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In This Issue:
Silence killer
It was the autumn meeting that made me realise we’re losing the battle. We live near the local racetrack, so we often see and hear tall quadrupeds with short humans tearing past. We like it. Or we did, until the autumn meeting, when six hours of races came with blaring loudspeaker music added, audible 600m away.
I’ve rung the racing club. I’ve left a short message of short words. But I know it’s useless. If you want quiet these days, you’re doomed. Intrusive noise doesn’t just rule; it assumes the right to rule.
I’m talking specifically about commercial assaults on silence, and all that they imply. There’s the cafes and restaurants where muzak mauls as soon as you step inside. The shopping plazas, movie foyers, supermarkets, gas station forecourts, doctors’…
The future foretold
There it was, in the top left corner on the cover of the Listener (July 20): probably the most apparently prescient headline in New Zealand journalism history. Written, printed and already delivered to subscribers a whole week before it– literally – applied!
The coverline? “Star mangled banner: keeping your head down at a Trump rally.” No headline could have been more appropriate for the assassination attempt on Trump a week later – just as this issue hit the nation’s magazine stands.
The article it refers to is Jonathan Kronstadt’s brilliant, skilful denigration of the Trump phenomenon in the US, through his attending a previous Trump rally, and recounting the mindless, disjointed, vacuous nature of the event, and the people and presenters involved – the sense of circus, and the resultant…
Bright Lines
Creative words competition
For our Headline Competition, we asked for a headline on the general election in France.
FINALISTS:
Le Coq-up for Le Pen
–Paul Kelly, Palmerston North
Le Pen not mightier than l’épée
–Susan Hall, Ōamaru
Writing on the wall for Le Pen
–Judith Sorrenson, Auckland
Right. Non. Left. Non. Une Impasse
–Sara Keen, Geraldine
France’s GPS –left, right or centre?
–Hans Zindel, Palmerston North
WINNER: Adroit left puts Le Pen to sword
–Tom Jarman, Christchurch
For the next Bright Lines challenge, please send us a limerick about the discovery of a cave on the Moon.
Don’t forget to include your address with entries.
TO ENTER: Send your entry to brightlinescompetition@aremedia.co.nz with “Bright Lines No 54” in the subject line. Entries must be received by noon, Tuesday, July…
10 Quick Questions
1. Which country was commonly known as Abyssinia until the mid-20th century?
❑ Djibouti
❑ Lesotho
❑ Ethiopia
❑ Benin
2. Who was not one of the Three Tenors?
❑ Plácido Domingo
❑ Luciano Pavarotti
❑ Rolando Villazón
❑ José Carreras
3. Alan Alda played Hawkeye Pierce in the TV version of M*A*S*H. Who played him the film?
❑ Robert Duvall
❑ Elliott Gould
❑ Harry Morgan
❑ Donald Sutherland
4. Which word comes from the Latin for “wave”?
❑ Submerge
❑ Inundate
❑ Antediluvian
❑ Prelapsarian
5. In the 1960s TV show Hogan’s Heroes, who said, “I know nothing!”
❑ Colonel Hogan
❑ Colonel Klink
❑ Sergeant Schultz
❑ Corporal LeBeau
6. Pitcairn Island, a British territory, uses the Australian dollar as its main currency.
❑ True
❑ False…
Quips & Quotes
“It’s scary and sad to see the US slowly tearing itself apart.” “I mean, you know, obviously it’s not ideal.” “Life on Earth began in caves, so it makes sense that humans could live inside them on the Moon.” “I was quite chuffed the other day. I was walking through the other side of the farm and I saw a bush robin [toutouwai] on the track and that’s the first bush robin I’ve ever seen on this farm.” “It’s ridiculous. I make too much money.” “There is an elephant in the room that nobody is talking about much. Drugs.” “Miles threw his horn down and ran upstairs from his basement …he was listening on an intercom to us playing because he felt like his presence there was kind of intimidating…
Bad seeds
Every party has MPs who go rogue. For a few exciting decades around the turn of the century, our politicians flounced out of their parties for ideological reasons. Jim Anderton left Labour to form NewLabour; Peter Dunne and a clutch of others split from their parties to form Future NZ; Winston Peters resigned as he was ushered towards the exit by National and founded New Zealand First; the Greens defected from the Alliance; Tariana Turia quit Labour to launch the Māori Party and Hone Harawira quit the Māori Party to launch the Mana Party.
But modern rogue MPs are primarily rogues. They follow a predictable trajectory: a scandal emerges; the party investigates. A report is produced but rarely made public. The MP splits from their caucus and employs the standard…
The bizarro States of America
Until this summer, my wife’s family’s bach in the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York State has had woeful Wi-Fi, to put it mildly. It has, for years, been a hot-button issue, much like the lovely but lake-view-blocking birch tree in the front yard, as some are concerned a strong connection would keep people indoors, despite the panoply of outdoor natural wonders.
I was always pro-better Wi-Fi, but now regret my lobbying, for never have I longed to be farther out of touch than the other day when someone took a shot at Donald Trump. I found out the moment I returned from a typically gorgeous paddle to find everyone gathered in front of their devices, sifting through the mountains of misinformation in the vain hope that our insane national…
Missing the golden path
Menton has ramped up the radiance. June’s humidity has given way to blazing sun, clear skies, long evening hours of dreamy dusk. The beauty is everywhere – in the light, the colours, the enormous grey rock faces that back the town. The scale of the geography is striking. You can take a bus into the mountains, all the way up to Sainte-Agnès, the highest coastal village in Europe. Every afternoon, the vast limestone cliff behind the apartment is bathed in golden light.
Most restaurants and food are strikingly cheap. But up the road at the border, a starred restaurant offers a menu for €450: “The earth whispers to us a menu inspired by the available set of roots. A journey guided by the movement of sap in plants.”
The border…
When less truly is more
Downsizing, less is more, bigger is not always better: there’s a slew of euphemistic and smugly virtuous phrases for trying to trick humans – who are still hardwired for incipient famine – that a little deprivation is okay, really.
We are a uniquely self-deluding species, but our higher and lower brain functions tell us quite sternly that “less” often means not virtue but misery: redundancy, poverty, loneliness. “More” means abundance, choice, comfort.
Lately, however, people seem to be evolving against big-ness in small but telling and potentially useful ways.
Perhaps the most iconoclastic is room size. For decades, people have been knocking through, adding-on and opening out, shunning walls and doors, save for bathrooms and bedrooms, scornful of past generations’ insistence on discrete rooms.
Now, climate change awareness, soaring energy…
Loss leaders
Emma was at the point of trying anything. She was 49, and 98kg. Her weight had been rising for years. She couldn’t run any more – an activity she’d enjoyed – and her joints were painful. Her doctor had told her she was prediabetic.
Emma (not her real name) is an Auckland-based marketing manager and says she has a healthy relationship with her body, but she also feels the societal pressure of being a larger woman.
“It’s okay to be older if you are slimmer,” she says.
She has noticed this particularly in a work context. “I think if you are an older, overweight woman, you’re just throwing up another hurdle, another barrier in front of yourself. From a business and career perspective, [I feel] I need to be smaller,…
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