Monterey Bay Aquarium
cherry valley forever
#extradirty
NASA
Show & Tell
Origami Around
shark vs the universe
Janaina Medeiros
we're not kids anymore.
KIROKAZE
⁂
titsay
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
oozey mess
if i look back, i am lost
Game of Thrones Daily
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Cosmic Funnies
ojovivo
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@sparrowhawkkarearea
A couple of poems, apparently.
A couple of poems, apparently.
Now. But not yet. Stark, unmade tree Violating Earth & Sky Constructed to mock Me and my sin Us and our sin Broken tree For a broken body In a broken world. The cross is wrongfulness on a hill. And then after a spread of poison hours Logos asserts to women’s witness and the killing tree resolves to smooth-hewn wood Earth & Sky clasp fingers, but no more. The wood waits for its Real…
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Rāhui, Mana and Peter Ellis: the new way Tikanga Māori is growing in Aotearoa's legal landscape.
Rāhui, Mana and Peter Ellis: the new way Tikanga Māori is growing in Aotearoa’s legal landscape.
It’s a quiet spot, this entrance to the Herekino forest. On this January morning the air was cool, and I wanted to get moving, to feel my body working by walking the track. I thought about ignoring the red-lettered sign in front of me at the track entrance. I thought about just…closing my eyes to the instruction it held that the track was prohibited to us. I could pretend that the sign was old;…
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A Good Death
We all knew, as our mother got older that she wanted the “plug” pulled when the time came. In her view of the world, if she couldn’t have a drink or a smoke under her own steam, as her saying went, it was time to go. Hers was a position of utter belief in the worth of independence and autonomy. Anything other than an independent life was not worth living. At the age of 78, robbed of her…
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Standing still in the whirlwind
Standing still in the whirlwind
[A column published on E-Tangata on Sunday 17 March, 2 days after the attack on our Muslim whānau in Christchurch]
Haere e ngā mate kua hinga i te toki o Aituā, haere, haere haere atu ki te wā kainga, te kainga tūturu. Rātou ki a rātou, tātou ki a tātou, Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
The day. In the depths of darkness and fear, it was hard to write. It seemed arrogant somehow, as…
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The Empathy Gap & Me
The Empathy Gap & Me.
A little while ago, I was driving a car down State Highway 1 and I was howling. Actually howling, snotty tears and all. Then I’d pull over for a bit, recover myself, move off again, and then something would catch in my throat. Then I’d be howling again.
Such car-cocooned moments are not unheard of for me in recent years. Ever since my mother died in 2015, I can get caught by grief, unawares,…
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Papatūānuku, Pan, and a lonely kid in Christchurch
Papatūānuku, Pan, and a lonely kid in Christchurch
I was a funny kind of kid. A lonely one, even. While I had older brothers, they were teenagers — too old to hang out with me. And I had few friends. I look at my own kids now and marvel at their ability to let new children into their lives. To not be as hesitant and aloof as I think I probably was.
Yet, I missed connection with others. I remember going to the house of a girl I went to school…
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Beyond the Bubble ep 2/2! Yay, part two of the first ep of our web series is up. Things get a teeny bit testy as Dion, Wendi & Maryan consider if we really can be certain that laws enabling euthanasia will have no effect on people who are vulnerable or even suicidal. How do we balance hope of a good life with the right to die, particularly for younger people? Watch & share whānau...
Why is God and sexuality so bloody difficult?
Why is God and sexuality so bloody difficult?
Content warning. This column may contain half-pie, untrained theological musings, so will probably be bad for your health.
Sometime after my 30th birthday, I gave in. All my life, there has been something I recognised, if I truly slowed down long enough to listen to the world around me.
Francis Spufford describes one of those moments of recognition in Unapologetic:
It feels as if everything is…
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Something about stories (and the Māoriland Film Festival) One evening, a few months ago I found myself sitting on the couch opposite my son. We were both filling out a…
The marae and the long shadow.
The kuia and I trade calls, our voices wreathed in the morning mist. The house before me, rooted in the earth, pushes up against the grey sky, creating space for us. The group advances with me. We pause. I remember my mum — two years passed. Her throaty chuckle echoes in my mind. Tears fall, again. We move on across the marae ātea.
The last of the calls fade into the air, and we shuffle into…
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Rā Maumahara...Just what are we really commemorating?
Rā Maumahara…Just what are we really commemorating?
This post also features, in a slightly edited form, on E-Tangata.
I have a jaundiced memory of going to ANZAC day parades when I was an Air Training Corps cadet in 1980s Christchurch; events that were dreary, cold and ill-attended. Small crowds would attend, outnumbering the veterans, but not by very much. I remember a few more over the last couple of decades in Wellington as attendance at such…
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What if the Crown is also Māori?
What if the Crown is also Māori?
A slightly edited form of this post has also appeared on E-Tangata.
Symbols come in many forms, tangible and the intangible. They tell us stories we may not even be aware of.
Here’s one. I work in a beautiful building. It is a building that breathes and moves about me. Occasionally, as I walk down the halls or the stairway I feel surrounded by a soft golden glow, created by the sensory fusion of…
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Turning off the tap? Righting water wrongs
Turning off the tap? Righting water wrongs
A lightly edited version of this post appears on E-Tangata.
One of the things I’m really enjoying about this election season is how many cats are being thrown among the pigeons. Not all of the cats are welcome, or wanted, but they are making things interesting. One of those cats (although he’ll hate this description, I’m sure) is ol’ Gareth Morgan, that Pākehā curmudgeon who doesn’t give two…
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Breaking Bad Law?
[An edited version of this post appears on E-Tangata.]
In the opening moments of the 1970s my father left my mother and followed his elusive business dreams to Australia. I have read several letters between the two of them, hurt and angry exchanges, and in all of them she asks him for financial assistance to raise their three children. He sent her a few payments, and eventually the letters and…
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#IAmAmbivalent
I am ambivalent about the hashtag du jour (#IAmMetiria) and the issue that gave rise to it. In case you have been under a rock, this hashtag refers to the declarationby Metiria Turei a few days ago that she had over-reported her housing costs, thus claiming a greater degree of social assistance than she was entitled to during her time as a solo mum on the DPB. Metiria made this declaration in the…
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Mana wahine, the legal system & the search for better stories.
Mana wahine, the legal system & the search for better stories.
Let me tell you a short story about an old court case. This case is well known to those familiar with New Zealand legal history. It involves a woman called Waipapakura from the Ngāti Hineuru hapū of Te Āti Awa. One day in 1911 she used nets on poles to go fishing in the tidal waters of the Waitōtara River. History doesn’t tell us if the fish were biting that day., just that she stuck her poles in…
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An Australian marae - a dangerous dream?
An Australian marae – a dangerous dream?
This post was originally published on E-Tangata.
Our father died in 2012. He had been living in Australia for about 42 years. He had only rarely returned to his birthplace (Waihopo) and our ancestral tūrangawaewae in Ahipara. My 5 siblings and I, as children of the post-war urban migrations, were all raised in different landscapes, with different air and different light, but we have all, in our…
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