Building Blocks Scholarship

Adiós

2007-06-10T15:03:00.000+01:00

I have been to Chautauqua in many incarnations: scholar, Director of Youth Ministry, teacher, lecturer and participant and today I add a new chapter to my Chautauqua story with my attendance at the wedding of my next door neighbour Elizabeth Congdon.

The wedding is taking place in the elegant surroundings of the Hall of Philosophy with the celebration conducted from the same platform where I delivered my “Education in the New Millennium” speech.

And it is from this seat of learning and the learned that I draw this project to a close.

For our main partner schools in Britain and America the summer holidays await and many of you are moving on to pastures new next academic year. I hope that you have enjoyed the encounters we have shared with the world over this past year and if I may leave you with a parting thought it would be this…

try always to live every day of your life. This is a wonderful world and we owe it to ourselves to drink in the wonders of creation.

Wednesday June 6th 2007. Lake Placid, New York.

2007-06-07T02:02:00.000+01:00

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the winter of 1887/1888 in Saranac Lake, New York. Some communities make the most of their history, no matter how tenuous the link and Stevenson in reality spent a very short period here.

That said the Scottish author did compose the twelve essays of the Charles Scribner series; The Master of Ballantrae and The Wrong Box whilst in Saranac.

It was to Saranac Lake that the author came from his home, in one of my former home towns, Bournemouth, England; enroute to the South Seas.

I have completed the journey the other way round and now from the South Seas I too make my stop at this humble home that was the New York resting place for a master literary craftsman.

Then its back on the road to Randolph via the Brick House Café in Brewerton.

Tuesday June 5th 2007. From Randolph. New York to Lake Placid.

2007-06-04T20:17:00.000+01:00

On the road again and I am heading up to Lake Placid through the beauty of the Adirondack Mountains. Enroute we stop in Brewerton at the Brick House Café for lunch.

The scenery was spectacular and Lake Placid itself is a most pleasing vacation destination. It was here in 1932 and again in 1980 that the Winter Olympics were held.

Tonight we dine at Charlies with a lovely view of Mirror Lake.

Monday June 4th 2007. Randolph, New York.

2007-06-03T19:59:00.000+01:00

Jamestown, once the home of a great furniture empire, a centre of cultural assimilation and what is often forgotten...a small city with a big history.

Jamestown's own Robert Jackson had an emminent career in the legal world rising to be the United States Chief Counsel at the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg...

"One's right to life, liberty and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and the other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections".

Sunday June 3rd 2007. Randolph, New York.

2007-06-02T19:01:00.000+01:00

One of the most interesting and unexplored histories of this area is the Underground Railroad that brought escaped slaves north to Canada and freedom. In dear old Jamestown one such house existed on 7th Street where Catherine Harris carried out heroic services for fugitive slaves...sadly today this is a very poor area renowned for its social ills.

One of the cute links I find with this story is the fact that just as the ladies of Changi passed messages to their men in the quilts they made for their fellow inmates, so underground railroad messages were also passed in quilts crafted by slaves and containing coded locations of stops on the road to freedom.

Sunday morning in Randolph and after baking muffins we are off to Randolph United Presbyterian Church in God-fearing small town America.

In the afternoon we take to the water on my beloved Chautauqua Lake...Now I really feel at home. Summer is here and the Lake has come alive, in our case with David, Chris, Alice and I.

Saturday June 2nd 2007. Main Street, USA.

2007-06-02T17:56:00.000+01:00

After coffee on Main Street at Oregano's I am off to the school horse show.

Randolph Academy is a non-secure detention facility and it provides some of the most innovative and customer focused educational programmes I have seen anywhere in the world. From animal husbandry to hairdressing to catering skills the education offered is practically focused. The basic premise is that the education provided will allow the student participants to play an active role in the outside world when they leave school.

Many of the students here are the victims of abuse, some have found themselves on the wrong side of the law...but all are children, all are people and all deserve to be given a fair and equal chance to engage with society. I have nothing but admiration for the special educators who work here and for a curriculum that thinks out of the box.

It strikes me today just how difficult it must be for the staff here. On a day like today when some families have made the attempt to come and see their children and when the school is effectively open to the outside world; it must be almost impossible to monitor legal judgments that do not allow student and family members to be on their own unsupervised or that prevent student engagement with other peers.
I am more than impressed with the way the staff here monitor and care for the students.

After the show, where so many students I have known over the years are just so pleased to demonstrate their skills and show me their prizes, we head off to have sun tea with Gayle on her porch.

On March 14th 1878 Buffalo Bill Cody brought his "new and exciting border drama" to the stage of Jamestown's Allen Opera House. The site of the opera house is today the Reg Lenna Civic Center (a late 1800's theatre built on the site where the old opera burnt to the ground on January 21st 1881)...

Tonight nearly five years to the day since its original discovery the complete billboard that advertised that 1878 performance will go again on public view. After 129 years a piece of American cultural history again comes to life.

What makes this billboard so important is not just the fact that Buffalo Bill was one of the first people ever to use billboard advertising; but the fact that this work of art was actually used to promote the show. It was displayed for public knowledge and it was never intended to survive. It was never a collector's piece but rather it served its purpose and has only survived because it lay hidden behind a wall for some 124 years.

Mike, Alice and I are lucky enough to be witnessing history as the six panel billboard, believed to be the oldest in the United States (home of billboard advertising), is unveiled.

