On My Way Down the Street This Morning

She yelled hello into the wind two houses away and stopped me with an outstretched hand outside of No. 8. That’s where the guy taped a note to his letterbox: “NO community notices or newspapers WHATSOEVER.” No one in the street knows his name.
Game, I shook her hand. Her plump fingers were capped in chipped purple nail polish and ringed with cheap rhinestones.
“I’m Jody,” she laughed. “Jody with a bleeping ‘y’.”
She giggled some more, something about the wind blowing my hair but her short fake-red mop being “too bleeping thick” to move. It only took a minute more for Jody to tell me that she and her flatmate had both had car accidents as children, that she lost her brother a few years after hers, and that she was “in the second-top class before I got a knock to the head.”
The other purple-tipped hand cupped my elbow. “Oh, well,” she intimated, “Bleep happens, you know. Look, I had a tracheotomy.” She lifted her chins and pulled her turtleneck down with a thick finger. “Here’s the metal plate in my arm,” – one sleeve rolled back to show a screed of old stitches – “and the other arm, and here” – with a tap above her left eye – “is the plate in my head.”
It’s not difficult to see that the head injury must have changed Jody. Her speech and laughter are indistinguishable. When she learned where I live, she invited herself over for “a cop of caffy” some day. Yet I feel I met the greater human. She said herself (I think) that her life is a miracle, and that determination overcomes much. I wonder if I would be nearly as candid if an accident left the teenage me in hospital for half a year; if I had to re-learn to walk, to talk, to breathe.
“How do you fill your week?”
” Oh, the therapist keeps me busy. I play games on the computer and watch TV. I stay out of trouble.”
“You?” I teased, “You don’t look capable of mischief.”
Jody struck a pose and batted her eyelashes at me through her glasses. She’s a cherub in sweatpants. “Not me! I’m an angel – in disguise.”
The hand found my elbow again. “I have nine tattoos.”
I cringed a little, guessing already that she would show her best and brightest to me. A pant leg lifts – the koru on her calf is aqua-green. On the other ankle, a turquoise dolphin leaps from swirling waves. There is one on each shoulder and her thigh. Please, no. Oh, good, she moves on. Two live on her chest, her brother’s name and another dolphin. I lost count of the dolphins. Jody said they can’t swim away from her this way.
“The dolphins are my favourite. And, hey, no pain, no gain!” She thrust her hand at me again. “It’s nice to meet you,” she smiled.
“And you, Jody-with-a-‘y’.”
“Why a ‘y’?” Her voice rose with a rumble. “Because my mum bleeping gave it to me, that’s why!”

On my way home, I noticed the greasy tape marks where the guy at No. 8 had torn down his note. This community will find its way onto your heart.

You’re All Crazy (But Thank You)

Dear Anaemic Little Blog,

It’s okay. Even though I don’t seem to love you enough to update you very often, you’re attracting plenty of attention from the web. You’re getting too many blog views for them all to be by my family (especially since folk in places like Alaska, Japan and Indonesia have found you – helloo out there!). I can’t seem to kill you by neglect, so I just might have to give you attention.

Besides, Hamilton’s rocking, and someone has to tell the world.

Paula

Adopt-a-Box: Glaring Yellow.

In the heart of Hamilton stands a lonely traffic signal box. A lonely naked beige traffic signal box. Except it’s not beige. Can you spot it?

Here, I'll make it easy for you.

That’s my box, and it’s even worse than beige! I chose a location to paint through the Adopt-A-Box website and Google Street View. Truth is sadder than cyberspace – not only does Box #4015 sport a glaring yellow sign on an out-of-place-baby-blue body, I have left it in said state since, oh, August. Behold, also, the reason why Adopt-A-Box is partially funded from the Ministry of Justice Graffiti Vandalism Prevention Fund:

No doubt it’s exactly because of this sort of fairy nonsense that the Ministry of Justice cares about graffiti. 🙂

You will see that #4015 has a tagalong (Edit: Ha! A pun!). I have a soft spot for good spray paint art and can totally see the appeal of a bit of brightening in the right nook. While the stencil on #4011 is a clever take on a banana brand, I had to blurr the word thanks to the artist’s crudeness. Isn’t it odd that Hamilton has lost stenciled hearts and birds to our anti-graffiti painters but that toilet humour survives at one of our busiest intersections? Methinks my little painting project will be stretching over two objects now. Boon!

