Out of places deep on Great Barrier Island The Pestival Every Kiwi knows that New Zealand has a tough problem of introduced species wreaking havoc on forests and other native habitats, birds and invertebrates. The situation is so controversial that not even everyone agrees that something ought to be done to try to reverse the trend, and those who agree on that disagree vehemently on what it is that ought to be done. The arguments, motivations and conflicts of interest over 1080, brodifacoum, glyphosphate and other biocides vs trapping alone have raged the entire 22 years we’ve been in New Zealand, and no doubt did long before that and will into the future. “Predator Free NZ 2050” sounds like a an indisputable common goal, but it’s a minefield. Though Great Barrier Island is two-thirds protected land, mostly bush, and not one possum, stoat, ferret, weasel, wild goat, deer, horse or thar can be found here, it has serious woes with rats, feral cats and pigs, rabbits and plague skinks (not to mention invasive introduced plants, ants and other insects, as well as serious plant diseases). Everyone is concerned, except those who want to let the seemingly losing battle amongst the native and the introduced run its course, come what may. A full house gathered for the Pestival at the Claris Conference Centre to find out how other New Zealand communities and projects are tackling their pest problems to protect native wildlife. Some samples below. Stewart Island Around Half Moon Bay on Stewart Island, a trust is trying to stay on top of possums, rats and feral cats in a 210-hectare open sanctuary. Just like on the Barrier, the work is done mostly by volunteers who trap, trap, trap, and trap some more. They also weed, revegetate and monitor birds. Half Moon Bay, Oban, Stewart Island Bay of Islands Project Island Song is the Bay of Islands’ wildlife sanctuary. Thanks to a partnership between community conservation group Guardians of the Bay of Islands, tangata whenua and the Department of Conservation, the seven main islands in the eastern Bay of Islands have been pest-mammal free since 2009, and natural ecosystems are being restored. The presenter, BJ Black, we learned after his talk, was rather modest about his role. In fact he’s been working almost fanatically for years to set, monitor and reset traps and coordinate volunteers over 3000 hectares! Other facets of the project are a biosecurity awareness campaign, weeding and revegetation, education and tours, and reintroduction of native species. Cacaphony Project to the rescue! As we know and heard, trapping as it’s done now can be frustratingly slow, difficult and labour intensive. The non-trading, not-for-profit Cacaphony Project are a group of inventors and high-techies who are passionate about radically improving the situation. In collaboration with others equally keen, they’re developing a set of open-source IT gear they believe will increase trapping efficiency by many tens of thousands of times. Thermal cameras, speakers and sensors placed in the bush use light, sound and scent to lure predators into traps, with room for several predators in each trap! AI identifies them and the invasives are “eliminated”, and all the while bird song is monitored to measure the impact of the interventions. To achieve their goal of a 100 percent predator-free New Zealand as quickly as possible, the Cacaphony Project is partnering with businesses better placed to offer the tools to councils and conservation groups, rather than trying to do everything themselves Meanwhile, Great Barrier Island has been awarded $3 million from Predator Free 2050 to support a pest control project over much of the island – but should poison be part of the plan? Alas, the rancour has already begun. The Killing Nation Coincidentally with all of that, one Sunday the phone rang at Aotea FM when I was doing my show. The backstory! In truth I often throw in comments that are at best less than neutral about what’s going on in the world. I was talking about the book Count Down, that is, sperm count. Sorry to say, but these most necessary counts have decreased 60 percent since 1973 and are continuing to decline. If they continue on their current path, sperm counts may well reach zero by 2045. Human vitality is weakened by all sorts of assaults these days, but the blame for this endgame decline mostly lies with PFAs – fluoride-laden chemicals that until recently were the basis of products like Scotchgard and Teflon. Same story, corporations hid the truth for decades. I went on to say that many other equally life-destroying substances are out there but it’s near impossible to link specific cause with specific effect, so they continue to be produced and unsuspecting people continue to buy them. ETC!! The phone rang during the next song (it was either Steve Forbert’s “Good Planets are Hard to Find” or James Taylor’s “Gaia”). It was someone listening from the upper Coromandel. No surprise that she asked if I’d be happy to share information about 1080 drops planned for the coming months and ask listeners if they’d email their opposition to the Waikato District Health Board. Of course I was, but instead I interviewed her the following Sunday. COME TO FIND OUT!!! My caller was Reihana Robinson, tireless though disheartened researcher and activist for economic, social and environmental justice and the author of books whose titles I knew! She’s also an organic farmer, poet and artist: reihanarobinson.co.nz Now we’re email friends. She shares her ongoing work for the greater good, and other information of interest, and as I do with several friends, we muse over where the world is going and what is our most sane and ethical response. Reihana took these photos of the Barrier seen from the Coromandel. New fruits Gerald of Okiwi Passion has a wonderful habit of delighting us with surprises of unusual fruits planted decades ago by his father that he and Caity don’t usually sell. This is an inga bean! When Gerald was in South America, he saw children eating them and climbing high in the trees to collect more. We can understand why – the fluff around the seeds feels like cotton candy (candy floss) and tastes as sweet. They’re also called ice cream beans, but I think that’s a stretch! These trees are high indeed – up to 30 metres! They’re grown up and down the Amazon region not only for the tasty snacks within the pods, but also for protein from the cooked beans (more than 10 percent); medicine from the leaves, seeds and bark that treats a big range of ills from eye problems to headaches, coughs, digestive issues, rheumatism and even bad moods; and fermenting into an alcoholic drink. The copious shade of the trees protects under-crops of coffee, tea and cacao. The wood is used for small building projects and fuel. It’s a model permaculture plant! And these are lucuma. Marsha and I wrote about lucuma in the Wholefoods Handbook, but only in the abstract as an exotic superfood powder from Peru. I can tell you there’s no comparison with the real thing! Our lucuma entry says “Its sweet fruit, with rich, creamy, orange and yellow pulp – the ‘Gold of the Incas’ – has been cultivated since ancient times. Its delicious maple syrup flavour is a favourite for many South Americans, especially for ice cream!” Gerald and Caity can vouch for the bliss of the ice cream and all of us love it in our smoothies! Beachcombing There’s always something different waiting to be found on our walks on Kaitoke Beach. The waves and tides fascinate infinitely, of course, and the sand also offers visual delights and wonder. Sometimes it’s patterns. Wee ridges covered much of the beach after a strong northeasterly. Shells distributed all over the beach had protected the sand on their leeward side, so ridges formed. Sometimes it’s dotterels or oystercatchers ... … whose tracks may go in unfathomable directions. Like, what the heck happened here? Occasionally, pumice. That’s here, we think, because we live nearly in the shadow of an extinct volcano, Te Ahumata, and the life of pumice begins in a volcanic eruption. When an ultra-heated, highly pressurised rock is violently ejected, suddenly it’s no longer ultra-hot and pressurised, but cooled and depressurised. It’s foamy-ish because depressurisation creates bubbles like those of the carbon dioxide created when you open a bottle of ginger beer or kombucha. All of a sudden the gases, and water, that were “dis”-solved in the lava “ex”-solve and form bubbles that are trapped within the transformed rock. New Zealand and the ocean around it have a volcanic history. Te Ahumata (photo) is one of three extinct volcanoes on the Barrier that are part of the Coromandel Volcanic Zone, and White Island isn’t far away, but the origin of the pumice on Kaitoke Beach does remain an open question. For a few days, it was sponges on the beach! We found all these different kinds on one walk. Why on this day a conglomeration of sponges? What are sponges anyway, how do they hold so much water, and can you really use them to wipe off your benchtops? Research and learn! A sponge is a marine animal so simple it has no organs! Instead, its huge surface area does the job of absorbing oxygen and nutrients and ridding it of waste. It reproduces by budding – sending out extensions that develop new wee sponges at their tips that eventually detach. A sponge is basically a flexible skeleton, a labyrinth of narrow channels and cul-de-sacs that slow down water and hold it within. Squeeze a sponge, the channels compress and the pressure pushes out the water. Synthetic sponges are similar, except they’re made of plastic and once discarded break down into Mermaid’s Tears – the microplastic particles that are relentlessly permeating the Earth’s air, land and sea. If they’re “antibacterial” or “anti-odour”, they probably contain the toxic pesticide triclosan, which is not only linked to health problems but doesn’t break down in the environment and is one of the most common human-made chemicals found in waterways. A home-grown solution is at hand! Bree posted this on Barrier Chitchat. “We love to try and grow new things in our garden – especially trying things that can replace items in our household. “This past year we loved growing our first crop of luffa sponges! So fun! This is just our partial crop - we got at least 40 off of 10 plants, plus they multiply when you cut them to a useable size." “Luffas are an excellent replacement for shower and dish sponges. We can honestly say it's the best dish brush we've ever used, plus it's fully compostable when you're through. How great!” From Out of Places Deep Thanks to great teamwork amongst the author, his partner, his editor (me!) and his designer, the awesome poetry book of my friend in the UK is ready for publishing! He’s offering Wonderground free in “an attempt to stimulate, entertain, inform and inspire the introspective nature of the reader.” In the preface he writes: Poetry is personal ... Best silently construed And pondered by the feeling eye Of heart where none intrude It gifts to you alone What you alone perceive therein Best read subdued in quietude To glean what lies within Early on in the process I wrote to him: "With your writing, one must use one’s brain for its intended purpose, and flex one’s vocabulary muscles, and consult one's dictionary! Then the rewards are many.” Keep that in mind as you peruse what lies within!
- - - - - - - - Down to the Wharf by Mike Scott I’m a part-time Barrier carrier Bays and bays fill my gaze and make for wonderful days Load empty stock, head down to the dock, watching the clock Johnny Blackwell has an awkward load, but he’ll tie it down, make it gel. He’s an expert, you can tell. Trucks and forklifts. Two Waynes, plenty of brains. There’s Jacquie. She’s in control, got things to roll. This place has got soul. Dave’s got a massive load. Planks and pallets. Plaster and pipes. He’ll make sure it’s carefully stowed. Farewell to the ferry. Wind’s blowing, going to be hairy. Downright scary. Glad I’m staying. Pity the passengers. There’s no delaying, soon they’ll be praying. Off around the bays again, eyes on the road, keen as a harrier. Lucky to be a part-time Barrier carrier. Bays and bays fill my gaze. Barrier people make for wonderful days. Mike’s not only a poet! He gave us a copy of this sweet book he wrote and illustrated, all puns about banded rails, the endearing roadrunner-like native birds. A few pages…. The wonder plant In early winter a seedling sprouted in our tulsi pot that we thought was a cayenne pepper, which occasionally pop up in the garden. As it grew we realised it was a capsicum, one of the GIANT Marconi Red variety that Caity and Gerald grow. Ro moved the wee plant to a pot of its own, where it shot up so fast we could just about watch it grow. It was very happy in the bright warmth behind the north-facing ranch slider, where it was lavished with attention and admiration from us and our visitors. Before long the pot seemed more like a thimble and Ro moved the plant to a container five times as big. It relished its roomy new home. Blossoms emerged! Soon three baby peppers were growing. By now they’re nearly full size. It’s been a real joy to observe it at close range and cheer it on, and we're looking forward to this come spring! Glimpses of the past from Barrier Chitchat Antique hide and seek “This is our grandson Jay hiding in a milk churn from the 1920s and 1930s, from the Cave Farm in Shoal Bay. .The original farmhouse burnt down and the churn was gifted to us. It’s been reconditioned and now sits in our apartment in Mount Eden.” Tryphena Hall, then and now Now it’s the office of the Aotea Family Support Group Clotheslines don’t change much "Hopefully you can see the Tilley lamps we had to use and the saws for firewood.” Date: the good old days! Flying to and from Auckland in those good old days ... “… when you could catch the plane from Mulberry Grove beach to town. Sea Bee Air's Grumman Goose ZK-DFCX was often also the emergency transport off the island.” [Barrierites call Auckland “town”. We found that amusing after Takaka was “town” for 16 years. Some here even call the mainland “New Zealand”!] “Capt. Fred Ladd was a real character. He used to get in the plane, which was full of excited passengers, sit at the controls and say out loud, 'Now, what did I do last time?’" And the present – look out for drones A drone came within 30 m of a Barrier Air flight into Auckland Airport one late afternoon in April, causing a temporary suspension of international and domestic flights. North Barrier Coop Gerald collects the Ceres Organics coop order from Tryphena wharf, to be split by members at Okiwi Passion’s great big shed the following day and picked up by other members or delivered by the splitters. Coop membership grew so much since we joined in 2015 that it split into North Barrier and Aotea South coops. Perhaps it will split again, into North, Central and South! Giant parsnips from Gerald and Caity Wildebeest in a bag Ruapehu, taken by friends on their way south North Barrier beauty by Bree Kaikoura Island Kākā Kererū and tūī at Windy Canyon Whangapoua estuary Rakitu Island, 4 km off Whangapoua Beach Tide pool Far end of Whangapoua Beach, through the gap at low tide to the next bay Port Fitzroy sunset
