Te Hunga Roia Maori o Aotearoa: Hui-a-Tau 2016

Last week I had the honor and privilege of traveling down to Queenstown with a delegation of Maori law students from the University of Canterbury.

We were attending the annual meeting of Maori law practitioners and students where we could hear the latest in legal happenings affecting Maori people.

It was a fantastic opportunity to meet students from other law schools and judges and lawyers who are focusing on Maori issues in the legal context.

Many of the discourses were given in te reo and the celebration of accomplishments was greeted with beautiful waiata sung in prefect harmonies.

I don't think I could be a truly proficient legal professional without understanding Maori concerns and viewpoints.

I made some wonderful friends and heard some moving speeches about tikanga and Treaty decisions.

I'm looking forward to participating in Te Putairiki events in the coming year.

Lupins near lake Tekapo

Marama and Me

Some lunchtime music

A moment of repose

Members of Te Putairiki

A celebration for the mooting champion

The Early Warning Pheasant

Just after I had drifted off to sleep in the wee hours of November 14 I became aware of the frantic cries of Percy the pheasant outside my window.

It was a strange, disjointed experience.

Something was off but I wasn't awake enough to figure it out.

Percy regularly patrols his territory around (and including) the house but he always does this in silence during the night.

All of the sudden his footfall was joined by what sounded like a herd of small hoofed animals scrabbling across the front porch and then the windows began to shake and the bed began to move.

I sat up and waited for things to settle down but the shaking grew stronger.

I wandered into the hallway and met Audrey standing there with wide eyes.

Around us the walls pulsed and the floor heaved. The overhead lights swung wildly back and forth.

"It feels like we're at sea," Audrey said.

The rolling sensation continued accompanied by the screams of Percy.

Nick was only partially awake to these events and Alex slept through them.

I spent the rest of the night riding out aftershocks and refreshing the browser on my computer so I could keep up with the news about the quake.

I worried about the issue of a tsunami warning and wondered about the untold damage being done.

Reports of destruction came from Wellington, Kaikoura and Waiau.

The earthquake registered as a 7.5 and the epicenter was very close to my uncle's property in the Hurinui district.

As dawn approached the house continued to tremble with aftershocks and news of landslips, fallen masonry and two fatalities trickled in.

The next morning was sunless and dreary. I slept through most of it and the afternoon trip to the grocery store with Nick felt unreal.

It seemed like a slow apocalypse had begun.

Trump had taken the presidency, the sun had disappeared and my part of New Zealand had been torn and shaken to bits.

It was possible this was the beginning of something worse.

I felt the impending shift towards depression.

The routes that allowed trucks to bring in food and other supplies were closed off.

A shortage of supplies was conceivable.

****

Last night we had peace and stillness.

There was a bright moon bathing everything in white light and I stepped out onto the porch with Audrey and a sleepless Alex to look at it.

I woke up to a bright sunny day having slept well.

It's warm out and the birds are foraging in the grass and tending to their young.

Nature is so very capricious.

Percy on Patrol

Alex Speaks

Alex is a talker.

He is also a singer.

His favorite song at the moment is "Kwinkle Kwinkle Little Star."

His favorite word to say is "naughty." He usually says this after he has done something naughty and instead of seeming ashamed he says it with a note of pride.

His sister taught him how to say "butt toot" and he says that every time he passes wind.

During the final week leading up to my contract exam I was trying to study in peace and quiet while he was loudly telling me about his toy truck. I told him to shush and he replied, "No to shush!"

Recently, he brought home a picture he had made with some colored bits of paper and glitter.

I displayed it at the Family Refrigerator Gallery and asked him about the strong use of negative space and tension between the rough geometric shapes focused near the paper's center.

He looked at me for a moment before replying, "fire truck."

Indeed.

When the world seems uncertain and dim I remember those words.

Fire truck.

The Canterbury County Fair

Today Nick and Alex and I went to the Canterbury A & P show. 

Alex freaked out about the animals and decided he didn't want a bar of them before he plucked up the courage to pet a small lamb. After that he didn't want to leave the farmyard and had a melt down when we said it was time to go.

Meanwhile Nick had a series of unpleasant flashbacks to his childhood when his parents made him tag along to the local A&P shows and he stood around bored all day while they participated in events. 

I always like watching the working dogs herd sheep but we only got through one and half round-ups before Nick got antsy and wanted to move on.

He also got petulant around the rare breeds poultry and wailed, "I hate fowl," before mumbling something about growing up on a farm with a strict father.

He kept seeing people walking around with delicious looking hot dogs but there were so many vendors that he ate two unsatisfactory hot dogs before he found the seller who had the hot dog he actually wanted. By the time he ate the third dog he was feeling pretty ill and disillusioned with the whole experience.

The Great White Hope

Today I woke up feeling incredulous.

For barely literate white supremacists Donald Trump's victory must instill that hopeful feeling that Obama gave many Americans eight years ago.

What depressed me most during the election was how certain men who I admired and respected (and many more who I didn't) were willing to excuse any vile thing Trump said.

No matter how racist, homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic he got, he was still "better than Hillary."

Expressing a sense of entitlement toward women and their "pussies" was watered down to "locker room banter."

A complete ignorance of politics was laudable.

Running a scam university and robbing from your own charity was forgivable.

Being openly racist was courageous.

What the ever-loving fuck is wrong with people?

If you are not brown skinned or Muslim or gay or female or a combination of those then no, it's really "not that bad." Not for you. Not for your kind.

I've been thinking of the time I met the man who became the first African American admiral in the Coast Guard.

I asked him if he felt like he could relate to what women were struggling with within the military and he said no because even though he was a minority, he was a male and that was still preferable to those in power.

Clearly this attitude hasn't changed.

From other global vantage points, America now reads like a badly drawn graphic novel where the main characters glory in the worst aspects of human nature.

If anyone in New Zealand asks, I'm Canadian.

I can't stand to be called to account for the actions of those Americans anymore.

To me, one of the most illustrative examples of the current American mindset occurred when comedienne Samantha Bee sent reporters out to ask Republicans "when was America last great?"

Their responses all harked back to a time when slavery was legal, women couldn't vote and minorities had no power.

And now they have their marshmallow-haired king.            

Like those of us who dreamed big with Obama, these people will now get to see what campaign promises turn into; one or two major victories followed by business as usual.

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps their wildest dreams will come true.

Republicans do own Congress now and Trump essentially stands for the same things they do; the power of the almighty dollar, a disdain for ovaries, minorities and non heteros and a fierce pride in anti-intellectualism.

Do I hear the hoof beats of the first horseman of the Apocalypse?

Today I Am 38

The weather was nice

Lunch was lovely

Dinner in the orchard will be fabulous