As for location, you can’t get any more iconic in Hamilton than the Fairfield Bridge. The bridge was opened in March 1937, having been built of reinforced concrete for a princely £22,426. Three sweeping bowstring arches extend along the 139-m span. You can see the Art Deco influence of the time in the balustrades and lamp posts that complement those lovely curves. Fairfield Bridge has been listed with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust since 1990, which I reckon it deserves on looks alone.

I bet even seasoned Hamiltonians don’t know the other reasons for the status of the bridge. According to the Historic Places Trust, the bridge was at the cutting edge of concrete technology when it was built. The middle span was the largest of its kind in the country, and the bridge remains the best example of a bowstring bridge in New Zealand. I love that the Trust describes its design as “confidence with refinement”. That such a fine structure was even built is remarkable considering Hamilton’s size at the time. Check out the plaque at the Victoria Street end:

Please excuse the evidence of former vandalism.

Note the commissioning council…yep, Waikato County! Back in 1937, this bridge wasn’t even in Hamilton! It’s about a kilometre north of Boundary Road (cue “ohh” from the locals) and wasn’t included in the city limits until 1949. Apparently some people thought that the bridge was way out of town and would hardly be used. ‘Seems to me there will always be Some People to rain on a good idea. As it happened, the only other bridge servicing Hamilton needed repairs shortly after ol’ Fairfield was finished. Farmers on the north of the settlement loved the improved access, and it’s now roughly the central point of the city. Good on the folk who had the foresight to build this bridge.

I peered at the names on that plaque for a long while. We have a Barton Street in the CBD – who reckons the County Clerk Mr. Barton had something to do with that? I know a Mrs. de Malmanche has taught mathematics at a local high school – perhaps a descendant by marriage of the Clerk of Works? It’s one of the things I love about Hamilton: we’re a city with a small-town heart, where it doesn’t take long to make connections between people. Even as I took these photos, several people drove past whom I know.

The next step is for me to brainstorm ideas for painting Box #4015 and chat to the Adopt-A-Box people about sprucing up its poor cousin. My design needs to conform to at least one of the following:

• Say something or tell a story about the area/suburb it is located;
• Reflect the character, culture, history or heritage of the suburb or area;
• Be ‘city centric’ (e.g. have images that relate to Hamilton as a city);
• Show aspects of the immediate environment – like landmarks, sights, sounds or experiences; or
• Acknowledge the youthfulness of Hamilton’s population.

What ideas do you have for our box buddies?

THE DEETS

Attraction: Fairfield Bridge

Location: Spanning the mighty Waikato River between Victoria Street and River Road. That’s  co-ordinates -37.771809, 175.269923 to the geeky.

Cost: Mega pounds back in the day. None to you, though.

Tourist value: Eye candy, especially from the river walkways either side of the Waikato.

Bonus Hoot: Spot the camera man! He’s in one of the photos above.

Come-! Come.

Happy December! Here’s a particularly moving instrumental rendition of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ for you, to celebrate the first of the month:

Back from the Ravages of World Travel

Three continents, 14 weeks and a whopping twenty new stamps in my passport later, I’m back to tell you that “There’s [still] no place like home!

I’ve been privileged to visit some of the great metropoli of the world, peer at ancient treasures and trade ideas with fine minds – so much more than this wee lass thought was in store for 2011. However, there is some quality to whichever place we call ‘home’ that makes it special above all the other wonders on our planet. Send me on a journey any day…but I will be glad to sleep in my bed again, with lumps that fit my hips and bumps.

I’m looking forward to delving back into Hamilton. Stay tuned for a couple of entertaining interviews I did before going away, reviews of the latest on offer for Christmas, and a look back at how The Rugby played out on our streets. Ohh, yes. It is good to be home.

SPARK Festival 2011: Lydia Kavina

Lydia Kavina flashes a hand-drawn electrical circuit on the screen. Two loops, two hands. Too much for the audience, which gasps in chorus. A skeptic with blond wisps about her face raises her hand: “Is it possible for us to build our own machine without – you know – a rocket science degree?”

