comes from a strong professional background in transportation planning. And yet, when the Greens meet behind closed doors, 180-odd delegates unknown to the public have a vote but she does not. This disenfranchisement of MPs within the party might be commonplace across the political spectrum, but that would only make a strange thing even stranger.
Second, I know a few people who refused to vote in this election because they did not feel any of the parties represented their interests. I've often defended those who don't vote because I think it's undemocratic to compel people to turn out at the polling booth, and I still believe this, but it has started to frustrate me. If you don't vote because you want bigger change than any of the options on offer, and you aren't standing for election yourself, how are you going to explain that to those in poverty? To their children? To mine? For all the talk you often hear about NZ politics being mild and samey compared to polarised places like the USA, there are tangible policy differences between parties (and independent candidates) on critical elements of our society: health and education, for example. Do these differences not matter to you? Is the long-term crusade worth some short-term pain?
I was largely inactive this year, apart from the odd game of beach cricket and a few runs. My appreciation of sport has turned back to the screen: football highlights every Sunday morning, and if there's cricket happening, it's on by default, especially if it's night and Tara thinks she might struggle to get to sleep. "Is there any cricket on?" And if there isn't, she sometimes asks me to tell her cricket stories, like a spoken word lullaby. "Tell me about Bradman."
Fortunately, she doesn't only find cricket soporific. Just the other day, she was disappointed there was no Super Smash on for us to watch together while we fed the kids. So, after four years together, my enthusiasm for cricket appears to have taken root in her.
The next thing is to grow my daughters into White Ferns. To live vicariously through the achievements of my children. To go full Sports Dad. I'm sure that'll go down well.
I didn't see many new films in 2017, but I did watch on in thrilled, appalled shock as a succession of sacred relics was picked off for their transgressions. First, Harvey Weinstein's victims; then Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Bryan Singer, and more. It was a familiar story, usually ignored, but this time it stuck. It had everyone — every man, at least — trawling their memory for instances of assault or harassment. I hope it means things are never the same again. (See also: my post on whether you can separate the art from the artist.)
Okay, but what new films did I see? Just these ones, with order of preference in brackets. (Connect with me on Letterboxd to follow my film-watching in real time.)
BEYOND THE KNOWN WORLD (7)
GET OUT (2)
THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (9)
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 2 (6)
MOTHER! (3)
With every year that passes, I get further behind the tech curve, safe in my Luddite haven. There are four computers in our house but the newest is from 2012. There are two smartphones, both cheap and a couple of years out of date. There is one television and its projection is via cathode ray tube. There are two cars in the driveway: one from 2000, the other from 1991. Still, I sit on Facebook and Twitter a lot more than I'd like to.
Tangentially related: I have finally come to understand that Silicon Valley innovations, and those of startup culture generally, are not necessarily good for society. Sitting on Facebook and Twitter is the obvious one, especially Facebook, with its unholy quest to capture as much of the global population's attention as it can. If Uber (a company that will never have me as a customer, for the awfully unimaginative name as much as the dodgy business practices and toxic work culture) reaches its goal of a fleet of ultra-safe, self-driving cars, the roads will become a funnel for capital to Uber shareholders, and they will have the power to shut them down any time they like. So, for that matter, will hackers. Such ideas are presented as a logical next step for our species, an evolution; we all need to pay attention and speak out, with words and dollars, when we see that it isn't as simple as that.
This year, I undertook a new project: prioritise reading books from years ending in 7. I put together a master reading list of books from 1917, 1927, 1937 etc., aiming for a variety of voices (i.e. female, people of colour) in there, and hoped the jumping around in time wouldn't be too taxing on my rather comfortable reading mind.
I managed 45 books in the end, most from this project. You can browse them here (and please, add me as a friend on Goodreads if you haven't already!). The highlights:
'Summer' by Edith Wharton (1917)
'Oil!' by Upton Sinclair (1927)
'Trout Fishing in America' by Richard Brautigan (1967)
'Consider Phlebas' by Iain M. Banks (1987)
'Underworld' by Don DeLillo (1997)
'Then We Came To The End' by Joshua Ferris (2007)
'Rants in the Dark' by Emily Writes (2017)
'The Whole Intimate Mess' by Holly Walker (2017)
'The New Animals' by Pip Adam (2017)
And a few major disappointments:
'Death on the Nile' by Agatha Christie (1937)
'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac (1957)
'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
'Tuesdays with Morrie' by Mitch Albom (1997)
The same project will go for 2018, and 2019, and so on until I get bored of it. It's the best time travel we've got.
On the fourth day of our honeymoon, Tara and I hired a two-person sailboat and tacked out to the middle of Muri Lagoon. Neither of us had ever sailed before. "It's not that hard," said the incredibly laconic, shirtless man who had drawn some basic diagrams in the sand and sent us on our way.
That first leg was tense. If we weren't shouting half-baked instructions at each other, we were crouching in uncertain silence. Then we came to the buoy we had pointed ourselves at, and I announced I would try to manoeuvre us around it, so I gently leant on the tiller.
In no time at all, we were whipped around in the breeze, picking up pace as we turned. I panicked and strained to pull the rudder back to a more neutral position. The boat started to list, Tara screamed, and we plunged into the water.
I thought Tara might be freaked out by this, but instead, she roared with laughter. I was confused and distracted for a moment, then I started laughing too. We righted the boat, hauled ourselves up into it, and headed back in the other direction — with Tara at the tiller this time. "My turn! I want a go!"
We must have capsized another six or seven times in the next two hours as we hurtled back and forth across the lagoon. Every time, Tara's amusement would ring out across the water, drawing stares from sunbathers on the beach. We got terrifically sunburnt and drank a litre of saltwater each, and there was the food and the snorkelling and the cheery hospitality, but that mad sailing experiment was the most fun we had on our holiday.
I was a family of one for many years, intermittently linking with brothers and parents but still very much a loner. And then Tara came along and became my family.
We were married in February on a day that drove us mad in the planning but is increasingly golden in our memories. Friends and family came and smiled with us in the sun, and if we don't get to see them much now, at least we got to see them that day. It helps that Meeko & Redge captured such perfect images for us: romantic but not idealised, formal but not constrained. Their photos show our best selves, loving and joyous and a bit messy.
Soon after – thank you, Rarotonga – we found out our family was growing inside Tara's belly. Soon after that, at the 12-week scan, two blobs on the monitor indicated we would be a family of four. Just like that! And so 2017 became, more than anything, the year of pregnancy: bearing it, managing it, supporting it.
Nora and June were born in November. Because they are my babies, and I therefore see them for several hours a day, observing their subtle developments and interacting with them more and more, they are the most interesting babies in the history of the universe. Their enormous eyes, deep blue and alive, stare out at me (or at least the wall behind me) for several hours a day. Their limbs flail about haphazardly when I plonk them on the change table, or under the play gym, or in the bouncer by the window. The work of caring for them is long and repetitive, but never boring: their continuous development and discovery forces us into the moment.
