Gutter Journalism

Most of the country by now knows about the tragedy that Bethlehem College has had to deal with these past weeks. It has been an horrific, sad, terrible thing for the school community to be coping with. But - as is often usual, the better side of human nature is displayed in the support and practical help a community offers as it does its best to help those most closely impacted. I could say that this has shown us how blessed we feel to be part of the BC family as we have watched and heard of the care and love shown to these families affected by this tragedy, but I know that this is duplicated time and time again in all places all over  New Zealand when these events occur.

Generally, we are too busy as a family to sit down and watch the 6 o'clock news, but last night just before I went to bed,  I clicked on two online news clips from our two main tv stations. And I was disgusted at the inflammatory use of the English languge that was used on one particular tv station in reporting on events at Bethlehem College.

The opening statement:  "There's been a new twist today in the cover up over who was driving the bus that crashed in Kenya..." (my emphasis added).

If I was a journalist I would be ashamed to use that sensational language. It puts bias on the story, making it sound as though Bethlehem College has been involved in some kind of conspiracy.
The tv station has included a clip from the African man - but they have not given the entire clip, or the context in which he was talking. Extremely misleading and bias. In other words, Bad, bad journalism.

They also show a reporter walking up to the house of the poor young man who has this burden to carry for the rest of his life. Nobody deliberately caused this accident. It was an accident. A mistake. One with terrible consequences; but the way that this particular news station is reporting on it, and the use of slant in their language, they are leaning heavily in the direction of trying to scrape up a scandal.
The other objection I have to it is that they show this young man's family home on the news, and point out that it is for sale (as it has been for awhile now). So now, everyone in Tauranga knows where this boy lives, and can even go and look at pictures of the inside of his house. Is this a breach of privacy? Comes pretty close to it, I should say.

Gutter, gutter journalism. I will not ever be watching this tv station again.

And then I watched TVOne's coverage of the story, and when you compare the two, there is no comparison. Much, much better. More informative, more accurate, and completely neutral - which is what a journalist and news report should be. Well, that's what I was taught anyway.

And then there's the school statement from our Principal. You watch. You read. You judge for yourself.

The unprofessional coverage here.

The real news here.

The school media release statement here.

Pippa's Book

While out shopping for school supplies yesterday, I found Pippa Middleton's book Celebrate on sale.

So thrilled!

I have been wanting to get a copy of it, but had to wait for it to come down in price a bit.

I know that there has been a lot of criticism hurled at Pippa for her book, and for the manner in which she has written it. But you know what? I might be in the minority - maybe - but I like it. And I think good on her for writing it and putting it all together. I'm sure she had a lot of help, but it's still hers, and I bet an awful lot of time and effort and planning went into it.  And I am proud to have it in my bookshelf.

And to be honest, I think the nastiness that some of the critics have said about Pippa and the book, says more about them, than about Pippa and her ability to write.

What I love about the book is the family feel that it has to it with her own ideas and recipes from her "Granny" and tips from her mother. It has a happy atmosphere with beautiful photography and some pretty appealing recipes, not to mention great ideas. I love parties, and I love planning parties. So much of the fun is in the planning.

The dedication in the front of the book.

Pippa comes across as fun-loving, fresh and young, yet practical and centered. For such a public person who has had fame thrust upon her - whether welcome or unwelcome - she seems a very sweet girl, and incredibly loyal and loving to her family. Her introduction shows she has a sense of humour and I love, love, love this sentence - this is exactly how I feel:

"The nurturing of friendship, family and home feels more important than ever to me in a world that sometimes appears to be moving so fast that we forget what really matters."

So, so true, and wise words from a girl not yet 30 years old.

I love the illustrations in the book. I don't know about you, but I think this would be amazing in fabric!

And I like the fact that small and big occasions should be cause enough for great celebrations. The Americans have this somehow embedded deep into their culture, and the British are the best at pomp and ceremony,  but maybe especially those of us who are their offshoots can take a leaf out of this book and learn to celebrate the annual festivities with style and simplicity and fun! I know that sometimes I am rushing through life with the daily demands of my family and I neglect to take the time to celebrate the changing calendar and all the little festivities that roll around each year. And the personal milestones within our family and the celebration of friends and relationships. I would like to change that.

And look at this - a recipe that uses Nutella! Other than spreading on toast. Now, I'm glad to have that! My children beg me to buy it while we are in the grocery store, and then they use it once and it sits in the pantry for weeks (ok, months).

So, I for one am thumbing my nose at Pippa's critics and celebrating her beautiful book. I'm glad to have it. Now if only I could get it autographed. Ha!

And So We Begin Again

They say that three times is the charm. Not that I believe in that really; but we are about to embark on building our third house.
We met this morning with the man who is in charge of it all. We stood on our section under the shade of a Jacaranda tree in all its purple loveliness, and talked house plans.