Laura Schell, the paper conservator, is a true artist. Salvaging and re-assembling the hundreds of pieces of paper that comprised the billboard, her work of conservation and restoration has brought to life a lost period of history. In the 1870's new posters tended to be pasted over older advertisements and so few originals survived. The Jamestown billboard was pasted to the wall of a building that sits on the corner of Third and Pine streets and its discovery was a matter of chance following the collapse of a brick wall in June of 2002.

This 26ft by 10ft billboard advertised a "border drama"; such shows were carried out by Buffalo Bill's theatre troupe a full decade before he began his Wild West shows. The particular show performed in Jamestown was based on the 1857 Mountain Meadow Massacre and it was staged here only a year after the execution of John Lee for his part in that massacre.

The world-premiere reading of the new play 'Behind The Buckskin Curtain: Buffalo Bill's Border World' tonight was sadly a disappointment. Whilst I could see where the playwright was trying to go with his work (in drawing parallels between the time of Buffalo Bill and the modern day) there were just too many loose threads. Further, in a good play the political messages are subliminal and not overt. From Shakespeare to Miller the writing was timeless though set in a specific time. What I mean by this is that the writings could be interpreted to any period because they covered universal themes...this play was far too trapped in Bush-era quips.

Tam's Birthday 2007 and I am in Randolph, New York.

2007-05-31T18:30:00.002+01:00

Shuffle off to Buffalo...

Henry Ford and Teddy Roosevelt, Harvey Firestone and Susan B. Anthony, literary and cultural icons, philosophy and William Glover...What do we all have in common I hear you ask? The answer lay until today in the Chautauqua Institution.

For all the years I have spent in Western New York, it was only a matter of time before I would beat a path to the Roycroft and further strengthen that Chautauqua link.

From 1895 until his death in the sinking of the S.S. Lusitania, Elbert Hubbard focused the attention of America and the wider civilised world on the town of East Aurora.

Hubbard, the one time sales partner at Buffalo's J.D. Larkin Soap Company, entered the world of publishing to "make a book like a William Morris book". As his fame grew so too did his Roycroft complex, modelled after William Morris' Kelmscott Press and Crafts complex in Hammersmith, which Hubbard had visited in 1894 in order to meet the great man.

By 1896 Hubbard's new print-shop was housed in a building that he modelled after the old chapel at Grasmere where Wordsworth is buried.

With the Roycrofters, East Aurora became a specialised centre not just for printing and bookbinding, but all manner of arts and crafts from mission-style furniture and leather goods to copperware and intellectual discourse.

Best known world-wide for the classic work A Message to Garcia which focused on the acceptance of responsibility and doing the "right job", Hubbard was the leading North American lecturer and literary figure of his day. His eminent circle ranged from Booker T. Washington to Andrew Carnegie and his Roycroft Inn and Campus became a cultural centre known for its unpretentious discourse and the industry of its employee-followers.

The Roycroft Campus continued as the leading American centre for the arts and crafts movement until 1938 and today beyond the Inn the movement is once again flourishing in former campus buildings.

In case you have not guessed, today I am in East Aurora to explore the Roycroft, to marvel at the beautiful crafted woods in the Inn, to dine whilst listening to Jazz played by Natural Elements and to visit Vidler's five and dime store and a Buffalo institution.

Thursday 31st May 2007. Randolph, New York.

2007-05-31T18:30:00.001+01:00

Back to school and back to curriculum development.

Today I am at the Board of Cooperative Educational Services Teaching and Learning Center in Cuba, New York.

Cuba is world famous for its cheese and I could not resist a little shopping whilst I was here.

Tonight we dined at The Old Library Restaurant in Olean. Built in 1909 and opened in 1910 the building (like so many libraries in both the United States and the United Kingdom) became a reality with the injection of Carnegie money. This particular building continued in existence as a library until 1974 and as well as its pleasant central rotunda the art works include a marble frieze depicting Alexander's triumphal entry into Babylon. The longbar once stood in Chicago's Cattleman's Restaurant, famously frequented by the notorious figures of the 20's and 30's.

Wednesday 30th May 2007. Jamestown, New York.

2007-05-31T18:21:00.001+01:00

Today I am busy with my chores. After putting out my washing I am off to Jamestown to do some work for my friend Marlene. Amongst the tasks, I carried out some chores for the Lucy Desi Museum and then in the afternoon I collected Elizabeth from school and we headed off to another Jamestown icon...Tastee Corners. With its booming rock 'n' roll music and neon signs this ice-cream shack is as American as apple pie.

BBQ was on the menu tonight whilst Marlene and I planted the summers pots and chatted with my neighbours on Pearl. After heading back over to Randolph there was a late evening tea party in the garden where Cathy (my only neighbour here on teacher alley that I hadn't seen since my return) and I were re-acquainted.

I do love being back in my American HOME after all my travels. In the seventeen months since I was last here so much has changed and it is great to feel that I am getting back into the swing of normal life again.

Tuesday 29th May 2007. Randolph. New York.

2007-05-29T15:49:00.000+01:00

Today I am back at work and trying desperately to get the blog up to date. Thanks for all the e-mails, I am trying and you should be updated real soon.

Tonight I took Alice to the 'Y' in Jamestown and I spent a quality evening visiting with Michael before I dined on a Jamestown institution...Lena's Pizza with Alice, David and Donna.

Rockin' Rocky

2007-05-29T15:43:00.004+01:00

For a few nights now a raccoon has been spotted at the Inn pestering patrons and frightening the cats.