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Power and Glory on Great Barrier Island A roundup of events, phenomena and photos from our island home, beginning with a warning from MetService that turned out to be not quite right. Scary as the warning may have been, instead of high winds and heavy rain, Barrierites were treated to a week of spectacular big seas, surpassing even the might of a similar event several years back. Less welcome were the unprecedented high tides that covered the big, wide beaches, washed away sand and cut into the dunes. Photos were emailed back and forth, attached to PMs and posted on Chitchat, footprints proliferated on the beaches, at least at low tide, and no conversation was complete without expressions of astonishment about the mighty waves. Photos by Bree, Margaret and me. Kaitoke Beach Here’s where I almost became one with my subject matter! I was only in up to my feet but an unexpected wave came in right up to my knees and the pull was so strong going out it was almost “down came Joanna, camera and all”! The tide came right over the huge beach and cut into the dunes. Medlands South end Medlands Rakitu Island from Whangapoua. Whangapoua is another Very Wide Beach and the tide came right up to the dunes. All Ready Free & let’s talk about life! I’ve already introduced lovely Kat, founder and baker par excellence at Glow Sourdough. Wednesday mornings she gets out of bed at 4:30 am and drives to Tryphena to bake 36 loaves of fresh slow-ferment sourdough, which she’s already looked after for the two preceding days. They’re treasured by lucky island households who are either members of her Bread Club or who have made it onto her weekly list before they’re all sold out. She also made incredibly yummy sourdough hot cross buns at Easter time. This is her equally lovely partner, Bodhi, who launched his first CD in April at an outdoor concert at the art gallery. All Ready Free was recorded out in nature on the island. It’s a totally, well, free and wholly original creative mix of partly spontaneous spiritual heart-based singing, rapping, chanting, didge, taonga Māori and birdsong, with friends contributing voices and music on some of the tracks. His website is allreadyfree.me. Bodhi invited me to his radio show to talk about Life, but as it happened he came to mine. I loved anticipating the different perspectives we’d bring, with our very different life experiences and difference of 40 years of living on Planet Earth. Using his album title as a starting point, we talked about freedom in many senses – the simple freedom to choose and its moral foundation, freedom from your conditioning and your past, freedom as a state of mind vs actual tangible freedom, and the big question of remaining at inner peace while aware of and even working among those who are suffering injustice and other social traumas. And then we talked about the self – the duality of its surface aspects of thoughts, feelings and body, and its deeper permanent essence, and about living with surrender and trust, self-enquiry as a means of personal growth and better relationships. Stuff like that, and we had fun too and it was pretty cool. The classical connection The following Sunday I phone-interviewed Rick Young, our favourite presenter on the Radio NZ Concert Programme, who would soon be leaving the station after 20 years to pursue other interests. Ro and I loved his late-afternoon show, The Classical Connection, and his presenting style, always warm, gracious and good-humoured, and over the years I didn’t hesitate to tell him so! We became email friends, and he was happy to oblige my request for an interview. I’ve interviewed a lot of people in the studio and by phone, about topics from homoeopathy, herbal medicine and women’s physiotherapy to a very indie type of music literally called noise, to a very different sort of music with specific healing qualities, to the worldwide menace of screen-induced myopia in children, to a sailboat voyage from Tahiti to British Columbia, plus a few about friends’ favourite music, and of course, life! Rick was by far the most prominent person, and I was even more excited than usual! The interview turned out to be great fun, more a conversation than a formal interview. Rick even put me on the spot with one of his very popular classic cryptic clues! He was kind and made it easy! It was “a degree reversing Swedish singers”, 4 letters beginning with “a”. Can you work it out? He gave a different music-related clue every day during his show, and hundreds of people would be in a mad rush to text in, vying to be in the top 12. Afterwards I finished the classical hour with some of Rick’s favourites: Nimrod from the Enigma Variations by Elgar, Jupiter from The Planets by Holst, the slow movement from Mozart’s clarinet concerto, and Solveig’s Song from Peer Gynt by Grieg. Rick said he imagines the presenter’s desk at RNZ Concert is very similar to the one at little old Aotea FM, and it is, just a bit more flash, and the phones are identical! You can listen to our 25-minute interview and Rick’s picks here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yisywkxzd94oy5l/Joanna%20interview%20with%20Rick%20Young.mp3?dl=0 Missing are the first few seconds of the interview (“It’s my absolute pleasure to introduce Rick Young, who has been a presenter on Radio New Zealand concert for 20 years”) and the last few seconds of the show, when I wrapped it up and said goodnight. 21st century alchemy Meanwhile a few km down the road at the Claris Conference Centre, what seemed an almost alchemical workshop was going on as part of the Barrier’s annual Off the Grid festival. The speaker was a rep from SOURCE hydropanels – a solar technology needing only sunlight and air to make drinking water! They look like solar panels but instead of generating energy they use the power of the sun to create an endless volume of clean, reliable drinking water from air. Installed on roof or ground, they extract water vapour from the air to make, mineralise (with calcium and magnesium), ozonate and deliver drinking water to a tap without need for another power source. https://www.source.co To us hydropanels seem to be upscaled distillers. The jury is out on hydropanels, with both sceptics and believers. Some say they’re an “incredibly inefficient means of making water that has caught the imagination of billionaire backers and ill-informed philanthropists” and “There’s no place on earth where a hydropanel is the most cost-effective source of water”. That’s all I know! 21st century awesomeness A festival workshop of high interest to Ro and me was on a more familiar topic also relevant to Great Barrier Island and in fact the entire world: the transformation of Denmark’s Samsø’s Island, which we’d read about four years ago in Australia’s wonderful Renew magazine. In just ten years, this island went from 100% reliance on imported oil and coal to 100% renewable electricity. Check out Renew, a not-for-profit organisation "that has inspired, enabled and advocated for people to live sustainably in their homes and communities since 1980”: renew.org.au If you doubt the potential of renewable energy, or you’d love to be inspired, look beyond the Barrier to Samsø, whose 4000 inhabitants have been energy-positive for the past decade, producing more energy from wind and biomass than they consume. Samsø’s transformation from a carbon-dependent importer of oil and coal-fuelled electricity to a paragon of renewables started in 1998, when the island won a government competition to take on the challenge of becoming a showcase community, to prove that the country’s target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 21% was achievable. The contest funded the salary of one person tasked with making the island’s 10-year renewables plan a reality. And he did! In less than a decade, the transformation to carbon neutral was complete. By 2000, 11 one-megawatt (MW) wind turbines supplied the island’s 22 villages with enough energy for self-sufficiency. Two years later 10 offshore wind turbines were generating 23 MW of electricity to offset emissions from the island’s cars, buses, tractors, and ferries to the mainland. The island sells the excess energy to the Danish national grid. In addition, three district heating systems were built to supply three-quarters of the island’s houses with heating and hot water from centralised biomass boilers fuelled with locally grown straw. Houses outside the heating districts replaced oil furnaces with solar collectors or biomass boilers. Now Samsø residents’ carbon footprints are NEGATIVE, on average negative 12 tonnes per person per year, compared with a Danish average of +6.2 tonnes and a New Zealand average of +8 tonnes. The community came to the party with great gusto, contributing enthusiasm for both self-sufficiency and emissions reduction as well as funds to achieve the goals. For example, the wind turbines are owned by a combination of private owners, investor groups, the municipal government and local cooperatives. Locals contributed about $2.7 million (converted to NZ dollars) to buy two turbines outright, and individuals bought the other nine. Two offshore turbines are cooperatively owned, and the five owned by the municipality generate income to reinvest in sustainability projects. The island’s vision now is to be fossil fuel-free by 2030. Islanders already own the highest number of electric cars per capita in Denmark. The municipality has replaced its diesel-powered ferry with one that runs on gas, and in time the ferry will run on island-generated biofuel and wind-charged batteries. Other petrol-powered vehicles will be replaced by electric or biofuel alternatives. My conclusions: 1) The Barrier is off-grid, power-independent and wonderful, but the Samsø model of community energy independence is much further finessed and progressed than our model of individual energy independence. 2) Samsø exemplifies Margaret Mead’s oft-quoted words: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. Sea Cleaners This charitable trust has been working full time for nearly 20 years to try to stem the plastic tide, or at least hide it. Sea Cleaners coordinates volunteers to clean up coastlines all around the country. Sometimes their work is in partnership with the New Zealand Navy, simultaneously collecting rubbish and training youth in humanitarian aid response. In 160,000 total hours with volunteer help, they’ve removed from the sea nearly 100 million pieces of rubbish, or 10.9 million litres, enough to fill 325 shipping containers. It’s all crammed into – plastic! bags and brought to “resource recovery centres”, where it’s no doubt landfilled, plastic bags and all. Sea Cleaners and the New Zealand Navy recently coordinated a clean-up around the shores of the Barrier. Groups in different locations collected a total of over 10,000 litres of debris, mainly plastic. Like many islands, ours is a landing spot for waste from the mainland. Among the junk were toxic items such as batteries from cars, boats and solar power, and a wheelbarrow tray from the giant containership Rena that grounded off Tauranga ten years ago and later broke in half. Items from the Rena are still coming ashore along the east coast of North Island. The Rena was the largest ship ever lost in New Zealand waters. It was 236 m long, weighed 40,000 tonnes and carried 1300 20- and 40-foot containers. The financial and ecological costs of the disaster were also the greatest in NZ history. He ingoa o ngā wāhi o Aotea – place names of Great Barrier Island Since our first visit to New Zealand, for seven months in 1989-90, I’m been fascinated by Māori place names, for they hold clues to flora and fauna, natural features and history. I’ve been learning the meanings of some of Aotea’s place names, which link us to people, events and culture going back a thousand years. Aotea: Great Barrier Island’s Māori name likely comes from the waka Aotea, one of the great voyaging founding waka. The harbour between Raglan and Kawhia is this waka’s final resting place and is also called Aotea. The Aotea Memorial Waka distinguishes the main street of Patea in South Taranaki. It was built in 1933 to commemorate the settlement of the area by Turi, leader of the Aotea waka, and his hapū. Ruahine: The high peak in the south of Great Barrier is named for Turi's granddaughter. Santi and his mum cheer after reaching Ruahine Lookout. Okupu: The mythical navigator Kupe was aboard one of the first waka to arrive from Hawaiki, before the waka Aotea. The ridge above Blind Bay, where we first lived on the island, is called Okupu – fully Ō-Kupe-Mai-Tawhiti, meaning “of Kupe from far away”. Kupe is believed to have eventually returned to Hawaiki, leaving from Hokianga, in Northland, which is a noun that means “return”. This is the view to the west from Okupu Ridge. Ngā Taratara (spikes) ō Toi: At the northern tip of the island, The Needles are part of Ngā Poitō ō Te Kupenga ō Toi, the floats of the net of ancestor Toi, who arrived from Hawaiki in the 12th century. When viewed from the ocean in certain weather, The Needles seem to bob like floats on a net.Te Moana Nui a Toi, “The Big Sea of Toi”, is the name for the ocean around Aotea. Kaitoke: The reef at the mouth of Kaitoke Stream, the main river emerging from the wetlands is an important marker for seafarers. Its name means food (kai) from the conger eel (toke). Te Motu Tohorā: The name of the island (motu) off Cape Barrier in the south refers to the fluke of a rolling right whale. Thanks to Joan Carroll for the photo: https://joan-carroll.pixels.com/ Te Ahumatā: Matā is obsidian, a hard, dark volcanic rock, whose flakes were used to make cutting tools and traded around Tāmaki Makaurau (the Auckland region). The name of Aotea’s highest peak, Hirakimatā, refers to the flash of lightning striking obsidian. Rocket roulette The phrase “existential threat” has been bandied about casually of late in reference to climate change, Covid, nuclear war, 5G, the end of nature, alarmingly decreasing sperm counts etc. Another such threat appeared literally out of the blue. In early May the headline read Chinese rocket to come crashing down to Earth at unknown location. The rocket was an 18-tonne “vehicle” that had launched the first module of China's new space station the previous month but now earned a dubious distinction as one of the largest ever chunks of space junk to plummet to Earth in an uncontrolled re-entry. When the big day dawned, we started tracking. On one ever-lowering orbit the rocket’s path went right over Golden Bay … … and on another it grazed the Barrier. It’s truly a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Lunar transcendence With the moon behind a cloud-covered sky, at bedtime we gave up on seeing late May's lunar eclipse. After lights out, around 11, something moved Ro to raise his arm and move out the blind. Lo! The moon! Right above our eyes! It was still mostly obscured but the clouds kept shifting, which was very special to see as we lay on our backs looking up and a bit backwards. The patch of light coming through the moving clouds sometimes brightened, sometimes dimmed, a very nebulous moon indeed. We waited patiently and then – a break in the clouds and there was the partly eclipsed! moon It phased in and out, but at times we could see it clearly! It reminded me of the time we were tramping the 220-km Northville-Lake Placid Trail in our old stomping grounds of the Adirondacks Mountains of northern New York State. One night we planned to stay in a lean-to, but others were in it, so we slept outside. Mosquitoes were driving us nuts and we couldn’t breathe with our heads in the sleeping bag – I longed for a straw I could poke through for breathing!, so we were awake and AMAZINGLY we witnessed a total lunar eclipse we had no idea was going to happen!
