Bread... or something like it

    I've been cooking for myself for a lot of years and, as a consequence of that fact - and the fact that I don't like bland, boring food -  I've become addicted to cookbooks that are just a bit off-center.
    It was, therefore, probably inevitable that I snapped up a copy of the The Kiwi Beer Lover's Cookbook by Sam Cook when I saw it while browsing in the Paper Plus bookstore in Lower Hutt a few days ago. The book is, I discovered while flipping through the pages, full of great recipes and every single one of them, including one for chocolate mousse, uses beer as an ingredient. I'm a big fan of chocolate mousse, but the recipe that caught my attention, and held it, was for something called "The World's Easiest Bread."
    There's a reason for that.
     The fact is that I can cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, make a decent pot roast and even lay out a pretty good three-course meal on those rare occasions when I invite a few folks over for dinner. I make more than two dozen kinds of chili and they're all pretty darn good.
    I cannot, however, bake.
    Oh, I've tried and now and then I've made a loaf of bread or baked a cake - from scratch - that is actually edible. More often than not, however, the result is either rock hard, toxic, or both. Honestly, you could build a pretty decent wall around your house with the number of ruined cakes I've made over the years... well, let me amend that to say that you could if the Environmental Protection Agency would allow you to use them for building materials. I may be wrong about this but I think the EPA has formally declared my cakes and breads to be health hazards and put them on a list of things that, along with friable asbestos and some kinds of dioxin, are not allowed near human beings.
    In addition to the name, the fact that this recipe has only three ingredients made me eager to try it out.
    (You'll have to buy the book to find out what those ingredients are. We authors have to stick together, after all.)
    I had discovered that the house we're renting has a wide variety of pots, pans, dishes, plates, knives, forks, spoons, glasses and mugs but no loaf pans so, while shopping for my ingredients at Countdown, I picked up a package of three lightweight aluminum ones. You know the kind; designed to be used once, maybe twice, and then discarded.
    Armed with my ingredients, the loaf pans and brimming with confidence I set about making "The World's Easiest Bread" Tuesday afternoon.
    Problem One: The house also does not come equipped with a measuring cup. I had to estimate my ingredients, as a result, and I'm not really good at that.
    Problem Two: I thought I had preheated the oven to 180 degrees but it turns out I had not. To turn this oven on you have to set the temperature with one dial and then, using another dial, turn it on.
    (I did not discover that until it was time to put my bread in the oven... I opened the oven door carefully after getting my ingredients mixed and the dough stuffed into the loaf pan because I was expecting a blast of hot air. Instead of being filled with hot air, the inside of the oven was stone cold.)
    Not wanting to let my dough sit for a half hour while the oven warmed up, I popped it in the oven anyway.
    Forty-five minutes later I pulled it out.
    It was, I must say in all honesty, one butt-ugly loaf of bread.
    In the first place, the loaf pans I bought were too small and so the bread had risen to the height of something resembling a seventh-grader's science project on the Himalayas.
    And, because the oven had not been properly warmed up, it was not quite cooked all the way through. Mostly, just not quite.
    Another disaster, I thought.
    Enter Josep's cousin Elena, riding to the rescue like a petite, very female colonel leading a cavalry charge: We could, she said, slice it and then toast it in the oven.
    I did that.
    It worked.
    We had it for dinner along with something Josep's mom Elena made out of chick peas, onions, garlic, tomato sauce, hard-boiled eggs and Chorizo sausage. No one got sick from eating my bread. In fact, there's just a small hunk of it left, which I'll have with coffee in the morning.
    After I toast it..
    So maybe Mr. Cook was right.
    This might just be the world's easiest bread to make.
    Now, about that chocolate mousse...

This is all that's left of my bread... For more information about  "The Kiwi Beer Lover's Cookbook" email the publisher at info@hurricane-press.co.nz

   

Utu Redux at the film festival

    Elena is a big fan of film festivals.
    Because she is, Josep, his cousin Elena and I boarded a train at the Melling Station and took it to Wellington where we met up with her so we could attend the opening night of this year's New Zealand International Film Festival to see Utu Redux, the restored version of director Geoff Murphy's widely acclaimed 1983 movie Utu.
    It was an excellent film but I found myself equally intrigued by the reactions of the audience crowded into the Embassy Theater to watch the movie. Those that attended that opening night showing were clearly proud of this movie, which is a fictionalized account of what are often referred to as the Land Wars between European settlers and Maori. Those wars were brutal; so brutal that thousands of men, women and children died during them. The Maori were fierce fighters and did not believe in taking prisoners. The British treated them as savages and seldom took prisoners themselves. The result was wholesale slaughter on both sides. So many people died, in fact, that Queen Victoria demanded that a peace be negotiated and the wars ended.
    That part of their collective history is not, I don't believe, what drew audience members - both Pakeha and Maori - to see this film on opening night, however. They came, I think, because this was a major film made by a Kiwi without the intrusion - is that the right word? - of Hollywood. It was written by New Zealanders, filmed by New Zealanders, produced by New Zealanders, filmed in New Zealand and starred New Zealanders. It was even financed by New Zealanders and while that may not seem like such a big deal today it certainly was in 1983.
    The film takes its name - Utu - from a Maori word meaning "restoring the balance" or "reciprocation for an act either friendly or unfriendly."
    In the film that concept leads to revenge when Te Wheke, the main Maori character, returns to his village to find that it has been wiped out by British soldiers who, apparently, mistook it for a rebel camp. At the time Te Wheke is serving with the British army as a corporal. Upon seeing the massacre of his friends and family he immediately vows revenge, renounces his ties to the British and wages war against not only the army but against all colonials who, he believes, bear a collective guilt for the murder of his people.
     I won't say more about the film in case you ever have a chance to see it, but I will say that the audience clapped and cheered throughout the showing. They even applauded both the opening and closing credits and as they were filing out of the theater once the film had ended they talked excitedly about it. A few were critical of its musical score, a few others thought it was perhaps too violent but those were comments made only in passing by men and women who clearly had not been disappointed by what they had seen.
    It made for an interesting night.