Late Saturday evening as we returned to the family house on the property we discovered that the raccoon had been indoors and had both terrified the cats and consumed their food.

Not wishing the animal any harm we decided to trap it humanely and relocated it to a wooded area where it could live its days in its natural environment. Sunday came and we set the trap and sure enough Rocky was caught.

So we fed him and gave him water and he spent the night in his cage preparing for relocation the next day. On Monday we drove Rocky some sixty miles from home to a forest that covers thousands and thousands of acres and we set him free. Unusually for a raccoon he was reluctant both to leave the cage and then ultimately to leave us. It was only after the event that we realised that strictly speaking our actions may have seen us arrested for the illegal trapping and releasing of a wild animal.

This is when my thoughts turn to the difficulties of interpretation where the law is concerned. We may have been breaking the law by protecting an animal and caring for its needs and yet as we drove out through the woods today we saw a sign that read:

Turkey Hunters Beware, Identify your target!...I suppose it is a good idea that you don't shoot your dumb brother in the ass when all is said and done.

Memorial Day 2007. Orange, Virginia.

2007-05-29T15:43:00.003+01:00

It was 400 years ago this year that 104 men and boys crossed the Atlantic aboard three ships to establish the first permanent settlement in the New World in the name of King James - Jamestown is where cultures came together and where modern America was shaped. From the original toehold of the Virginia Company of London came the notions of representative government, the rule of law, individual opportunity, free enterprise, a common North American language and celebration of diversity.

Well Rocky made his presence felt during the night moving his cage a full ten feet and eating his way through an electric cable...but today he is set for release.

After a lovely breakfast amongst the guests on the sun-washed terrace I am off into town to attend the Memorial Day Parade. The only non-American here and yet I am the only attendee heading out from amongst the guests to the parade.

My first port of call though is Ed's gallery where he and I have a very interesting conversation based around the true meaning of life and the struggles we all have to face in crafting our way in the world.

AT THE GOING DOWN OF THE SUN AND IN THE MORNING WE should REMEMBER THEM!

As the bell tolled out from Trinity Methodist Church and the vet's saluted the passing flag with chests puffed out you could not fail to be swept up in the emotion of conflicts past and present. The justifications for wars can be debated until time immemorial but the reality is that it is only right that we honour the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms.

I can though understand why this appears to some to be a slice to far of Americana. After the preaching from the minister of Orange Baptist Church (and we had the only white minister out of the ten plus Baptists ministers in the area) we saluted the flag and sang the national anthem before we all recited the pledge of allegiance.

This is the South and this was an Anglo-Saxon celebration and yes this was propaganda wrapped in red, white and blue right down to the lady in front of me and her Heart of America crocheted cardigan. From sea to shining sea and across thy fruited plain America rightly celebrated the sacrifices that have been, and are still being made.

Upon leaving Orange our task was first to release Rocky and then to take Vince back to Washington D.C..

After saying our final farewells to Rich and Vince in Alexandria, Alice and I headed over to St Elmo for lunch before we hit the road back to New York. As usual we made the most of our trip stopping to enjoy the views and even stopping for ice-cream at one of the sadly declining number of roadside diners.

Sunday 27th May 2007. Orange, Virginia.

2007-05-29T15:43:00.001+01:00

Today is a day at leisure when I work on the project and I even make a stab at the beginnings of the project book.

However we do head out both to Woodberry Forest School and to the Ed Jaffe Gallery where we get a private tour of works that I really enjoy.

Tonight we have a family Memorial Day BBQ (for which Ed joins us) and Rocky the Raccoon makes his starring appearance.

Saturday 26th May 2007. Virginia and it's Blue Ridge Mountains.

2007-05-29T15:41:00.000+01:00

In 1762 the Secret Treaty of Fontainebleau saw France cede the Louisiana territory to Spain in order to prevent it falling into British hands…the French continued to meddle in North American affairs and they became the first real ally of the new independent United States of America…naturally for their own political ends.

I begin my day with a stroll through downtown Orange and a visit to the Farmers Market before I go to view the Re-Visions exhibition of works by J.M. Henry and Farida Hughes at the Arts Center. Breakfast is at Not the Same Old Grind before Alice and I head out of town to visit what I find to be the most pleasing of presidential homes.

Ash Lawn-Highland was the home of president James Monroe; the man who held more major offices than any other American President. A total of 11 major offices of state ranging from Minister to France, Minister to Spain, Minister to the Court of St James, Secretary of State and Secretary of War, Governor of Virginia and fifth President of the United States of America.

As Jefferson’s special envoy it was Monroe who negotiated the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and today his Monroe Doctrine would serve the current administration well as a cornerstone of foreign policy.

In Monroe’s time the house was known as Highland and as a protege of Jefferson it was to be the older man who both chose the site for the house and who would have his gardeners from neighbouring Monticello begin the orchards.

The first guests that the Monroe’s entertained here were their friends James and Dolley Madison and I love the fact that although this was a wealthy home, having more than one room, it did not stretch to the grand scales of many Virginia planters but rather remained a “cabin castle”.

Many of us think of the Eisenhower presidency as being the birth of America’s love affair with the car…and that is true. However, it was the Monroe presidency that began the birth of the love affair with the open road when Highway 40 became the first federally funded interstate roadway.

After a pleasant early afternoon in the sun-drench grounds of the Monroe home we head out to explore a local feat of engineering.