We truly believe that God kept this plot of land for us. The Bethlehem subdivision is nearly 20 years old, and we have just bought the last section. It has been vacant for all this time. The owner purchased it with plans to extend his garden, but it just happens to be a prime spot. Less than 5 minutes walk to school and kindy, a cafe, my brother-in-law's, and just off the main highway. It's perfect for us, and as the owner has had it on the market, on and off, for awhile, we know that we know that we know (as we used to say in YWAM days), that God has kept it for us all these years. He knew we'd end up here, and that we'd love it, and that we'd never want to leave.

So here it is - our little piece of miracle. And I am fighting to keep the Jacaranda.

Plumminess

I love the word Plum. It's such a plummy word.

Our elderly neighbour gave us a bag of plums this week. Incidentally, I love the way the older generation put things into old bread bags. It's not so common to do that anymore... but I like it.
As well as those, yesterday I received another large bag from the mother of one our children's friends. And there is a large bough broken on a large plum tree up at my brother-in-laws house, so there are hopes of more plums to come.

This afternoon - being cooler - I set to work on Plum Jam and Plum Chutney. I have a recipe tucked away for Plum Cordial, when I get some more, and does Plum Icecream sound nice.....??

Plum jam is so easy.
My recipe is . . .

2kg Plums
1 1/2 cups of water
7 cups of sugar.

I nearly lessened the sugar by one cup, because really, 7 cups of sugar!!! Seems a little too much, but in the end I didn't, which is just as well, because the jam is a little on the tart side, which I, and everyone else in my household happens to like, but if I'd left the cup out, we would have been pulling funny faces at each other.

The plum chutney recipe is my own, although there is one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's that I am keen to try here. But for now, this is mine:

1 onion, finely diced
500gms plums, roughly sliced
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1tsp salt
1 1/4 cups Malt Vinegar
1/2 tsp chilli powder
Fresh ginger chopped and bound in a muslin bag (as much as you like).

Boil until sugar is dissolved, and then turn heat down and simmer for 30-40 minutes until it is reduced and thickened.

The Life of Pi - a movie review... kind of.

Last night I went to the movies to see the Life of Pi. I went with my sister-in-law and niece and cousin. Life of Pi was actually the third on my priority list of movies I wanted to see this summer, but my niece had seen Les Miserables and my sister-in-law had seen Quartet and none of us had seen Life of Pi, so it was the obvious choice. The movie is an adaptation from the book, Life of Pi written by Yann Martel.

picture source here

I nearly didn't go and see it. My instinct is to flinch from anything sad or brutal, and this movie is both. But it is also beautiful. Truly beautiful! There is such a deep, human-ness about the story, that it is a movie that will stay with me for a long while, I think. There are so many reviews and plot outlines out there in internet-land of what the Life of Pi is about, that I will not add mine to the myriad.

If you like literature that is not main-stream, and by that I mean has a message, has a depth to it, not fluffy or of common genre, and written from a unique viewpoint, then this is something you will enjoy. I read somewhere that this was described as the film that was unfilmable, because the main characters are a boy and a tiger... trapped in a small boat. But the filmmakers have worked their magic and it comes to life on the big screen (3D is awesome).
There's this one part where the tiger jumps out from under the boat cover, and a woman in the theatre actually screamed - which made us all laugh and lessened the tension.

When the book first came out, I was intrigued by it and thought it would be something I'd enjoy, but I must have read a few bad reviews of it and how hard it was to read, and that put me off. How wrong they were. How wrong was I!

I loved the gentle Indian-style music at the beginning of the movie, and the anecdotes of village life before the disaster of the shipwreck and what followed - which is the main theme.

Truly - you will be doing yourself a disfavour if you miss it.

How to survive without air-conditioning

This summer, the rotating fan is my best friend. I haven't had to use it since I was a student of 19 and studying at a christian university in Hawaii. The sound of a fan whirring and rotating is the sound of a hot summer!

And since our migration north to the tropics (a slight exaggeration, maybe; but that is what it feels like), we are having to learn to survive without airconditioning in our rented, two-storied house. We had airconditioning in our Canterbury house - without it, the nor'west winds are not survivable.

This is probably very much a first-world issue, and while I love it warm I am not very productive when I have my makeup melting on my face. Seriously, if I wear sunglasses or my reading glasses, they just slide down my nose in this heat. I think I was really made for colder climates.

So the first, non-optional (I tell that to Rob at least once a day) luxury for our new house is air-conditiong in the upstairs bedrooms.
And being school-holidays, I can't make home-made iceblocks fast enough, so I have stocked up on grocery-store-bought iceblocks, and we make icecreams in a cone once a day and ice-cream sodas (or spiders) are excellent for making the children feel like they've had a treat and really only using a small amount of icecream and soda.

Thank the Lord for Rob's older brother who lives across the road and generously allows us to use their pool whenever we like, or the children and I would not have survived this hot and humid summer - you should see what it does to my hair. I call it, 'going native.'! Even my children are shocked to see for the first time that I have naturally curly hair, but no amount of flat-ironing seems to stay in this weather.