Titahi Bay.Redux

    The waves were running headlong onto the shore with reckless abandon, their white caps askew as they raced toward the sand.

    Josep paid them scant attention as he scrambled down toward the sand but his cousin Elena paused as she looked down from the hill above Titahi Bay and said simply, "It's beautiful."

    And so it was.

    The last time I visited Titahi Bay it was with her aunt Elena more than a month ago. It was cold that day and the surf was not running high but was, instead, casually strolling ashore. The bay and the beach had been beautiful on that day as well and the sunset was spectacular but it had been an entirely different kind of beauty; a quieter one.

    Not so on this day. The wind was up but it was not cold since it came from the north, not the south, and we had three, perhaps four, hours before the sun went down and the temperature dropped.

    Down on the beach the sand was alive with barefoot children in shorts and t-shirts. A half dozen of them were busily building a castle of sand and sticks with a few shells thrown in for good measure. Others were kicking soccer balls and a few were walking with their moms in the wet sand just out of reach of the booming waves. Out on the water, a dozen surfers were bobbing up and down on the waves waiting for one on whose back they could climb for a wild ride toward the beach.

    It may be winter here in the Land Down Under and Over a Bit but if you give Kiwis a few minutes of sunshine they'll take full advantage of it even if doing so means jumping into water that is cold enough to instantly numb your fingers and toes.

    Elena and Josep spent almost two hours there, picking their way among the rocks and fossilized trees to search for shells, watch the cormorants diving for their dinners and, generally, enjoying the late afternoon on a sunny day. I, who cannot scramble much these days, was content to watch them. Life, for me, has mostly been about doing but, sometimes, standing off to the side and just watching it going about its business is all I really need to make what might have been an ordinary day extraordinary.

 

Kids plus sand equals a castle of some kind.

Elena searching for treasure at Titahi Bay.

Catching a wave at Titahi Bay.

Josep and Elena searching for more treasures.

End of the ride at Titahi Bay.

Elena found this perfectly preserved seahorse among the shells.

A quiet moment at Titahi Bay on a day when the waves were running high.

Waiting for a wave.

Josep and Elena deciding where to go next.

Hoping for just one more good ride, a lone surfer heads into Titahi Bay.

    

Yank spotting: A guideline for Kiwis

    True story: A month ago I was walking in downtown Wellington when a guy who said he was from Aukland stopped me on the street to ask for directions to the Te Papa Museum.

    Hmmm, I thought, he must think I'm a Kiwi even though I'm wearing a dark blue hoodie with "Englewood Beach Florida" stenciled across the front of it in bright white letters. Inordinately pleased that I had blended in so well, I nonetheless had to confess that I had no idea where the museum was because, like him, I was a stranger in the Kiwi capital. (I have long since discovered where the museum is and have visited it twice...)
    Anyway, that got me to thinking that New Zealanders can probably use a handy guide to spotting Yanks who might otherwise pass for Kiwis so I've come up with some tips for them to use.           Here's what I've come up with so far... please feel free to send me any you can think of that I might have missed:

YANK SPOTTING: Some Guidelines for Kiwis on how to recognize Americans traveling in New Zealand

You can spot a Yank in New Zealand by following a few simple guidelines. For example, he’s a Yank if:

He thinks a Kea is a small car made in Korea.

He’s wearing two t-shirts, a hoodie and a jacket on a day when most Kiwis are wearing shorts and flip-flops.

He’s the guy asking where the Burger King is while standing in front of a fish-and-chips shop.

He thinks bookstores are “quaint.”

He’s always walking to the wrong side of the car whether he’s the driver or the passenger.

He thinks Kiwi police cars look like taxi cabs and keeps trying to hail one.

He thinks the All Blacks are an African team.

After two hours of watching rugby he still doesn’t know who won.

  

He can’t understand why netball players don’t shoot jump shots.

He looks to the left when crossing the street and then to the right when he gets in the middle of it.

He can’t pronounce any of the Maori place names – and has a hard time with those that are in English.

He can’t understand why there’s instant replay in a televised darts match – or why darts matches are televised in the first place.

He can’t figure out if a Kiwi is a fruit, a bird, or someone from New Zealand.

He looks completely baffled when someone asks him where he got that jumper.

He jumps under the table during earthquakes measuring less than 8.0 on the Richter scale.

He thinks “good on ya” is a comment about his fashion sense.

He thinks ginger beer is an alcoholic beverage and is disappointed when it doesn’t taste like Corona.

He stays inside when it’s raining.

He stays inside when the wind is blowing 150 kph.

He doesn’t know if 25 degrees Centigrade is warm, hot or cold.

He asks for a pound of meat at the Countdown.

He wonders why there’s a Prime Minister and a Governor-General.

He’s not sure who the Queen is or what she has to do with New Zealand.

He thinks Kiwis talk funny.

He can’t understand why the Southerlies are colder than winds from the north.

He thinks Russell Crowe is an Aussie.

He keeps asking where the Hobbits live.

He’s not sure if a Weta is a giant insect or if it has something to do with movies.

He keeps looking for the “broil” setting when he turns on the oven.

He can’t understand how runs are scored in cricket even when you explain it to him for the tenth time.

He always pays with a $20 because he can’t figure out the coins.

He breaks into a cold sweat when he sees a roundabout.

He tips waiters and waitresses.

He’ll be the only one in a crowd wearing a fanny pack.

He has no idea what EFTPOS means.

He gets into a roundabout and keeps going round and round because he can’t seem to get out of it.

He politely declines when someone says “bugger me, mate” by explaining that he’s straight.

He keeps taking pictures of sheep.

He doesn’t know what minced meat is.

He thinks Maori art is a little scary.