The Shenandoah Skyline Drive that follows the backbone of the Blue Ridge for 105 miles was built at a cost of $50,000 per mile and it remains one of the greatest Depression era projects. The work was completed between 1933 and 1939 by the men of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) as one of the many projects aimed at bringing American out of its economic black hole.

We join the drive at Rockfish Gap and dine at Loft Mountain taking in scenic overlook after scenic overlook. This is not a drive to get you from A to B, but rather a time to stop and saver all the natural beauty that this world offers and that we are all too often too busy to enjoy.

So in the early evening Alice and I hike to see Dark Hollow Falls...And to crown our wonderful day we enjoy a fine meal at the Inn this evening with Nan and Rich.

Friday 25th May 2007. Orange, Virginia.

2007-05-26T14:02:00.000+01:00

History of the times...In 1749 when George Washington was commissioned to survey the new county of Culpeper he was only 17 years old.
1760 saw the silk top hat was first introduced in Florence

AND John Brown's body helped ignite the Civil War with his bloody insurrection at Harpers Ferry.

After breakfast with Nan and Myrtle at the Greenock House Inn, Alice and I headed off for the day to Montpellier, the home of the United States fourth President and the Father of the Constitution James Madison.

Today this is a 2,650 acre estate that is home to both a flat track and a steeplechase course built by the last private owner Marion DuPont Scott. However the real history here pre-dates the DuPont era to the days when Montpelier was home to several generations of enslaved families who worked the plantation of Madison’s time.

The estate began life as Mount Pleasant with Madison’s grandfather Ambrose but it was James the gentleman farmer, who was to thrust the family into the limelight.

As father of the American Constitution and architect of the Bill of Rights (one wonders what Madison would think of the current erosion of civil liberty under the Bush administration?), he also served as Secretary of State for his friend, mentor and neighbour, Thomas Jefferson.

The Madison’s though were equally famous for the role played by Dolley, James’ wife and the only First Lady to serve a total of four full terms in office…(as Jefferson was a widow Dolley had fulfilled this role for the presidency that pre-dated her husbands).

Dolley was actually the first President’s wife to be given the title of First Lady and she is still considered to have been one of the most astute political hostesses of modern America.

It was Dolley who as First Lady refused to leave what we know today as the White House, until the portrait of George Washington had been secured, when the British burnt the city in 1814. The name White House only dates from around 1900 and the reason for the colouring of the building was a simple attempt to cover the burn marks stemming from the War of 1812.

I am lucky enough to be visiting this home at a time when it is being restored to the 1820’s era of James and Dolley.

The icon of the property remains The Temple which still shines out as a beacon of Madison’s notion of liberty and learning each leaning on the other for mutual support. His temple though is no folly. Madison was a practical man and whilst his temple reflected visually his dreams of an agrarian republic, it served practically as an ice-house.

The grounds of this property tell as many tales as the home and a stroll through the Landmark Forest gives you an idea of the resource base on which the new empire would be built.

A man of reason in an age of enlightenment, Madison saw the United States as taking its lead from the two great political experiments that were the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece. What may be telling for modern America is that both of these empires were brought down not by enemies from without, but from the enemy within.

The grounds also tell the social history of the time offering up a wealth of knowledge about the death ritual.

We have the family cemetery (the only resident non family member is one Frank Carson of Lislee, Ireland who owned the home in the mid-1800’s) and it is indistinguishable from any other European cemetery of the time; but we also have the slave cemetery with its markers at head and foot of the body and the rituals from night-time burial to the freeing of the spirit. Slave funerals were a celebrated blending of European and African tradition mixing both traditional beliefs and Christianity.

We headed on to round off our day with lunch at Mama’s in Gordonsville where Alice and I explore the town before heading back to Orange and evening supper with Nan and Drea.

Thursday 24th May 2007. New York to Virginia.

2007-05-26T14:01:00.000+01:00

After school Alice and I headed off in the car to Virginia. Our route took us down through the Allegheny State Park in Pennsylvania before a stop in Ridgway to have ice-cream at Two Scoops. Dropping down into Virginia I took the back roads all the way to Orange where we were welcomed by Nan to the family Memorial Day weekend.

Tuesday 22nd May 2007/Wednesday 23rd May 2007. Randolph, New York.

2007-05-22T22:15:00.002+01:00

I am now busy working on curriculum development with the partner educators in New York state.

Wednesday night...Tonight Alice, Marlene and I dined at Mariner's Pier out at Holiday Harbor before we went walking in Celoron (the childhood home of that local heroine Lucille Ball).

It was sad to see that even little old Celoron has not been left unaffected by the modern terror threat. At the Veteran's Memorial there is a special addition that was created in 2006 to mark the first loss of local life in the conflict in Iraq. Terror may seem a world away but we are reminded of its impact nearby with the memorial to Amy King the local girl killed as a flight attendant on board one of the two planes that hit the World Trade Center on the now infamous 9/11. From here we headed over to Lucy's childhood home that is currently being restored by a friend.

Monday 21st May 2007. Jamestown. New York.

2007-05-22T22:15:00.001+01:00

I spent this morning on the telephone with the TSA enquiring as to how they expect me to return my property to Scotland with two suitcases that are now broken (one completely beyond repair). Dealing with any administrative organisation is never fun and from one telephonic abyss to another I journey.

Eventually after exhaustive discussion I am informed that whilst the damage is regrettable it is not the responsibility of the TSA (who caused it)…but they will send me a form to complete and mail in and they will look at the complaint from there.