Still here on Great Barrier Island! Good to be here, literally, ‘cause we almost weren’t. At 8:28 am on Friday, 5 March a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck in the Kermadec Trench off the Kermadec Islands, about 880 km north of New Zealand, not long after two other lesser quakes. The depth of 20-24 km below the seafloor is considered shallow, with the potential for greater damage and a larger tsunami than a deep quake. The quake was reported straightaway on the radio, and people in Northland were told to evacuate. “Whew!” we thought, “We’ll be OK here.” edit. But then, about 20 minutes later, our guts tightened at the scream of sirens blasting by on the road, and on the radio the incessant steely command “EVACUATE NOW! LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!” I fell into a daze, trying to adjust to the abrupt change in reality from one moment to the next, holding my “grab & go” list, wondering what the priorities were and getting some things together. Ro kept his wits about him and carried a lot of stuff out and into the car, though his heart rate went way up. I clung to the groundless notion that all would be well that ended well. If you have to evacuate, it was the most beautiful day for it, and a perfect time of day as well! It would have been very difficult in the middle of the night, or bad weather, or both. It happened that we had our brekkie smoothie ready early, because we had another plan for that morning, so we brought it with us! Everyone living where their dwellings could be demolished went to one of the four highest hills along the roads south, central and north. We went to the top of Blind Bay Road, where we had a clear view of the ocean. There we and others hung out, watching. After about two hours we learned it wouldn’t be a big wave but surges with inundation. We stayed another hour as the idea took increasing hold that, really, we'd be OK at home, and we left. So we weren’t very late for lunch either! Perhaps an hour later the all clear was given, and we even got our swim in much later in the day, though it wasn’t advised. The event was stressful, no doubt of that. For four hours, two polar opposite scenarios were in our minds – returning to the house as we left it, having lost just three hours of the day, or seeing a tsunami pull the water out and watch it come screaming in, covering the dunes and lowlands, coming up Oceanview Road and losing our house and everything in and around it. Pitokuku blocked the view of our house, but we would have known by what happened around it. I wondered if I’d be writing about the tsunami-that-wasn’t for my blog, or if our lives would change so much that I’d never write a blog post again. it was a day just like this, and we were up on Okupu Ridge on Te Ahumata (background(, with Pitokuku below us and the sea beyond. It was a huge relief to see everything as it should be, but I felt drained, shaky and unfocused, and it took the rest of the day and a few more to fully recover. I still think about the possibility of a tsunami more often than before. Ro and I know that we carry the trauma of the devastating debris flow flood of 2011 in Pohara Valley, and that we have a much lower threshold for coping with situations beyond our control. A friend who lives in North Barrier, boat access only, sent this account: Tsunami morning we got all our boats up on the bank and safe, and then shifted our firewood which was in possible danger of being washed away. "We had strong surges up the river," she continued. "I could hear the water rushing in and out from up in the garden. The biggest surge was about 1.2 metres, measuring against our jetty piles. The water came over the grass below our house, but not much and only once. The house is about 25 metres above the river so no danger to us. Certainly could have been a major event and very scary." Here’s why we didn’t all get wiped off the face of the Earth: In the sort of quake it was, called a thrust quake, pent-up stress along the boundary of two tectonic plates is released by a slip of one plate under the other that shakes the sea floor vertically and lifts the water with tremendous force. Every increase of 1 on the magnitude scale is a tenfold jump in shaking. Large tsunamis almost always come from mag 9s, but very large tsunamis can also come from mags in the 7s or 8s, depending on factors beyond the initial depth measurement. That’s why tsunami warnings are standard practice beginning at mag 7, and that was the situation on 5 March. Other factors are the depth of the biggest slip along the fault line and the speed at which stress is released. The deeper the slip along the fault, the less movement and the less water displaced. In our case the biggest slip was close to the surface, and as for speed, the fault rupture was released slowly. Slow is relative, of course — a slow earthquake is 1.5-2 km per second! Fast ones can be double that. The problem with issuing warnings immediately is that scientists can’t know these other factors – the depth of the biggest slip and the speed of the quake – until 15 or 30 minutes later. By the time the rest of us find out, everyone has fled, perhaps unnecessarily, but in this situation, one can’t be too careful! About earthquake depth Shallow quakes are more dangerous because the seismic waves from deep quakes have to travel farther to the surface of the seafloor or land, losing energy along the way. Up to 70 km (the depth of the Earth’s crust) is considered shallow, 70-300 km (the Earth’s upper mantle) is intermediate, and beyond that, to the deepest depth ever recorded, nearly 800 km in the lower mantle, is, clearly, deep. - - - - - - - - - An email from Lotte, a coordinator of Oruawharo Medlands EcoVision “You might have seen me sneaking around the back of your property again last week, setting and collecting our quarterly rat monitoring in the reserve. I thought you might like to see what I found in the tracking tunnel right behind your house.” “A beautiful skink had wandered through!" she wrote. "I found skink prints in four out of ten tracking tunnels this time around, so there must be a decent population in Kaitoke. I’m fairly confident it is a moko skink. Note the long bendy hind foot ‘index toe’ visible also in the footprints on the monitoring card.” About moko skinks…. They’re mainly found on islands off the east coast of the northern half of the North Island – that’s us! Their colour and pattern vary, but their overall colour is coppery or, like this one, olive brown, and they usually have a dark brown stripe along the side, bordered cream or white on the top and bottom. They have distinctive long toes and tail and grow to a maximum of 18 cm. Moko skinks are active mainly by day, often seen basking or found under logs and stones, in clay banks or up manuka trees! They eat small insects, spiders and other invertebrates. Like most native skinks, they don’t lay eggs but give birth to live young, with litters of up to eight, born around February. Of the three major groups of reptiles – crocodiles, lepidosaurs (snakes and lizards), and turtles, live birth is only seen in lepidosaurs. Even among them, most lay eggs that hatch into young, but a few lizards and snakes, like the moko skink, give birth to live young. Back to Lotte and Oruawharo Medlands EcoVision (OME) She’s a tireless leader of a determined group of mostly volunteers working on area-wide ecological restoration. They receive funding to work toward their goal of protecting and enhancing local biodiversity and ecosystems, including the beach, sand dunes, waterways, wetlands and gardens. One of their main activities, a common tale throughout New Zealand, is suppressing rodent numbers to reduce predation of vulnerable species. Many Barrier people set traps around their own dwellings, and every trapped rat and cat is tallied in the Trap NZ database! The OME also collaborates with DOC on restoration work at the ecologically significant sites of Oruawharo Stream at the south end of Medlands Beach ... … and the wetlands reserve behind the northern end. They’re replanting, suppressing weeds, monitoring water quality and trap, trap, trapping. The causeway along the wetlands on the main road from Medlands to Sugarloaf is one of only a few straightaways on the island. The OME has the support of Ecology Vision Aotea, another relatively new group that umbrellas many community initiatives to protect, restore and enhance the diversity and abundance of the island’s ecosystems “from ridge to reef”. Ecology Vision’s packed-full website is worth a visit to find out about their many projects, including native plant nurseries, a “library” of traps and peanut butter bait, an annual community bird count, and support for individuals and community groups like OME who are carrying out conservation in their home areas. In “Treasures/Taonga” under the “Ecology Vision” tab you’ll find photos and info about Aotea’s birdlife, freshwater fish and lizards, bats and invertebrates. https://ecologyvision.co.nz Conservation is HOT on GBI right now, with new projects and visions large and small, for land and sea, getting underway up and down the island, and a “Pestival" happening this weekend. More on that next time! Not to neglect Great Barrier’s absolute gem of a little brother Te-Hauturu-o-Toi, Little Barrier Island, an extinct volcanic cone that last erupted 1.2 million years ago, is about halfway between Great Barrier and the mainland. It’s little all right – 28 sq km, or just one-tenth the size of big brother Barrier’s 285 sq km. This ecological treasure became New Zealand’s first nature reserve in 1895, though it was a devastating loss to those who were living there, and were removed, and their kaitiakitanga (guardianship of the island) taken from them. Little Barrier is New Zealand's only large forested area that very few introduced browsing mammals ever set foot on, so it’s a unique remnant of primeval bush and a refuge for rare and endangered plants, birds and animals. Even humans, a highly invasive species, are barred entry without a permit. Little Barrier’s highest point is at 700 m, higher than Hirakimata on Great Barrier. Moist rising air often gathers in a fog near the top, creating a cloud forest ecosystem. Four hundred native plant species live on Little Barrier, including some now seldom seen on the mainland, and the island is home to the most diversity of native fauna of any island in the country. Because of this, and the fact that it’s free of most introduced predators, Little Barrier Island is considered one of the most important reserves of its kind in the world. All is not well, however. The island's vegetation is threatened by weed species that continue to invade. Many exotic species have been eradicated, but some are widespread, including the dread pampas and climbing asparagus we knew from Golden Bay. Ongoing monitoring and removal is difficult but essential. Ideally natural processes will in time restore a diverse self-sustaining forest system with large numbers of native lizards and skinks, insects, burrowing seabirds such as black petrels, and threatened birds such as kōkako and saddleback. Many other less rare birds are currently thriving on Little Barrier. All of these photos were taken on Little Barrier. Kākāpō – Its Māori name means “night parrot”, and like the kiwi, it’s a nocturnal bird. Kōkako Kākāriki Kiwi Kōtare (kingfisher) Miromiro (NZ tomtit) Tieke (saddleback) Tītī (Cook’s petrel) Tuatara Giant centipede Watch this video and be amazed at what New Zealand once was and still could be! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oNir75_l4U I posted it on Barrier Chitchat and people were thrilled to see it. Like me, most had no idea of the incredible biodiversity so close to us! It’s the perfect time for Barrierites to be extra-inspired because of the current momentum for serious island-wide ecological protection, restoration and enhancement. Little Barrier's Maori name, Te Hauturu-o-Toi, can be interpreted as the "wind's resting post”. Seen from a distance, the cloud cap that often rests at the top of the island creates this impression. - - - - - - - - - Fruit fest Gerald and Caity’s fruit trees went bananas this autumn! After the season wound down from their height-of-summer mixed boxes of whatever they were harvesting, mainly veges, for the first time they offered order-your-own-choices from a list Caity sent around twice a week. Their fruit trees are prized heirlooms, like Sir Prize, Winter Banana and Dayton apples, planted by Gerald’s father, who started their market garden in Okiwi, North Barrier, decades ago. Have you had so-called, and misleadingly called, “astringent” persimmons – the ones in the back? Once fully, transparently, gushy-soft ripe, they’re as sweet, glop-syrupy and luscious as any fruit I’ve ever blissfully slobbered over! This bunch of bananas nearly maxed out Gerald and Caity’s 30-kg scale. P*ss on it That’s one basil plant on the left, and a tulsi on the right. Ro’s technique: Start a brew of seaweed tea with a couple of big pieces of seaweed in a bucket of water. Let sit at least overnight, keep the seaweed in and as you use it over time, top up with water and add more seaweed. Fill watering can ¼ full with the seaweed tea, pee in it once ♂ (or one pee’s worth of pee ♀), fill with water and use on plants.
He uses this mix on the garden veges, with regular watering as well, and nothing but this mix on the basil and tulsi, two or three times a day, and never lets them dry out. Lots of gardeners and growers are cottoning on to their own pee – a free, year-round, handy daily source of nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and trace elements that you can’t buy at a garden shop or order online! - - - - - - - - Summer flowers blooming in autumn! Jordan gave us dahlia bulbs long ago and they didn’t blossom all summer in the drought. When we finally got some real, honest-to-goodness rain, out they came! Sweet summertime on Great Barrier Island mm The long-awaited warmth of summertime is always sweet, but on GBI this year there was bittersweet as well. The drought dragged on, with last year’s rainfall only about 45 percent of the historical average and not enough in January to make much difference. It’s been heartbreaking to watch the land brown off and trees succumb, and to hear of dried-up mountain streams and struggling freshwater ecosystems. People’s water tanks ran dry, and though you can get water delivered it’s from a stream and not intended for drinking. Nowadays it seems it takes cyclones to get decent rain, which can sometimes be much too much of a good thing. The 60 mm the island was blessed with one day in mid-February was brought by ex-tropical cyclone Lucas, which caused flooding and damage in Vanuatu and New Caledonia. The other sour note this summer on the Barrier was the unprecedented inundation, not of water, but of travel-starved New Zealanders longing for a holiday somewhere, anywhere, overseas. The packed-out island couldn’t cope. Restaurants and cafes had to close and wait for the next barge when they ran out of food. Some couldn’t open at all for lack of sufficient staff. Flights were increased markedly and new routes were added, car parks were chocka and more rental cars were on the roads. Some holiday homes packed in visitors beyond reasonable limits for septic systems and neighbours, and empty sections owned by off-islanders became tent cities. Those not involved in tourism haven’t been very happy, and I don’t think anyone wants to see the very basic island infrastructure upgraded to meet demand. That will be the beginning of the end, as it has been for special places around the world. Every place was special once and not many still retain their original beauty. Wishes for You for 2021 Be all that, and the world, as it may, these universal wishes came our way in the holiday-time mail! Make yourself a set and have a play and a ponder. Leave them out on your table and watch your visitors, irresistibly drawn, begin to arrange them in the way that makes the most sense to them. Guaranteed to bring forth philosophical conversations on what life’s all about and insights into one another’s hearts and minds. Joy Happiness Love Ease Goodness Friendship Connection Laughter Yumminess Peace Light Well-Being Health Giggles Beauty Fun Surprises We send to you all these wishes and many more just like them! The right person for the job Do you own two pairs of shoes? Can you replace worn clothes? Do you sleep in a good bed? Have you eaten meat or fish twice in the last week? When was your last one-week holiday? Could you pay an unexpected $500 expense within a month without borrowing? These are a few of the questions you’d be asked if Ken Blackwell or another of the 170 Stats NZ interviewers around the country knocks on your door. In this survey he’s seeking information about how households are faring economically, their living standards and child poverty. Does the income of this household meet its members’ needs? If it does, can they in fact access their basic needs? Ken is the son of our dear friends, Bev and Les, who live just down the road. Theirs is the fantabulous garden I wrote about in my June 2018 post. After Ken records the responses on a laptop, he sends them to subject matter experts, who analyse them and prepare reports so that, as he puts it, “Jacinda knows what’s happening around the place”. Ken also conducts the “general social survey”, with questions about residents’ feeling of safety in their neighbourhood, their nearest shops, health care and other basic services, as well as their income and expenditures. Households to be interviewed are selected by location only. They’re sent a letter advising that an interviewer will soon contact them to arrange a visit. Though some people don’t want to participate, the fact is that it’s just about compulsory. It takes finely honed communication skills to succeed at this job, starting right there, with the art of gentle persuasion to bring around reluctant interviewees. Ken also finds himself in the role of counsellor when people pour out to a sympathetic listener their distress and anxiety about the difficulties they face. He sometimes refers people to other government services and helplines. When the pandemic kept everyone at home, Ken carried on working. He was on the COVID helpline answering questions like “My cows need hay – what can I do?” and “Am I an essential worker?” Ken started his job with Stats NZ after 40 years + 1 week at NZ Post. But during all that time he still managed to travel around the world and visit 31 American states. He was in Time Square on New Year’s Eve in 1999, one of three million people bringing in the new millennium! Ken's on the left, in the All Blacks cap. He