My dad told me in the lead-up that once they're out, everything changes. He was right, but not in the way I expected. In Lost In Translation, Bill Murray's character says at the moment of your child's birth, "your life as you know it is gone, never to return". Instead, I feel a great expansion of possibility for all four of us. Easy for me to say as the dad who goes off to work each day and gets barely ten per cent of the social pressure of parenthood, right? But Tara is in the most meaningful ways the same Tara, just like I am the same Barns – valuing the same ideals, preoccupied with the same thoughts, distracted by the same distractions – but with bigger, fuller hearts (and perpetual bags under our eyes). The thought of what lies ahead has never been so exciting.
Filed under 'Best Of' Lists, Biography, Books, Film, Music, New Zealand, Politics, Sport
Tagged as babies, family, Film, health, kapiti, melanoma, Music, watching cricket, year in review
New York's Queensboro Bridge Photo by Fraser Mummery
Woody Allen's 1979 film MANHATTAN is an elegant rhapsody; a cinematic wonder of jazzy dialogue, lush black-and-white photography, and profound immaturity regarding girls and women. The artist, whose character in MANHATTAN falls in full-hearted love with an adolescent, would later have an affair with and marry his wife's adopted daughter. He would also be accused of sexual abuse by another adopted daughter, who was also an adolescent at the time of the alleged abuse.
Allen is usually the first example of the 'art vs artist' debate, which comes down to the following question: can the misdeeds of the artist be separated from the art they make? Roman Polanski raped a 12-year-old, but he also made the classic thriller REPULSION. Louis C.K. masturbated in front of several women without their consent, but he also made the consistently sharp and insightful sitcom 'Louie'. R. Kelly had sex with underage women and married one when she was 15, but he also made the unique hip-hop opus 'Trapped In The Closet', hot and fresh out the kitchen.
In the post-Weinstein era, now that no one can ignore their conscience while turning a blind eye to sexual harassment, there's a lot of hand-wringing going on. History is full of people who did abhorrent things and made great (or at least memorable) art. What are we to do?
The question is actually a lot simpler than writers of prevaricating thinkpieces would have us believe. Instead of getting hung up on the scales of justice — on one hand this but on the other hand that — let's focus on one of the key issues here.
A good number of our social norms are designed to limit harm. Sexually harassing a colleague is frowned upon socially because it might negatively affect the victim's professional and personal life. Having sex with an underage child is frowned upon socially because the underdeveloped brain and body of the child may not be able to cope with or comprehend the intensity of the act, and the power imbalance inherent in any adult-child relationship is problematic. Murder is frowned upon socially because wilfully ending another person's life is an affront to the very idea of society.
Many of these social norms are applied into law. If you're going to have sex with a child, the courts will incarcerate you and put you on a list for the rest of your life. It's a simple, inarguable outcome of an act that contravenes the values of basically every society.
To say that art can be separated from the artist is to say that in the creation and presentation of art, social norms are not relevant. Let us not talk of Rachel Weisz's horror at having her breast groped, unscripted, by Dustin Hoffman in CONFIDENCE; let us instead consider the genuine shock conjured by Hoffman with an ad lib. Let us not talk of Maria Schneider's appalled feelings of violation at an unscripted rape scene in LAST TANGO IN PARIS; let us instead isolate the depth of emotion Bernardo Bertolucci manufactured when he sprung it on her.
The question, again: can you separate the art from the artist? Does a great piece of art take precedence over its maker's violation of social norms?
Well. If your response is 'the art matters more', I have a question for you: are you kidding me? Anthony Rapp has lived through decades of confusion and trauma after Kevin Spacey tried to force himself on him when Rapp was 14 years old, but you'd rather not talk about it because you really liked Spacey in THE USUAL SUSPECTS? Lana Clarkson had her life snuffed out by Phil Spector's gun-wielding hand, but can't we just focus on the genius of the Wall of Sound?
It need not be a zero-sum game. All art is filtered through the context in which we absorb it: our own life and experience, our mental state at the time, the news of the day, the other works referenced by the art, and the deeds of the artist.
It's similar to the 'politics should not interfere in sport' argument. Our world would be pleasantly stuffy and genteel if athletes could compete solely within the confines of their chosen field, freed from the burdens of political trivialities like nuclear threats and institutional torture. But athletes do not cease to belong to society the moment they step across the white line. They know it, and so do those watching. Ask Serena Williams if context matters, or Caster Semenya, or Henry Olonga. Just as politics intrudes on the field of play, the artist's sins are bundled with the art they produce.
Why, then, do so many people struggle with this question? Why are our social media feeds littered with good folks agonising over whether they should hide their precious DVD of CHINATOWN? The answer is that it's hard – hard to reconcile one's admiration for the work with one's revulsion for the artist. MANHATTAN seems an easy one: where I once found Isaac's attraction to Tracy – sweet, young, unimpeachable Tracy – understandable and even worthy, I now find it an unpleasant fever dream of a man with an unhealthy fascination for teenage girls. But what about DOGVILLE, which I find so bleakly insightful about the human condition, and so aesthetically inspired, but whose director has consistently subjected leading women to traumatic on-set conditions? What about ENDER'S GAME, a fascinating and morally confronting book, royalties from which support the author's crusade against gay marriage? One side of you is saying 'can't we just appreciate a great piece of art?' And the other is saying, 'oh, so child sexual abuse is okay now?'
We are complex beings, capable of holding many things in our minds at once. You can watch [x] knowing that [y] did [z]. Absolutely, you can. But you're lying to yourself if you think the deeds of the artist have no bearing on the art. They should sit uncomfortably alongside the work, elbowing their way into your thoughts. Go ahead and praise LAST TANGO IN PARIS if you must, but be ready to have a conversation about how Bertolucci traumatised Schneider in his pursuit of artistic ecstasy. The art can still be great, whatever the context, but a person still made it, and they bring all their baggage to it. There is no separation.
Still feeling uneasy? There are other things you can do. Watch films directed by women. Read books by first-time authors. Pay attention to artists who use their celebrity to speak out against injustice and seek out their work. Their art won't all be as memorable as ANNIE HALL, but some of it will stick with you for good reasons, and some of it will be as great as anything caveated by its maker's transgressions. There is gold this side of the moral horizon.
Filed under Books, Film, Music, Politics
Tagged as art, art v artist, artist, entertainment industry, Film, harvey weinstein, opinion, roman polanski, sexual harassment, woody allen
A few years ago, I picked up a copy of After Dark by Haruki Murakami in a library book sale. Five for a dollar! I peeled the duraseal off, scrubbed away the patches of glue it left behind, and put it away for later. (See: tsundoku.)
