The Year In Review - July

Because JY is so devoted to his students he spent his holidays in July with 18 students in Japan. It was a great trip. It had been five years since Cathy and JY left Osaka to come back home and do things like get real jobs, buy a house and have a kid.

Eleanor was a hit wherever she went in Japan. This is pretty unfair. I've tried my best to learn the language and embrace the culture and no elderly Japanese have ever stopped to smile at me and pat my head.

Richard had a slow month, but he did write this. Because life doesn't like it when you feel like you know something the following day he was forced to write the sequel. Little did Richard know, it would get even better on Father's Day.

JY didn't write much. A couple of things about sonnets were ok.

(Photo: Eleanor on the train in Osaka in July)

The Year In Review - June

I read through June and it seems like this was the highlight. It actually was a pretty low high point. Richard's post was way better than mine. Actually, Richard had a good month in his bass bag: he started my favourite story of the year, managed to get an American sword swallower on his blog, and started off on a story about knocking on God's door which he really should finish sometime.

The Curmudgeon started whinging. Second fiddle started the 53rd version of his site.

Presumably the sun came up and went down a few times.

(Photo: Eleanor copying Richard's table manners in June)

The Year In Review - May

My favourite post from Richard in May was this one. Otherwise, Richard seemed to be obsessed with getting some guy called Murray to be the Pope. Richard and JY were limping like wounded sloths towards the middle of the year.

Eleanor had a little operation to put grommets in her ears. At the time this was upsetting, but since the operation she has been a much happier little girl.

JY wrote about how 300 was a movie that promoted fascism (see sidebar), but Richard thought it was just an excuse for more pictures of nearly naked men on this blog.

(Photo: Eleanor in May)

There are photos of Richard on this blog because, well, I'd rather look at Eleanor.

The Year In Review - April

Richard began posting about his long repressed fascination with Jesus, and then he went to Tauranga. In Tauranga he met some students. The followers of Richard's blog couldn't decide if this story of meeting ex-students busking was comic or tragic.

JY wrote a long series of posts about nearly-naked women and Prince. This was very frustrating for Richard. Often he would log on hoping to see a woman in a swim suit and instead he would see an skinny little man with bum fluff. In the end Richard got quite angry.

He should have remembered that for every trip to Tauranga there is another term at school to pay for it.

(Photo: Eleanor in April)

The Year In Review - March

In early March JY spent a couple of weeks at home nursing his injury. Having a broken collarbone means you can't do monkey impressions that involve flailing your arms up in the air. This severely limited JY's ability to teach.

Richard no doubt complained to someone else about 9YJ while JY was away. It was a rough month for Richard. He quit his band because they saw the gift that he bought JY for his birthday (a box set of Samoan music) and made some unkind comments. Moths and stick insects featured heavily on his blog.

The Wine Guy debuted by telling us to drink 22 litres of wine (or something like that).

JY wrote the equivalent of a blovel (blog novel, a word coined by FM) about a man with a normal sized penis who liked to jump around in tights (Nijinsky - see sidebar). Richard seemed concerned about this fixation with the male form. In the end both bloggers took a break. When Richard staggered bleary-eyed out of his blogging den Shelley called the police because she thought there was a strange man in the house.

It turned out she was right.

(Photo: Eleanor in March)

The Year In Review - February

In February of this year we all went back to school for Term One filled with pointless optimism and hope. By Friday of Week One Richard was already complaining about teaching 9YJ Music, little knowing what horrors lay ahead in the class of 9AD. JY blithely mocked and ridiculed Richard, and smugly wore a green T-shirt to Athletics Day with a sign on it saying "imagine this is yellow". Richard, finely attuned to the easily angered nature of the Gods, suspected that Athletics Day would not end well for JY. It did not. Tragically cut down performing superhuman feats on the sports field JY broke his collar bone. So noble was his bearing after the accident that those who witnessed the event were moved as a man to cheer him from the field.

