A Classical Education: Chapter 4 Going On 5
On Dialogue It is true, my child, that dialogue is how we come to understand the world. By steady question and answer, between the curiosity of youth and the wisdom of age, we approach truth. And yet...
View ArticleShe loves you, YA, YA, YA!
Up-and-coming New Zealand author Karen Healey first caught my eye via her LiveJournal blog, the magnificently named Attention Rebellious Jezebels. One day, as a consciousness & self-esteem-raising...
View ArticleA new (old) sensation
The piece below originally appeared in the January 2011 issue of Metro magazine, billed rather provocatively on the cover as "What's wrong with NZ novels?"I'm grateful for the softening effect of that...
View ArticleWhat was lost
This morning, my older son said “Hey, Jojo! Watch this!” as he playfully piloted a plane into the ground, on his computer, for no reason, just for fun. Completely out of the blue.I burst into tears....
View ArticleSons for the Return Home
Over the years, you have all been so good to me. The last time I asked here for wisdom about moving house, it was on behalf of a two-year-old. Now I’m asking for myself, because this time, the...
View Article“Glory! Glory! There’s the salt!”
The news that Margaret Mahy has written all her stories – for that is what her death means to us as readers, while for her family it is a whole other dimension of inevitable, unfathomable loss -- came...
View ArticleSchool bully
When the National government introduced National Standards four years ago, I didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind was blowing. I’d been watching our older son acclimatise to public...
View ArticleGood as gold
Everyone should have read the book by now. No, not Dirty Politics (although you should have read that too). The other one that came out quietly at the end of last year and has become the silent witness...
View ArticleBeware of the Leopard
Democracy is a funny old thing, an exercise in trust. We concentrate expertise and execution into the hands of the few, in the expectation that they will be steered by the will of the many. Hence town...
View ArticleTell You What: A Nonfiction Giveaway!
When Susanna Andrew and I sat down to write our proposal for that old-fashioned thing, a book on paper, we wanted to make the book we wanted to read. What we wanted was to sit down each summer to a...
View Article