Flash forward four years, and I finally got around to reading it last week as part of my 2017 Only Reading Books From Years Ending in Seven project (the English translation was published in 2007). The book is slight, a diversion, although – in typical Murakami style – it does hint at an opaque world of unsolvable, half-drawn mysteries.
One such mystery particularly caught my imagination, and it comes not from the mind of Murakami but from a previous reader. Library books are supposed to have many readers, after all; you can usually only guess at how many, and who they were, and what impression the book left on them. This reader, however, made three notes over the course of After Dark's 200-odd pages. Each is in the same black ballpoint pen.
Here's the first, from page 47:
There's plenty of overwriting in After Dark. Murakami quite indulges himself by giving his omniscient, disembodied narrator full licence to describe the least consequential aspects of a scene and wax rhapsodical about these tiny moments of city life and what it all means. This technique is effective in building a small world of rich detail, but it can make for dull reading.
This previous reader, though, got hung up on Murakami's (and translator Jay Rubin's) decision to modify the motorcyclist's 'kick' with the adjective 'strong'. Now, I'm no line-by-line editor, but this choice seems quite reasonable to me; it draws attention to the motorcyclist's physical presence, and to the machine's weight. I feel like underlining their 'Why?' and writing the same thing alongside it.
Later, on page 79:
Now the kick is 'big', and that's caught the reader's eye. There's no annotation in the margin this time. I can appreciate that 'big' is not as descriptive as 'strong', but is its inferiority as an adjective the reason for its underlining? Perhaps the reader thought 'strong' was too much, where 'big' is just right. Perhaps the reader is a motorcyclist and takes issue with Murakami's representation of ignition. We can only speculate, because the reader isn't giving us any more.
Finally, on page 172:
Now there's an image worth underlining, an image with real feeling. (!)
(See also: Inside David Foster Wallace's Private Self-Help Library, a great piece in The Awl by Maria Bustillos. Now there's a person who could write a good annotation.)
Filed under Books, Japan, Uncategorized
Tagged as after dark, annotations, editing, murakami, novel, reading, writing
January 17, 2017 · 11:47 pm
Crocodile stone
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Dec 3, 2016 at 4:02pm PST
I've never understood the need to ceremoniously dismiss a calendar year from sight. Every December you hear the same, from so many people: this year was shit and it can fuck off. Bring on next year. Bad things happen, and people grasp at the opportunity to sweep them aside, but I considered myself above raging against an arbitrary construct wholly unrelated to the actual sources of one's bitterness. I thought myself level-headed when it came to apportioning my annual misgivings. And then came 2016.
There was a failed overseas adventure that ended in frustration and debt. There was an assault, one that I sort of saw coming but was no less upsetting for it in the aftermath. There was a shocking death in the family, and the grief and support that followed. These three shunts spun me around and brought unfamiliar feelings to the surface. There is a thrill in learning from new experiences, for sure, and I have learned a lot: about what is really important to me, what I want to do with my time, how I respond to trauma, and how capable I am of carrying others. But the negative effects of these events linger, regardless of what they have taught me.
I am being deliberately vague here. At this early stage, I can't articulate all of the lessons and wounds and how I have changed, other than that I know want to have kids as soon as possible. A phrase I've returned to again and again in the last couple of years, both in relation to my own life and to global current events, is 'the more you know, the more you don't know'; perhaps this is how I sweep the bad things aside.
Then there were all the jolts in the obituary pages. David Bowie. Alan Rickman. Prince. Anton Yelchin. Muhammad Ali. Leonard Cohen. George Michael. Carrie Fisher. Et cetera.
And, in June and November, the United Kingdom and the United States of America voted to turn the tide away from global citizenship and toward isolationism. They washed their hands of the various crises on their doorsteps and further afield in favour of looking out for number one — but with no clear or functional plan even to improve their own lot.
It isn't all doom and gloom. It never is. I got a new job — after some months of trying — and so did Tara. We moved into a new flat two minutes' walk from a Sunday fruit and veg market. I was in better touch with my parents than I have been years. Nothing was easy, but it could all have been a lot harder.
Still, as 2016 disappears over the horizon, I find myself filled with trepidation for the year to come. 2017 promises at least one great boon: I will get married. Pretty much everything else is up in the air, both at home and in the global sphere. Eighteen months ago, Tara and I upended our lives in the hope of improving them out of sight. It could be another eighteen before we manage to settle back down to Earth.
Black Caps fan at the Basin last week. Here's hoping today's #nzvaus #cricket goes a bit better.
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Feb 19, 2016 at 11:08am PST
There was a lot more watching than doing this year. No tramping. No indoor football. A few hikes. A few jogs, the longest stretching to an easy eight kilometres. A couple of hits at the beach with a cricket bat. I attended a full Australia vs New Zealand cricket Test and watched us get absolutely hammered. There was also the World Twenty20, which started so well and ended in disappointment. There was EURO 2016, which promised a surprise champion and delivered the worst surprise champion possible: Portugal, every neutral's least favourite team.
The one thing I did more than any other year was swim in rivers. Around these parts, rivers are very cold in summer and icy cold in winter, and believe me, there is nothing quite like the rush of endorphins you get from immersing yourself in cold water. Back in July, at the end of the Five Mile Track south of the Wainuiomata, I swam in the Orongorongo River and it was so cold that I found myself literally unable to think after about ten seconds in the water. Survival instinct kicked in and I hauled myself back to the riverbank. There is video of this — I'm not going to show you — but I appear to have aged ten years between hitting the water and emerging from it.
The solemn mood and darkly glorious lyrics made Leonard Cohen's 'You Want It Darker' my song of 2016. As a species, we did in fact seem to want it darker.
As a valedictory statement, You Want It Darker (the album) was as complete as they come, rich with memorable tunes and words to sum up Cohen's life and the times in which he left us. I group it with David Bowie's Blackstar, which was followed, two days later, by the artist's death, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' Skeleton Tree, so pregnant with the aftershocks of Cave's son plummeting from a cliff on the South Coast of England. Mortality hung heavy over this year, and in confronting death head on, these three great musicians bestowed dark gifts.
The Field brought out a new record, The Follower, and I eventually fought past its repetitiveness — normally so comforting — to find the beauty within. He is a genius. Radiohead are geniuses, too: A Moon Shaped Pool was perhaps the most cohesive album they've ever done, but it was also their saddest, with Thom Yorke's previously bitter voice stepping over into resignation.
Sturgill Simpson's A Sailor's Guide to Earth was a tight country masterpiece accessible even to the likes of me. Two easily digestible pop albums, Kaytranada's 99.9% and Francis and the Lights' Farewell, Starlite!, got me tapping my feet under the desk at work and dancing around the house. And Solange's A Seat at the Table spoke brightly and angrily for black women in America, linking the past to the dire present but still finding joy in one's skin. (I didn't hear Lemonade but it sounds like Solange's superstar older sister tackled similarly weighty issues in 2016.)