saved this postcard as a souvenir. Recently Ken (right) was selected as one of seven Stats NZ staff around the country to trial an electric vehicle for a year! Ken and his three siblings grew up on the island in the 1950s and 60s, when there was only one school on the island, down in Mulberry Grove. This is the school a bit later, mid-1980s, with the schoolmaster’s house over the road. The house was brought over from the mainland by barge. The school is much the same today, but the surroundings are more filled in! No island roads were paved, and Winnie, who’s one of Ken’s aunts, was the school bus driver. Ken’s mum, Bev, thinks this tiny low-tech, actually no-tech, country school did a brilliant job of preparing their children for life. And so it is! James has a Ph.D. in applied linguistics and teaches at Asia Pacific University in Japan. Ken is as personable a person as you’ll find anywhere, and his low-key, relaxed, unassuming, kindly and fully attentive manner has perhaps unexpectedly brought him to leadership roles in every organisation he’s been part of. Of course having the loveliest parents in the world helps a lot too! Many lifetimes in one body I’ve been editing the life story of someone best known as one of New Zealand’s fabled artisan master cheesemakers – Gabrielle Kervella. The other is her husband, Alan Cockman! Though Gabrielle and I were friends in Golden Bay, I had only wee inklings of her incredible life! Now I know that If anything could have happened to someone, it happened to Gabrielle! As I say to Ro as I edit her story, “Expect the unexpected with Gabrielle!” This intrepid and high-spirited woman has lived in or visited every continent except Antarctica and speaks four languages. From an early age she acquired the broadest skillset I’ve ever heard of, from violinist to nursing, ranch hand, animal husbandry, hunting, gardening, biodynamic farming, horse riding, breeding and training horses, running children’s summer camps, skiing, yoga, self-reliance and home maintenance, cordon bleu cooking, driving in extreme conditions, human relations and communication with people of all walks of life all over the world, writing most engagingly, and of course the world’s finest cheesemaking. My list is far from complete! If you love adventure and joie de vivre, you will want to read Gabrielle's book! For now, for a great read about the cheese-y side of Gabrielle and Alan’s life – their journey to become one of only three accredited raw cheese producers in New Zealand, check out Nina Hindmarsh’s wonderful article at https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/food-to-love/123738976/golden-bays-artisan-master-cheesemakers-keep-the-dying-art-alive Popples from the past For six years we’ve driven past four trees on our way to and from swims at Kaitoke Stream that we didn’t realise we knew very well. Only 11 of the 260 native tree species in New Zealand are deciduous broadleaf trees that shed their leaves in autumn. We had noted that these trees were deciduous, but only recently did we open our eyes wide and take notice that they’re actually quaking aspen! It was a wondrous revelation. We loved these unique trees in our 20 years in the North Country in the Adirondack Mountains up near the Canadian border. Their flexible flat-stemmed leaf stalks catch the wind, causing the lightweight, shiny, pale green leaves to tremble even in the gentlest breeze, bringing a gentle rustling sound and movement to the quiet landscape. There’s another reason quaking aspens are special to us. Unlike conifers, all broadleaf trees shed their leaves in autumn, so throughout the long, cold, snowy winters there wasn’t a broad, flat leaf in sight in all nine million acres of the Adirondack Park. The leaves of the quaking aspen are the first to emerge when the long-awaited warmth of spring is finally imminent, so we were always anticipating the special day that brought the welcome sight of the quaking aspens’ pale green swath beginning to spread far and wide over the countryside. Populus tremuloides is known by many other names, including trembling aspen, golden aspen, white poplar and popple. Wait, there’s more! Aspens are genetically identical clones! New trees sprout from shoots and suckers along its long lateral roots. “Pando” (Latin for I spread), “the trembling giant”, is a 43-hectare clonal colony of one quaking aspen in south-central Utah. It’s been determined to be a single living organism with one massive underground root system. Pando is estimated to weigh collectively 6,000,000 kg and its root system is estimated to be several thousand years old, making it the heaviest known organism and one of the oldest known living organisms. Pando in autumn Bonus! Did you know that though kowhai trees shed their leaves, they’re not actually deciduous? They’re brevisemideciduous! As Kiwis will have observed, they lose their leaves not in autumn but in spring when they flower. All the leaves fall off and are quickly replaced. Archaeological finds and history of Aotea: Part 2 of 2 The vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean was explored and settled by sailing large double-hulled canoes from island to island. The ancestors of Māori are likely to have sailed their waka to Aotearoa about 600 to 800 years ago, from East Polynesia, perhaps South Tahiti, the Cook Islands or even Australia. Replica of a voyaging canoe Why did they leave their homelands for a perilous journey that could take as long as a month? Their reasons may have been population pressure, intermittent warfare, lack of resources, and the Little Ice Age brought on by the eruption of a huge volcano in the Pacific in 1257, causing cold summers to the Northern Hemisphere as well. In Aotearoa they found more abundant protein resources than those on Pacific Islands – salt- and freshwater life, sheltered waterways, intertidal mudflats and more. Aotearoa – braided river east of the Southern Alps – painting by NgAng! When Māori founding waka arrived in the Hauraki Gulf, three of them landed first on Aotea – Great Barrier Island! Aotea became important in Māori history because all waka traveling north and south passed close by, so different people were meeting, fighting and sometimes displacing or absorbing one another here. To protect themselves in times of danger, those living here built pa as refuges on most of the headlands and a few summits. Rock-faced terraces, gardens, storage pits and artifacts such as paddles have been found around the main island and on the smaller islands by Port Fitzroy in the north. Early Māori lived mainly on the west coast, the Gulf side, where there was fresh water, easy access to marine resources and deep sheltered valleys. Last year we attended a talk about the prehistory of Oruawharo Bay (Medlands Beach) by archaeologist Don Prince, who assisted with Auckland Council’s Aotea Great Barrier Island Historic Heritage Survey, published last year. He contributed to the database of pā sites and settlements by locating and describing them and speaking with tāngata whenua and others with knowledge of the island’s prehistory. All of his work on the island was done by visual inspection. We learned that Sugarloaf between Medlands and Kaitoke was a fortified pa site, with ditches, palisades and fighting platforms, as well as a marae. Pa sites around the island’s coast were also used as lookouts for approaching waka. People lived by freshwater waterways for the coastal resources of birds, fish and eels. Goat Hill at the south end of Medlands Beach above Oruawharo Stream was a pa and village site known as Whangaiti. Steps were cut for the climb up to the site. Usually storage pits for crops are in the earth, but here Don found storage pits cut into the rock. He found evidence of moa as well. Early stone tools were rough, but over time they became more refined. Don said that people are still finding stone tools throughout Aotea, but unfortunately rough tools are discarded and not valued! He told of a Maori ancestor who was ambushed and killed by another iwi on Rakitu Island (Arid Island) in the 1600s. His death was avenged by his sons at Whangaiti. Don discovered nearby a major urupā with 22 burials and another with 17 burials behind the dunes a bit further north. He investigated them with permission from the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. People enjoy Medlands and other beaches oblivious to these wāhi tapu that need protection as heritage sites. He found a large midden near what’s now the walkway to Memory Rock. Don recommends Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History, by Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris, for the best summary of Great Barrier Island’s prehistory. He says updating Aotea’s database of prehistoric sites is a lifetime of work! How high is your cloud? Watching clouds forever changing has always been a favourite. Now I know a bit more of the science behind these perpetual shapeshifters. Their lives begin when humid air rises to higher altitudes, where temperature and air pressure are lower. There the water vapour condenses into either water droplets or ice crystals, and voila!, a cloud. A cloud’s height depends on the temperature and pressure of the air, and how much water it contains. The International Cloud Atlas classifies clouds into 10 “genera” according to their altitude and appearance. The Atlas goes further! It subdivides the genera into “species” by shape and structure, and “varieties” by transparency and arrangement. The 10 genera are classed into three categories of altitude, with a lot of overlap since clouds can be very tall, very tall indeed! Low-level clouds have bases at altitudes below 2 km, so they’re mostly liquid water droplets. These are pretty, puffy white cumulus, rain-bearing cumulonimbus and nimbostratus, and featureless, sheet-like stratus. Mid-level clouds, whose water can be liquid or ice, begin at 2 km to 7 km. These are blankets of altostratus or clumpy altocumulus. High-level clouds, with bases above 5 km, are made of ice crystals. They’re thin, translucent clouds like wispy cirrus. (Commercial airplanes fly at even higher altitudes, usually around 11 km.) Like putting a name to a face, it’s satisfying to be able to put a name to a cloud! - - - - - - - - - - Heron at Kaitoke Stream Harataonga The Barrier from a boat in a rough Gulf (posted on Barrier Chitchat). I’m feeling seasick just looking at it! Funny waves at Kaitoke Beach (photo by Ken) Eunate watching dolphins at Puriri Bay
The Great Conjunction on Great Barrier Island Have you seen them, getting ever closer? From a country lane in a village in the UK a world apart from London, my friend Mary of the MirrorStones sent very glad tidings: “On 21 December, the day of the summer solstice 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will be in conjunction for the first time in 20 years. This Great Conjunction is a time when the planet of structure and restriction, Saturn, meets the planet of growth, expansion and miracles, Jupiter, marking a societal shift we’ll see leading into 2021. It’s a new day … a new era!” Ro and I are looking forward to that new day more than anything on our journey through life. Meanwhile, on to some history, adventure, homoeopathy, culinary delights and photos! Aotea Sojourn The twice-a-month Barrier Bulletin serialised over seven issues a tale by local author Don McGregor. Three thousand years ago, 1126 BC to be exact, two children – a sister, age 8, and her brother, age 11 – were the sole survivors of the wreck of a boat from somewhere in Polynesia that had been carried off course and broke up as it came ashore on the rocky coast at the south-eastern end of Great Barrier Island. In time they named the island Venosia in tribute to a beloved elder and mentor who was lost in the disaster. What brave and resourceful children they were! They adapted and not only survived on their own, but thrived, by using the skills they already had, recalling knowledge they’d internalised from their culture and elders, and acquiring new skills they needed to feed, clothe and shelter themselves in a very different environment. They even built a sturdy sailing craft and circumnavigated the island on a three-day journey. The villains of the tale were giant eagles, now known as Haast’s eagle, which frequently menaced them and several times could have killed little Ila, had not her bold and protective brother thrown rocks to deter it. The Haast’s eagle was the largest predator and the top predator among New Zealand's prehistoric fauna and the largest, heaviest eagle species ever known. It weighed up to nearly 18 kg and had a wingspan up to 3 metres. Its legs and bill were larger and stronger than the largest living vulture species, and its feet and claws were as big as a modern-day tiger's. The Haast's eagle was certainly large enough to attack human children, so the fears of the children in the story were very real. It specialised in hunting the moa, which were up to 3.6 m and 249 kg. Both the Haast's eagle and the moa endured through many glacial periods, when size mattered for survival. They both went extinct around the same time, 500-600 years ago – perhaps you can work out why. If not for the eagles, the children may never have attempted to find their way home. To return to their home island seemed impossible until the constant anxiety of sky-scanning whenever they ventured into the open became too much to cope with, and they worked together again to overcome the greatest challenge of all, navigating the great ocean to find the tiny speck they longed to return to. By using bits of charcoal to mark the position of stars on flattish pieces of wood, and then burning them in with hot stones, they created two star maps, one of the night sky as seen from Venosia and one of the night sky as they recalled it from their home island. They discovered an overlap in one corner of the two maps. With their maps as a guide, and their boat filled with provisions and water cleverly stored, they set out for home. Archaeological finds of Māori prehistory on Aotea: Part 1 Fast forward a few thousand years to 1200-1300 AD, when Māori tīpuna began arriving in Aotearoa. Ancient Polynesian navigators could read the weather, sea birds and seaweed to know when they were within 100 km of land. Like the children in the story, they created star charts with to find their way back home. Because they knew they could return, others had confidence and motivation to come to the new lands of Aotearoa. The Hauraki Gulf islands were probably among the first places settled by east Polynesian voyagers to Aotearoa. A very early arrival was the explorer Toi, who named the islands: nga poito o te kupenga o Toi Te Huatahi – the floats of the fishing net of Toi Te Huatahia. The founding waka Tainui and Arawa arrived in the Hauraki Gulf almost simultaneously, about 600 to 700 years ago. Three others landed on Great Barrier Island before travelling further: Takitimu, Mataatua and Aotea, which became the Barrier's Maori name. And so, the Ngāti Rehua, hapu of Ngāti Wai, who live on the island today trace their association back over many centuries. Aotea is important in Māori history. Because of its location at the entrance to the Hauraki Gulf, it was a major networking area for early Māori. All waka travelling between the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Plenty, and beyond, passed close by Aotea and Hauturu (Little Barrier Island). Māori settlements on the smaller Gulf islands were mainly temporary or seasonal. Visits were made to tend gardens, gather shellfish, harvest mutton birds or set up temporary fishing stations. Only larger islands like Great Barrier and Waiheke sustained longer-term settlement. Archaeologist Don Prince, who has roots on the Barrier, assisted with Auckland Council’s Aotea Great Barrier Island Historic Heritage Survey, which was published last year. He contributed to the database of pā sites and settlements by locating and describing them and speaking with tāngata whenua and others with knowledge of the island’s prehistory. Earlier this year we went to a talk he gave at Medland Haven, a house for group accommodation run by St Johns Church. (More people than expected turned up – the talk was in the kitchen/dining area, but the lounge was full!) Because of the island’s relative isolation and small population, many of its heritage sites have survived relatively unmodified, offering clues about the island’s prehistory (before the written word). Māori use and settlement of the island over a period of 700-800 years left behind nearly 600 archaeological sites and other places of cultural significance. Some of the treasures are early campsites containing the remains of moa, more recent pā, settlement sites, pits for crop storage, middens (food refuse deposits), cultivation and resource gathering areas, urupā (burial grounds) and places where conflicts or other events took place. Some of the midden have been dated to the earliest period of occupation and provide information on the past environment and food sources. Most of the sites are at accessible areas of coastline of the main island and on the smaller islands. Don has been locating and investigating these archaeological sites. I’ll share some of his findings next time. Intrepid friends (didn’t quite) reach Everest Base Camp Auckland has a super lively tramping club that our on-again, off-again island friends Margaret and Peter are super active members of. Their ultimate adventure, in October 2018, was to tackle the nine-day, 65 km trek to Everest Base Camp. They were ready to share their once-in-a-lifetime experience at the club’s September meeting, but it was held remotely, so Ro and I were able to attend as well, and I screenshot-ed madly throughout! Their adventure began with a flight from Kathmandu to the infamous Tenzing-Hillary Airport at Lukla, at 2680 m. Short runways are always dangerous, but here the runway ends at a stone wall and a steep mountain. The most prominent mountain of the trek wasn’t Everest, but Ama Dablam, 6812 m. What a surprise for me to learn that Everest isn’t a technical climb, but Ana Dablam is. What makes Everest so challenging is its altitude, 8849 m. Everest Base Camp is at 5120 m on the Khumbu Glacier. All the glaciers and ice sheets of the region are melting, increasing the risk of rock and ice avalanches, and even threatening the villages along the route to Base Camp. The tracks between villages are centuries old. The group stopped at villages for lunch and overnight, and twice for two nights to take return walks to higher altitudes for acclimatisation. Donkeys are usually used at lower elevations, and yaks higher up, because they cope better with altitude. Altitude sickness had already