In this issue

1. My image of the week

2. Frontispiece

3. Going out through the in-door

4. On the life of trees

5. Fevered Mind Links ( to make your Sunday Morning Coffee go cold)

6. End Papers

My image of the week

― John Lennon

Frontispiece

― Matshona Dhliwayo

Deep Gratitudes

Over the last few weeks, I've been struggling on all levels.

It hasn't been an easy time, physically, mentally and spiritually and I have felt distinctly separated from what's going on in the world. But, having said that, sometimes our times of trouble are also times of growth, and I feel that when we become aware that suffering has a golden lining, we can get through it a lot better. I did not have it in me to step up and get out the newsletter, which usually takes me around eight hours to write. In some way, I suppose it is a lesson about self-care and the importance of looking after oneself.

I am very grateful to those of you who reached out to check on me and see if I was okay. I am very blessed and humbled by your concern.

However, I'm also conscious that this newsletter is helping some of you to get through these difficult times and that it is time to get back in the saddle and put mouse to screen.

Anyway, I'd forgotten how much I love putting this weekly Epistle (the Epistle according to St Anthony?) together and, while I haven't been present, I've been gathering a variety of links for the Fevered Mind section.

Praise be to Facebook.

Yes, you read that correctly. I had no idea what I would write about this week (that's usually the case) until Facebook stepped in to help me.

Last week I was in the process of updating my Facebook information when it suddenly asked me what I would like to happen to my Facebook page when I pass away. Macabre though that may seem, the thought did occur to me that maybe it was time to put something in place (not that I'm planning on departing anytime soon!). So in/following the event of my demise, I can nominate somebody (hopefully still alive) to shut it down for me. Facebook will even send that person a message-although how it knows I have karked it, I have no idea. Praise be to the algorithm!

It's an interesting problem. I have several friends on Facebook who I know have passed on, yet they are still there on my friends list one day I took my mother to a nearby retirement village to visit be an old friend whom she had known for many years so she could catch up and have a good talk I took runs. I know they are deceased, and yet somehow, I feel uneasy about unfriending them since that is the only way to remove them because, in some ways, it feels disloyal to their memory.

Am I the only one who feels this?

And that small process led me to think about this week's topic-my mother and her plans for departure. Read the section below.

Oh, and this week's foodie section in Fevered Mind links is dedicated to fine English cuisine (is that an oxymoron?).

Going out through the in-door

One day I took my mother to a nearby retirement village to visit Bea, an old friend whom she had known for many years, so she could catch up and have a good talk. I took her inside and, once she was settled with a cup of tea and a biscuit and conversation, I went off to nearby Hagley Park to spend time on my own. Neither of them needed me there hovering in the background.

I came back perhaps ninety minutes later to pick her up and take her home. As we walked out to the car, she slowly shook her head.

"You know," she said soberly, "I'm never going into a home. You go into a home to die."

And it wasn't long after that that Bea passed away. Mum repeated the statement when she told me about her old friend's departure.

You go into a home to die.

Eventually, my parents retired to Rotorua, where they bought a small three-bedroom house heated by a thermal bore. Neither of them suffered from a lack of heating! Whenever I visited in summer, it was like living in a sauna, and I used to dread hot, muggy nights at their place.

After my father passed, my mother continued to live in the house. When she became too frail to make it to church, the church came to her. She would sit in her La-Z-Boy, waited on hand and foot by all the helpers who came to care for her. It seemed to me that she wore an imaginary tiara.

My sister was much more diligent than me, making the pilgrimage up from Wellington each Christmas to spend time with her. I would come whenever I could. It was always a lovely time, and Mum would make a point of making her drink-driving-unfriendly trifle, which was vast amounts of sherry held together with cream and sponge and jam.

The Christmas before she passed, aged 92 10/12, I managed to make it up to be with her. I arrived at more or less the same time as my sister, and we sat down to have tea and biscuits with her.

We had barely been there twenty minutes when she pronounced in a firm voice:

"I'm going into the home after Christmas."

My sister and I looked at each other across the room in complete shock. What on earth was going on?

"Are you sure, mum?"