My biggest new discovery of the year was Angel Olsen, whose My Woman showcased an artist reaching the peak of her considerable powers. It isn't just that she's good; she knows she's good, and if you are lucky enough to see her perform in the flesh, you get the feeling she could destroy or exalt any of you with a single look. With the backing of her outstanding, blue-suited band, Olsen delivered one of the best gigs I've seen.
But if there was one single musical highlight I had to pick out, it would be from WOMAD, where, after walking Cathy back to the motel at about 10pm, I bounded back down the hill to the sound of Calexico filling the valley with the sweet, wistful strains of 'Falling from the Sky'. I was alone, but I was dashing toward the light, where I would be enveloped once more in the pleasure of performance — a performance that was everything I hoped it would be and more, but still not as special as the exquisite promise of being able to hear it before I could yet see it. It was like nostalgia in real time.
Film holds less and less importance in my life with each passing year, which is to say that where film was once my brightest, fiercest passion, it is now an essential but occasional diversion from the everyday lists of tasks. In 2016, I managed to see about 40 films I hadn't seen before, and a solid handful of new releases that impressed me. Here we go:
45 YEARS felt like a lesson in how not to go about my impending marriage, and its haunting final shot is worth all the attention it has received. THE BIG SHORT came from nowhere and demanded my attention and admiration by being terrifically entertaining and desperately depressing. Micro-budget Wellington pic CHRONESTHESIA offered a high-concept vehicle for well-written and performed character interactions, and was one of the more enjoyable films of 2016. I relished the brutal thrills of GREEN ROOM, roared at the Warriors reference in HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE, and jigged about in my seat at SING STREET, which did teenagers the service of presenting them as real people with real problems. SPOTLIGHT was a work of outstanding focus and importance, much like the work of the reporters it chronicled; in particular, Liev Schreiber's performance as editor Marty Baron was perfect, laden with power and prestige but never showy. No film of 2016 was sadder than TONI ERDMANN, which was billed as a comedy and made me laugh (a lot) but not without horrible cringing at the deep cracks in its characters' lives. And YOUR NAME allowed me to bask in the distinctly Japanese state of natsukashii, which is some untranslatable combination of cherishing and yearning.
Now, you may not believe this, and I still have doubts myself, but I think ZOOTOPIA was my favourite film of 2016. I remember blundering around Queensgate Mall one day back in February or whatever and seeing a poster for another stupid computer-animated film in which animals walk on their hind legs and crack wise. Then I went and saw it, and I found it to be funny, touching, well-plotted, visually spectacular, and thematically rich. Its subplots of political puppetry and migration/segregation seem almost prophetic in hindsight. I can't wait to see it again.
Christmas off to a good start. Both of my chief needs met.
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Dec 24, 2016 at 1:02pm PST
The only new book I read in 2016 was Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays by Ashleigh Young. Ashleigh is a friend but she also happens to be one of the best writers in New Zealand today, although I would say that. It's been wonderful to see more people discover her writing, which broaches difficult subjects in a way that is gentle and curious but doesn't flinch from the hard bits. She makes no excuse for the fact that she is still figuring all this stuff out, too.
Of the 45 other books I read over the 12 months, Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville and (in particular) Sam Zabel and the Magic Pen were a joy to after so many years of keeping meaning to getting around to reading Dylan Horrocks. Even more satisfying: I neared completion of Rupert Thomson's oeuvre, knocking off Death of a Murderer, Katherine Carlyle, and This Party's Got to Stop. Only The Five Gates of Hell remains unread. Thomson is my favourite author, an unclassifiable literary force whose work exists in a slightly off-kilter universe, both familiar and disorienting in the details. His talent for pithy description is pretty much unrivalled. I find myself often re-reading a sentence, looking up from the book to reflect on it, then carrying on.
From a Thomson profile a few years ago: "I do build quite a lot into the words and I'm often trying to slow the reader down". 2016 was the year I started setting myself reading targets and greedily racing through pages with one eye on the tally, but Rupert Thomson's writing is a reminder that the pleasures of reading are more numerous than just the numbers.
After the 2014 New Zealand general election, in which the Greens and Labour got smashed by a surging, John Key-led National, I attempted to mitigate my shock by engaging the other side. I wrote a Facebook post inviting National voters to message me with their reasons for voting that way. The aim was to understand their perspective, whether I agreed with it or not, because the election had acutely demonstrated that I lived in an ideological bubble divorced from the concerns of the majority. The only response came in person, a friend, who was happy to elucidate his vote over beers. 'Lack of a credible alternative' was the key phrase he used. It was hard to argue with that, regardless of the whole Dirty Politics palaver.
After Brexit and the election of Donald J. Trump, I decided I needed to go deeper down the conservative route. There was a whole world of media out there that I never gave a second thought because I didn't believe it could offer genuine facts or considered opinion. Clearly, a lot of people found that appealing in 2016, so if I wanted to understand their side better, I had to engage more directly. I watched some panel discussions on Fox News, which were invariably confusing and boring, laden as they were with impenetrable policy speak, although at least people listened to one another. I read through the top stories on Breitbart, which included a heartfelt endorsement of Trump by prominent Dutch racist Geert Wilders. And I subscribed to The Weekly Standard Podcast, on which white, middle-class men put the boot into 'Barack Hussein Obama' and performed backflips to find the silver linings in Trump's repurposing of the Republican Party as his own plaything.
This broadening of heard opinions has changed my thinking somewhat. I appreciate the messages Trump voters were sold, and I understand why they voted that way, if they believed what he was saying. And even if they didn't believe him, their desperation (in many, if not all, cases) seemed a reasonable catalyst to vote for change. The folks that actually produce the hogwash they read, though — the titles listed above, but also the cynical opportunists parlaying credulity into clicks and cash — deserve fiery contempt. I mentally pick holes in their arguments as I listen/read, throwing in the occasional profanity, and hope for some cataclysm to jolt them out of their plush comfort zone.
All this turned John Key's resignation into a bit of an anticlimax. After eight years of complaining about the guy, I'm almost going to miss him. But we have an election coming in New Zealand in 2017, with more potential for change, and for shit-throwing from all sides. National will do what it's been doing for years — steady hand on the tiller, can't trust the other mob — and they will probably win again, but not without some mad interference from your Dotcoms and Morgans and whoever else decides they've got what it takes to be the Kiwi Trump.
All I hope is that more people vote than last time. A lower vote count helps no one.