He pronounces "quay" as "key" or "kway" when everyone knows it's pronounced "kay."

Signs that give distances in kilometers don't help him a bit.

He's not sure what a litre is but he's pretty sure it's somewhat less than a gallon.

 

Epilogue: Earthquake

    My birthday weekend ended on an appropriate note: A 6.5 earthquake.
    We had driven from Kaikoura back to Picton Sunday night to catch the ferry to Wellington and had just finished dinner at the Toot & Whistle. Since we had some time before we boarded, we were standing in the restaurant's parking lot debating whether we should go for a walk (Elena's idea) or have dessert at a different restaurant up on the High Street (my idea) when the earth started trembling and then began shaking.
    Cars in the parking lot, including our little Suzuki, began bouncing up and down as the shaking got more violent and then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped.
    I think we've become honorary Kiwis because instead of panicking or yelling we just looked at one another and shrugged.
    "Earthquake," I said.
    "Yes," Elena said.
    "I vote for dessert," Josep said.
    Elena, however, opted for a walk.
    A little while later we drove to the terminal and learned that the ferry was going to be delayed for at least 30 minutes.
    "I vote for dessert," Josep said again.
    This time, rather than sit in the car, Elena gave in and we walked to a small place in the center of town where Josep and I shared a massive ice cream sundae and the two Elena's shared some kind of tart thing.
    No one in the restaurant even mentioned the earthquake.
    We learned later, while watching the news on the ferry, that the 'quake had measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, had shut down the Wellington airport, damaged a hotel and broken some water mains so there were some flooded streets in the capital. The 'quake also disrupted train service, stopping some of them dead in their tracks, as it were. According to the news, four people wound up in the hospital including one poor guy who had a television set fall on his head.
    Because she's a psychiatrist working with a crisis team, I expected Elena to come home Monday night after a long day dealing with hordes of panicky, anxious people.
    I was wrong about that. Even though the earthquake was the strongest to ever hit Wellington - a fact she learned from talking to other nurses and doctors - there was apparently very little anxiety about it.
    Kiwis, as they always seem to, simply kept calm and carried on.

Cormorants by the hundreds gather daily on this big rock that once served as a lookout post for whalers.

Side view of a sperm whale diving.

The cormorants share that big rock with fur seals.

It seems remarkable but these giant whales don't make much more than a ripple on the water when they dive.

Sometimes, all you want out of life is a nice warm rock to lie on so you can catch a few rays.

   
   

Birthday Weekend. Part Three - Whales!

    Sunday was full of whales.
    Six of them, to be exact: Six gigantic, truly magnificent sperm whales that fair took my breath away as I watched them swimming on the surface and then, filling their huge lungs with air, diving straight down into an ocean trench nearly 2,000 feet deep.
    My late father spent much of his life on water dredging harbors and doing whatever else his company did when it sent him all around the U.S. and the world. Perhaps because I am his oldest child and was, therefore, destined from birth to be his polar opposite, I have spent most of my life on the land. He was in the Coast Guard in World War II. I was in the infantry in Vietnam. He could swim like a fish. I can swim but not far and not well. To me, the beach is for reading and maybe some shallow-water snorkeling, but swimming out a half mile and then back again, as he used to do on those rare times when we were at the beach together, is not something I've done or ever intend to do.
    Because he spent so much of his life on the water, whales were no big deal to him. He'd seen them often but seldom talked about them as being anything but a hazard to navigation. To me, however, whales have always been something very special. Perhaps that's because they live in an environment that is so alien to my own or maybe it's just because they are so huge. I don't know why I've always found them so fascinating but I have and so when Elena said she was going to take me on a whale watching tour for my birthday I was excited at the prospect of finally seeing them up close. I was also, I confess, a little anxious. They have always been so mysterious as well as fascinating and I wondered if, maybe, by getting close to them some of the magic might wear off.
    It did not.
    We went out on the tour a little after 11 a.m. Sunday and the operators were careful to point out that we might see only one whale during our two-plus hours on the water. That didn't disappoint me; seeing one would have been plenty, especially if we could get reasonably close to it.
    We saw our first whale about 20 minutes into the trip; a long black shape lying mostly submerged about 200 yards away. It spouted water and swam lazily forward as we approached it, seemingly unconcerned by our presence, which I found pretty remarkable given our very long history of slaughtering his kind. We drew closer and the captain slowed his engines so that we were riding easily on the flat ocean as we kept pace with the whale's progress. He spouted more water into the air and the tour guide told us that the whale was expanding its lungs prior to making a dive. We watched in fascination as he did this three more times and then, in an act of supreme gracefulness, tipped his head down and dove; his massive flukes standing high in the air for a few quick seconds before they disappeared below the surface with only a small ripple to mark his progress.
    I meant to take a photo of that dive but I admit that I was unable to do so; it was such a beautiful sight that I never managed to do anything but stare.
    It wasn't long before we sighted our second sperm whale, another long black shape riding easily on the surface. We drew close to it and then watched as it went through the same ritual of gradually expanding its lungs for a deep dive. As the first one had, when it was ready its massive body tipped headfirst, its tail went high in the air then disappeared beneath the small waves and it was gone.
    I did manage to get some photos of this dive, and of two more whales diving but by the time we saw our fifth and sixth whales I was content to just watch them. It occurred to me that it would be wonderful to swim with them even though I am no swimmer but I dismissed that idea almost as quickly as it came. The sea is their world, not mine, and I think I would feel like a trespasser skulking through someone's back yard in the dead of night were I to jump into deep water just to be near them.
    Later, back on shore, I compared photos with Elena, Josep and his cousin Elena. Theirs were better than mine and they'd even shot videos of the whales diving.
    Very cool but not for me. I have a few photos but, more than that, I have the memory of that first dive and it is better than my pictures.

This was the second sperm whale we saw; I was so awestruck by the first one I saw diving that I couldn't do anything but stare and so I didn't get a photo of it.