So after school today Alice and I headed over to Chautauqua and Mayville to help inspire in me the feeling of being home and now safe from all the trials of this last year.

It is wonderful to be back on familiar stomping ground and it is amazing how much things change in a short space of time. In the seventeen months since I was last here the old Red Brick Farm where we headed for coffee has been completely re-vitalised into a gourmet dining and boutique shopping experience.

Just driving around gave me a sense of the on-going development that has altered the landscape with new housing, a new hotel and the closure of old favourites adding to the vitality that is the changing landscape of life.

Tonight however was wonderfully familiar as I sat down to dinner at the Lucas household. It seemed like I had never been away. They say familiarity breeds contempt and that is true, but after all I have seen this past year I also realize that familiarity infact breeds greater comfort and joy!

Sunday 20th May 2007. New York City to Western New York State.

2007-05-22T22:02:00.001+01:00

Shannon, Alice and I had breakfast this morning at the Corner Bakery on 3rd Avenue. I am still feeling rather groggy but today I must journey from the city home to Randolph and the luxury of my own bed at long last.

Enroute Alice had a surprise destination in mind and so we found ourselves at the world’s largest kaleidoscope located in the Catskill Mountains. The Catskill Kaleidoscope at Emerson was a very interesting pit stop. Located so close to Woodstock, as I lay there on the floor watching the scenes change above me I could not help but feel a little closer to the hallucinogenic 60’s.

Afterwards we ate in one of those wonderful local roadside bakery’s that characterise the picture postcard view of the North Eastern United States. And Pineview Bakery on Route 28 certainly had its standardized locals, its long counter top, its large grill and its waitress ready with the coffee pot…Oh, yeh; and a few tourists too.

But with me this year there always seems to be a crisis and our trip to see the kaleidoscope got us ticketed by a state trooper. So with fine in hand we resumed our journey home.

Saturday 19th May 2007. The Big Apple.

2007-05-22T21:53:00.000+01:00

Today I really feel under the weather. This bug has all my bones rather sore and I seem to have no energy.

Determined not to waste my time though I decide to head out anyway and see how I get on.

We begin our morning exploring the Lower East Side taking a wander through the streets of one of the few areas of this city I have never previously explored. Then it was time for a pit-stop to have breakfast at what Time Out claim is the best brunch in the city.

It all looked lovely, but I hardly touched my food at the Clinton Street Baking Company before I was back on the subway and back to the apartment and to bed.

I resumed my day this evening by joining Shannon, Charlie and Alice for the dinner they had planned for me at the Atlantic Grill on Third Avenue, a very upscale experience where I ate as much as I could but did not do the food justice.

Friday 18th May 2007. New York State of Mind...

2007-05-18T00:24:00.001+01:00

Proud of my soldier ashamed of my President.
Support our troops not our President...It is refreshing to see that there are alternative political opinions in this country. Irrespective of whether you agree with such views or not it is good to see that the broader worlds' opinion of America the right wing extremist is not necessarily a reflection of the truth.

This morning I am off to the National Museum of the American Indian housed in the former US Custom House which stands on the ground where Fort Amsterdam was erected by the Dutch in 1626 to secure control of trade in the harbour. Indeed, nearby Wall Street is so named for a wall that was erected on that site by the Dutch in 1653 to keep out northern Indians.

George Gustav Heye founded the museum in 1916 and remained its director until 1956. He began his collections in 1896 with the purchase of an Apache Deerskin shirt and went on to accumulate the largest private collection of native American objects in the world.

Native American history and the relationship between people and a sense of place, historically and metaphysically, has been researched extensively both by the literary and the visual arts.

We often site the relationship between native peoples and "the land" as the root of tribal identities. Like the Aboriginal and Maori peoples encountered in this project, the Native American draws their origin stories and their understanding of the world around them from the geographical features of their landscape. Tribal identities are inextricably linked to the natural environment of their homelands.

The natural world is an identifier both literally and conceptually of tribal identity and the struggle between Native and non-Indian settlers over the use of land epitomises the central role that "the land" plays in native cultures. These disputes range from the use of land to farm commercially to the exploitation of natural resources and the Off The Map exhibition reflects the landscape as a place not just of history, but of expectation and ultimately of loss.

I particularly enjoyed the work of the self-taught James Lavadour who equates walking over the hills and mountains of his home community on the Umatilla Indian Reservation with the movement of his hand across the surface of his paintings. His Blanket (2005) and Wall {'Skiing to Hell' as Alice named it} (2006) were stunning.

What has interested me in visiting Aboriginal, Maori and Native American museums is the debate that rages over the souvenir...

Whilst many people argue that souvenirs made by native peoples are inauthentic, I argue that there are many issues we need to consider. Art needs to adapt to the changing social and physical circumstances in which we live. It has to adapt to new ideals and new materials. Traditions are vital to this ability to adapt to change because they allow us to maintain our values. Adaptability after all allows for survival physically, emotionally and culturally and we need to remember that for many peoples the making of souvenirs is a viable option for survival.

Souvenirs are art and the purist must recognise that the market is simply different, there are still buyers and sellers and people still exchange.

This building is a work of art in itself. 100 years old this year, the building is home to stunning rotunda murals that are the work of Reginald Marsh.

In 1937 under the WPA (Work Progress Administration) programme, Marsh was commissioned to decorate the panels of the Custom House rotunda in what is one of the finest examples of beaux arts architecture in the city. Beaux Arts with its monumentality, accurate symmetry and elaborate ornamentation unites both the classical Greek and Roman schools.