Millennium Falcon pancake
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Jan 1, 2016 at 2:03pm PST
I still get angry at things. The hinges on my pleasing little Medion laptop gave way in a minor tantrum back in July; poor bugger didn't deserve it. If I spend any time in the kitchen at all, I am best avoided as there is a likelihood of swearing and thumping on the bench. Funny, because I love cooking. And people think I'm so calm.
The other tech note is that my social media use declined further in 2016. I remember a time when I craved likes and retweets to the extent that they effectively sustained my continued existence. Nowadays, I post whatever I feel like whenever I feel like and am thrilled if even one person interacts with it. I live in a warm cocoon of my own nonsense.
In the queue for free hours at the Prado.
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Jan 17, 2016 at 11:18pm PST
Tara and I cut our European sojourn dramatically short at the six-month mark, hurrying back to New Zealand as our finances reached into the red just in time to avoid a student loan repayment. It was devastating to give up on the dream of living and working abroad, but we consoled ourselves with the fact that we had done it before and we had tried to do it together, and this obviously wasn't the time. We had felt a pull back to NZ ever since we left, anyway. There's so much to love about being here.
Best new travel discovery of 2016 was Castlepoint. More specifically, the $120-a-night bach ten minutes up the coast in Sandy Bay, with its big lawn, ocean views, and soothing quiet. I can't wait to go there again.
Christmas is better in the Hutt.
A post shared by Barnaby Haszard Morris (@barnabyhm) on Dec 17, 2016 at 1:21am PST
2016 was the year Tara and I were engaged, all 366 days of it. We took two steps forward and one step back, over and over, in pretty much every aspect of our lives — except in our relationship. Together, we took on the enormous logistical challenge of planning a wedding, moved back to NZ, changed both of our careers, moved house, felt the earth shake, and grieved, but we kept talking and listening and hugging and have come out the other end with as strong a bond as ever. This time next year, we'll be married. (Gosh, in a little over a month we'll be married. Getting exciting now.)
Otherwise, apart from regular Skypes and lunch dates with my parents, and board game sessions with Tara's family, I was more absent from the lives of those I care about it than I would prefer. Part of this is just drawing inward during a rough year. Part of it is the continued renegotiation of friendships as my live-in relationship takes precedence. Part of it is the cult of busyness, convincing myself I'm unable to go and meet people because I have too much on.
These are all excuses. I intend to be a better friend in 2017. If you're reading this and thinking the same, let's go for a beer sometime.
Filed under 'Best Of' Lists, Biography, Books, Film, New Zealand, Politics, Sport
Tagged as 2016, Biography, books, Film, politics, sport, year in review
As a child, I would often think about turning 20 in the year 2004, 30 in the year 2014, and so on. While 20 seemed within reach, I didn't imagine I would ever actually turn 30; it seemed too distant and grown-up a number to attach to myself.
But now I am 30. I've breached the asymptote. And I've come out the other side feeling much the same. I constantly refer to myself as not being a 'real grown-up' or 'proper person' yet, perhaps because I still don't have kids or a mortgage or a clear career path. And yet I am in my thirties, and a lot more of my thoughts are taken up with long-term planning. After all, I am sure I want kids, and a house, and a satisfying career. I just don't feel quite ready for them yet. The itch to travel still tingles, and I expect I will scratch it before I embark wholeheartedly on any of the above legacies. Round up a few other 30-year-old New Zealanders and see how many say the same thing.
A lot of what follows is about me, but for much of it, there's someone important beside me.
Indoor footy remained integral to my physical well-being in 2014, as it was in 2013 and 2012. But it became one of many athletic pursuits rather than my sole half hour of proper exercise each week.
Early in our relationship, Tara explained that she used to be just as sloth-like as me and passed endless wasted hours on Reddit. She wasn't happy, so she started hiking, tramping, and scuba diving instead, replacing idleness with a thirst for new outdoor experiences.
When you spend so much time with someone who has so much energy, that thirst will become part of your life, too, and you have a choice to reject or embrace it. After a few weekends of farewelling Tara as she headed off on another expedition in her trademark yellow cap, I embraced it. I went tramping in the Tararua Range, hiking in the Orongorongo Valley, swimming at Titahi Bay, stand-up paddle boarding at Port Nicholson, and wire-walking at Porirua, all things I would have hesitated to even attempt in the past. Now I marvel at how much the world has to offer, and I occasionally wonder how much I've missed over the years.
It wasn't that I was necessarily afraid of any of these things. It was just that it all seemed to take up so much time. But all I did with that time, sunny day or no, was sit on the computer and chastise myself for not doing any writing. I'm finding that as a general rule, it's better to be outside.
On an international scale, the success of the Black Caps (New Zealand's national cricket team) in 2014 has been a great source of joy and even made me shake my head in amazement at times. It began with a one-day series win in January and a glorious fightback to draw the Basin Reserve Test in February, both against India. I was there for the fifth one-dayer, and I watched nearly every ball of the Basin Test, including the one Brendon McCullum dispatched to the backward point boundary to reach his triple century. Those five days were probably my favourite five days of the year for they also encompassed a super Valentine's Day out at Wellington Zoo, a successful and sunny dinner party on the deck with Tara's family, and an Italian dinner with Tara to celebrate six silly months together.
There was also the Football World Cup, which is always a joy. This was my favourite 'fuck yeah' moment.
My favourite album of the year was Morning Phase by Beck — great song after great song — and my favourite 90 seconds of a song this year was the final 90 seconds of closer 'Waking Light'.
Those 90 seconds feel like the meandering calm of Morning Phase finally breaking the shackles and bursting out into triumph — but it's still tinged with all the uncertainty that preceded it. Morning Phase seemed dark and depressed to me at first, but with each listen, I found it more and more beautiful, even as an underlying sadness remained. Beck seems to aim for ambivalence rather than assuredness with this album. I think that's why I like it so much.
I also enjoyed Lost in the Dream by The War On Drugs and rediscovered Floating Into The Night by Julee Cruise. I didn't give Syro or a whole lot of other new albums enough of a go. There was a lot of music I missed, largely because I now live with someone who has different tastes in music. And music is one of many areas of life subject to renegotiation when someone moves in with you.
In 2014, Tara introduced me to songs by Auditorium, Cloud Cult, Avalanche City, Sam Cooke, Semisonic, Disney heroes and heroines, the a cappella stars of Pitch Perfect, Hanson, and some Mutton Birds albums I hadn't previously heard. I've liked some of these songs, and she's liked some of the ones I've played for her. Our shared command of Spotify has been an interesting and enjoyable challenge. Rewards have included butchered harmonies and spontaneous living room dancing.
We played board games while watching the NZ general election results roll in on TV, the sound muted. We shook our heads and swore repeatedly, and once the frustration faded, a week or two of disbelief set in: how are we so out of touch? I thought the Greens might bump up to 15% of the vote, and in the wake of Dirty Politics and Key's relentless jiving, I assumed National's vote would decrease. Instead, National romped to the biggest party vote since the start of the MMP era, and we on the left are still sitting down and having a think about it all.