Kavina chortles. She is addressing creative types at the 2011 Wintec Media Arts Festival SPARK, who are clearly more enthralled with the otherworldliness of her music than its workings. I spy a bearded and greying fellow in the front row whom I think I recognise from a current production of King Lear. He wears a knotty knitted beanie in paua shades, a periwinkle-blue knit cardigan and an evergreen tartan shirt. Closest to me are music students in skinny jeans and heavy fringes. The man across the row sleeps through his cellphone. His head is tilted back, mouth open, arms folded across a generous chest. Grey waves fall away equally far from his chin and scalp. I feel out of my depth but for a different reason from everyone else.

For the record, theremin kits are on sale in Hamilton, and the science behind the instrument is as simple as its application is revolutionary. Playing a theremin well is another matter.

Léon Theremin (nee Lev Termen) was born in Saint Petersburg in 1896 to a partly French family. He showed an early interest in Physics, especially electricity, and was known to academics in the field before he left high school. Kids, don’t try this at home:  the young Léon built a million-volt Tesla coil in his backyard lab. It is said that the idea of the theremin came to him when he noticed that the Tesla coil hummed at a different pitch when someone stood nearby. All that a theremin does is amplify that hum.

Kavina’s theremin is a squat metal box with a straight vertical antenna on the far right and a horizontal loop coming from the left. One would think that the world’s first electronic instrument would look more like the whiz-bang behind the Wizard of Oz, but photos of Theremin’s invention in the 1920s show little shift in concept. There is nothing remarkable about the theremin until someone like Kavina lifts her hands and a pleading note hovers in the air with her fingers. She has touched nothing; her hands are warping the force field around the antennae. With her left she controls the volume; her right dances around the vertical post to pinpoint the pitch.

Kavina treats her listeners to a history of the man and his machine. She ought to know the story well – Theremin was her great-uncle and instructor. Her speech is peppered with a sense of humour that sees her receive a cloth gift bag at the end, ask “What is this?” and pretend to put it on her head.

First, a piece by Tchaikovsky. The theremin sings like a violin on Auto-Tune – a human voice with an electric edge. Folk may better recognise its eery sound from science-fiction or horror films like Tim Burton’s ‘Ed Wood’. Picking on its ethereal quality, some, like eccentric “free music” composer Percy Grainger, have heralded the theremin a liberation from the interference of the performer. Kavina takes pains to declare the theremin an instrument and not merely a machine. She maintains that Grainger’s pieces, played by computer as he implied, are empty and cold. Ironically, only the human touch can bring the theremin to life.

The last performance of the day is indeed lively. Kavina has chosen a piece in the Grainger tradition, in which the score is scribbled with deliberate anarchy on plain paper. I wonder how anyone can make sense of the loops and twirls on the staves. Remember that there is no physical guide for a theremin player, just a good ear and imagination. And some imagination! The man across the aisle wakes. King Lear is stiff in his seat. We gasp together at the drama, the precision, the sheer musicality that Kavina draws from the garble. The slight Russian lady in a dark pant-suit is a rocket scientist…with a million volts of creative energy.

Otherworldliness: Lydia Kavina explains the theremin circuit diagram. Superimposed is a section of Percy Grainger's 'Free Music' score for four theremins. Kavina has colour-coded amplitude and pitch lines for each instrument.

THE DEETS

Event: SPARK International Festival of Media, Arts and Design

Time: Morning, noon and night for a week in August each year.

Location: Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec) and other central city spots

Tickets: So free it’s criminal.

Tourist Value: Whether watching emerging Kiwi artists or truly international gems like Kavina, you won’t be sleeping through this one.

 

Bonus Hoots:

Dorit Chrysler on the Moog Polyphonic Theremin

Radio NZ celebrates Kavina coming to Hamilton

Les Mills’ Cheap Thrills

Les Mills Gyms are offering nine visits for $9 if you sign up by 28 August and get your energetic self down there before 11 September. I would be all over this offer and a parallel one by the Hamilton YMCA if it weren’t for my moonwalkin’ boot. I’m surprised no-one has asked about my ankle. If you must know (oh, and you must), I jumped out of bed and twisted my foot. Lame!