From here we head to Alice's Teacup at 64th and Lexington for afternoon tea, before we head into Central Park to see the statue of Alice in Wonderland and to watch the turtles messing about in the Turtle Pond.

On a day of art I must mention Cleopatra's Needle...I know all the world's major cities seem to have one but this obelisk dating from 1600bc made its way here courtesy of Vanderbilt money and that links us back to The Getty and the fortunes like Mr Deering's that whilst removing art works actually helped preserve them.

On our way home we stopped for coffee at Dean and Deluca.

Tonight we are off to see a show like no other I have ever seen in New York City. Shannon and Charlie are taking us to the HIRO Ballroom in Chelsea to see Meow Meow, a drag artist who performs as a poor copy that mixes elements of Patsy and Edina…unfortunately Meow Meow is not absolutely fabulous.

The venue is filled to bursting with the ultra-cool. This is the place to see and be seen tonight if you are a trendy New Yorker. Here the upwardly mobile of the metropolis are feeling very intelligent and superior, and dare I say it, a little risky. They are applauding loudly at behaviour you would scold a child for and laughing whimsically at humour that would fail to impress in an undergraduate theatre studies class.

What cannot be denied is that this is an excellent piece of marketing. Taking these so establishment customers and letting them taste the risk that is involved in the cross-dressing fanciful world of others…but all for a price.

Anyway I round the night off with that New York staple, Pizza…and boy was it good.

Thursday 17th May 2007. Finally in New York City...

2007-05-17T23:56:00.000+01:00

Here I go with my diatribe...The Americans notion of service is a joke. From the country that claims to have invented good customer service they really don't know the first thing about what customer relations mean.

Let's begin at the beginning...When I get to Miami International Airport, Continental Airlines are insistent that check-in is via machine. Only when the machine refuses to read my passport or booking does a person finally agree to check me in. The ladies behind the counter are more concerned with their job descriptions and working to rule than they are with serving customers.

In the United States they now have this idiotic public show of re-screening bags that are locked. The idea, I presume is to make us all feel safer in the air, and not to intrude on the individuals personal liberty under the guise of security?

When I flew from Los Angeles a few weeks ago I took my bags for re-screening by the TSA (Transport Security Administration).

I asked about this in Miami and I am told that my bags are OK to travel. Well when I get to LA (where I have to collect my bags because Continental refuse to check them through to New York City because the last leg is an American Airlines flight) I discover that the TSA has burst open the locks on my new bag and wrapped the bag in cling film...What gives them the right?

If they had wanted to search my bags again then they could have paged me at the airport.

So I trundle off still with a painful shoulder, hand and neck over two terminals to check-in for my NYC flight. Again American Airlines are requiring check-in by machine and again it does not work and I am eventually served by a very arrogant woman who effectively tells me I am an idiot. She condescends to tell me that I will not understand the difference between a ticket and a reservation...and here is the saga.

When I arrived in the USA I contacted Qantas to confirm the next leg of my journey and I was told two things. One, that I must fly back from Miami to Los Angeles to validate the next portion of my round-the-world ticket and two, that I needed to contact American Airlines to book the cross USA section.

I did this and American Airlines gave me a flight reservation which I reconfirmed. Now the agent can see the reservation but she insists I must travel to yet another terminal to see the Qantas agents for them to release the ticket. So carrying all my luggage, in my neck brace I head over to Qantas to get them to release the ticket; even though the ticket is in the system.

Qantas tell me I have a ticket and send me back to the American Airlines terminal telling me that American must let me board. Back again at American Airlines and again they refuse to let me board my flight unless I want to buy a one-way first class seat for $5000. I refuse and point out that I have gone fully through the system and that the problem is with them.

At last it is all over and I am off to security to get to my gate...Lucky I had a five hour lay-over as it has taken three and a half hours just to argue my way into my own seat.

...but then. I am selected for the full pat-down (which is fine in this security conscious age) but my two carry on bags are also selected for full screening. What I object to is the way in which this is carried out. Everything is dumped out without thought or consideration and all my little notes fly across the floor. When the girl finishes she simply walks off leaving the mess for me to clear up saying "have a good one now".

These people are still public servants answerable I would hope to the taxpayer and yet they act in an arrogant and superior manner that reflects their social and cultural ignorance.

It was all I could do not to land one on the TSA pat-down guy who thought he was a comedian by mimicking my accent for the amusement of his friends. If we did not live in such an age of over sensitive security I would have complained, but there seemed no point creating a drama and I don't want to miss this flight as it is one step closer to blighty.

In all my years of coming to America the last few have really limited my view of the country. I was at one time the most pro-American educator you could meet, but as time has gone on I have become more and more aware of the arrogance and ignorance that causes the hatred for this great country exhibited by the rest of the world. For the first time ever I am of the view that it would not bother me if I never returned here.

The final sting in the saga comes when I get to the gate and they tell me they have no seat for me although I do get onboard and make the journey eventually.

You have to accept that these people are only implementing the rules when all is said and done, yet it annoys me that we cannot question 'why'. Questioning is not the accepted practice. The agents are here to implement the rules even if they do not understand them and please do not ask them to interpret what the rules actually mean, we all must simply follow like helpless sheep.

I do enjoy the fact that on this 5hr+ flight you can watch the "free" movie if you buy a headsset and you can have water if you buy a bottle and you can eat if you buy a snack...so this is service? It is embarassing that the countries flag-carrier offers such poor service in the world's leading nation.