forced three members of the group to abandon their dream, when, past the village of Dingboche, perhaps 12 km from the goal, altitude sickness got the better of Margaret. She and Peter had to turn back to Pheriche, the closest village with medical facilities. It’s not far from here that they had to turn back. Once Margaret stabilised at Pheriche, they were flown to a hospital in Kathmandu, and when she was given the all-clear, they did a bit of sightseeing – not their intention!. Meanwhile, the remaining group members reached Base Camp … … and carried on along the Three Passes Route loop. Margaret told me it wasn’t just the altitude that made the trek so difficult. The food was unusual to them, with not a single vegetable. They didn’t know they could have brought some of their own food. They had to filter their water, and though remaining fully hydrated is essential, they didn’t always get enough. The dusty trail with a strong odour of yak poo contributed to breathing difficulties at ever-higher elevations. Though they walked for only about six hours a day, much less than they were used to on other challenging tramps, Margaret always felt tired. Overall, the trek involved adapting body and mind to a brand new experience of physical stress, sensory onslaught and an unfamiliar culture. After the Zoom presentation, instead of the buzz of conversation over supper, everyone drank their quiet cuppas within their own four walls. This, by the way, is Everest! Two years on air and a chat about homoeopathy Early December marked my two-year anniversary as presenter of “Can’t Live Without Music” on Aotea FM. I never missed a show! Except of course when the studio was closed in April and May this year. Last month I interviewed Linda, our island homoeopath. Ro and I have had a number of experiences with the great value of homoeopathy, including the always-at-the ready remedy Oscillococcinum, our ally for decades in stopping flu in its tracks. Here in brief are Linda’s answers to some of my questions. How it is that like cures like? The Law of Similars is the basis of homoeopathy: A substance that brings on symptoms in a healthy person can, in a very small dose, trigger the body’s natural defenses to treat an illness with similar symptoms. How can small doses be effective? Each remedy is formulated by successive dilution of the ingredients (potentisation) and vigorous shaking. The resulting remedy is thought to resonate with the body, triggering a gentle but profound healing response. * How did they work out in the first place what remedies are helpful for what problems and conditions? It’s called “proving”. A homoeopathically prepared substance is given to healthy volunteers to find the symptoms it produces, which are the ones it will potentially treat. * With over 7000 available remedies, how do you find the right one? Homeopathy is wholistic. It’s based on the philosophy that the body, mind and emotions are fully integrated. Homoeopaths do detailed consultations covering each person’s physical, mental and emotional situation, past and present, before deciding on the best remedy to remove the underlying cause of their problems. Linda is currently becoming an even more wholistic practitioner by complementing her knowledge of homoeopathy with study in traditional Asian nutrition. and when she’s further along I’ll interview her again. Tune in to Can’t Live Without Music on Sundays from 3:40-6 pm, livestream at aoteafm.org or www.radio-new-zealand.co.nz/aotea-fm. Send me your requests! Binging on beetroot Between Greg’s and Robert’s gardens, and our garden, we’ve been blessed with beetroot! Beetroot salad, beetroot and hemp heart burgers www.kindearth.net/hemp-beet-veggie-burger-recipe-gluten-free-vegan/ and borscht have been on the menu. And thanks to our dear Lina, KVASS, a delicious beetroot-based fermented drink, became the latest in our fermentation repertoire. Here’s her easy recipe! Kvass – from the Queen Bee of Fermentation Wash a 1 L jar with baking soda, then pour boiled water over it. Cut beetroot into small cubes. Fill jar 1/3. Add water with salt: First dissolve a level tsp salt per cup water. If you have it, add 1 tsp clear whey to the jar. Leave a one-inch space at top (unlike in the photo!). Use a plastic lid, screw tight, keep in the dark. Shake after two days. Taste after three days. Once fermentation starts you can add a small amount of beetroot blended with a little water and leave another day or more. It may take up to a week to taste nicely fermented. Before it does, if there's white mould around the lid or top of the jar, scoop it off and rub a wee bit of salt around the edge and lid. If there’s grey mould, don’t use the kvass. You can do a second fermentation with some of the old beetroot plus new cubed beetroot and blended beetroot. Just like kombucha, kvass improves in taste and fizziness after a stint of at least a week in a sealed bottle. If you give it a try, let me know! * * * * * * * * * * * * Lovely Kat has been baking her beautiful all-organic “Glow Sourdough” for the community. She makes two kinds: artisan white and glowgels (rhymes with Vogel’s!): rye/spelt with sunflower, pumpkin and flax seeds, plus great big generous dollops of love energy vibrations. She does a two-day slow ferment, finishing on Wednesday mornings at the kitchen at the Barrier Social Club. She’s been scaling up – eight loaves to start, to 12, then 16 and now 24. She’s sold out and beyond every time! In the new year she’s starting a Bread Club for sourdough by subscription. We’ve enjoyed both kinds and given some as gifts. They are DELICIOUS! Bread baking is one minor string in Kat’s bow! She and her partner, Bodhi, created the incredibly successful Breathe School: https://breatheschool.com. Their mission: "To integrate the ‘Mindful Breathe Break’ into as many schools and systems as we collectively can around the world. A three-minute break from technology, thinking and ‘go go go’ mode. Helping alleviate stress and anxiety, while building a daily habit of peace and calm.” Check out their inspiring story in the videos on their site! * * * * * * * * * * * * * I was thrilled to hear from Purple, Renee and others about plans to revive H.A.N.D.S.! What a joy to read the market was a great success, just like the old days! I hope the energy is sustained to get the system back on its feet and thriving, Dear Mary Allan, my spectacularly wonderful medical herbalist and beautiful friend, with a big batch of aerials for me: calendula and chamomile flowers and true peppermint. Worth needing her to meet her! One weekend she sent this photo with the note “Doing the rounds, at Kumeu market, just sold a copy of your book xxx.” The Wholefoods Handbook, of course! The other books are lovely, informative and inspiring collaborations of Mary and another awesome herbalist, Isla Burgess. Check out their newest book at Mary’s clinic website: www.solsticeherbs.co.nz and the others at her herbal products (best in the world!) website: www.thymeheal.co.nz Ready to view the Great Conjunction a bit later in the evening. My comfy nightgown was once a new bamboo T-shirt we bought for Ro from Barbara in Takaka! Elastine is the secret ingredient here! Drying seaweed on the clothesline. Crunchy, delicious and nutritious! My fifth GBI calendar! This year’s cover photo is by Ken Blackwell. Many thanks also to dear Carrie for her InDesign work! Seen on Barrier Chitchat Orca from a kayak in Tryphena Godwits at Whangapoua, up north Kaka in flax Winnie and Charlie’s granddaughter is now captain of the Blackferns!! Also at Karaka Bay, up north on the west coast near Port Fitzroy My deepest heartfelt wishes to you and every human being for a peaceful and healthy season and new year to come.
Pohutukawa at Medlands Shelter from the storm on GBI I finally realised exactly why I love Great Barrier Island so much. It’s equal parts of the natural beauty of mountains, bush and sea that it does have and all the rest that it doesn’t have. Not only is the island off grid, with all the wonderful limitations that result, it's as close to 100 percent non-commercial as an inhabited island can be within a capitalist system. I’ll be very glad to never again see heavy traffic, traffic lights, shopping centres or malls, big car parks, petrol stations, any of it! What we don’t have on the island is very special and everyone who lives here is well aware of it. On to the topics of food, farewells, fun and frolic, friendship and faraway family! Healthy coop mitosis When we arrived on the island five+ years ago, we straightaway joined the North Barrier Coop, which had formed in the north several years before but soon had members all over the island. Once every four to six weeks the coop orders bulk and packaged food in outers from Ceres Organics. Coops like ours throughout the country access the extensive Ceres catalogue at wholesale prices. In the core team, Bree looks after the spreadsheet, I place the order, Gerald or Caity collect it from the wharf and bring it to their big shed at Okiwi Passion, and Sue comes to the “split” and does the order reconciliation and billing. Other members take turns helping at the split and delivering orders. Sue lives boat-access only so the split is scheduled according to the tide, so she can be there! The coop became so popular that orders were approaching $10,000, which could take many hours to place and to split. Happily for all, members in the south formed their own coop, Aotea South, and central people like us could go with either one. Both started adding new members, and now each has over 20. It’s my dream to see the coops continue to grow and divide until the whole island has access to a full range of less expensive organic dry goods. Gerald was primed to take a photo of the order coming off the barge, but it was hosing down rain and he couldn’t get it. Next time! Gerald's home, the van's unloaded and Sue's organising for the split. Bree delivers our order Aotea South has since joined FareShare, a software platform that eliminates the need for a spreadsheet and automates reconciliation, billing and emailing members, in exchange for three percent of the order total. https://fareshare.coop Local produce The global situation has truly gotten people’s attention here. More and more are realising that ordering food boxes from Countdown to be flown over and collected from the airport may not be a long-term solution for food on the table. With many submissions on food self-reliance for the island, the local board included it as a top priority for their annual and three-year plans. It was amazing how quickly covid was forgotten as people packed the room for the initial meeting. It was organised in a modified “world café” format, with a different topic at each of four tables and 15 minutes for brainstorming before participants randomly switched to another table and topic. The topics were: utilising resources already on island for producing food, maximising productivity for home gardens, organising for community-scale value-added food production, and facilitating collection and distribution of locally produced food throughout the island. The responses will be collated and the conversation continued. These steps in the right direction are very dear to our hearts. Cherimoya for boxes from Okiwi Passion – YAY, they’re the best!, the largest supplier of produce for the island. https://okiwipassion.co.nz https://fundrazr.com/okiwipassion?ref=ab_7Vg4aSBbhro7Vg4aSBbhro Darren, above Palmers Beach, also greatly appreciated, is the second largest, growing kumara, potatoes and cupola. He and Shona sell them at markets and pop-up stalls at the art gallery and the church. Everyone ❤️ Lorraine Lovely Lorraine, a beloved Barrier icon, recently sold Pigeon Post shop and post office after running it for 17 years. She was the first islander we spoke to before moving here in 2015. We always enjoyed going into Pigeon Post for a chance to have a chat with her. I had the idea of asking Shel, an amazing artist, to make a nice, big card that lots of people could sign. It was kept in an envelope at the till at Claris Store, where the staff could let people know they could sign. Luckily Lorraine doesn’t do facebook, so I also used Barrier Chitchat to get the word out. Here's the card early on. By the time of the sweet farewell gathering the card was all filled up and Lorraine was very pleased to have it! In an atmosphere of warmth, smiles and wistfulness, her friends stood up to thank her and present gifts. Second from the right is Erua. When we introduced ourselves he became he 700th person we met on the island, 13 months after the 600th. We’re still keeping track! The previous 100s were reached after 9, 7, 9, 12, 8 and 7 months. No one’s really sure how many people live here, if it’s closer to 800, 850 or 900. If we make it to 800 we’ll be very pleased. To Lorraine’s left is Kirstie, who bought Pigeon Post with her husband, Ruark. To Lorraine’s right is one of their two daughters. Lovely people! They live on the Hauraki Gulf at outer Whangaparapara Harbour, the deep bay on the left in the photo, so they have quite a commute. (Blind Bay is to the right.) Their boat-access-only house is somewhere around here. Some days getting onto their boat and into the harbour can be risky, and once they get to the wharf, they have a long drive to Claris on a windy, unsealed road that’s sometimes blocked by slips. The shop opens at 8 and the girls have to catch the bus to Kaitoke School! They’re young and enthusiastic and the difficulties don’t seem to daunt them in the least! Let’s laugh! Laughter was the topic of this year’s Small Island, Big Ideas “festival of the mind”. Great topic, but when the postponed date was announced, Ro and I thought it was a bit early for people to have reacclimatised to being in large groups and many would hesitate to go. It really was a shame after all the organising, twice, and the guest speakers flying over. We used the Wholefoods Handbook fund to pay someone to film it, and good thing we did – only 30 people turned up. In one of the videos we heard someone in the audience sneeze and I imagine everyone nearly fainted! Moderator Michele A’Court – renowned comedian, writer, social commentator and mum. Winner of multiple awards for comedy and popular on radio and TV, and in theatres, clubs and pubs. Panelists Nick Holm, Senior Lecturer in media studies at Massey University. The role humour plays in advertising, politics, popular culture and the media, also parody, satire, irony and comedy. Alex Taylor, Senior Lecturer in psychology and leader of the Animal Minds Lab at Auckland University. Do animals laugh? Alex studies the minds of humans, dogs, kea and crows, using theoretical and experimental approaches, including tickling rats, to figure out if animals see the funny side of life.. Barbara Plester, Senior Lecturer in Management and International Business at Auckland University. An expert on workplace humour. Can banter and a chortle at work improve performance? The workplace joker and kindness and cruelty in laughter. Jeremy Elwood (Michelle’s partner), award winning comedian and regular panellists on TV3’s 7 Days and RNZ’s The Panel. How do comedians make people laugh? What's funny and what's not, and what happens when it all goes wrong? A morning “breakout session" The afternoon panel How soft is your towel? Rayco in Japan sent these most beautiful organic towels as a gift for helping her students with their theses. She said that when she was in the States (that’s when we met, when she was getting her PhD in Tucson and I edited her dissertation) she was constantly appalled at how scratchy the towels are there! All towels are nice and soft in Japan, she said. These towels are the softest we ever had, like drying your face on a puffy white cloud! I sent the photos to Naomi, another friend in Japan. She wrote “I know which ones Rayco sent you. That is the best towel in Japan or maybe best in the world. Very soft and feeling good. Every time you use it you feel happy.” It’s true! Rayco got them at a towel museum! I’m learning they have all sorts of unusual specialised museums in Japan, such as tin toys, subways, pears, footwear, soy sauce, salt, kites, gloves, mercury poisoning, paper, black pearls and lanterns. Love at first swim We finally went to the swim hole in Awana Stream we’ve known of for several years. Now we know why people speak of it with great enthusiasm. It’s at the edge of the campground from where surfies follow the stream downstream to the sea. You can see it gets deep straightaway! Further downstream The dunes at Awana Campground. The stream is to the left. Baby to baby – a Pacific bubble of love The baby on her mamma’s lap is Moana, July 1980. When we were in the South Pacific we stayed with this beautiful family in the village of Safotu on the island of Savaii in Samoa. While we were there they renamed the baby Joanna! We often walked with Vitale to their two plantations, one of them very far away, and spent hours and hours day and night talking to him. We got to know the rest of the family as best we could with only the shared language of love. We learned a lot from all of them. They made these shell necklaces for us and gave us this lavalava. We’re still friends! Since then they had three more children, and recently I had a wonderful surprise of a facebook friend request from the youngest one, now 16! In 30 years, things have changed a lot in Safotu. Alapina and I have been corresponding ever since. Here’s Joanna now, at 30, with her six children, including twins. Her youngest is this wee cutie! Let’s learn! Enrolment in online courses surged at the height of the stay-at-home, and we were inadvertently part of the trend. In the two years since I started my radio show, which ends with a classical hour, our appreciation of classical music has grown and deepened. We were ready and keen to learn more. We signed up for what proved to be a WONDERFUL course: www.coursera.org/learn/introclassicalmusic It’s free! The instructor is a scholar of music and music history, and he’s most engaging as he explains the fundamentals of composition and performance, outlines the composers’ lives, and places them and their music in a rich context of history and culture. Our nightly videos are a treat and our knowledge and understanding are accumulating effortlessly. Craig Wright Below is the signed first page of the score of Beethoven’s Symphony No 5. You can see the three famous notes followed by the long note with a fermata over it, indicating that it’s to be prolonged. Flying bicycles What a surprise to see two of these heading for the airport! Some people who saw them thought they were dreaming. Lucia, who works for FlyMySky, said they left almost as soon as they arrived. As far as I know, no one got a photo. Friendly postie Handmade gifts from the author of Functional Education, the unique, brilliant and potentially culture-changing homeschooling guide I edited recently, which is in layout stage and soon to be published. Santi’s mother’s painting of Medlands Springtime lettuce – the red ones are Blood Red and Perella Rougette. SS Alevei in Tryphena Harbour (not my photo)
