A tribute to Georgina

On Monday afternoon Aotearoa lost a Kiwi icon and trailblazer – Georgina Beyer. An amazing woman and an inspiration to many. She will be fondly remembered and sadly missed, not only by New Zealanders, but by discriminated against minorities in many parts of the world. I’ll leave it to others better skilled than I to sing her praises.

Georgina Beyer remembered as trailblazer by Prime Minister, Labour’s Rainbow caucus chair

‘Georgina had guts’: Chris Carter remembers Georgina Beyer

Georgina Beyer: Tributes pour in for world’s first openly transgender MP, former PM Helen Clark remembers her as humorous, courageous

World’s first transgender mayor and MP, Georgina Beyer, dies aged 65 | Newshub [3:35}

Trailblazing MP Georgina Beyer dies aged 65 [5:43]

Georgina Beyer; Rainbow Voices interview | NZ Parliament [12:56]

Matangireia S2 | Episode 2: Georgina Beyer | RNZ [46:02]

MPs react to death of Georgina Beyer [3:28]

Former MP Georgina Beyer remembered as ‘anchor for the rainbow community’ – Louisa Wall [8:05]

Emergency!

For only the third time in our history, Aotearoa New Zealand is under a national state of emergency. This occasion has been caused by Cyclone Gabrielle which has closely followed several weeks of extreme weather events that has caused widespread flooding, landslides, roads, homes and bridges being washed away over much of the upper half of Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island). Even before the arrival of Cyclone Gabrielle, the cost of the damage of the recent extreme weather events has been estimated to exceed the costs of the Christchurch Earthquakes of 2010/2011.

The land over much of Te Ika-a-Māui reached saturation level over recent weeks where some areas have received several months of rain in as little as a day. The forces of Cyclone Gabrielle – winds, rain and low atmospheric pressure – have added to the chaos with emergency services being overwhelmed over large areas of the country. For those who still insist that climate change is a hoax, all they need do is look the frequency of extreme weather events compared to previous decades.

In the Manawatu region where we live, we haven’t experienced much more than a severe storm. However some rivers in the region that have catchments to the east and north are now running above capacity and breaches can be expected. Our home is perched on the lip of the valley overlooking the township of Feilding, so our home can’t be threatened by flooding. The valley wall is not very steep so even if the land was waterlogged, it’s unlikely that significant landslides would occur. Over night we experienced winds with gusts of up to 120 km/h (75 mph), which is not exceptionally strong, and moderate to heavy rain. So in this corner of Aotearoa it’s been almost a non-event, and likely to remain so, unless more bridges get washed away or the Manawatu River rises significantly higher than expected.

True extent of damage yet to be seen as Cyclone Gabrielle cuts off Gisborne | Newshub

Cyclone Gabrielle ‘most significant weather event this century’ – PM Hipkins | Newshub

New Zealand climate minister blasts parliament as Cyclone Gabrielle devastates North Island

A trivial payment

A recent blog post over at bereavedandbeingasingleparent regarding the insignificance of a discount he received from his electricity supplier, reminded me of an incident that occurred around 1959/1960. This was many years before Aotearoa New Zealand converted from Stirling (Pounds, Shillings and Pence) to Decimal currency (Dollars and Cents).

My father worked for the New Zealand Education Department as a PhysEd (Physical Education) specialist. His role was to visit schools and to advise the educators on all aspects of PhysEd from swimming pool and playground safety to the supervision of individual and team sports to instructing teachers how to teach folk dancing and Māori action songs/dances.

This story revolves around a cheque he was sent. I don’t recall whether it was to make up for a shortfall in his salary or for an underpayment of expenses, but the department sent him a cheque for half a penny at the end of the financial year. He thought it was hilarious, as the postage alone cost four pence plus the cost of the envelope plus the cost of typing the message detailing how the shortfall had occurred. Additionally in those days there was a two pence stamp duty on each cheque. The postage and stamp duty alone came to sixpence. My father framed it and hung it on the wall as it would have cost him a two pence processing fee to bank or cash.