While the ambulance was taking our hero to the hospital it took a detour to go and check in on someone else. The paramedic asked JY if he minded and JY told them it was fine, and that they could go ahead and pick up some groceries at the dairy as well if they wanted. The paramedic got a bit snippy after this and kept asking him to rate his pain on the Powley-Prowse Face Pain Scale. JY found this difficult because there wasn't a face with the caption: "It f**king hurts."

At the end of the month Richard almost had to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance after listening to Ornette Coleman "play" the violin.

JY wrote a series of posts about an Austrian pop star called Falco (see sidebar), and Richard was reduced to petty insults to cover his lack of knowledge about the 1980s Austrian pop scene (exposing an embarrassing gap in the knowedge of a so-called music teacher). JY, forced to take time off school, began to formulate a long, Panadol-addled post about Nijinsky's penis (amongst other things).

(Photo: Eleanor in February)

My Mother's Records

Three

Guess which one is Mum.

This might be my favourite photo of my mother. She looks very "contemporary" although this photo must be from the early 1960s. Of course it was the early 1960s in the far south of New Zealand so we should subtract at least a decade in terms of fashion. Looking at family photos from this period you get the strong feeling that living in Otago in the 1960s was not quite the same as living in America in the 1960s.

Early in my mother's marriage she started going to classes in creative dance held in a room in Otago University in the Physical Education Department. They were taken by someone called Lorna Brown. There were about a dozen people in the class, and they danced to a variety of records including Spanish stuff requiring castanets, shawls and a shuffling mastery of footwork.
When I was a kid one of my toys was a pair of black plastic castanets held together with a piece of red string. Of course I didn't know what they were or how to operate them. They seemed a very cryptic children's toy. Funny how your parents' lives before you were born don't exist when you are a child or a teenager. When you are a teenager you are utterly impervious to the idea that your parents were once young, and felt the things you felt and hated the things you hated.

Then you get older of course. Age does bring perspective. Strangely this reminds me of a piece I read in a book at the beginning of the year. The person writing is a very old Jesuit priest, and he says:

"I am sometimes very conscious that I am following a leader who died when He was less than half as old as I am now. I see and feel things He never saw or felt. I know things He seems never to have known. Evedrybody wants a Christ for himself and those who think like him. Very well, am I at fault for wanting a Christ who will show me how to be an old man? All Christ's teaching is put forward with the dogmatism, the certainty, and the strength of youth: I need something that takes account of the accretion of experience, the sense of paradox and ambiguity that comes with years."

Although my father lived to a reasonable age he died when I was five. It struck me this year that I really knew nothing about him. Am I taller than him? What did his voice sound like? All those photos of my mother and me... he was there, in the room, holding the camera and pushing the button. I really think he must have loved the woman he married. He supported her in the barbarian culture of 1960s Otago to take fashion courses, to do a Masters, to dance.

While my mother was at Lorna Brown's dance classes she worked up an original dance piece set to Mars, Bringer of War from Holst's The Planets. Aside from Mars, Bringer of War and the bit that someone set to Blake and turned into Jerusalem most of this album reminds me of the theme for Star Trek. The last piece even has a female choir. If only von Holst had thought to have someone say "Stardate blah-blah-blah" over the top of it.

It was written in 1914. That means that you have to think about World War One. The liner notes say (about Mars), "It has been called a prophecy of the mechanised warfare that was to come." No. Just because there's a snare drum in there doesn't mean it has anything to do with World War One. I would say most people listening to it now would think of Darth Vader.

Holst composed 200 pieces of music. He's remembered for this. Ravel is remembered for Bolero. Rodrigo for Concierto Andaluz.

My mother bought this after going to see the movie starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. My mother said that seeing this movie in the late 1950s blew her mind. She thought Dandridge was a fantastic Carmen, and the music and dancing were wonderful. On the back of the LP Hammerstein says when he was a kid he went to the opera, liked the music but thought it was silly they were all singing in Italian. Listening to his version I think it's silly they're all singing in English. Frankly the toreador's song is not quite the same when it's about boxing and he says things like "punch him smack on the nose." Nevertheless, my mother passed on the Carmen gene to me. I was brought up on Carlos Sauras' version of Carmen. The Carmen Jones version starred Dandridge and Belafonte but they were both dubbed. So the record has neither of them on it. Dandridge's career didn't pan out very well.