"Yes," she said. "I'm going into the home."

Once my sister and I managed to recompose ourselves, we asked her why. I suppose we should have both known because she had been asking us for the previous eighteen months what stuff of hers each of us wanted .

No, Mum, I would say, I have no use for your TV. I've got nowhere to put it.

No, Mum, I really don't want a lounge suite or any bedroom furniture.

But I really want to give you something, she would reply.

In the end, I asked if I could have her crayfish salad bowl, a genuine piece of Kiwiana, and an Ikon of Jesus, which hung on her wall (it now hangs on mine). That seemed to mollify her.

When we asked why she had suddenly decided to go into the home, she replied that she only had two things left to sort out; to see me with a partner and find a home for her cat, which she insisted on calling Pussy.

Being the innocent that she was, she had no idea of the other meaning of the word Pussy. And neither my sister nor I were ever going to tell her. We were far too cowardly.

However, one day, I couldn't help myself. The Spirit of Naughtiness overcame me.

"Have you seen my Pussy?" she asked.

I couldn't stop myself.

"No, Mum, not since I was one minute old."

The dark look she gave me made it all the more delicious.

So my sister and I flew into a panic, talking about everything that would have to be done. Putting her house on the market to help fund her move into the home and clean it out for her. When we began to look around, we realised we would need at least one skip for all the junk that would have to go out.

"Which home are you going into?" we asked.

"Oh, the one around the corner. I will be going into room twenty," she replied airily.

So we buzzed around like demented bees getting things organised. We went to the Boxing Day sales and bought her a lovely 32-inch flatscreen TV; we organised her clothing (well, my sister did) and a trailer to take her stuff around to the home.

We hitched up the trailer and loaded her stuff onto it on the appointed day. Mum looked on beatifically, a tiny, glowing Buddha dressed in a pink twinset and pearls, with a brilliant corona of white, permed hair.

We installed her in the car and drove around the corner to the home. We helped her out and took her inside to reception.

The Nurse Manager came out and greeted us.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

"Yes, we are here to bring mum into the home."

She looked at us strangely.

"Really? How is that?"

While we were talking, Mum was sitting serenely on a chair to one side.

"You didn't know?" we asked.

"No, we've got no record of that."

A strained silence fell across the room.

My sister and me and the Nurse Manager looked at each other.

Mum continued to sit there, calm, radiant and Zen-like, clutching her walking stick and handbag.

Then the silence fractured.

"Well, let me have a look," the Nurse Manager replied. "Oh, that's interesting. Room twenty IS available."

Mum continued to sit there, calm, radiant and Zen-like.

My sister went off to take care of the paperwork while I muscled her La-Z-Boy and furniture into the room.

Mum continued to sit there, calm, radiant and Zen-like while confusion circled, looking for a place to land.

Then it was done. She was nestled in room twenty. She sat there, watching her TV, and we knew it was time for us to go. We were no longer needed.

We popped by over the next couple of days to check on her. And she seemed perfectly at peace. Eventually, it was time for us all to leave and continue on our way.

"Will you be okay, Mum?" we asked.

"Oh yes, dear," she replied. "I am fine."

Three weeks later, I was back in the South Island when the phone rang. It was my sister in tears.

"You'd better come up straight away"," she said. "Mum is in hospital. And she is not expected to live."

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"She has renal failure."

"But there was nothing wrong with her kidneys."

"I know."

I caught the next plane to Rotorua.

We were there ten days before Mum finally passed early one morning.

Her sister Dorothy did the same thing. Then, at 96/7, after busily flying backwards in force across the Tasman to visit her daughter, she suddenly passed.

I remember talking with a retired monsignor in the same home as her at the funeral.

"Oh," he said, "she had had enough and decided it was her time to leave."

To this day, I will swear some amongst us, who have lived rich, full lives, are given the blessing of determining when they will pass.

On the life of trees

I came across this piece of text while researching for the newsletter, and was so entranced by it, I wanted to share it verbatim.