My opinion is that in New Zealand, as in Australia and maybe in other parts of the world, people want strong leadership more than they want strong policy. In other words, voters want someone who will get things done, regardless of what those things are and whether they are in the voter's own interest. The left in NZ didn't seem to offer that.
As the dust settled, I made a vow to broaden my horizons outside the white liberal bubble of central Wellington so I have a more accurate picture of New Zealanders' overall political sentiment. I haven't done much about that, but I hope the Labor and Green parties have.
The only film I saw twice in 2014 was GONE GIRL, largely because it was such a phenomenon that I knew multiple people who wanted to see it. That isn't to say I didn't like the film; I really enjoyed it, and in some respects — especially the ending — it worked a lot better than the book. It was interesting to read the book after seeing the trailer, then watch the full film after reading the book, meaning I had the actors in my head as I read but didn't know what was going to happen. My conclusion is that Ben Affleck was perfect for the role and Rosamund Pike, who actually had to act, outshone him. And Carrie Coon outshone them both.
My favourite film of the year is tricky. There are quite a few contenders: BOYHOOD, THE TALE OF THE PRINCESS KAGUYA, VOICES FROM THE LAND, and UNDER THE SKIN. The latter was particularly memorable, one of those rare films that's so unsettling I couldn't shake its sounds and visions for weeks. I also really liked NOAH, THE LUNCHBOX, THE DARK HORSE, and WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS.
But I have to go with ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, which left me buzzing with ideas and appreciation of cinematic craft. I hadn't liked the Jim Jarmusch films I'd seen previously — they seemed too self-consciously aloof to let me in — but this was a delight in every way, from Tom Hiddleston's centuries-old ennui to the incredible music, most of it by Jarmusch's band SQÜRL. I didn't think it was possible to get me engaged in a story about vampires, but ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE did it by grounding them in the real world: what it would it really be like to live for hundreds of years? How would you survive? What would you learn about life on Earth? This film answered those questions, and asked a few more. I loved it.
And then there were the losses, particularly Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose greatness is now a void in cinema. Neither of them will make any more films, and both cases but especially Hoffman's, that is a great loss to the medium.
I bought a new phone in 2014, a Motorola Moto G. It's pretty good so far. And my main computer keeps overheating and powering off, which sometimes makes me very angry. I still get angry at inanimate objects, technology more than anything else, and it's still embarrassing to the point of making me feel like a spoilt little kid every time.
Deno started a book club in 2014, and because I like Deno and want to read more books, I joined up. So far we've read some interesting books and repeatedly pushed back our deadlines, which I assume is what most book clubs do.
For the first time since 2006, I spent none of the calendar year outside of New Zealand. Instead, I got to know new parts of my country — Paraparaumu, Porirua, the Rimutakas, Taranaki, the Tararuas, and more — and revisited old favourites like West Auckland's beaches.
Travel experiences became more about the adventure itself than the destination, and more about the company than the sights (although the sights were often exceptional). Tara witnessed just about everything I witnessed, and she usually instigated the trip. She is the lead explorer in our relationship and pushes us steadily on to the next adventure as soon as the last one is over. Her family call her the Labrador, partly because she goes a bit crazy if she doesn't go for a walk each day.
As I am now 30, more and more of my friends are getting married. I was even best man at a wedding — that of my oldest friend Stephen, who married Cayley in March. That was a good day.
More and more of my friends are having kids, too. I'm watching them grow up photograph by photograph, video by video, nearly always smiling and happy. Their childhoods are being edited into a selective stream of joyous firsts and daily moments of delight. That sounds a little cynical, but I think it's a privilege to be able to see those kids at all. I would rather see them all a lot more often and get to know them as people, rather than as two-dimensional flashes of colour, but my Facebook feed is the next best thing. And their parents — my friends — are changing too. A little more weight behind their eyes, a little more openness in their smiles.
I already had a family, but in 2014, I gained another family. Cathy, Jeff, Richard, Ruth, and Kazu have all become an integral part of my life in a very short space of time. We play a lot of board games — preferably ones that involve protracted arguing and shouting, like The Resistance — and we go on walks, picnics, tramps, swims, and holidays. Here I thought you weren't supposed to get on with your in-laws. I fear these positive relationships in a new area of my life come at the cost of my relationships with family and friends; that the time and energy I've used to forge new bonds is limited and needs to be doled out more carefully. Finding a better balance of time spent with people important to me is the biggest thing I have to work on in 2015.
Through it all is Tara, there at my side — or stopped behind me, more likely, to run her hands through long grass or shift a snail from the pavement to the bushes. She adds so much colour to my world and somehow lightens each of my steps — into cold river water, into the vicious slope of another hill, or into the woods with twenty kilograms on my back. She is the constant source of love and intellectual stimulation that sustains me. With Tara, more than in any other part of my life, I am lucky.
Filed under 'Best Of' Lists, Books, Film, New Zealand, Sport
Tagged as 2014 in review, Film, Music, new zealand, personal newspaper, sport
Opening My Eyes Further: Graphic Novels, Comics, and Me
Upon Ed's recommendation, I've been reading a lot of graphic novels lately – or comics, I'm not sure which. They've all been non-fiction, so are they still graphic novels? I'm gonna go with graphic novels because of their long-form nature – when I see the word 'comic', I think first of strips in the newspaper, like Peanuts and Garfield.
They've been quite a revelation, these graphic novels. My reading hasn't just been changed by the addition of this bright new medium; it's been broadened and given new life. I hope you'll bear with me while I cast my eye back a little to illustrate how this new enthusiasm fits into the context of my life.
It's funny that I should associate Peanuts and Garfield with the newspaper, because when I was a kid, I borrowed and read all the Peanuts and Garfield books in Tokoroa Public Library several times over. I never read them in the newspaper. I even bought a few cheap Peanuts collections with my allowance, books that are now long gone. (I never bought any Garfield, and I'm glad now that I didn't because reading Garfield as an adult has been one of the most jarring revisitations to childhood I've had. Like, did I really used to laugh at this?)
More than Peanuts and Garfield, I read Tintin and Asterix. I think Tintin was my first exposure to comics. On about my seventh or eighth birthday, a compendium of the three Tintin books – Tintin in America, Cigars of the Pharaoh, and The Blue Lotus – was given to me by parents, and I was soon reading each of the stories over and over. I already loved reading, and read voraciously, but Tintin allowed me to escape into a world I could literally see, not just imagine.