So who is game for the gym? Come back and tell us all about it!

Got my leotard, got my leg warmers!

THE DEETS, Pt. 1

Event: Nine gym sessions for nine bucks

Time: Sign up by 28 August, 2011; complete sessions by 11 September.

Location: Les Mills Gym, Victoria/Barton Streets, Hamilton

Cost: Small enough to afford a cuppa and cake on Barton Street afterwards.

Tourist Value: Great for the longer-term visitor. What a place to meet people!

www.lesmills.co.nz/hamilton

 

THE DEETS, Pt. 2

Event: You and a friend get into a fitness class for free

Time: August, 2011 only

Location: YMCA, Pembroke Street, Hamilton

Cost: Zip.

Tourist Value: Sometimes the most memorable experiences are the quirkiest. Find yourself a buddy and go, go, go!

Call (07) 838-2529 or visit www.ymcahamilton.org.nz.

Thanks, Telecom, for the Advertising Budget

Sign spotted outside Palmers Garden Centre, Lincoln Road, Hamilton.

Catch up on the back story here. Or don’t.

The Week that Was

Friday.

I gain one of these:

The trees are bare.

Monday, Hamilton gets its five minutes of fame for five magical minutes of snow:

The trees are bare.

Tuesday: Ta-da! Cherry blossoms all through my neighbourhood.

You know the saying that your heart “leaps for joy”? Seeing the first signs of Spring does that to me. I think of bounding lambs and daffodils and all manner of boldly growing, hopeful things. The blossoms you see here had the audacity to appear just one day after a record-setting chill.

I have sat with these words for many minutes, grasping in the warming air for how to convey the delicate power of finding Spring. It’s not that seeing new life makes me optimistic – that everything is going to be alright, because all is not yet right with the world. Much too soon, the blossoms will fall, leaves will wither; seasons roll on top of each other, and fresh starts of every kind grow stale. Optimism is not enough to bear our burdens. My mother pointed out that optimism grounded in faith, however, is hope, and hope does not fade.

Thursday:

I find the ‘Best of’ album of my favourite artist in a Bryce Street store for only $5 (proof in part that if you know where to look, Hamilton’s shopping delivers!) Treat yourself to this song from the album, ‘Every Season’ by Nichole Nordeman:

Every evening sky, an invitation
To trace the patterned stars
And early in July, a celebration
For freedom that is ours
And I notice You
In children’s games
In those who watch them from the shade
Every drop of sun is full of fun and wonder
You are summer

And even when the trees have just surrendered
To the harvest time
Forfeiting their leaves in late September
And sending us inside
Still I notice You when change begins
And I am braced for colder winds
I will offer thanks for what has been and was to come
You are autumn

And everything in time and under heaven
Finally falls asleep
Wrapped in blankets white, all creation
Shivers underneath
And still I notice you
When branches crack
And in my breath on frosted glass
Even now in death, You open doors for life to enter
You are winter

And everything that’s new has bravely surfaced
Teaching us to breathe
What was frozen through is newly purposed
Turning all things green
So it is with You
And how You make me new
With every season’s change
And so it will be
As You are re-creating me
Summer, autumn, winter, spring

P.S. I looked for a post from Angie Smith about one of her twins choosing a lone bare tree as her favourite in a stand by the side of the road. The little girl saw the potential of what the tree might become.
Points to anyone who finds that post (Angie’s blog is well worth being read)! Instead, I found a post Angie wrote shortly after the loss her infant daughter Audrey Caroline…about cherry blossoms.

I’m Still Here!

What happens to a blog if you don’t feed it?

Methinks I’m going to need some practice at regularity before Husband and I endeavour to take on anything alive. Blogs are safe. It’s like pretending you have a pet when it’s really just a Tamagotchi.

I wanted to tell you about the week that was, but the photos are in the Room of the Sleeping Husband, so I’ll leave you with a promise to come back soon and a gratuitous shot of a pup in a Hamilton bridal boutique. If we forget for a minute that it’s probably a Bichon Frise, I was going to say that someone’s pretending they have a dog when it’s really just a poodle. Woops.