"On the evening of the Pilgramage, the Gypsies gather together in their camp. On the second side of the record you will hear Manitas and his family. His brother plays the guitar with him. His sons, his cousin and his nephew sing, and during this Provencal night they are all present for you, singing, dancing, playing for your pleasure which, today, thanks to this record, is also yours."

This album. This is the jewel in the crown of the collection for me. Manitas' playing is so rough, raw and percussive. Side Two, the live side, is fantastic. Somehow I have never been bothered by not understanding what people are saying when they sing (sorry to the guys who wrote Carmen Jones), it has always been about conveying emotion for me. The wonderful thing about listening to these guys sing is that they are like the brass section in a jazz band, doing their long bluesy runs, and filling in each others gaps, while underneath are the clapping off-beat hands, and pulsing heavy guitar rhthyms. Strong stuff when I was a kid.

About as far away from this as you can get is the "New Flamenco" of Ottmar Liebert. I have two of this man's CDs and have been to one of his concerts. All because my friends knew that I loved flamenco and were being kind. I think enough time has passed for me to say (1) thank you for your generousity, and (2) German flamenco! Oh dear. It sounds like it is being performed by robots. The back of Liebert's CD says (please read it with a fake German accent): "we are dedicated to a process of continuous refinement both artistically and commercially. As in music, so in life." Dreadful. Reminds me of another slogan: "Work Makes One Free." Yeah, right.

The Year In Review - January

This is a photo of my favourite view from our backyard. At the bottom of our garden there is a small pool of lawn surrounded by trees. I like to go down there with a blanket and a book and watch the leaves.

Looking into the depths of the branches reminds me of the idea that you can see the infinite (sorry, Richard) by getting smaller and smaller as well as bigger and bigger in scale. When Eleanor was a new born I would look at the skin on her face when she was sleeping. I found that it was only if I took my glasses off and leaned in until I was almost pressing my nose against her cheek that I could actually see her skin. It existed in a whole other layer of fine detail that you cannot see in a glance.

I think it is a common enough to sometimes feel that you are letting most of life pass you by. When it bothers me enough I make myself notice by drawing things. I like to take a notebook and sketch when I go on holiday. This is probably the only way I will meditate on something. Getting lost inside music can erase your ego (unless you're Andre Rieu), but concentrating on drawing a building or a landscape makes you hyperaware. How has a building, or a tree, or a mud flat bleeding out into the silvery, tidal rivers and reeds, how have they been put together?

Like sketching, writing this blog has made me notice the year a bit more. I have decided to return it to its former shape because I like it better. Even though this is a generic template it still suits me more than the other thing I was mucking around with. I also miss the gravestones (like I miss Nostradameus on RBB). While I was looking over the year of posts on this blog I realised that for the first time in my life I have actually managed to keep a diary for an entire year. I have quite a collection of abandoned diaries around the house so this is a real landmark.

I'm going to go back and tidy up some of my old posts and then put them on the list to the right. So far I've only done one. It was January, there was a sense of optimism in the year, Richard had a spring in his step and a rising sense of dread in his stomach. Even though school was drawing inexorably closer he knew he could get some relief by hitting the bottle and reading: My Mother's Records.

Being Good

There's always a moment at the Christmas party where Santa says: "Have you been good this year?" and everyone laughs. If I were forced on to Santa's knee and directly asked this question I think I would say "define good". This would probably disqualify me from presents.

Actually the smart arse who says "define good" turns out to be the problem that Professor Blackburn only just disposes of in his book Being Good. He satisfactorily gets us to the point where we can say that there is a need in human society for rules governing behaviour, but he can't get us to the point where we can make these rules universal without a bit of fudging. The closest he gets is Kant who suggested that we test each of our rules as if it were going to be applied universally. If we could live with the rule as a universal principle then it is probably a good rule.