Every month following, the accounts department sent him increasingly desperate letters asking him to bank the cheque so that they could “balance the books” – each letter costing another four pence postage, plus whatever it cost to process. My father ignored the requests for six months, but finally he received a phone call from Head Office and the caller sounded to be quite upset, so much so that he felt he should do “the right thing” and bank the cheque.

Cheques were valid for six months and by the time he tried to bank it, it had expired by a day or two. He sent it back from his office to head office, which again cost the department four pence in postage, explaining why it was being returned. I don’t know how the department and my father finally resolved the matter, but that half penny cheque incurred direct costs of at least eight postage stamps plus the stamp duty totalling 34 pence, not to mention the the eight envelopes, eight A4 sheets with departmental letterhead, plus the time of the accountant and the typists to prepare each letter.

Back then accounting was processed using mechanical accounting machines, and perhaps there was no practical way of carrying that half cent for an individual employee from one financial year to the next. I wonder, in these day of electronic funds transfers, if similar situations still arise from time to time.

Counting sheep

Falling asleep is a process I’ve found difficult for as long as I can remember. Until quite recently I thought counting sheep was an irrational metaphor used to describe an aid in getting to sleep. As a child I was often advised to count sheep in such situations, and in more recent times during a stay in hospital, I was also given the same advice. My response has always been “How?” No one has ever provided me with even just one sheep to count.

Whenever I asked “How?” people tend to be taken aback, and then in a manner that assumes I’m an idiot, carefully and with deliberate slowness, usually say something like
“Imagine a fence with a gate. Now imagine sheep jumping over the gate. Just count each sheep as it jumps over.”
or
“Imagine a flock of sheep in a hillside. Simply count the sheep starting from the nearest. If you run out of sheep, Imagine a different hillside and continue counting.”

Such explanations were of no help at all, and as I child, any further attempts on my part to gain a better understanding of how to imagine such situations usually resulted in anger or frustration on the part of the advisor. As I got older I learnt there is a limit on how far I should seek clarification, and it was often safer to pretend to understand the advice given, even when I didn’t.

It wasn’t until quite recently that I discovered why this process of imagining was such a mystery to me. I can’t. Well to be more accurate, I can’t imagine anything visually. I cannot conjure up a mental image in my mind. Until I discovered I have aphantasia, I never realised that most people can, to some extent, use their “mind’s eye” to visualise what they are thinking about.

When most people think of a loved one, or a sheep, they are able to to form a mental picture, sometimes quite detailed, of the person or object in mind. When I think of the wife, a family member or a sheep, all I can tell you is that I know I’m thinking of the person or thing, but that is as far as it goes.

Apparently, aphantasia, like prosopagnosia (face blindness) is more common in autistics than in the general population, but the two conditions don’t seem to be directly related. Most folk who have aphantasia have no problem recognising faces, and most folk with prosopagnosia are capable of forming mental images. I have both conditions. Are you able to create mental images, and if so, in how much detail?

Thanksgiving

No, it’s not celebrated in Aotearoa, although Black Friday is now firmly on the retailers’ calendar, replacing Boxing day (December 26) as the day with the highest retail turnover. Besides, it celebrates a myth and a whitewashing of America’s colonial past.

Before ill health forced me into early retirement 15 years before I anticipated, I worked for the New Zealand subsidiary of a multinational information technology company. The managing director of the NZ subsidiary was typically (but not always) a foreign national – often American. In the early years of the 1990s an American was appointed to the role of managing director, and in his wisdom, he decided that as the parent company headquarters were located in the US, the NZ subsidiary should follow the American tradition of Thanksgiving. Staff located in Auckland where the NZ head office was located were “treated” to a luncheon with turkey and speeches that were mostly meaningless to the attendees. Staff in the fifteen or so branches scattered across the country were “less fortunate”, as all we were “treated” to was turkey sandwiches that had been couriered to each staff member in every branch.

I hate to think what it cost the company, as turkey was almost unknown here at the time. I presume it was imported specially for the occasion. The six staff members in the branch I was based at took one bite of a sandwich, and instantly tossed all their sandwiches into the rubbish. None of us had tasted turkey before, and not one of us liked the taste one tiny bit. The same occurred in every branch, and apparently most of the turkey served in Auckland had a similar fate. It’s not something the Kiwi palate could easily accommodate.