This is the view from the front of our motel in Kaikoura.

Sperm whale spouting as it went through the process of expanding its lungs prior to making a deep dive.

The moon coming up in Picton just as the sun was going down behind a mountain in the west.

Birthday Weekend.Part Two

    Saturday started very early in the morning with Elena poking me in the shoulder and telling me it was time to get up. I grumbled something about needing just a little more time to sleep and felt perfectly justified in doing so because, well, it was my birthday and I am, after all, a bona fide senior citizen.
    Elena wasn't having any of that, however. She's the mother of a 13-year-old boy who has to go to school five days a week from September through June and so she's used to hearing a male voice plead for more morning rack time... she's not only used to that sound, she's immune to it.
    Aiming for coherency, and missing by a wide margin, I asked what time it was and, in a voice that was far too perky for that hour of the morning, she said it was 5:30 a.m. I had to take her word for that because it was too dark both outside and inside for me to see a clock, not that I could have made out the time in any event because I had no idea where my glasses were just then. Grumbling, stumbling and trying not to injure myself in the dark, I spent about 30 minutes getting up, getting dressed and packing a small bag for our South Island adventure. Not surprisingly, both Josep and his cousin Elena were ready to go by the time I staggered out of the house and into the tiny car that Elena uses for work. After watching me struggle to get my seat belt buckled, Elena set off and a half hour later we pulled into the lot at Wellington's Interislander Ferry Terminal where we waited patiently for big trucks, camper vans and other cars to be loaded onto what was, to my eyes, a gigantic ship. Our turn to drive on board finally came and Elena maneuvered her car into a spot on Deck 5 where we parked and were told by a crew member that we should leave our vehicle and proceed to Deck 7 (there are 10 decks in all on the ferry.) We climbed up the stairs to the deck, stepped inside and I smelled coffee... life suddenly took on a much rosier glow.
    The ferry ride to South Island takes three hours. We started off in a heavy fog with a light mist falling but within an hour the fog had lifted and the sky cleared. It was a beautiful day with a stiff breeze that came from the north so it was warmer than usual. I spent a fair amount of time on Deck 10 shooting pictures of anything and everything in sight and then ducked back inside to get more coffee. I was enjoying what was probably my third cup of coffee in the lounge when a cricket match between Australia and England popped up on the big-screen television set mounted on the wall. Hmmm, I thought, I'll just watch a little of this... I did and an hour later England was leading by 263 runs and I have no idea how the score got that way. I do remember the commentators saying something about bowlers and wickets but they might as well have been speaking Elvish for all the sense it made to me... I have resolved, however, to research this whole cricket thing before I leave here for Spain at the end of August.
    We pulled into Picton Harbor just before noon or thereabouts, disembarked without incident and I went down to a small waterfront park to watch the world go by while Elena, Elena and Josep went for walks and to do a little window shopping in what is a very nice little town.
    I can't say that I am normally an introspective person but as I sat there feeling the warm sun on my face and watching kids play I spent a little time taking stock.
    The first thing that came to mind was that, somehow, I've managed to live this long despite serving a couple of tours in Vietnam and surviving cancer as well as assorted wars, revolutions, coups, hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, an earthquake earlier in the week and, once, even a landslide in Honduras. That, I thought, is kind of remarkable. More remarkable is the fact, I thought, that I am currently in New Zealand, at the other end of the world from everything I know, and having one hell of a good time. I reckoned as I sat there that my life has been, to this point, pretty interesting. I'm a published poet, have sold short stories to magazines, spent a long career as a journalist and was a fair-to-middling athlete until my late 50s. I've sold a few paintings, written five novels that are for sale on Kindle and have a son who turned out pretty darn well although that probably wasn't my fault. I have three failed marriages in my past, more failed relationships than I care to remember and my legs don't really work worth a damn these days but I've seen a lot of the world and watched a fair amount of history being made. And, maybe most importantly, I've been fortunate enough to spend my life writing and because that's true I can't complain about the way things have turned out.
    That little introspective moment vanished as fast as it came and before long the four of us were having lunch and getting ready for the 2-hour drive to Kaikoura where we would spend the night before going on a whale-watching cruise Sunday morning.
    The drive down was long but pretty interesting... Tim Donoghue had told us Friday night to be on the lookout for a small colony of fur seals on the drive and we actually did find it. It was nearing dusk when we did but we were able to get some nice photos of the seals and their pups despite the failing light. We finally left when it got too dark to take any more photos and pulled into Kaikoura when the streetlights were on. We unpacked the car at the Norfolk Pines Motel and went to dinner at a local bar where the wide-screen television featured a rugby game pitting the Crusaders against the Reds in a game that was apparently of some significance... we figured out pretty quickly that we were in the midst of what was clearly a Crusaders crowd. The bar's other patrons cheered lustily when the Crusaders did something good (I'm not sure what, exactly) and booed when the Reds did something good (again, not sure exactly what...) We didn't cheer or boo because, really, whatever was happening on the screen was kind of a mystery.
    Dinner eaten, we headed back to the motel intending to read but, instead, we turned in early because it had been a very long day and we had whales to watch in the morning.

Leaving Wellington Harbor in a thick fog... apparently the captain has really good eyes or the radar was working...

Approaching Picton Harbor.

It may be winter but give them a little sunshine and Kiwis are out in it...

Really? I traveled halfway around the world to eat Kentucky fried chicken? Not...

I wouldn't mind owning this bar in Picton... heck, I wouldn't even have to change the name.

We stopped at a small fur seal colony to shoot some photos of critters that were probably as curious about us as we were about them.

