Arts Take Virtual Performance To Another Level

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One evening in April, a Kiwi songwriter friend living in London posted a YouTube video by the London Humanist Choir, performing a love song in Māori. The video of New Zealand’s unofficial anthem, Pokarekare Ana, was, as we are now accustomed, a multi-screen video with choir members recording their parts remotely. I shared this with a few Kiwi friends who live elsewhere, knowing it would tug at the tendrils of homesickness, which are almost always…

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Not everyone has Internet access

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I visited my local library last week for the first time in months and noticed that public internet access (computers, desks and chairs), had been removed. Desks, tables and chairs had also been removed from the reading room, where one could sit for hours browsing newspapers and magazines or working on jigsaw puzzles. “That’s not very fair on people who don’t have a computer or access to WIFI,” said She Who Believes in Equality. A…

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A doggy tale in the time of covid-19

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By Guest FOMMer Laurel Wilson As anyone who knows me would realise, I love dogs and have had various four-legged companions ever since I can remember. ‘Foxie’ was the first one − a small, non-descript, furry golden mutt, who apparently decided our place was an improvement on her previous abode. Then came ‘Rex the wonder dog’ (or at least, that’s what I called him), also a mutt, but who looked quite a bit like a…

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How deep is the financial hardship well?

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It is probably no comfort to anyone to reflect on the year when investors could get 14.95% on a bank term deposit. It was January 1991, the recession Paul Keating said we had to have. People with personal loans and credit card debt watched horrified as repayment rates went to 20% and beyond. The average variable mortgage rate rose to 17.5% at the same time. The gap between the haves and have-nots in that era…

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