No one had the courage to inform the managing director what they thought of the whole Thanksgiving fiasco, so he decided to celebrate Thanksgiving the following year. While many Auckland staff found excuses not to attend the luncheon, the branches hatched up a plan of their own. Every sandwich package delivered to the branches was carefully repackaged, addressed to the Managing director and sent by overnight courier back to Auckland. There were about 80 staff members across all the branches, so when he arrived at his office the following morning, the managing director found 80 packages of stale turkey sandwiches waiting for him.

We never heard mention of Thanksgiving again.

Musical Monday (2022/11/14) – Bliss

Being autistic, I’m unlikely to venture into places where this song usually heard. Pubs and loud people are a form of torture for me. Bliss has become something of an iconic cult song in Aotearoa – our unofficial national drinking song. Performed by the Kiwi band Th’ Dudes, it’s kind of ironic as it was written as a satirical comment about the many drunken audiences they played to while performing on the Sydney pub circuit in Australia. Any evening when large quantities of alcohol is consumed in this nation, you can guarantee the song will the night’s anthem.

Originally this song originally referred to piss, which is slang for alcohol, especially beer, but their recording company balked at its use, hence the word piss being replaced by bliss, including as the title. The music video was recorded in a well known Wellington watering hole – The Cricketer’s Arms. The song was released in May 1980 and climbed to a ranking of 25 on the New Zealand Music Charts. It has since been voted 50th best New Zealand song of the 20th century.

While I’ll never be able to participate in rendering this song in alcohol induced revelry, I find it somewhat liberating when I hear it played at a moderate volume level. Enjoy.

Bliss – Th’ Dudes (1980)

Bliss

Yah ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya
Yah ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya

Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another
Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another

Drink yourself more bliss
Have a stiff one all night
Everything is alright
Try and reach the bar
Coppers took the car
Offers from the sidewalk

Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another
Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another

Yah ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya
Yah ya ya ya ya
Ya ya ya ya

Think I'm at full speed
Get it up the Coogee
Hello Sailor cruising
Buy some Spanish shoes
Think I need a refill
Get it at the Cross

Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another
Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another

Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another
Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another

Drink yourself more bliss
Forget about the last one
Get yourself another

Empathy

Like many, perhaps most autistic people, I am suspicious of a lot of the work and research that Simon Baron Cohen is involved with, however sometimes he hits the nail right on the head. I recently watched a 2012 TEDx presentation by Cohen and he made some comments regarding empathy and democracy that are surely relevant today. Let me quote starting from 10:35:

10:35 “Empathy is vital for a healthy democracy; it ensures that when we listen to different perspectives, we hear other people’s emotions and we also feel them. Indeed without empathy, democracy would not be possible.”

11:46 “Empathy is our most valuable natural resource for conflict resolution. We could wait for our political leaders to use empathy – and that would be refreshing – but actually we could all use our empathy.”

If I was asked for one word to describe what is lacking in American society and politics at this time, I think I would choose the word empathy.

If you wish to watch Simon Baron Cohen’s presentation in its entirety you can find it on YouTube: The erosion of empathy | Simon Baron Cohen | TEDxHousesofParliament.

The trouble with flowering trees and shrubs…

…is flowers.

They look lovely when on the trees and even look quite pretty when the dropping petals first land on the footpath, but…

They stick like glue to the footpath making them almost impossible to sweep away unless…

Someone walks over them, where they stick like glue to the soles of shoes or to Frankie the cat’s fur, again making them almost impossible to remove, unless…

The aforementioned shoes or cat come in contact with the carpeting in the car or the house entry points where those damned petals stick like glue to said carpet and become impossible to remove even with the vacuum cleaner, unless…

I pick up each decaying petal one by one where they stick to my fingers and I find them impossible to remove, unless…

Please let me discover another unless

HELP!