 
 
 
 
 

Birthday Weekend.Part One

    Despite my best efforts, I somehow managed to become 66 years old on Saturday.
    It wasn't too hard, actually. I went to bed Friday night, woke up before dawn on Saturday and I was a year older. Not wiser, I think, but older.
    My birthday weekend actually started Friday night when Elena and I had dinner with Tim Donoghue, a reporter at the Dominion Post who has, like me, spent most of his adult life as an ink-stained wretch. I emailed him while I was in Spain to ask if he wanted to meet for lunch or dinner once I got here to Middle Earth because, though we'd never met before, we'd been in some of the same places at the same time covering stories. It took us a while to make connections but we finally did and chose Friday night to get together.
    Now, lest you think I've become a grumpy old curmudgeon, let me say - on the record - that I have nothing against young reporters and editors. I enjoy talking to them; I always enjoyed working with them (well, okay, I didn't really enjoy working with the stupid ones) but now, grayer than I'd like to be, I find that it's nice to sit down every now and then with someone who knows what a Linotype machine is and talk about old times.
    Dinner was at his house high in the hills overlooking Wellington Harbor and, like Tim, it was pretty straightforward: fish, chips, some fried oysters and a couple of bottles of really excellent New Zealand chardonnay. His wife is a midwife and these days she's off in Australia working with aborigines so it was just the three of us.
    The talk was kind of what you'd expect when a couple of old hacks get together and alcohol is involved: We spoke of how the business has changed over the past 40 years; about stories we've done and stories we wished we'd done; about editors we've known and loved and a few we've known and despised. We didn't leave Elena out of the conversation; Tim managed to weave her into the flow of words throughout the night and it occurred to me that, if I had something to hide, I wouldn't want him interviewing me simply because before too long I'd be telling him everything I knew about whatever it was I was trying to keep secret.
    We also talked about how these are tough times for newspapers in the United States. I said that, in my opinion, that's mainly because we've lost our way: We've forgotten that newspapers are bought by people, not demographics, and we have generally ignored people for the past 30 years. Instead of covering their neighborhoods, we've spent too much time and too much money going for the brass-ring, home-run, put-somebody-in-jail kind of story. Those are necessary, of course, but as someone who has done more than a few of them over the years I can say without reservation that they're rare and add that you usually only find them while you're doing the spade work writing those neighborhood stories that are important to people.
    That's not how most Stateside reporters and editors see it these days, however. Here's an example: I once had a young reporter tell me that she was leaving the business because she was 30 years old and had not yet won a Pulitzer - and not just any old Pulitzer, but one of the "important ones" like those they hand out for investigative reporting. "I didn't get a masters degree to cover water board hearings," she said.
    Evidently not and that's sort of the reason why we've been losing readers for the past three decades because, like it or not, people want to know that their water is clean and that it's not going to cost them an arm and a leg to take a bath next year.
    Here, while there are certainly some editors who are more concerned with bandwidth than column inches, there's still a substantial interest in committing good journalism and, as a result, Tim says it's still possible to convince a boss that there's a good story in what might otherwise seem like a routine event.
    Bravo.
    As the night drew to a close Tim, noticing that both bottles of chardonnay were now empty, offered us a spare room for the night. That, I've found since arriving here, is pretty typical of Kiwi hospitality. We declined, however, because Elena hadn't drunk most of that chardonnay, Tim and I had.
    And, besides, we had to get up at 5:30 in the morning Saturday to board a ferry for South Island, but that's a story for Part Two of this birthday weekend blog.
   
   

Earthquake

    I had just made a cup of coffee and was walking down the hallway toward the small room I'm using as an office here in Lower Hutt when the house began shaking at 9:06 a.m..
    My first thought: A truck had hit the house.
    I knew that couldn't be right, however, since the driveway to our little hideaway in the hills is very steep. A truck would have lost all its momentum by the time it reached the house.
    My second thought: Somehow a brontosaurus had awakened from an eons-long sleep and was walking by.
    No, I thought, even here in Middle Earth that would be impossible.
    Hmm... must be an earthquake.
    It was. It struck (is that the right word?) near Seddon on the South Island across the Cook Strait from us and measured 5.6 on the Richter Scale. There were six aftershocks.
    Elena sent me a message minutes later saying that it had also shaken buildings in Wellington where she was working today. The Kiwis she works with took it all in stride, she said, laughing about it as they went about their business.
    I was a little more impressed than they were: I've been through six hurricanes (if I'm remembering them all), blizzards, tornadoes, a couple of floods and even a landslide in Honduras but this was my first-ever earthquake and I admit it caused me to pause for more than a second and not just because it threatened to spill my coffee all over the hallway carpet. I mean, the earth actually shifted... that's pretty awesome when you stop to think about it - and I did.
    Josep's cousin Elena was on Skype to her family in Spain when it hit and she was a little concerned, though not frightened by it.
    Josep slept through the whole thing.
   
   