― Herman Hesse, Bäume: Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Fevered Mind Links (to make your Sunday morning coffee go cold)

What Is Chinese New Year? Unraveling the History of the Enchanting Festival — mymodernmet.com

Happy Chinese New Year! Every February, this enchanting holiday is honored by millions of people across the globe, making it one of the world's most widespread celebrations.

Innovative ‘Bee Bricks’ Are Drilled With Tiny Holes To Offer Homes for Solitary Bees — mymodernmet.com

It's no secret that bees are vital to the environment, and helping to protect them is one way we can mitigate a climate change disaster. If you’d like to do your part, give the Bee Brick a try.

Loving Father Photographs Unique Habits of His Son With Autism — mymodernmet.com

San Francisco-based photographer Timothy Archibald began photographing his autistic 5-year-old son Elijah as a way of dealing with the young boy's diagnosis.

Shropshire fidget pie — www.hairybikers.com

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Line a 23cm/9" spring-form cake tin with the pastry, bringing the pastry up over the edge of the tin, reserving enough to make a lid.

Highlights from the International Landscape Photographer of the Year — newatlas.com

Cementing its position as one of the most spectacular photo contests on the annual circuit, the International Landscape Photographer of the Year again delivers a stunning assortment of images, from mythical shots of snow-covered forests to awe-inspiring descents into hellish fiery volcanos.

Rare, Poignant Photos of Frida Kahlo During the Last Years of Her Life — mymodernmet.com

German-born French photographer Giselle Freund (1908-2000) offers a rare look at Frida Kahlo in intimate snapshots taken of the celebrated artist during some of the last years of her life.

Stargazy Pie — www.foodsofengland.co.uk

See also:

Traditional Bedfordshire clanger recipe — www.countryfile.com

The novelist HE Bates described the Bedfordshire clanger as “Hard as a hog’s back, harder ’n prison bread.” More often this local delicacy has been described as a soggy suet roly-poly, about as appealing as a wet sock.

Grace Paley on the Art of Growing Older — www.brainpickings.org

“For old people,” Ursula K. Le Guin wrote in her sublime meditation on aging and what beauty really means, “beauty doesn’t come free with the hormones, the way it does for the young… It has to do with who the person is.

When Turtles Fly — www.biographic.com

The other likely factor contributing to turtle strandings is the warming of the Gulf of Maine. Climate change has caused the water here to warm earlier each year and to stay warm for longer, keeping young Kemp’s ridleys in the fertile shallows of Cape Cod Bay later each fall.

End papers

-Matsuo Basho

The seven books I've either published or been involved in publishing sit on my bookshelf. My copy of A Few of the Legends is on the right-hand side, which forms a weighty counterbalance to the others. It is a beast of a tome, and each time I pass it, I have a quiet smile to myself that somehow I've achieved something in my life. It's a nice thing to be able to say I now have a bookend to a forty-year journey with photography.

So now what?

I'm not really sure.

I've been thinking about three photographers who profoundly affected me. James Nachtwey, Sebastiao Salgado and W. Eugene Smith are/were three of the greats of world photography. It's fascinating to ponder what drove them to make the work that they did. And, if you are interested, there are films you can watch about their lives and their life's work. But, all three have in common that they wanted to make a difference and that passion drove them to do the work they did.

I am looking forward to watching Minamata (Netflix or Amazon Prime-I'm not sure which) in the next week or so.

This brings me to the question of why we make photographs. The number of reasons is legion.

But what would happen if we turned away from personal achievement and awards/rewards to using the work we do with our cameras to make a difference in the world? Maybe we might not think we can, but, as Basho points out, perhaps it is not so much the box we tick at the end as our intention to do that on the way. Indeed, the history of photography is populated with photographers who set out to use their art to bring change to the world.

Mind you, the world as we knew it has gone, and none of us knows where it is going. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the pandemic numbers are trending dizzily upwards, and it will be quite some time before things settle down and we can all get a sense of a way forward.

Perhaps, as we hunker down and try to make sense of all this, we might ask ourselves how to use our photography for the greater good.

I found this beautiful poem which I would love to share with you. In many ways, it really says it all.

Be safe, care for yourselves and each other and, above all, avoid fear.

Ngaa mihi arohaa ki a koutou

Much love to you all