Not even a peanut, just a very small coke as my comlimentary drink and I ponder just what this full service carrier is actually offering. It makes you wonder why they need all these inflight staff? For an airline that claims to pride itself on customer service, you cannot talk to a service representative but you can talk to the airline through the anonymity of their website.

The talk around me on this flight is of jobs and position and salaries. This is a hideously obsessed nation when it comes to money and the garbage I have just heard spoken in the name of commerce is astoundingly, though sadly not, unbelievable.

To crown this journey when I get my luggage at JFK Airport the indestructible coffin has also been burst open...only in America!

Travel may broaden the mind but it also can break the soul. It makes you aware that we do not live in one world but infact in a world horribly divided between the "have's" and the "have not's" and that within these groupings dangerous cracks appear.

,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Well after all the saga, I am finally at Shannon and Charlie's with my now destroyed luggage and not being positively disposed towards the United States.

I am off this morning to a UNICEF briefing at the United Nations building. The speaker is a UN official who has managed UNICEF activities in a variety of arenas around the world and who I am to discover is politically a member of the Christian right.

She came to her present role through the World Council of Churches. This raises for me the question, should people in such high positions within UNICEF be religiously biased or does this indeed equip them better i.e. spiritually, to deal with the rights of children?

In the modern world, as throughout the ages, the people most likely to be disenfranchised are children. Indeed, today in many developing countries, such as those in the Aids ridden continent of Africa, we often find half the population under the age of fifteen years.

The United Nations was founded on the principal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and whilst UN development agencies are apolitical, this does not necessarily mean that the wider world does not percieve western dominance in these agencies.

A question that I have often Headquarpondered is why is such an economic money spinner as the International ters of the United Nations located here in the First World; indeed in the world's wealthiest nation? Should such an economic giant not be located in a developing nation? Would this not help bring prosperity and stability to a countrty in sub-Saharan Africa? But then again, do they have the necessary social, cultural and diplomatic as well as practical infrastructure needed? If such infrastructure does not exist, should we not lead by example?

The needs of the populous differ with age i.e.health issues for children differ greatly from those of adults.

UNICEF works with social workers, educators and health professionals in offering support. However when I heard of their key role in teacher training and counselling the image was one of your standard politically correct group talking about issues but doing nothing practical.

That said UNICEF as an organisation works at governmental level through creating protocol's such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only two countries have refused to sign. One of these is Somalia (which has not had an effective government for the last fifteen years) and the other is the United States of America.

UNICEF is constrained by working through the United Nations notion that we have to work through governments if we wish to bring massive change, and it is true that you do need the legislative to work in harmony with the grassroots. However we must note that governemnts making decisions in the United Nations on their own will not stop phenomena on the ground.

And this is not to say that UNICEF does not do a great deal of work in vaccines funding and training of health workers in particular as grassroots activities. UNICEF also tries to get to the grassroots by working with non-governmental organisations.

UNICEF has been a pioneer in collecting data for advocacy work , but how productive is this? It has a strategic planning role, but people want fed today.

It is the people at the margins who need intervention the most and many of the most marginalised people don't want to be brought in.

It was interesting that at one point the speaker got her UN and her US policy mixed up. A freudian slip maybe, but when she talked of ending the powers of tribal chiefs and educating them in the ways of democracy there appeared to be a 'Bush agenda' going on. Are we certain that creating democracy along US lines brings civilisation, or does it kill a civilisation in the name of progress?

We have to remember in politics as in any struggle, that people get stuck with a label and a lack of hope and they end up on a downward spiral. They see that there is so much involved in seeing someway out that they don't even bother...What international organisations must do is offer some hope!

After a heavy political morning we head over to Houstons on 54th and 3rd to have lunch before our meeting at the education department of the Central Park Conservancy.

Wednesday 16th May 2007...The Epic Journey.

2007-05-15T22:35:00.000+01:00

Today I will make a somewhat idiotic journey to get to New York City.

Because of the way airlines ticket flights and because I must take the next section of my economy round-the-world ticket from Los Angeles;

I am flying from Miami to Houston to connect to Los Angeles...just to then fly to New York City. A journey that will take me from leaving Wendy's at 9am to arriving at Shannon and Charlie's at hopefully 8am tomorrow!...Such madness cannot be environmentally friendly when New York City is a two and a half hour direct flight from Miami?

Tuesday 15th May 2007. Miami, Florida.

2007-05-14T22:14:00.000+01:00

Florida factoid...The Florida Keys' are home to the legend that is the Overseas Highway, that 113 mile drive on US Highway 1 from mainland Florida to Key West. A marvel of engineering the concrete expanse stretches over huge areas of water with the Atlantic to the left and the Gulf to the right. These waters teem with fish and a coral life that lies just below the teal coloured waters that are dotted with islands.

This morning I started my breakfast with fresh-pressed organic sugarcane juice (very healthy, but not very tasty)...But I needed it. I got word today that a letter had arrived in Scotland regarding my car accident saying that the other party are denying negligence and so I will need to pay the hospital bills and then sue for damages if I wish to proceed...what a saga. America is so litigious and every drama seems to become a crisis.

Today I aim to visit a Miami-Dade Police Station for the photo opportunity, my dad is a huge CSI fan...but as Wendy said...only if we are visiting and not as part of one of my calamities!

Lunch is on Lincoln Road at Pasha's where I have the classic yani before I head off to enjoy Britto Central.