A mouse in the house

    There was a short - but loud - shriek from the kitchen Wednesday night followed by the sound of dancing feet and an exclamation.
    A mouse - which Josep and I had seen earlier in the day and ignored because, well, it's just a mouse - had run across Elena's feet and she was not happy about that.
    "We need to rent a cat," she said moments later. "We have a mouse in the house."
    I said I don't think you can rent cats here in the Land Down Under and Over a Bit.
    "The SPCA," Elena said.
    No, I replied, I don't think even the SPCA would rent us a cat. Besides, I pointed out, we now live in a forest on the side of a mountain so there are bound to be all sorts of critters sharing our space from time to time.
    "You think this is just normal? That a mouse comes with the territory and we just accept that?" she asked. Her voice fairly dripped with skepticism.
    Well, yeah, I replied as she shook her head and muttered something in Catalan.
    Sensing that she was not in a house-sharing mood when it came to the subject of mice - and maybe men as well at that particular moment in time - I told her that we'd buy a mousetrap when we went into town Thursday to do the grocery shopping.
    "I still think a cat would be better," she said.
    Turns out she was probably right because this is one very smart mouse: It's probably, in fact, the Einstein of Mousedom.
    On Thursday it took Josep, his cousin Elena and I a little while to find a mousetrap at the Countdown in Lower Hutt but, thanks to a helpful customer service rep, we did. Two, in fact. When we returned home Josep and Elena spent a little while trying to figure out how to set it without losing any fingers in the process. There were a couple of near misses when the trap sprung before they were ready but I am happy to report that no fingers were harmed in the attempt. Eventually, baited with cheese, one trap was set in the kitchen, the other near the piano in the living room.
    Soon, Josep promised, there would be one less mouse in the world.
    Not so, as it turned out.
    About four hours later, as I was washing the supper dishes, I glanced down at the mousetrap.
    The cheese was gone.
    The trap had sprung but there was no mouse in it.
    Undaunted, Josep and Elena checked the trap near the piano. It still had cheese.
    The mouse, Josep declared, had just been lucky.
    He and his cousin Elena re-set the trap in the kitchen... fewer near misses that time than their first attempt at setting it. They decided, after some rapid-fire discussion in Catalan, that it should go back to its original hiding place. Confidently, they used a pencil to push it back under the sink, certain in the knowledge that when we awoke this morning the trap would have done its job: The mouse in the house would have shuffled off this mortal coil to join its ancestors in mousy heaven, or wherever the souls of dead mice go.
    That was not, in fact, what happened.
    The cheese was gone.
    The trap had been sprung.
    The mouse was not, however, trapped.
    It had once again defeated humanity and its technological wizardry.
    "No way," Josep's cousin Elena said as she stared down at the empty trap.
    "Way," I replied and, for just an instant, I thought I heard a tiny mouse snicker from behind the walls. Probably just my imagination...
    "I think we need to name this mouse," Elena said after a pause. "I think he might be with us for awhile."
    I think she's right.

Petone

    Wednesday was nice and so, instead of chopping wood for the stove or repairing the damaged cord for the vacuum cleaner, Josep, his cousin Elena and I went exploring.
    We'd been told that Petone, which is right on the bay and not very far from Lower Hutt, was a cool place to hang out so we headed there about mid-morning and we weren't disappointed: It is a cool little place. In many respects it reminded me of Geneva-on-the Lake, a small beach town in Ohio that my friends and I spent many a summer day wandering around when we were in high school. Like Geneva-on-the-Lake, Petone's business district is one long street lined with shops and restaurants. It's also a pretty relaxed place, as most beach towns are around the world.
    Petone differs from Geneva-on-the-Lake in some important respects, however. First, it's bigger. Second, instead of arcades where you can waste a lot of time (and money) playing everything from skeeball to video games, Petone has bookstores - really nice bookstores run by really friendly people. Finally, Petone is a town that takes its history seriously: There are monuments, plaques pointing out historic buildings and even an old ship that was used to bring early settlers to what is now a good-sized place. The people of Petone have even restored the old police station and jail and turned it into a tourist atttraction, which, when you think about it, probably says a lot about them.
   Petone is also home to a wonderful place called La Bella Italia, which is kind of hard to define. It's part restaurant (Elena and I shared a pizza that was really, really good while Josep had a plate of lasagna that was equally good), part grocery store, part bakery, part souvenir shop... if it's Italian you can probably find it on the shelves, in the display cases or on the menu... okay, you can't buy a Lamborghini there but you get the point. We didn't find it by accident, a nice lady at one of the bookstores told us it was the best place in Petone to have lunch, especially if we wanted pizza.
    After cruising the main street and eating a late lunch, we headed back to our car by walking along the town's very wide beach at low tide and then out on a long pier where we found a small band of folks fishing for their supper. They didn't seem to be having much luck but that didn't seem to bother them much; mostly they seemed to be enjoying the day and joking with one another.
    It was, all things considered, a day well spent.

That's Wellington across the bay. I shot this photo from the Petone beach.

Dylan once wrote that you don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows, but sometimes you might need a flying fish to do just that.

Another view from the Petone beach, this of the mountains that are a constant backdrop in New Zealand.

They were fishing but, mostly, they seemed to be enjoying the day and joking with one another.

Early morning in the Hutt Valley

    The sun, petulant because it had been hidden by clouds for a few days, was so bright it almost hurt my eyes early Tuesday morning when it burst over the mountains. It brought not only light but also warmth that made even the cool morning breeze bow before it.
    Morning in the hills above the Hutt Valley is full of sound. Birds stake their territories with a variety of songs, chirps and a few raucous calls. The breeze blows through the trees turning the leaves into musical instruments that play softly in the morning light. Not far away a dog barks; not challenging anyone or anything, simply barking to announce its presence to the world. Far below, there is the soft sound of cars full of early morning commuters heading into work along the asphalt river that is Route 2.
    I am not someone who is altogether comfortable in hidden places. I much prefer city streets to forests; I like the sound of people moving about, of their voices and the noise that they make walking, opening doors, carrying packages. Despite that, on Tuesday morning I found myself feeling content as I stood on the small terrace of this house that is hidden from its neighbors by trees growing so thickly together that it might have been dropped into the middle of a rain forest and forgotten.
    Down below, in the valley, people were opening shops, baking bread, ordering supplies and generally getting ready for another day. I could not see them but I knew they were there and what they were about for I have lived most of my life in close proximity to other human beings and have done so on purpose. For a little while, however, I did not feel the urge to go down to be with them. Instead, I stood watching the world from this hideaway, drinking a cup of strong coffee and wondering how the first men and women to see it must have felt when they looked down into the valley from this spot so long ago. There would have been no city in the valley then, of course, no collection of buildings dotting the landscape. Could those first men and women have envisioned a time when there would be? And if they could have envisioned such a time, would they have approved?
    I don't know the answers to those questions, nor do I need to. On a Tuesday morning, feeling quite alone but not lonely, it was enough just to ask them.
   