Last night, just for a change and because the house was intolerable, we packed up a picnic tea of cold chicken, salad, hot chips and fudge for desert and headed for our favourite spot at Pilot Bay. It's the family-friendly side of Mount Maunganui. The ocean side has a long, beautiful, golden beach full of surfers and serious waves, while the other side is in a harbour inlet and cocooned quietly away from the ocean winds, which means safe swimming for children and sheltered enough for picnics.

There were a lot of families there, and the atmosphere is lovely. We ate our dinner and some of us read and some built sand-castles and some splashed and paddled in the sea. And we cooled off and stayed until the sun dipped below the horizon and the sandflies came out to play.

 

We watched a container ship come into the harbour from the Pacific Ocean, being pushed along by a tug boat. Earlier in the week, Hugh was out there sailing in his boat with his class, learning the rules of racing. They even have to negotiate these giants.

Alice found her brother's sunglasses and kept us entertained with songs and dances.... and poses.

 By the time the sun went down, and we packed up to head home, it was almost 9 o'clock.

Geocaching

Years and year ago I was getting an American magazine in the mail. It was my little indulgence - my little piece of America. These are the best, loveliest, 'real-life' magazines available on the planet! The magazine was Country Woman. There are no advertisements, except 'in-house' and are almost entirely written and contributed to, by the readers. I love it, and I still do. On and off over the years I have renewed my subscription when we were going through 'plentiful' times.

In one of those magazines I read about Geocaching, and was so intrigued by it.
Geocaching is hunting down a 'treasure box' secretly placed in any part of the world with public acccess. The GPS coordinates are then shared on the Geocaching website, and anyone with a GPS, or in our case, a printout with the clues can go and find it. You sign the little book inside the box, and can (it's optional) replace a little 'gift' item, then tuck the box back where you found it ready for the next hunter.

When I first read about it in this little American magazine, I looked up the website and found that there were only a handful in New Zealand. The one most accesible to us at the time was in the Marlborough Sounds at the start of the Queen Charlotte Track. But now, several years later, there are hundreds and it's a hobby that seems to be growing and growing in popularity.

At New Year's Robin's brother James and Mary (Uncle James and Aunty Mary) came out to the bach for a couple of nights, and re-introduced geocaching to us, by suggesting we look for the two or three out near our beach that is listed on the website. How exciting!!!

However, the GPS had been accidentally left at home, but fortunately Aunty Mary had printed out the instructions so we trekked over the hill to Tawhitokino to have a look. I must say, as James scaled treacherous rocks and some of us climbed and skidded up into the bush, and overturned rocks, it felt a bit like being on the reality tv show, Survivor, and hunting for a Hidden Immunity Idol.

We couldn't find it anywhere, and then reading the instructions again, we realised that the box must be out on the point! Here, to be precise.... which is no easy feat to get to. 

 You can't see it, but there's a massive gap halfway along the rocks, with the sea churning below. I have never done it, although Rob and the children - and the dog - have. But it was getting  late in the day, and it's tide-dependent, so I think we'll save that hunt for another time.

But the children did find one on the track over to Tawhitokino and replaced the little toy with a marble from Theodore's stash. Such great fun, and it's free, and it's now all over the world.

The Caretaker's Garden

A few years ago I blogged about the little cottage on our family's beach property.
The cottage once was lived in by Rob's grandfather and grandmother. It's called Narnie's bach, and is very basic - just two bedrooms, a small living room, and a kitchen the size of a cupboard and a bathroom. It's over 80 years old already.

But it's very quaint and I just love it for it's cuteness. If it were mine I'd be painting it white with green trim around the windows, and painting the interior white with little red gingham curtains, or something from Cath Kidston, or lovely, light, dreamy, creamy linen!!! For most of the year, the family have a caretaker living in the cottage as security for the beach property, but over January and February the caretaker vacates it so family can use it as extra accomodation.

We wandered up there to visit some cousins and to look at the garden. The caretaker's wife is the most amazing gardener, and going by what I found in the garden, I'd say they would almost be self-sufficient.

Chickens - but I'm told only one is laying which tells me that the caretaker's wife must be a bit of a softy, and hanging onto her aging chooks.

 

I loved all the little paths through the garden that are lined with shells. I think it's a funny coincidence that I'd just been reading one of my favourite Anne books where her gardens were lined with shells too.

So many pretty flowers scattered through the garden....

 

And as if the view isn't enough to look at....

... the caretaker's wife also has some pretty fun artworks around the cottage and garden. Meredith in particular, loved them, and asked me to take some photos for inspiration.

 

 

"Does the song of the sea end at the shore or in the hearts of those who listen"

  

This is an old figtree that Robin's grandfather planted.

 

And a massive Misletoe tree with red berries, but they were too high for my camera to catch ...

Children playing in the garden ... and helping themselves to raspberries ...

The steps that come down the hill to the caretaker's house ...