The following year, I was given another compendium containing The Calculus Affair, The Red Sea Sharks, and Tintin in Tibet. I remember being moved by Tintin's relationship with Chang, the Chinese boy he saves from the river in The Blue Lotus, and their tearful reunion in Tintin in Tibet. Because I read them all so many times – possibly into the hundreds – I can also a remember a number of specific images, like Haddock's curled-up beard when Calculus lights his microfilms on Haddock's pipe, or the final 'shot' of Tintin in Tibet, in which the yeti looks longingly across the plain at the departing travellers.
Tintin is like a series of shots, a storyboard for a film. I still haven't seen anyone convey movement in a static image as well as Hergé could. The stories are often as full of plot holes as the dumbest Hollywood blockbusters, but the drawings themselves are so memorable. Pretty good cast of characters, too.
As a kid, when talking with friends, I was adamant that Tintin was not a 'comic' but a 'cartoon', which to me implied its status as serious art. There began my prejudice against comics in general, or what I narrowmindedly thought of as comics.
Asterix, meanwhile, has followed me into adult life more than anything else I read in childhood. I liked Asterix in those days but preferred the fast-paced action and earnestness of the Tintin books. When I read through the entire Asterix series as an adult, however, I marvelled constantly at all the wordplay that had flown way over my head years before. What's more, all this wordplay was developed twice – once in French by Goscinny, and again in English by those translation wizards Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge. I've never read the French editions of Asterix but someday, if my French ever gets good enough, I'd love to do so.
I do remember the images of Asterix well, too, especially Uderzo's broadly demonstrative facial expressions. The bit where the major-domo tastes Asterix and Obelix's stew in Asterix and the Laurel Wreath ALWAYS cracks me up, as does the bit in Asterix in Switzerland where Obelix tries to 'speed up the works, by Toutatis' and immediately gets wasted drunk. No doubt there are others out there who can recall it in an instant too.
After going through Asterix again – this was about five years ago – I didn't seek out any more comics. The term 'graphic novel', which came up with relative frequency in conversation with various friends and family members, was still off-putting to me: it conjured visions of dark sci-fi drawings with lots of blood and exclamation marks. No real reason for that, of course. It was my way of closing my mind off to them, perhaps so I could keep the world a little more manageable. It's bad enough thinking of all the films you want to someday see, let alone all the books you want to read.
I also saw the film version of Watchmen and hated it. After hearing so much about the supposed genius of the graphic novel, the terribleness of the film seemed to validate my preconceptions.
Then, a few months ago, Ed got The 120 Days of Simon out from the library. It was really quite vacuous: a man I would hate in real life travels around Sweden having lots of sex and taking lots of drugs, then tells his story through cartoonish illustrations and unexceptional (though relatable) dialogue. To my surprise, I raced through it in an hour, thoroughly entertained. I guess I'm as voyeuristic as the next guy.
Afterwards, the sense of satisfaction at reading a 400-plus-page book in such a short space of time was something I hadn't felt before. It was a minor epiphany: graphic novels are a way of reading many books without using up all my waking hours! I decided to seek out more.
Next, Ed recommended the work of Guy Delisle, a Canadian animator who has written graphic novel travelogues about his time in various unusual locations around the world. I started with Shenzhen, which was very good, and then went on to Pyongyang, which was not as good but fascinating just for the fact that it was about the everyday life of a foreigner in North Korea.
When I look back on reading those two Delisle books, I can't remember many of the images. My brain is wired for language, it seems, so I focused on the dialogue and narration much more than the pictures. Not surprisingly, the drawings I remember most clearly are the ones that were unaccompanied by English words, such as a hilarious scene in which a Chinese man gets into a lift with Delisle and bellows into his ringing phone before realising he hasn't pressed the button to answer it. I wonder if this means my brain can only properly process one form of input at a time, in this case either pictures or words. I'll bet it's possible to train your brain to do both.
Delisle has done quite a bit more than those two books, including some well-reviewed work on Burma and Jerusalem, but I wanted to get into some classics of the genre first. A little research brought two titles quickly to the surface: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Maus by Art Spiegelman. Persepolis is the story of the artist – an Iranian woman – growing up in her post-revolution homeland, while Maus is the story of the artist's father surviving the Holocaust in Poland and Germany. Both are widely hailed as exceptional works of art in any genre – Maus won a Pulitzer – and as essential reading for any graphic novel enthusiast.
I decided to start with Persepolis because I've been very interested in Iran lately. I want to get a broader picture of Iran than what we get from most news reports, which show virtually nothing beyond a tyrannical government and a faceless, obedient proletariat. Persepolis was perfect because Satrapi was a woman (i.e. not a man with a beard) from a well-off but somewhat dissident family, which couldn't be much further from the fundamentalist Islamists I had previously pictured when I thought of Iran.
It was a brilliant memoir, full of internal conflict as Satrapi wrestled with her love for a homeland that felt less and less like home. She illustrated the dynamics in her family clearly, and with admirable and honest empathy for all the times she drove her parents crazy. She also didn't shy away from her passionate views on human rights, the veil, censorship – the kinds of things that artists in Iran have been jailed for. I was entertained by her sense of humour and enlightened by her bitter insights. Persepolis enriched me as a person. It also got me the email address of a PhD architecture candidate from Iran, who was handing out questionnaires in Civic Square one afternoon and saw me reading it. A golden coincidence.
As it was with Delisle, I don't remember many of Satrapi's images. Most of the time I would skim across the top of each frame, where the majority of the dialogue and narration was placed, and more or less ignore the illustrations. Perhaps the skill of taking both text and images in at once will develop with experience – or perhaps it's just that those details you missed can be revealed on subsequent readings, just like with any other book.
Then came Maus, which is the reason for writing all this. Maus is purely extraordinary. Schindler's List used to be the work of art I would immediately think of when moved to consider the Holocaust for one reason or another; henceforth, it shall be Maus. Here are some of the reasons why:
The central character is compelling. He's racist, cantankerous, and miserly, as well as being chivalrous, resourceful, and very intelligent. He speaks in a grammatically imperfect English – "one of the boys what we were in the attic together, talked over to the guard" – which builds up a distinctive voice in your head as you read it. He loves and loses almost everything.
Spiegelman doesn't shy away from the most horrendous aspects of the Holocaust. He illustrates so many ways to die in just the level of detail that you won't be put off reading any further but won't forget any of it, either.
With Maus, I DID remember a lot of the images afterwards. In fact, I'd seen some of them before: in a third form social studies exam, more than half of my life ago, we were asked to read a page from Maus and then answer questions about it. (I had no idea what it was at the time, of course.) When I came to that page in the book, I recognised it immediately. I think this is a testament to Spiegelman's straightforward approach to detail in his drawings, which aims to tell the story without too many lines getting in the way. He also employs the simple visual metaphor of drawing each race as a different animal – Jews as mice, Poles as pigs, Germans as cats – to help embed those images.