Of course there are all kinds of potential problems around this. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a fine and noble thing on the whole, and it is very brave to put some of these things down on paper, but when you start to poke even the simplest of the rights you end up with all kinds of debates. Take the third article:

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person

I couldn't agree more. Of course there are the small problems of abortion, euthanasia, war, and capital punishment to be negotiated. Further, what about the problem of rights that require other people to give up something? If everyone has the right to life, and the right to medical care (Article 25) then this means someone else has to give up a portion of limited resources to pay for the liver transplant of an elderly alcoholic.

Personally I agree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in entirety, and find this sort of intellectual hair-splitting distasteful. I also think that countries that criticise the Declaration as being Western, or disrespectful to Islam, or whatever, are... well, not to sugar coat it, wrong. Who can disagree with this: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood? Notice that it doesn't say we are all equal in ability, just that we are equal in dignity. Any qualification on that equality is wrong.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights seems to me a good balance between rights and responsibilities. For every right that is stated you must imagine the unstated responsibility that goes with it. It is not simply a list of things that we should feel we are owed, because every right has an unspoken responsibility, and, I feel, a duty attached to it. Everyone has the right to life, and so we therefore have a responsibility not to take life, and a duty to speak out when we see this right threatened for others. The rights of the individual are really the rights of the individual within a community, and the community in this case is supposed to be the brotherhood of man. Relativity taken to its conclusion works the other way and becomes the subjectivity of the individual, alone, proclaiming their opinions to no one. Being a person is being a member of a group. I will let KC speak for me here:

"At this point I reveal myself in my true colours, as a stick-in-the-mud. I hold a number of beliefs that have been repudiated by the liveliest intellects of our time. I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction. I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I'm sure that human sympathy is more valuable than ideology. I believe that in spite of the recent triumphs of science, men haven't changed that much in the last two thousand years; and in consequence we must still try to learn from history. History is ourselves. I also hold two beliefs that are more difficult to put shortly. For example, I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos. And I think we should remember that we are part of a great whole, which for convenience we call nature. All living things are our brothers and sisters. Above all, I beleive in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible.... I said at the beginning that it is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."

Kenneth Clark

I think it must been horrendously unfashionable to love Kenneth Clark, but I unashamedly do, and this statement from the end of his fantastic series Civilisation is something that means a lot to me. The end of this series is actually somewhat pessimistic. He quotes the following portion of the Yeat's poem Second Coming,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

For Kenneth Clark in the 1970s it seemed that there was no centre, and it can seem that way now too. We have a centre though if we choose to remember it. The best of civilisations have maintained themselves through tolerance, and tolerance is about brotherhood and brotherhood is about love. This is very hard work. It is much easier to practise fanaticism. Sometimes I am pretty intolerant. Sometimes it is just easier to be rude, meanspirited and petty, even to people I love. Mr. Munro Leaf had this to say in his children's book Manners Can Be Fun,

Very often the people we like most live in the same house with us. We see them so often we sometimes forget to be as nice to them as we are to others. Most of the time it is just because we do not think of it.

The society we want, and the centre we crave is in our home and with our family. This might be why the story of Christmas has some resonance still. I have not always been good this year and I ask your forgiveness. There is always today, and renewing ourselves.

Why asian immigration is good.

Two recent headlines stated exactly how bad our education system is supposed to be.

The first headline gleefully announced that we were crappier than Kazakhstan at science in primary school. We all know this is dire because we have all seen Borat which is a gripping, fly-on-the-wall documentary about the Kazakhstan primary school education system.

The following day we were told that “New Zealand has been ranked second worst among 37 countries when it comes to bullying in primary schools, according to a major international report.” The solitary country below us was Tunisia.

These seemed like remarkable claims so I decided to investigate further. Both stories come from the same report. The report is from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study which “provides reliable and timely data on the mathematics and science achievement of U.S. 4th- and 8th-grade students compared to that of students in other countries. TIMSS data have been collected in 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007.” New Zealand participates in this study for our equivalent of 4th grade; students who are nine to ten years old.

In science, where the average score was given as 500, Kazakhstan was ranked 11th on 533 points while New Zealand was ranked 22nd on 504 points. This is a gap of 29 points, and 11 rankings. Curiously the bigger gap between New Zealand and its academic arch rival Kazakhstan was in maths where they were placed 5th on 549 points and we were 23rd on 492 (below the international average).