An upside to the overturning of Roe v Wade

For America and Americans there isn’t any, but for us in Aotearoa there is an upside. Especially when it comes to women’s health. The reality is that in America, and especially in the conservative south, many professionals working in women’s health live in fear – fear of being shot, fear of their work places being bombed, fear that their families might become targets for anti-abortion extremists. Who would choose to live like that? If enquiries from American health professionals to New zealand recruitment services are anything to go by, many have chosen to seek safer pastures.

For many decades, Aotearoa, like many smaller nations have have been the happy hunting ground where large American and European health organisations poach health professionals by offering eye watering salaries way beyond our capacity to pay. We simply don’t have those resources. As a consequence this country is critically short of medical staff in practically every field. And covid has only made thing worse with staff often working beyond the point of exhaustion. But perhaps the tables are about to be turned.

While I have the deepest sympathy for American women who have had their bodily autonomy stolen, I’m grateful that as a consequence of Roe vs Wade, many qualified and experienced health professionals are looking for alternative places where they can practice what they have been trained to do without fear of imprisonment and without fear for their safety, the safety of their families, safety in their place of work and safety for their patients. Many are seeking to make a new, safer and more balanced life for themselves and their families here in Aotearoa. We benefit by a reduction in our critical shortage of health professionals. Everyone wins (except for America and its women).

The YouTube video below is from Sunday, a weekly documentary series shown on TVNZ’s ONE channel. This episode describes the plight of American women seeking abortions in the south of America and also the plight of their health professionals. I can’t imagine living like that. I suspect this outside perspective of what America has become will be unsettling to many of its citizens, but I also suspect that those who should see it will be the last to even consider watching a foreign documentary. That’s what religious and political intolerance does.

Scary stories

Halloween was a few days ago. It’s an event I ignore. It didn’t exist in Aotearoa when I was growing up and personally I’d be happy if it remained so today. Thankfully, our current home has not been visited for Trick or Treating since we moved here 16 years ago. Perhaps it’s the unlit, tree lined zig-zag path that leads to the front door that puts kids off. Whatever the reason, it means I don’t have to pretend that Halloween is fun.

Halloween has brought up the topic of how folk with aphantasia (the inability to visualise mental images), such as myself, react to scary stories. Apparently we don’t. It might explain why I had no interest in sharing scary stories as a child. According to a Royal Society Publishing article the fear induced while reading or hearing a scary story relies on being able to create a mental image of the situation/event being described. No image, no fear.

The study measured skin conductivity of subjects while being presented with a scary or frightening story such as being in an aircraft as it crashed, or being trapped in a room full of spiders that then begin crawling over you. It’s well established that strong emotions are linked to skin moisture – the stronger the emotion, the wetter the skin becomes, lowering its electrical resistance. The control group showed significant increases in skin conductivity during the presentation of the scary stories but the aphantasiacs “flatlined” showing no change in emotions.

To check whether aphantasiacs lacked emotional responses, subjects were also presented with scary images. Both the control group and those with aphantasia showed identical responses. The study indicates the there is a close relationship between visual imagery and emotions. Both the control group and aphantasiacs presented the same emotional reactions when presented with real images, but only the control group did so when no images were presented as they were able to create the mental image of the story whereas those with aphantasia could not.

Around 2% – 5% of the general population have aphantasia, while it’s estimated that 20% – 30% of autistics are also aphantasiacs. Most people with Aphantasia don’t realise that they have it unless they are tested specifically for it. I only discovered I have aphantasia in my mid 60s – around six or seven years ago. It might go someway to explain why I have difficulty identifying faces –even of those nearest and dearest to me. Perhaps it might also explain why I find little to no attachment to fictional situations, but slightly more so when I see it on a TV or movie screen.

Aphantasia is another one of those neurological differences where those with the condition are frequently described as suffering with/from the condition, in much the way autistics are often described as suffering from autism. If you are guilty of this, just stop it! Neither autism nor aphantasia cause suffering in and of themselves. Any suffering comes from how others disbelieve, devalue, ignore and gaslight the experiences of those with these conditions, and worse when we are punished because others perceive our responses to our experiences as being wrong.