The story is fundamentally about one man's experience, but that narrower focus allows for a richness in detail that broader works wouldn't have time for. In sticking to his dad's story in this way, Spiegelman ends up speaking directly to people's individual experience of the Holocaust, which is much easier to relate to than a history lesson. The fact that his dad's life intersected with so many others helps, too, as they move in and out of the narrative. You get a sense of the staggering numbers of lives involved – on all sides.
On the back cover of this edition of Maus, there was a quote from the Washington Post: "impossible to describe accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but comics". The latter part seems very true to me: it's a perfect marriage of illustration and language, both of which are essential to the way the story is told. The narration allows you into the characters' heads so you can see the illustrations on the page from their perspective as well as your own. And because it's a printed page, rather than a moving image on a screen for example, you can linger on a particularly compelling image for as long as you wish.
As for the 'impossible to describe accurately' part, that's obviously an exaggeration, but I think the point is that it's considerably more valuable to read Maus in its entirety than it is to skim over its Wikipedia page. It was, for me, an incredibly moving and inspiring experience, and I cried a little as I read the last page. It's good to know I'm not so caught up in my own scattered thoughts that I can't be moved to tears any more.
I notice that something common to all the graphic novels I've read so far is that they are memoirs, so maybe my enthusiasm is just as much for the confessional nature of memoir writing as it is for the fact that they're in illustrated form. Perhaps it's related to the fact that I've long felt a deeper affinity with film than with words on the page, and I hardly watch films nowadays compared to the amount I read, and the graphic novel is a happy middle ground between the two that I find doubly satisfying. Maybe graphic novels remind me of the exhilaration I once felt reading Tintin, how I could blast through a book and be entertained for half an hour – a kind of Freudian link to some of the most purely content moments of my childhood.
Or, maybe I've just lucked into beginning the genre with its most broadly appealing work. Whatever the case, graphic novels – comics – cartoons – whatever – are a legitimate art form and I am thrilled to have finally discovered them.
As mentioned before, graphic novels are not eating into any of my other reading. They've simply added more time and more discernment to my reading habits. I've learned that my brain can switch from one printed story to another, just as it can switch from longform journalism article to another, or from one music album to another, or from one internal monologue to another. What graphic novels are eating into is my time spent watching Youtube videos and liking things on Facebook, and I'm not complaining about that.
Next will be the work of Joe Sacco, who was once featured in The Caravan and has been widely acclaimed for graphic novels about turmoil-stricken places like Palestine and Bosnia. After that, maybe I'll try and break down another the wall to another consciously overlooked writing genre. Poetry, probably.
Tagged as art spiegelman, asterix, books, comics, graphic novels, guy delisle, images, language, marjane satrapi, maus, reading, tintin


Former FVCSA Board President Dave Grant and his wife Suzanne are moving to South Carolina this week. We are sorry to see them go, but we wish them well as they begin this new chapter in their lives.
Dave was a member of the Board of Directors for eight years, first as Treasurer, then as President. He contributed countless hours of service to the community on the Board and on the Recreation Committee as well. Dave was the major force behind keeping up our tennis courts and he's played on them right up to his last days at Princeton Landing.
Be sure to say goodbye to Dave and Suzanne if you see them around Parcel 7, the Loop Road or the tennis courts.


Coming from the stompin' grounds of Motoplayground is the #218 of Dawson Kaub from Ottawa, KS. Kaub has been rippin' on his KTM backed by Letko Cycles. With only 3 years of experience on a dirt bike, Kaub had an impressive showing at Freestone last week where he was battling in front of the pack all week, brining home top 5 finishes in 4 different Novice classes. At only age 15 Dawson will be one to watch out for in near future. His wrist is locked, the throttle is pinned, and with his Dunlop tires throwing roost, he doesn't plan on letting up anytime soon.
MP: What's up Motoplayground here checking in. What's going on today?
Dawson Kaub: Nothing much, i'm just here at school getting all my work done so I can head out to Bar2Bar MX for the LL qualifier this weekend. After school is out I'll be heading out to my compound to do some training. Tracy Freeman the "dirt artist" just did a makeover on my track so I'm super stoked to get some good time on the bike before the weekend.
MP: How did you get started into the sport of motocross?
Dawson Kaub: My dad and his cousin rode/raced when they were younger and every year since i was 5 years old we went to St. Louis Supercross to watch the races and I always wanted to ride but didnt really have the money to afford it, then when I turned 13 a month later I got a kx85 for Christmas and its been a great journey since then.


A disdain for reading is not an anomaly when it comes to grade-school boys. Girls (and women), comprise over 80% of today's readership. It is not just a grade school issue; Men in general are not prolific readers in comparison to women. Eva's grade-school brother is just vocalizing a well-documented indifference that I think at times, part of the modern male Y chromosome. Oh contraire, some might say, that has to be a twenty-first century phenomenon. Most of our great poets and authors through the centuries were men. I may be banned from blogosphere for this, but let us keep in mind that less than a century ago, women weren't encouraged to participate in literature (Let us have a moment of silent reverence for the women pioneers who risked social ostracization to be authors).
Eva feels young people don't read anymore, unless "it means to scan mindlessly over your friend's tweets for hours on end." I share Eva's view, something I parodied last year in, Texting – Conversational Spam. Recreational reading was and still is a downtime thing. We had more of it when I was a kid. With today's oversupply of extracurricular activities, I'm surprised anyone has time to read. Media entertainment the last fifty years has glutted us with too many options. It's so much easier to wait for the movie or cable version, which allows for multitasking, like texting, or surfing Instagram.
Thanks DB. And Happy National Library Week.


Polymath Software is used in Chemical Engineering courses. It is installed on it's own but you can add it to Excel.
Polymath is not compatible with Mac versions of MS Office therefore it will not work on Macs unless you install Windows.
Polymath is installed on HSSOE instructional computer labs.
You must be logged into your UCI Google Apps account or switch to it from other Gmail accounts.
Note: You must use your UCI Google Apps account to access the download.


February | 2018 | It's Sew Anny!
Recently a sweet, generous neighbor gifted me with a fabulous mink hat. She said she knew I wear many hats (both figuratively and physically 🙂 and thought I might enjoy it. I am in favor of FAUX fur, but definitely wanted the mink beret to have a good home. One day, thinking how nice it would be if the beret could actually go back to its rightful owner (it was a family heirloom), I hit upon the idea of making the hat into a purse for her. So here you see the beret in its original form, and then the transition to charming, little purse. I shaped it into an oblong position, added handles, an interior snap, and attached an accessory for the final touch. Voila!
My dear neighbor was very touched by the gesture and confided that the mink had belonged to her grandmother. And, anytime she wants to convert the purse back into a hat, every alteration I made is totally reversible. From Mink to Mink!