Maths (36 participant countries)
Average Score: 500
1. Hong Kong 607
2. Singapore 599
3. Taipei 576
4. Japan 568
5. Kazakhstan 549

11. USA 529
23. New Zealand 492
36. Yemen 224

So, how come the story in the New Zealand media was about science and not about maths which was an even worse result?

*

I have a friend who is doing a PhD in Mathematics. He once observed that he thought it was incredible that in New Zealand it was laughingly accepted if someone was barely numerate (“I can’t do division!”) but regarded as a shameful secret if someone was illiterate. He thought both things should be regarded as equally shameful. He’s right, and I have spent my life as part of the joke.

I was never very good at maths and always faked an illness on maths test day at primary school until my Mother told me she was taking me to the doctor and I was forced to confess. From a very early age I had it in my head that I was going to be an architect. I did Technical Drawing at secondary school and was very good at it. Then someone told me you had to really good at maths to be an architect and I gave up the whole plan.

I got 50% School C. maths. 50%. Actually I probably got 2% and it was scaled up to make a perfect bell curve. I have spent most of my life being very proud of this result. In fact, it is only now that I look back on it and think for the very first time that I was an idiot. My maths education stopped when I was 15. Maths was connected with a career dream that I was still harbouring in my early thirties and yet I still skited about my “perfect” exam result.

Last year I had to take a third form maths class for one spell a week. Sometimes it was a bit hard but what surprised me was that you could actually just sit down, use the textbook and your brain and problem solve and then you would get the answer. A good discovery to make twenty years after School C.

I think how our maths result was non-reported in New Zealand in favour of science tells us something about how we view maths in this country, and when you begin to trawl through how the test was received by the media in participant countries around the world you begin to see certain cultural viewpoints shining though. Here are a few that I thought were interesting.

The Koreans did very well but were glum: “Korean students tend to perform much better in mathematics and science than students in other countries, but have a low level of confidence or interest in the subjects.” The English were quite pleased with themselves, although the Daily Express reported that the reason Singapore was number one was because they were using a textbook from the 1930s, a time when the Empire was still in evidence in that part of the world. The Japanese like the Koreans seemed to be trying to find negative things to focus on in their success: “the decreasing motivation for study among junior high school students is becoming another concern. The number of students that said they enjoyed studying was among the worst three in 48 countries and territories for science, and worst six for math.”

In New Zealand maths isn’t taken seriously. If the headline had been “New Zealand Behind Kazakhstan in Maths” I suspect most people would have just shrugged and thought about how their own maths skills were rubbish anyway. Reading the news in Korea and Japan it’s clear that being in the top five doesn’t necessarily make you happy. Perhaps muddling along being adequate in maths and science is a part of the core identity of what it means to be a New Zealander. Just as it is to beat ourselves with whatever international stick we can find to prove how rubbish we are.

*

And what about that other headline I mentioned at the start about bullying in our primary schools? In this survey bullying was defined as “having something stolen, being hit or hurt by another student, being left out, made fun of, or made to do something you didn’t want to do.” WHAT? Being made to do something you don’t want to? Isn’t that called BEING ALIVE?

Out on the Weekend

Three

In the afternoon Eleanor played in her paddle pool and I carried on reading. I went and lay down on the grass under the trees. When the light of the sun comes to you through the cool green of leaves it is a fine tranquil thing. I started a book called Being Good by Simon Blackburn. It’s interesting although sometimes I have to reread bits to really get it. The author is trying to explain to me what ethics are and why they are unpopular.

“Ethics is disturbing. We are often vaguely uncomfortable when we think of such things as exploitation of the world’s resources, or the ways our comforts are provided by the miserable labour conditions of the third world.” He’s right of course. Sometimes when I reveal a particular absurdity to my History students (things people said about women getting the vote, or the intellectual capacity of the Negro, that kind of thing) I also say: “don’t worry, in 200 years people will be appalled by us.” I hope this is true. I hope that in 200 years people will find our global injustices and arrogance appalling, because that will mean things have changed.

