Work in progress
| Contents | After too many tedious hours in ancestry.com… There are two types of family tree. The first draws a circle around me (us) and asks where I (we) came from. That’s what I’ve been doing. So, kids, the first graphic shows where you came from. You grandkids, it’s half of ... Read more
| Contents | This, for what it’s worth, is what I was reading and writing in 1965 after dropping out from VUW. Looking back, I thought it weird that the book that eventually “grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me” was written by a German psychotherapist in 1930 — ... Read more
I remember the day Dad came home with a new stereogram. It was the size of a lounge cabinet — which he turned it into, eventually — with a pale timber finish and built-in fabric-covered speakers. The top lifted to reveal the record player, the control panel and bins for ... Read more
| Contents | Here are three photos that won’t mean much to you but mean everything to me. They explain why I love wedding albums. The first is from my parents’ wedding in 1945, a beautiful sepia print in a classic folder. Young as he looks, Dad had just returned from five ... Read more
| Contents | Good and bad, I define these termsQuite clear, no doubt, somehowAh, but I was so much older thenI’m younger than that now — Bob Dylan, My Back Pages So, over the years I’ve trodden the well-worn path from radical to reactionary. I blame University and my enquiring ... Read more
| Contents | in my first year back at university we studied Communist China as part of Stage 1 Political Studies. My flirtation with the Red Guards was long over but once again I had to come to grips with the Party Line. Here’s the understanding I developed of the relationship ... Read more
| Contents | For some reason cartons of my old undergraduate handouts, notes and essays, with a lot of other prehistoric paper, have been jamming up our cupboards for years, and I’ve been thinking of putting a lot of it through the shredder. Heather said she’d like to compost it ... Read more