The grand show on Great Barrier Island Ten weeks! The longest gap between posts since I started writing them in 2015. Editing is the culprit, but a wonderful culprit! A bunch of juicy projects came my way all at once and they’ve taken over my computer time. A work in progress, chapter by lovely chapter, is Through Her Eyes: 16 women of Aotea Great Barrier Island. It’s a beautiful and insightful book gathering together the life stories and philosophies of a diverse group of Barrier women, with several fine art photos of each of them. Then along came the latest in a long line of master’s theses over the years by Japanese graduate students. They’re elementary teachers or high school teachers of English as a second language who’ve been learning to use “whole language” to teach English. I’ve written before about the glories of whole language, with its learner-centred approach based on authenticity, experiential learning and integration of the language arts skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Whole language develops learners’ language competence by engaging them in meaningful communication. It’s the natural, organic way humans have learned language effortlessly through the millennia. My current book is another in my big group of favourites, though it’s with “if only” wistfulness that I savour its ideas. It’s by Francean McCall, an experienced teacher of Steiner, Waldorf and enquiry-based learning. Fran has been recognised as one of the most inspiring teachers in New Zealand! Her book is a guide for homeschooling parents as well as a description of her absolutely brilliant online homeschooling programme, www.functionaleducation.com. Fran created Functional Education as a solution for parents facing problems with their children’s education. The few Steiner and Waldorf schools in New Zealand have long waiting lists, many parents were thrown into homeschooling at the deep end because of COVID, others who’d already been attempting it have encountered difficulties, and others are dissatisfied with traditional education or their children are struggling within it, but they lack confidence to embark on a homeschooling journey on their own. Each chapter is so refreshing I could weep. The world would be a different place if all children were educated along the lines of her programme. I wish I’d been! Working with Fran is a collaboration made in heaven. It’s a real joy to draw upon my experience in alternative education to advocate for the educational change I’m passionate about. I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to help Fran get her message out and attract parents and children to her unique and much-needed programme. Waiting in the wings are books by friends Keith and Mary in the UK. Mary’s book is about her MirrorStones, a “self-reflective tool” she manifested for times when more clarity and understanding are needed. When read and reflected upon with open heart and mind, they’re gentle guides to awareness, inspiration, growth and self-healing. I’ve immersed myself in some samples and I know their power! Keith has written more than 5000 poems, which he’s sorted into over 60 categories! I know Keith well enough to know his ideals are of the highest, his poetry ideas form in his heart and emerge through his sharp intellect, and I’ve read enough of his poems to know he has valuable insights to share and remarkable facility with words to express them. Some of his poems are very funny as well! from Searching Don’t Look Don’t look for what you have not lost You’ll muddle matters more, So many things you’re sure to find Yet not what you search for Look to yourself, the master key Lies waiting deep within, Unlock the door of Self to see No lack have you therein from Words, Signs and Symbols Wordless Truth Plain imprecision dogs the task, Exasperates right from start, All effort wrought, all meaning sought By language of the heart By word we fumble to express, Communicate the real, To touch the heart, to impart Truest sense of that we feel Yet word is not the thing Oft thrashing distant from the fact, And silence may more surely say By wordless truth exact from Freedom and Adventure The Gateway Through Come with me, let’s up and flee And we shall see what we shall see, I know not where the path may lead But let’s chase dreams, this rasping need To search out places far away Beyond this world in disarray Both worlds within and worlds without We’ll wend as one devoid of doubt, To never tire, to never cease, Resolve life’s puzzle piece by piece Until at last we step into Sweet namelessness, the gateway through… ending with something completely different, from Silly Rhymes Our Soup Bum of rat and toe of dog, Hair of bat and heart of hog, Mash them up and make a stew, Just enough for me and you Add some slime of slug (with salt) And don’t forget that cheese you bought, Stir well, don’t spit or dribble in Our soup from your now drooling chin And finally let’s serve our broth Upon that gaudy tablecloth, Two spoons and napkins quickly place Before we slurp it in our face! Come sit, fix bibs, just smell and stop As bum of rat floats to the top, Our steamy soup looks better than Cow pie that’s noshed by Desperate Dan! Can’t Live Without Music on Aotea FM Our beloved Jordan was on the show talking about his 58-day sailing adventure in a small yacht from Tahiti to British Columbia via Hawaii last year. It was just Jordan and the captain aboard, and alas they soon found they didn’t get along very well – a familiar tale on long voyages in small craft. Jordan’s life aboard ship was round-the-clock six-hour watches, with colossal containerships and supertankers never far from his mind, and the rest of the time sleeping, eating and hanging out in the galley, which were his quarters. He told tales of high seas and near catastrophe, doldrums with little progress, the resulting dwindling supplies of food and water, and great relief when they arrived, as much about survival as about parting company! With all that, it was a magnificent trip that he’d do again in an instant! The Ring Gold, gods, giants, dragons, airborne horses …. murder, love, greed, folly, valour and devotion – this Ring is The Ring of the Nibelung, the 15-hour epic by the German composer Richard Wagner. The Ring is as revered now as it was at its first performance at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany in 1876. It’s a mammoth undertaking presented in four evenings that’s still performed in big opera houses, and tickets always sell out on the first day of sales! After all, it’s among the mightiest single monuments of art created by one person. The Ring is performed in opera houses, but its four parts aren’t called operas because they don’t follow opera conventions such as arias and ensembles. The four “music dramas” are The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung, which means Twilight of the Gods. Earlier this year for six or eight weeks, most nights from around 10 pm, Ro and I watched 15-20 minutes, until we’d experienced the entire Ring! We were encouraged by our music lover friend Robert, who knows it well and has been to several performances. And we’re glad we did! A wild horsewoman of the air, the Valkyrie Brunnhilde In the classical hour on two of my shows I summarised the story of the Ring and played highlights of its incredible music. I pasted in below*** the summary I wrote, if you’d like to get an idea of what it’s all about. And if you’re keen for a profound experience and to watch a most BEAUTIFUL production in every way, search for “The Ring of the Nibelungen, Bayreuth 1979, English subtitles, youtube” and you’ll find each of the four parts. It may take some searching for the right ones. I can send you the links – just get in touch. You too will be very glad you did! Check out Aotea FM on livestream at aoteafm.org or radio-new-zealand.co.nz/aotea-fm and let me know a song you’d like to hear! The first Aotea FM schedule after presenters could return to the studio Chooks in the studio! Organic NZ Check out the current issue of Organic NZ magazine! Starting on page 40 you’ll find the article I wrote with our friend the medical herbalist Mary Allan (included in my last update). Very exciting to have an article published in ONZ! On page 8, “Things We Like”, you’ll find a wee review of the Wholefoods Handbook 2020. Still passionate up north in Okiwi Exciting happenings at Okiwi Passion, where our hard-working friends the market gardeners Gerald and Caity grow beautiful vegetables, fruit and herbs for weekly produce boxes for as many as 100 island households. You haven’t tasted a carrot til you’ve tried one of theirs! They also grow salad mixes and microgreens for island cafes and the two food shops, plus hundreds of punnets of seedlings. Their popularity has exceeded their infrastructure capacity! They’re crowdfunding for a large greenhouse for seedlings, for a low-tech planting device that will save hours of crouching labour when they’re planting them out, and a walk-in chiller (to replace ice packs in styrofoam boxes, can you believe it?). Read their inspiring story and see beautiful photos and videos of their market garden at fundrazr.com/okiwipassion The Wholefoods Handbook is one of the rewards! Caity and Gerald rely on three fit and dedicated interns every summer, when the gardens at Okiwi Passion are at full tilt and the cycles of abundance need to be planted, tended, harvested, packed and distributed. Their interns are usually from overseas, but this year, of course, there won’t be anyone from overseas. Even two-month WWOOFers would be lifesaving. Read more under “Learn” on their website: okiwipassion.co.nz. If you or someone you know might be keen, let me know and I’ll put you in touch, or contact them directly. Guaranteed to be a wonderful experience in a very special place! One of eight one-acre growing blocks Smaller scale growers share their harvests Greg brought beetroot And we made borscht! Jordan brought a bag of limes and Santi made them into scrumptions key lime pie, using a recipe I’ve had since the 1970s! Annette left out heaps and crates of yacons for passers-by to help themselves Extra beauty in one of many bountiful goodie boxes from Bev and Les Once again grapefruits (and lemons) are coming in from all directions – Leo, Bev, Robyn, Jordan, Maxine, Orla, Robin and David have all given us some! This is a special one amongst the dozens. NZ spinach going wild at the Community Gardens And Santi keeps on keeping us in sourdough rye! Swimming carries on, of course. Every day, depending on waves, wind, temperature, sun and tide, it’s eeny, meeny, miny mo for Medlands on the east, Blind Bay on the west or (the cold option!) Kaitoke Stream. After an autumn swim at Medlands Circus comes to Claris Soon after Kiwis could travel freely again, the island had a treat – the Cirque Lemuria, a wee circus travelling around the NZ coast and calling in at different places to do a show. As far as anyone can remember, it was the only circus ever to have been here. It was a grand show and just about the whole island came to see it! Traveling the NZ coast 😊 😊 😊 😊 😊 Dear Lucia was here for lunch. As I was “plating”, Jordan turned up. I got out another plate and made three into four, and then we all had the best time! I LOVE that young people like to be with us. Rapturous Eunate at the Medlands overlook Bella realised her dream of her own barber shop in Claris The main road south to north, wharf to wharf from Shoal Bay in Tryphena to Port Fitzroy is 38 km, with many twists, turns, hills and saddles. This is one of the only two straightaways along the route. St Johns Church in Medlands was barged down to the Barrier in 1986 from its original location in Awanui, 7 km north of Kaitaia. Awanui 1986 Medlands 2020 The Barrier from the Isthmus – posted on Barrier Chitchat They say the island’s been easier to spot than usual. We’ve rarely seen the Auckland-Northland coast from the west side of GBI. (GBI is on the horizon, towards the left) This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. —John Muir Sunset at Tryphena *** The Ring in brief
Forever, the Rhinemaidens have guarded gold, a magic helmet and a ring that gives the wearer power to control the world. The dwarf Alberich tricks them and steals it all. The chief god, Wotan, tricks Alberich and steals it all from him, but Wotan has to give it to the two giants who built Valhalla, the palace of the gods, up in the sky. One giant kills the other to keep it all for himself. He turns into a dragon and guards the treasures in a cave for 20 years. The nine Valkyries are daughters of Wotan. The Valkyries are wild horsewomen of the air who rescue heroes fallen in battle and return them to Valhalla. The twins Siegmund and Sieglinde are also children of Wotan who’d been separated at birth. They meet as adults, after Sieglinde had been married against her will, and fall in love. Wotan has ways to find out what’s going on everywhere. He commands his favourite Valkyrie daughter, Brunnhilde, to kill Siegmund for his sins of incest and adultery. Brunnhilde can’t bring herself to do it, but Wotan enters and kills him. Then to punish Brunnhilde he banishes her to sleep on a mountaintop surrounded by fire until a true hero breaks through the fire and awakens her. Sieglinde gives birth to Siegfried but dies in childbirth, leaving him an orphan. He’s raised by the evil dwarf Mime, who intends that when Siegfried grows up he’ll kill the dragon and obtain the treasure, so that Mime can kill Siegfried and get it for himself. Siegfried does kill the dragon, but then he kills Mime. Wearing the ring, he follows a bird to the mountain summit, gets through the fire and awakens Brunnhilde. They fall in love. After some time, Brunnhilde urges Siegfried to leave in search of adventure. He places the ring on her finger before he leaves. He comes upon the Hall of the Gibichungs along the Rhine, where Alberich’s son, the evil dwarf Hagen, lives with the rest of his unsavoury family. Hagen wants the ring for himself. With the others, they plot to drug Siegfried so he forgets his bond with Brunnhilde and agrees to bring her back to marry Hagen. The drug also causes Siegfried to fall in love with Alberiche’s sister, Gutrune. Brunnhilde is devastated and completely at a loss to comprehend what’s going on. She can only think that Siegfried has betrayed her. Siegfried is eventually murdered on a hunt as a result of Hagen’s intrigues. In the last scene of the entire 15-hour epic, Brunnhilde, who now understands the deceit of the Gibichungs, commands that the vassals build a funeral pyre for Siegfried over the Rhine. Hagen attempts to remove the ring from Siegfried’s finger, but his hand rises threateningly and Hagen recoils in fear. Instead, Brunnhilde takes the ring from Siegfried’s finger before his body is placed in the fire. Then she commits suicide by riding into the fire on her horse, Grane, and returns the ring to the Rhinemaidens. Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring, and the gods and Valhalla are destroyed. Kaitoke Kiss on Great Barrier Island What a strange time it’s been! We celebrated the loosening of restrictions with a kiss on our favourite dune-top! How glad I was that people could once again call in for a visit! That’s what I missed the most. For many people, the past seven weeks haven’t been easy on the emotions, mind, spirit, heart and soul, and I hope your experience has been as gentle as possible. The confused energies may have affected animals as well. Something in the air one April day caused them to go a bit wacky! The flapping pig, lifeguard dog, curious horse and squawking oystercatchers Every now and again the wild pig problem returns to Medlands. They wreak havoc on gardens and make a mess of recycling. This day, two pigs were across the road as we pulled up to our favourite spot to park and walk over the dune. One behaved like a normal pig, but the other was lying on its side, its two in-air legs flapping up and down like a calisthenic clamshell. Alas no photo, but here they are the next day. (We believe they are no more. A few days later Johnny was there with his rifle and pig dog.) Down to the beach and into the sea for our cold but blissful frolic. Along the beach came Greg, his wife, Mandy, and their dog, Koda. We’d been introduced to Koda, a long-haired black shepherd, the largest dog we’ve ever known. Though massive, he’s well-behaved, so he’s off lead when away from people. As they all came near, Mandy put him back on the lead, but to our surprise, next thing we knew he was in the water and heading full speed towards me! I admit to being terrified! Just centimetres away, he heeded Mandy’s calls and turned back. Koda acted from concern, wanting to help or rescue me – as Greg put it, his intentions were honourable! Sand sometimes gets into the clip, said he, and Koda slips off the lead. They tell me his name means “friend” in Native American languages, a good description of a life-saving dog. What next?! As we sat on the dune enjoying the beautiful scene, along the shore came Dale leading three horses. One took it into his head to trot right across the beach to us. Ro got up to greet the horse (and stand in front of me lest I get trampled!), look him in the eyes and stroke his face. Ro thought he was curious about us! Telltale hoof prints Dale and one of her horses on another day Adding to the oddity of our usually uneventful afternoon at the beach, a resident oystercatcher pair, Rigg and Maggie, normally silent as they go about their shoreline foraging, kept bursting into intermittent episodes of raucous squawking racket! STAY WELL That’s the solution to last month’s acrostic. Many of the clues and answers seem a bit dated by now! Self-isolate Enjoy quiet days and evenings at home Travel Out of the question these days Air A invisible medium for disaster Yay ! What everyone will say in celebration when this is all over Wash your hands Do this often as you sing Happy Birthday twice Elderberry Small, round, blue prevention that grows in bunches on trees Laughter Happy release that’s wonderful for stress reduction Love What the world needs now more than ever Forget your troubles and fly a kite! The first event on the island since the 22nd of March! Aotea FM A few of the trustees rotated days to keep our community radio station on air two or three