Blackburn’s book begins by going through all the reasons people use for dismissing ethics. This bit of the book would have been really handy if I’d had it in tutorials at university.

First annoying person in my anthropology tutorial: God is dead. There are no morals.

Professor Blackburn’s response: Good things exist separately from God. We know this because God also must decide what is good, (gay=bad, straight=good) and then punish accordingly.

Second annoying person in my anthropology tutorial: It’s all relative.

Professor Blackburn’s response: Quite probably, but given that we have to make a decision what are we actually going to do that we think is best?

Third annoying person in my anthropology tutorial: People just act out of self-interest.

Professor Blackburn’s response: Often people don’t act with enough self interest and ruin their lives by doing things like murdering people over a love affair and wind up going to prison. More importantly, saying this kind of thing is lazy and proves nothing. It gives the illusion of explaining everything, and therefore it explains nothing.

I would have read more but Eleanor had gotten out of the paddle pool and was busy not being good over by the rosemary and I had to go and stop her. Still, I rather like Mr. Blackburn, and I look forward to hearing what else he has to say.

Out on the Weekend

Two

I can take myself too seriously. It actually happens a lot less than it used to. When I was a teenager I think I took myself very seriously most of the time. Nowadays I’m more likely to see myself as a baboon trapped in some elaborate prank. I was taking myself quite seriously when we got back from the library. I was taking myself so seriously that I farted. Eleanor stopped what she was doing and regarded me quite philosophically for some time before saying: “Daddy poo time?”

I think that you’re supposed to take comics seriously if they’re called graphic novels. This seems unnecessarily pretentious. This is probably a way for academics who like comics to justify their study by giving them a serious sounding name. When I was at school I think graphic design was called technical drawing. It is likely the subject got a name change because “drawing” didn’t sound serious enough. It’s funny that the word novel now gives weight to something when it used to be regarded askance, not as a serious art form itself. Still, some stereotypes hold up when you think about comics: the three people over in the comic section when I went there were young men, by themselves with hygiene issues.

It’s a Good Life, If You Don’t Weaken is a comic by Seth. The lead character takes comics very seriously. He buys old issues, collects them, thinks about them. He is a hoarder of old comics and old records. He is alarmed by change, he is a bit of a loner. One day he discovers a one frame gag comic by a guy called Kalo in a back issue of the New Yorker. He becomes fascinated by Kalo and begins to try and find out more about him. I like this about the lead character. I love to do this kind of thing; to hunt down information about people who were once known, and try to put them back together again. Last summer I tried to do this with Captain William Hobson.

In the end we find out quite a bit about Kalo, although quite a bit turns out to be not very much. The protagonist reflects on how a life can be reduced to half a dozen comic strips in another person’s folder. There is a great deal of attention to the beauty of things in this comic. Just as the lead character pays attention to the design and brush work of the single frame gag comics of Kalo so he also stops to notice ordinary things: buildings at night, the passing landscape outside a train window. The collage of our senses and the slowly changing continuity of our identity seem to be what life is really. When a person we know dies then the glue that holds a whole series of things together also dissolves leaving only the their possessions, objects somehow drained of their power. There is memory of course, but memory of a person is different from the person themselves. Memory of a person is mixed up in the identity and perspective of the one who remembers.

Writing a book is a way of putting things back together – taking scatterings from the past and fitting them in a way that makes sense like building a motor out of scrap. I mentioned awhile ago that I was going to write a book. It’s going to be a bit like this motor-building. It will be disguised as a set of biographical essays about people from New Zealand history. I have had a long standing obsession with Richard Seddon so he will be in there. Writing this has reminded me about Hobson. I’m going to start with Hobson.

After Eleanor said “Daddy poo time?” I looked back at her quite steadily and said no. Fatally, I then smiled. Probably it was because I smiled that she didn’t believe my denial. I can tell you this, after you’ve been chased around a bedroom by a two year old who is grabbing at your bum and shouting “Daddy poo time” it is very, very hard to take yourself seriously.