   

Moving.Day.Part.Deux

    Sunday was windy, cold and came complete with a driving rain so, of course, it was time to move from our apartment in Wellington to our newest (and last) residence - a 3-bedroom home in Lower Hutt.
    We managed to get all four of us and our luggage into the station wagon Elena has for work and made the trip from downtown to Belmont Terrace in one trip without incident - which means, of course, that I was only mildly panicked throughout the ride. (I still cannot get used to sitting in what, in the States, is the driver's seat while Elena is driving on what is, to me, the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road.)
    Belmont Terrace is about halfway up a mountain so you do get some spectacular views when it's not pouring rain. Our front yard is also something of a rain forest so you kind of have to stand in the right place to get those views of the Hutt Valley, the mountains on the other side of the Hutt River, and the city of Lower Hutt, which is down in the valley itself.
    The house is of an unusual design, two stories tall with lots of windows. It's a little chilly because there is no central heating... heat is supplied by a small wood stove and those rolling radiators that plug into wall sockets. The beds come with lots of covers, including electric blankets so sleeping is pretty comfortable, actually. Getting the fire going in that little stove demands persistence and a certain amount of creativity. It also helps if you cuss a little, which we have done in three languages - English, Spanish and Catalan.
    The house, however, does have a piano and since Elena and Elena both play, I look forward to some impromptu concerts during the days and nights we're here. That, at least in my opinion, will make up for a little chill now and then.
    I'm not looking forward to the half-mile walk down the mountain to the mail box and the bus stop, though, because once I get there it's a half mile back UP the mountain to the house but some things you just have to grin at and bear.
 

The view from the front of the house

The view from the side porch - yeah, it's a rain forest

If you stand in the right spot, you have a nice view of the Hutt Valley, the mountains on the other side and the city of  Lower Hutt.

Flowers, a cannon, stars and a long walk

    It seemed so easy when I looked on the map... go right on The Terrace after leaving our apartment building and follow the street to Salamanca then go right again and follow that road to the botanical gardens and the Carter Observatory...
    It wasn't easy, not at all. First off, the map wasn't drawn to scale and so what seemed like a short walk was actually more than two miles long. Second, the map made the route look, well, flat.
    It wasn't.
    It.Was.All.Up.Hill.
    Every single step.
    Making the climb from the apartment building to the botanical gardens and the observatory was not something I want to do very often... okay, true confession time: It's not something I want to do ever again. Truthfully, if my pride hadn't been involved I would have turned around about halfway there, gone back to our apartment and ordered pizza (yeah, Domino's delivers here in Wellington.) My pride, however, which has always overruled my good sense, did get involved and so I kept slogging onward and upward to keep my somewhat rash promise to meet Elena, Josep and his cousin Elena at the observatory at 1:30 p.m.
    It took me almost 90 minutes to make the climb so I arrived a little before 2 p.m. to find them waiting for me outside the observatory. We went inside just in time to catch the 2 o'clock show, which is divided into two parts: A film showing the history of the space race followed by a nice presentation on the night sky over Wellington that is tailored to the specific date you're there. Pretty impressive really.
    I very much enjoyed both the film and the presentation and not just because I was able to sit down in an extremely comfortable chair for more than an hour, though that fact increased my enjoyment about 100 percent.
    Elena, Josep and Elena had wandered through the botanical gardens before I got there so they managed to see a lot more than I did. I saw part of it as I was staggering uphill to the observatory, which sits at the highest point in the gardens. This is winter so not everything was in bloom but there were still some beautiful flowers and some wonderful old trees on my route. I suspect the gardens are spectacular in the late spring and summer.
    Not far from the observatory is a climatological station and a small rest area that has a captured World War I cannon facing Wellington Harbor. From that point you have a very nice view of the city and the landscape across the harbor.
    I was not anxious to face the walk back, even though it would be all downhill, but fortunately I didn't have to: Elena wanted to try the famous cable car ride that takes you from the observatory hill to Lambton Quay and so we did.
    The result was a relaxing ride down, which probably saved me from a stroke.

This German cannon was captured during World War I by Kiwis from Wellington serving in the New Zealand Division.

Not all the flowers in the botanical gardens were in bloom because it's winter but some were and they were beautiful.

Josep and his cousin Elena at the cable car that brought us down the mountain to Lambton Quay and saved me from a stroke.

The Carter Observatory in Wellington.

A very unique sundial at the observatory... you stand on the slab in front of the small pillars of stone and it tells you the exact time of day. Pretty cool.

The botanical gardens from the top of the hill.

A view of Wellington and the harbor from the botanical gardens.

   
   

The Night Market

    Friday night was a little windy and a little rainy but not extravagantly so and because that was true we went out for dinner instead of cooking at home. Elena had heard of a movie theater on Kent Terrace that she'd been told has a restaurant inside; a cool place decorated in a Roaring Twenties theme. That sounded intriguing enough that the four of us started walking there at around 7 p.m.
    We arrived only to be mildly disappointed. It turned out that the "restaurant" was really a cafe of sorts. Although it was done in a striking black-and-white, art deco motif, all you could get there were drinks and bar food.
    Walking there, however, was not a complete waste of time - my legs did not agree but you know how they are, if they had their way I'd never leave the couch - because we did get a chance to explore the neighborhood around the theater. It has a lot of actual restaurants as well as a couple more movie theaters and some interesting shops. We finally wound up eating chicken at a Nando's franchise, mostly because Josep - at 13 - has an aversion to trying anything exotic such as Vietnamese or Thai food.
    It was while out on our Friday night ramble that we discovered The Night Market on the Left Bank just off the Cuba Street pedestrian mall. You enter down this narrow alleyway into a square that has restaurants, a really nice bookstore, shops and a lot of small temporary stands selling food, jewelry and assorted sundries. It was great, not only for the sights, sounds and smells but also because the people there were just odd enough to be fun. Among them: a few punks, a few Goths, a few dreamily hip couples who might well have teleported in from a long-ago Grateful Dead concert and some guys who looked like they'd really like to start a revolution but not until they had just a couple more cups of coffee and maybe another slice of pie.
    I could have stayed all night, especially since there was a young woman there singing who had a really marvelous voice. When we arrived she was singing something from "Phantom of the Opera" but by the time I got my camera out she'd finished. I did manage to get some video of her singing a few minutes later... not great video, but better than what I shot of the old busker a few days ago.
    (Maybe if I keep shooting video I'll eventually get good at it... sigh, that's just wishful thinking I'm afraid... Anyway, here it is...)