hours a day. Our lovely station manager, Feli, put out a request to the community for two-hour Spotify playlists. I made a few as well as six classical playlists, one for each Sunday afternoon. Choko time at the Community Gardens In late autumn and early winter a choko megavine covers the fence along one side of the Gardens, producing prolifically! To quote from the acclaimed new Wholefoods Handbook 2020 (contact me if you’d like a copy – single copies are $6 plus postage): Choko (chayote or Mexican marrow) is an edible gourd that originated in southern Mexico and Central America, where it was long cultivated by the Aztecs. After the Spanish conquest, chokos became widely grown all over the tropics. Chokos are vigorous climbers, growing as much as 15 metres in one season! To cultivate, the whole fruit is sprouted and planted, the top protruding a little. Many consider choko to be bland, but a wide range of options can enliven this prolific and useful vegetable. Raw choko can be grated and used in salads. It can be sliced or chunked, lightly steamed and seasoned with herbs or tamari, or eaten with salt, pepper, butter and cheese. Don’t overcook. It can be halved, stuffed with mushrooms and cheese, and steamed. It can also be baked; sliced and fried; diced and mixed with eggplant or other vegetables for a stir-fry; and added to soups and casseroles. Cooked choko can also be mashed and used as a thickener in soups and baked dishes. It can be used in place of avocado for pseudo-guacamole, or mashed with avocado to increase the volume. And it makes excellent jams and pickles and can even be used like pumpkin in desserts. That’s it on news from the island! Once again I’m reaching into the archives and bringing out bits I wrote a while back. This month: the birth and death of stars, and a wondrous trek up a mountain called Ruahine. Private lives of the stars, concluded We’ve already learned about the temperature of stars, their size and speed, and their distance from our pale blue dot. Here are the last of the questions asked and answered by visiting astronomer John Hearnshaw at a talk on the Barrier a few years ago. How are stars born and how do they die? Stars begin life as increasingly dense molecular clouds of dark dust between existing stars in a galaxy’s spiral arms. With the continuous gravitational collapse of gas and dust, the evolving mass becomes hot, and the increase in mass leads to gravitational collapse, which gives rise to subcentres and subsubcentres, until eventually 1000 stars can come into existence from one cloud. The star cluster Matariki (Pleiades) contains 400 stars. About 100 million years old, it’s considered a young star cluster. As stars evolve, nuclear reactions at their centres convert hydrogen to helium, which gives out energy and causes changes to the stars’ temperature and pressure. Only the outer 25 percent of stars isn’t involved in these fusion reactions. This is why stars have a finite life. Over time – a very, very, very, very long time, the hydrogen is used up. Most stars are between 1 billion and 100 billion years old. Our dear sun is about halfway through its expected lifespan of 10 billion years. Stars with high mass burn out more quickly and may only live for 10 million years, and those with low mass hold on longer. Stars reach the ends of their lives in different ways. Some throw off their outer layers and become what’s called “planetary nebulae” (misnamed over 200 years ago because when viewed through older telescopes they resembled the rounded shape of a planet), such as the Hourglass, the Helix, the Ring and the Crab. The Crab of the Southern Sky Stars of higher mass explode as supernovae. Most of the stars’ mass is ejected and the cycle continues. Supernova 1987A was the brightest supernova seen from Earth in the four centuries since the telescope was invented. The explosion occurred 160,000 years ago on the outskirts of a “nearby" dwarf galaxy. The light of the explosion, traveling at 300 million meters per second, finally reached Earth in 1987. The star stuff is reused thousands of times, though some dying stars become black holes, neutron stars or dwarfs. And finally, what are stars made of? The technique needed is stellar spectroscopy, which measures the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation emerging from stars to determine which elements are present. It’s been known since the 1860s that all stars contain the same elements, though this theory had its detractors over the years and has only recently been confirmed. The consensus now is that stars are about 90 percent hydrogen and 10 percent helium, with trace amounts of other elements. Oxygen, for example, is only 1/40,000 of a star’s make-up. There John concluded his talk. I can’t say what all this fascinating information does for us in our daily lives, but as Mark Twain wrote in his delightful 1869 travelogue, The Innocents Abroad, “I sincerely wish to learn” just the same! ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Night sky over Great Barrier Island In the forest primeval Way back in the innocent pre-virus days of early summer, the intrepid triad of Lucia, Santi and Santi’s mum, Marina, tackled a little-used track at the very south of the island. The track starts at the end of Cape Barrier Road (at the bottom right in the satellite image), drops down to a bay and then winds up the mountain Ruahine, a prominent feature of the landscape around Tryphena. Before the real climb begins, a break for mate (of course!) at Whalers Lookout. From here the Coromandel Peninsula is to the southwest, 19 km over the Hauraki Gulf. Dolphin at Whalers Point DOC advises 1.5 hours each way, but that seems outdated. The track is marked but not maintained so trailblazing and bushwhacking were needed, slowing the walk to 2.5 hours. They soon lost themselves in a magical world and became one with it. Watching a livestream Mini cascade Vines and roots twined everywhere in weird and wonderful bush like they’d never seen before At last they emerged on a clearing – the summit! Closing with a few more photos A Navy ship at Blind Bay after a rainy swim Rocket, chives, guavas Misty view from our deck I think that in the past seven weeks people have been more reflective and having conversations about deeper questions than perhaps they did before, and really connecting with and appreciating each other more explicitly than before. As a friend wrote to me, “It's a time when we’re all keeping each other healthy and happy. I'm looking forward to a better future when we can be fearless and free.” Living in a bubble on Great Barrier Island How things have changed since my last post! No doubt you too are wondering what this mega-upheaval is all about and where it’s going. I’d just relished a second heavenly herbal weekend with Mary Allan, featuring her herbal medicine-making workshop ... … where we made all of these – thyme- and garlic-infused honey, kawa kawa- and comfrey-infused oil, fire cider and lip balm, plus a tincture ... ... and had lots of fun as we chopped, chatted and learned how to build our natural immunity with herbs.... ... The next day Ro and I celebrated five years on the island (photo from our early days here) … when all of a sudden life changed all over the planet. With literally nothing happening here to write about, it’s a perfect time to send along some of the science-y bits I wrote over the years that never fit when lots was happening! So let’s learn about about stars, trees and time. Private lives of the stars, continued Further illumination of stellar mysteries from the talk two years back by New Zealand astronomer John Hearnshaw. This episode delves into the speed and mass of stars. How fast are the stars moving? The Doppler effect, first identified in 1842, comes in handy to answer this question. You’ve probably heard of it: a change in the frequency of sound waves or light waves as the source and observer move towards or away from each other. The example we were given in high school was the change in the pitch of a train whistle as the train approaches and then carries on down the track. Similarly, light waves from the stars change frequency – observed as colour – as the star moves relative to us. There’s a shift towards the blue end of the spectrum as a star moves towards us, and a red shift as it moves away. Using these shifts, clever astronomers of the late 1800s developed stellar spectroscopy to deduce the velocity of stars. If you want to take a crack at guessing the average speed of stars in kilometres per hour or second, now’s the time to pause and consider, before you begin to read the next paragraph! Hint: If you were a (person-sized) star, you could travel 25 km in a little less than a second. The answer is…. Most stars move at about 100,000 kilometres per hour (kph) relative to the sun, or 30 kilometres per second (kps). A few zip along at more than 360,000 kph (100 kps). Not one star ever observed in the Milky Way has revved up to “hypervelocity” – 1,000,000 kph, or about 300 kps, which is fast enough to escape the gravity of the galaxy, though every now and then a hypervelocity star enters and exits. Nowadays astronomers use the red and blue shifts to calculate a star’s speed to a precision of 3 meters per second! The Milky Way from two perspectives How massive are the stars? First of all, what is mass? It’s a measure of gravitational attraction. Physicists can determine the mass of a star by studying its orbit, but they need some clues indicating what forces are affecting the orbit. Did you know that most stars are part of a binary pair, or even a triplet or higher multiple? From this distance, many pairs seem to merge into one. Alpha Centauri, our nearest star, is a binary pair we can easily see. Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B are in an 80-year elliptical orbit around each other, sharing a centre of mass. “Simply” measure the effects of the two stars on their orbits and you can work out their mass. Alpha Centauri A & B (lower left) are the pointer stars to the Southern Cross (centre). Alpha Centauri A & B through the Hubble telescope. Or maybe they’re headlamps on a rainy night The sun is one of perhaps 15 percent of stars that are solitary. Luckily there’s another way to determine the mass of dwarf and mid-size stars: their mass correlates with their temperature, which is correlated with their colour. The sun’s mass is so colossal it’s difficult to comprehend. It’s 2 x 1030 kilograms, or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg, which 3,000,000 times greater than the mass of the Earth. “Hot dwarves” are even more massive, and stars with the least mass are 100 times less massive than the sun. Why are trees tree-shaped? And why do some, like pohutukawa, have large side branches and others, like pines, have small side branches? We take for granted that trees are fundamentally similar, with wide trunks splitting into smaller branches. There’s a reason for this nearly universal size relationship – the need for trees to support themselves and their branches, possibly for centuries. Trees have developed some neat tricks to keep their trunks upright and their branches aloft! For some, including pohutukawa, oak and sycamore, the wood in each branch’s lower half is slightly compressed while the top half is stretched, which takes the weight off the branch. This layer, called reaction wood, is reinforcement for the increasing weight of the growing branch. Pohutukawa at Medlands For other trees, the reaction wood is on the underside of the branches, so the branches are pushed up, not pulled from above. This adaptation isn’t as effective, so these trees can’t support large side branches. Instead they have a thick vertical trunk with much smaller side branches, and they grow to be conical: pines, spruce and firs. Kahikatea, the New Zealand white pine Trees deal with a lot of wind. Their branches sway nicely in the breeze, but if branches bend too far they’ll snap. Yet a thick branch that doesn’t bend easily is also heavy, so it adds stress where it forks off from the rest of the tree. That’s why where a tree forks, the diameters of the two forking branches together equal the diameter of the sturdier main branch. All trees follow this pattern to minimise bending and snapping in the wind. Flexing branches also make trees more robust. Each branch sways at its own rate, pushing and pulling on the trunk at different times, all out of sync. Sharing the energy puts less stress on the roots, so the tree is more likely to weather a storm. These structural ingenuities are what makes a tree look like a tree. Nature is not only abundant, it’s also brilliant! What makes time special? That’s the topic of this final instalment from “The Nature of Time”, the fourth annual “No Barriers – Small Island Big Ideas” festival of the brain in October 2018. Though the four experts could only conclude is that time is “a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey … stuff” or even worse, “a big invisible thing that will kill you”, each took a crack at elucidating a tantalising but elusive concept that’s evaded scientists and philosophers since not long after the dawn of time. The last speaker was Craig Callendar, who flew all the way from California for a time-lagged couple of days. (Are at-will flights a thing of the past?) He’s a philosopher of science at the Institute of Practical Ethics – “Science for the Common Good” in San Diego. His 2017 book “What Makes Time Special?”, and his talk on the Barrier, tackled the conflict between our intuitive model of time as flowing and the “static” or “block” time of fundamental physics. Craig barely made it through the panel discussion with his eyes open, but he got himself together to talk about some very heavy duty stuff, though to him it’s child’s play by now. We think that time flows, he pointed out, like a spotlight moving up a map of our life. Our lives are a story with memories and other ingredients of a self that maintains an identity through time despite superficial changes. But physics tells us there is no time, only space-time. In the static view, our lives are a streak on the world line, forever there on the timeless “block” of all events, and so perhaps we are eternal. You and I experience time as an ever-changing structure. Starting in childhood, we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model is deeply saturated within our language, thought and behaviour, but physicists say that it’s rubbish! As Einstein put it: For most of us, said Craig, time is general concept with many components that are central to our whole idea of it – the flow of time, its direction, sequence and duration, simultaneity, a “special” present that’s shared everywhere, time dragging or speeding up, and time as the fourth dimension. However, over time physicists have been gradually tearing apart these notions, using logic to detach our intuitively derived properties one by one. In fact, as science progressed, time has been shedding so many properties it has all but evaporated! There’s so little left, we can hardly call it time anymore. Craig explained the origin of our flowing-present model of time as a natural reaction to the perceptual and evolutionary challenges thrown at us. We’re constantly bombarded with information coming in through different senses from different directions at different speeds. It’s a chaotic mess that we do our best to make sense of in order to live. Sometimes that means integrating our perceptions and experiences into an intuitive but useful order and projecting it onto the world, even though our conclusions are at odds with the conclusions of science. Our view of time makes the world easier to describe but in fact has no independent existence. Once we become aware of the scientific picture of time, reconciling it with our inner picture is a fundamental dilemma. Modelling time as flowing makes sense even if it misrepresents it. Craig concluded with the lovely conciliatory idea that physics doesn’t explain the full richness of human experience. So what is time? Philosophers, physicists and everyday thinkers have long pondered the question, but to everyone but geologists it seems to lead only through labyrinths to find only paradoxes. Saint Augustine of fourth century Algeria wrote: “When you do not ask me what time is, I know, but once you ask me I do not know…. How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.” ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ ⏱ Water The Barrier's longest drought in living memory began in the spring of 2018. With one exception we’ve had only meagre falls all this time, and less than 1/3 of normal rainfall last year. As the rainless months dragged on, the local board set up a water source behind the council building. Carrying water home in containers only goes so far, and the only water deliveries on the island are of unpotable water from a stream. Since our early days here we’ve been urging the board to get community bores drilled south, central and north, with a clean tanker to deliver potable water to people’s water tanks. They agreed to the need, but no action yet. Denya We haven’t seen our dear friend Denya in 40 years. We first met her at a Doug Kirshaw concert in downstate New York in the early 1970s, where she had a wee stall selling her bead and shell jewellery. Now, as the pandemic’s tentacles had stretched all the way to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, all of a sudden emails weren’t enough and we had a rash of phone calls for the first time ever! Denya’s a professional musician, delighting audiences for decades with her fiddle playing and vocals, solo and with different groups at different times and places, at least until her life as she knew it was put on hold. Garden After months of stress from wind and drought and looking worse than pathetic, and then, following what seemed hardly any rain at all, our garden responded gratefully to even 10 mm from the sky. It breathed a sigh of relief and started to grow almost uncannily lushly. Kale, New Zealand spinach and mizuna grew bigger than ever. Kaitoke Beach from Palmers Beach. The arrow more or less marks the path through the dunes to Oceanview Road. South end of Blind Bay on the west (Hauraki Gulf) side of the island Wetlands (not my photo) Coast of Rakitu Island Gerald often boats out there, 2.5 km from Okiwi Passion, for fishing, or did for years before boating and fishing became taboo for a month (and we all hope no longer than that). Interior of central GBI from the Medlands overlook From our deck Here’s a wee pandemic-themed acrostic puzzle Ro and I made up! After you guess the answers to the clues, the first letters of the answers will form a two-word phrase reading from top to bottom.
_ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Enjoy quiet days and evenings at home _ _ _ _ _ _ Out of the question these days _ _ _ A invisible medium for disaster _ _ _ ! What everyone will say in celebration when this is all over _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Do this often as you sing Happy Birthday twice _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Small, round, blue prevention that grows in bunches on trees _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Happy release that’s wonderful for stress reduction _ _ _ _ What the world needs now more than ever Answer next time! Building natural immunity on GBI and beyond “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said visiting medical herbalist Mary Allan as she began her talk here a few days ago. Initially she planned to speak on safe and effective ways to support and strengthen the immune system as we move towards autumn and winter, the seasons when colds and flu are on the increase. Then she added to the description: “especially this year, with a virus pandemic looking possible”. By the time she arrived, a global pandemic had been declared. In the world’s present dire straits, an ounce of prevention is worth a tonne of cure. Mary shared enormously valuable advice on whole plant medicine for whole body immunity. This "special edition" post is based on her talk and on her workshop the next day and other research. The situation changed quickly during the weekend Mary was here. If the talk and workshop had been planned for this coming weekend, we would have cancelled them. More than half of the cells in our bodies are not human – they’re microorganisms, some beneficial, others harmful or deadly. The immune system, our ally in resistance to infection, is made up of entire organs and vessel systems as well as individual cells and proteins. Defences are found in bone marrow, the thymus gland, lymph nodes, tonsils, spleen, bowel, the skin, mucous membranes and more. Infection is the invasion and multiplication of a pathogen, while inflammation is the body's protective response against infection. Supporting the immune system is perhaps more important now than ever before. Herbalism is holistic, and Mary covered nutrition, hygiene, sleep and stress management as well as herbs to bolster our natural immunity. Herbs The following herbs are valuable for immunity and for protection and healing of the respiratory tract. Often the only difference in using herbs for prevention or for treatment is the size and frequency of the dose. Mary advises that these herbs have been helpful in viral infections, and whilst the Covid-19 virus is a novel virus that we haven't treated before, we can take an educated guess that they will help. Fresh garlic is active against all sorts of bacteria, fungi and viruses. It’s a warming herb that can be taken daily with food – 1-3 cloves daily, raw or lightly steamed. For acute treatment take raw on toast or mixed into honey, or make a jar of garlic-infused honey and use off the spoon or in drinks. To prepare, place garlic cloves in a jar, pour honey over to more than cover the garlic, cover the jar tightly, label. Let sit two weeks, then strain and store in a cool, dark place. If you know your stomach can handle it, you can even swallow half a garlic clove like a pill. Fresh ginger benefits every organ system in the body. It’s also warming and helps to strengthen the body. Ginger is a powerful anti-inflammatory and as well as aiding expectoration (expelling from the throat or lungs), it soothes digestion, helps reduce joint pain and has many other beneficial effects. You can eat ginger with honey or as tea, or slice and suck! For a cold or cough: squash a clove of garlic and a piece of ginger, put in a cup with chilli to taste, and pour boiling water over. Turmeric is warming as well. It’s very anti-inflammatory to the whole body. Turmeric is most effective if eaten along with fat, so put into food cooked with oil or in salad dressing, or make golden milk: mix a heaped teaspoon of turmeric in milk with some black pepper and honey (honey is optional), then heat. Viruses reside in the nose. A traditional Indian treatment is to place turmeric powder into a pot of boiling water and inhale through the nose at the onset of symptoms. [To really clear out your nose, check out the yoga cleansing technique jala neti with special breathing.] Echinacea purpurea, Echinacea angustifolia roots for immune system stimulation, powerful blood cleansing, anti-infection and anti-inflammatory effects. If your mouth feels tingly, you know it’s good quality. It’s mainly used as a preventative, but if you feel like you’re getting sick, take a high dose immediately and every two hours. Sometimes this is enough to nip an infection in the bud. The most effective forms of the root: * a strong infusion – steep covered for much longer than tea. For prevention, drink 1 cup per day. If you have symptoms, a cup every two hours may knock out the bug. If it doesn’t after 1-2 days, switch to other herbs or continue to prevent secondary infection. * decoction (mince the root, bring to boil, then simmer 15-20 minutes) or tincture: 5-20 ml a day, up to 30 ml for colds and flu. The dose in echinacea supplements is too small to be of any real value Photo from Nature’s Creation: Knowledge and Guidance through Healing Plants by Jennifer Michelsen Studies have found that green and black tea are also useful preventatives. Elderberry has been used traditionally for respiratory infections and lab studies suggest it has antiviral properties. Elderberry syrup is a popular herbal medicine for colds and flu. Lung support Mullein tea: Pour 1 cup boiling water over 1-2 tablespoons of fresh or dry mullein leaf, cover and steep several hours, strain and sip. It’s palatable and soothing, moistening and expectorant, especially helpful for dry coughs. Plantain (ribwort) is another soothing herb with many virtues for the body! For coughs, narrow-leaf plantain is better than broad-leaf. Use as a tea, a tincture, a juice or made into herbal honey: place dried plantain into a jar, pour honey over to cover, stir to coat the herb, add more honey, cover tightly, label. Let sit two weeks, then strain. Stored in a tightly covered jar in a cool, dark place, it will keep indefinitely. Thyme has antiviral, antifungal and antibacterial properties, and is a powerful expectorant, especially helpful when a secondary infection is present. Include in cooking for as a preventative; for acute treatment make tea or take a tincture. Fresh or dried thyme can also be made into a vinegar: put leaves and soft stems into a jar, cover with apple cider vinegar, let soak 3-4 weeks, then strain. Important: If you are on medications or pregnant or have a serious health condition, check with a herbalist to be sure the herbs you use aren’t contraindicated, particularly when taken in higher amounts. Food quantities are unlikely to cause major issues. Nutrition and Supplements Fire Cider is a delicious sweet spicy brew to take through the cold and flu season for either prevention or treatment. It’s a herbal vinegar made with horseradish or turmeric, onions, garlic, ginger and chilli, and unrefined naturally fermented apple cider vinegar (with the “mother”) poured over all. Let sit four weeks, strain and add honey. You can find recipes online. Search for Rosemary Gladstar, who coined the term Fire Cider decades ago Zinc is required for the activity of over 100 enzymes in the body. Sources are pumpkin seeds, shellfish, mushrooms, spinach. Or take around 15 mg daily as a preventative. If you get ill, increase to around 35 mg daily or follow instructions on the label. Don’t take too much. Selenium boosts natural killer cells. It’s found in oats, raw garlic and Brazil nuts. Vitamin A is important for health of the mucous membranes, which line many body cavities and tubular organs, including the gut and respiratory passages. Beta carotene, which the body can convert to Vitamin A, is found in yellow and orange vegies. Vitamin C is found in fresh herbs, citrus and vegies. For a supplement, lypo-spheric may give better results, but it’s expensive. Take 1000 mg daily for prevention, 3000 mg if you get sick. For non-lypospheric vitamin C (tablets or powder), take 1000-5000 mg daily in divided doses as preventative, the higher end and even more if you get sick. High doses can cause loose bowels; reduce dosage if this occurs. Vitamin D3 is very important for immunity and much more. Because of so much time indoors, 40-70 percent of people may be deficient in vitamin D. Sources are fish, salmon, sardines, eggs, dairy. Supplementing with D3 is advised. Practitioners often recommend at least 5000 IU daily.Be sure not to take too much – check that your GP isn’t already giving you vitamin D, also called cholecalciferol. You can also ask to be tested for your D3 level. Vitamin E is needed for maintenance of the immune system. Found in nuts, seeds, vegetable oils and leafy greens. Carotenoids boost natural killer cells. Found in brightly coloured vegies. Essential fatty acids – omega 3, 6, 9: raw nuts and seeds including hemp seeds and flax seeds, fish oil. Olive leaf strengthens the body’s immune response. Make a tea or take a supplement. Honey is immune boosting and good for colds or sore throats. Probiotics such as kimchi, sauerkraut, miso, tempeh, kefir and yoghurt can add back helpful bacteria and boost the level of immune cells in the mucous membranes of the intestines. Eat a variety of mushrooms to strengthen immunity. Mushroom supplements can be helpful to strengthen immune health. Hygiene “Be careful, not fearful,” said Mary. Both personal hygiene and community and public health measures are essential. Hand sanitisers are effective but if overused they disrupt the natural healthy microbiome of the skin. Washing hands with soap and water is best. Air: Use a diffuser or burner to disperse essential oils at home, especially antimicrobials such as eucalyptus, pine, tea tree and thyme. Traditionally herbs such as white sage were burned to purify the air. Bleach as a disinfectant: Clean surfaces with soap and water first. Use 1 part bleach to 99 parts cold water. Use bleach with caution, follow safety guidelines, use gloves and keep away from eyes. Alcohol as a disinfectant: 70% dilution. Alcohol is flammable and should be used in well-ventilated areas away from naked flame. Also keep in mind that viruses dislike the sun and thrive more in cold and wet conditions. Sleep Herbs, nutrition, supplements and hygiene can only go so far to compensate for lifestyle shortfalls. For your body and immune system to function optimally, a regular routine that includes plenty of sleep should be top priority. Do everything you can to ensure adequate rest. Over time, being run down can suppress the immune system and leave you susceptible to infection and disease. When needed, use nourishing, relaxing herbal teas, tinctures or tablets. If you tend towards anxiousness or sleeplessness, be sure to have quality herbal sleep medicines on hand. * Nervine relaxants (calming and restorative): chamomile, holy basil, lemon balm, lavender, withania (ashwaghanda) * Herbal sedatives (stronger than the relaxants): kava, valerian, California poppy, hops Stress management The immune system is even affected by the mind. Stress-induced immune suppression makes us much more susceptible to catching whatever’s going around. Take a deep breath, reframe your situation, practice meditation, go for a brisk walk (or a swim!), whatever works for you. Laughter, friendships, relaxation and making music all improve the immune system. Even better, all at once! A verse from the Tao te Ching
Imagine a small country with few people. Its inhabitants are content. They enjoy the labour of their hands and do not waste time inventing labour-saving machines. Since they dearly love their homes, they are not interested in travel. Although they have boats and carriages, they are rarely used. Although there may be weapons, nobody ever uses them. They are content with healthy food, pleased with simple clothing, satisfied in snug homes. People take pleasure in being with their families, spending weekends working in their gardens and delighting in the doings of the neighbourhood. Although the next country is close enough that they can hear their roosters crowing and dogs barking, they are content to die without ever having gone to see it. This is the time! |
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