Cityscapes

    I'm not much of a photographer, and as I proved a few days ago when I tried to shoot some video of an old busker on Cuba Street, I sorta suck as a videographer.
    Despite that, I keep firing away with my camera and, since today is wet and windy, I figured I'd play around with some shots I've taken from around the city. The result: Okay, they're not so great but it was fun doing the kind of editing that I never had the chance to do back when I was a working journalist. So, without further ado, here are some doctored cityscapes:

The view from our small balcony on The Terrace... this is what a pencil sketch might look like.

Building down the street from our apartment.

Evening on The terrace... high contrast.

Lambton Quay in the afternoon... another high contrast shot.

High winds, high heels and a really good juggler

    The wind came from the north today so, while it was cold, it didn't strip the flesh from your bones or freeze your marrow or do any of the hundred other awful things that the Southerlies can do to your body. Still, it was a strong wind and walking into it was difficult, not just for me on a pair of bad legs but for many people who, heads ducked into their chests, were struggling along.
    Which brings me to the subject of women in high heels... okay, not the smoothest segue in the world but bear with me for a second or two. Women in Wellington are addicted to high heels. That may be because this is a capital city or maybe it's because there are lots of banks and insurance companies and real estate agencies doing business here or maybe just because Wellington women like walking around in high heels. I don't know why they are addicted to them, just that they are and that means that they have to learn to walk on them in winds that can be strong enough to stop a grown man in his tracks on occasion.
    Some women have mastered that skill; in fact, here in Wellington a lot of women have and, believe me, that's no mean feat.
    So it was that earlier today, as I pushed into the wind on my way down to the ferry terminal, which is close by the railroad station, to check on boat rides to South Island, I saw several women in open-toed stilettos marching along as though it was a sunny summer day on Rodeo Drive and not a gray, chilly afternoon in the Land Down Under and Over a Bit. Later, on Lambton Quay, I saw dozens more women striding along wearing a variety of high-heeled shoes and boots and thinking nothing of it. Me? I was in a pair of hiking sandals wearing two pairs of socks to keep from losing a couple of toes to frostbite and wishing the wind wasn't blowing so hard because I really had to fight against it to get where I was going. I stopped and had a cup of coffee to think about the fact they were cruising along while I was having trouble keeping my balance while wearing flat sandals... okay, truth be told, I stopped to have a cup of coffee because my hands were cold and my eyes were tearing slightly from the wind but while I was inside having it I did think about all those women and I came to some conclusions.
    First, you have to not just want to wear high heels on a day like today, you have to NEED to wear them.
    Second, you have to have remarkable balance to move into a wind that is blowing your hair straight back like a flag snapping in the breeze while walking on four-to-six inches of narrow heels on sidewalks that are often made of bricks.
    Finally, and maybe most important of all, you need a high degree of confidence to wear high heels on a windy day in Wellington. You can't be tentative in heels when the wind is gusting at 30 or 40 mph. Instead, you have to stride forward in the certain knowledge that what you are doing is not simply fashionable but, in some mysterious way, righteous as well.
    I also ran across a very good juggler on Lambton Quay Thursday. Unlike the young man on Cuba Street, who couldn't keep three bowling-pin-like things in the air at the same time, this old timer kept four green tennis balls going in a high wind.
    Pretty darn cool.

High heels in a store window... I would have taken pictures of women walking down the sidewalk in heels but, uh, that would have been kinda creepy...

The guy was really good, juggling four tennis balls in a high wind... very cool

   
   

An old busker and a terrible juggler

    I saw him for the first time outside the Wellington train station a couple of weeks ago, an older man sitting in a misty rain on a cold, gray day. He had a small laptop in front of him perched on a music stand that stood bravely on skinny aluminum legs in defiance of the weather.
    He keyed in some music on the laptop and began singing and suddenly it felt like I was in a small club back in the 60s, not shivering in my shoes standing outside a train station. His voice was strong and his range was exquisite. Someone, I thought, should shoot a video of this guy.
    Earlier today I was walking on Cuba Street looking for, among other things, an All Blacks sweatshirt and a cup of strong coffee to ward off an early afternoon breeze that had a few sharp teeth in it, when I heard him again. I looked around, following the sound of his voice, until I found him sitting outside a store singing old standards. This time I hauled out my camera and shot some video of him, though I confess that I'm just not very good when it comes to video. Still, I hope that despite the poor quality of the video - and the background noise - you can get some idea of how rich his voice is.
    A little farther down the street there was a young man who really thought he was a juggler.
    He was not good at juggling; not at all. He kept dropping the large, white, bowling-pin-shaped things he was trying to keep in the air. Each time one or two of them hit the pavement with a crash he sighed, bent, picked it (or them) up and tried again. As I watched I saw that he'd manage to keep all three in the air for only a few seconds at a time before one or two of them would bounce off the pavement again. It was a little painful to watch but I kind of admired his persistence even though I was convinced that he was going to (a) hurt himself, (b) hurt some passer-by, or (c) break a store window.
    The fact that he wasn't very good didn't stop people from dropping coins into the hat he had placed near his feet, however. Either New Zealanders appreciate a good effort or they felt sorry for the guy or, just maybe, they thought he was being bad on purpose.
   Whatever, he probably made $20 while I was wandering up and down Cuba Street.
    I never did find the sweatshirt but I did get a really good cup of coffee.