The Pasha concept developed out of a Harvard Business School project that aimed to make healthy Mediterranean cuisine easily available to customers in various formats, from quick service to delivery and catering. The menu is inspired by the cuisine of Levant.

Romero Britto's Gallery is an explosion of colour from the Absolut Vodka bottles, to china and sculptures to my favourite, Winter, an acrylic and oil pen on canvas.

Also on display you will find the Alexandra Scott Butterfly Award, given each year to an exceptional child hero who helps others in need, as part of the Volvo for life Awards; this piece is a collaboration of Romero and Tiffany & Co.

His vivid colours, joyful themes and bold compositions make him the premiere pop artist of our time, merging expressionist colours with the compositional elements of cubism to present playful and youthful themes that are optimistic and joyful.

My next stop is the Miami Beach Garden Center a botanical garden that although small is a wonder of vibrant tropical colour.

Tonight Wendy and I dine at Sawaddee on Bay Drive...and a last Miami fact, this Normandy Isle area was named by the property developer Henri Levy in the early twentieth century after his native France.

Monday 14th May 2007. Enough Already Its' Miami, Florida.

2007-05-14T05:18:00.000+01:00

Today I am moving from the Hispanic theme of yesterday to the other major culture here in Miami, Judaism.

I am visiting the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial 'A sculpture of love and anguish' bearing a message that we must never forget.

Though their bodies have perished, their souls and their spirit will forever remain immortal.

The sculpture is a dramatic tribute to the six million Jewish victims of Nazi terrorism during the second world war. The holocaust was the premeditated and systematic murder of millions of people during the planned destruction of European Jewry.

In the worst human catastrophe in modern history an entire people and their age-long culture was destined to become extinct.

In a powerful display of pain and suffering, at the centre of the memorial stands a bronze arm and hand stretched toward the sky. Struggling to climb it are life-sized sculptures depicting the horrified victims.

Remember that as a by-product of the Zyklon B fuelled gas chambers, human bones were crushed for fertiliser, hair was made into military blankets and soap was crafted from human fat.

Surrounding the monument a photographic history of some of the darkest years of human existence are etched into black granite where the walls chronicle the images of the infamous death camps.

The work of Kenneth Treister the memorial is a construction of Jerusalem stone and marble. The sculpture itself stands as part of a lily-filled reflection pool where I take time to sit awhile and ponder on the many questions we all face in our lives.

**********

This is a vital memory that cannot be forgotten and this is a good piece of work, but it is not excellent. The most famous resistance to this horror came in the shape of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 19th 1943 which held the Germans at bay for some 27 days (the whole of France fell in only 14 days).

We owe it to this memory to get all our facts correct. There are some questionable facts here and with such a powerful statement everything must be accurate or else you are opening up the flood gates of bias. It would also have paid to have employed a good English teacher before etching this somewhat grammatically, and at times chronologically, challenged work.

I for one find that the statement

While The World Watched....
While The World Listened....
And Remained Silent..........

to be an interpretation rather than a historically accurate description of this story. 'The World' made mistakes but it fought a bloody conflict during the days of the holocaust to bring freedom and liberty.

Opened in February 1990, the greatest reflection on this work comes from Sabina Frydman a survivour of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and the "March of the Dead"...

"This memorial is very dear to me. It is like our cemetery, where our names are inscribed...When school children visit the Memorial, their response is unbelievable. Some get very sad and some cry. We speak out against all prejudice...we want the children to know this".

Tonight Wendy and I dine on the Cuban delicacy of Pollo Tropical and black beans, it was lovely.

Sunday 13th May 2007...Mothers' Day, South Beach. Miami

2007-05-13T18:18:00.000+01:00

Miami Factoid...Biscayne Bay is named after a Spanish explorer who took shelter here in hurricanes.

Today is my first day of leisure in I don't know how long and I will spend it exploring the art deco and spanish mission of South Beach.

But first, a call to my Mum in Scotland to wish her a Happy American Mothers' Day.

Wendy, Mark and I are heading out in Miami Beach and it strikes me again just how much my life veers from the sublime to the ridiculous. Here I am driving through condo land in luxury vehicles with the beautiful people...luxury cars, trendy homes, the silver spoon and then some...and yet I don't feel out of place. It is a world that for some reason I have belonged too for some years. This is what my life was like in the UK and here I am driving through the Beach in a turbo model (of which this is the only car in the whole state); I am experiencing the Miami mindset firsthand. This is a city where you need a named brand for everything from clothes to cars just to be; infact, just to survive.

Our destination is the exclusivity of the Delano where we dine by the pool and where I am drinking lemon-drop martini. It is so stylish the way Wendy and Mark communicate with each other on opposite sides of the pool by telephone. To give you an idea, this establishment has plasma televisions and works of art in the cabanas.

After my walk on the beach I find myself eating kobe beef which originates from the ancient province of Tajima in Japan, of which Kobe is the capital.

The going price for this beef is in excess of £100.00 per pound and in the USA, kobe style beef is produced using a crossbreed of Wagyu and American Angus cattle.

Food is on the agenda all day today and after our leisurely afternoon Wendy and I walk the streets of South Beach before heading over to dine with Miriam and Blythe at Tapas & Tintos on Española Way.

La Tapa originated when the Spanish king Alfonso X, the wise, was prescribed by his doctor to take small amounts of food with some wine between meals in order to prevent an upset stomach.

The wise king saw the benefits and ordered that all the inns of Castilla could only serve wine if it was accompanied by something to eat. As a result, in all taverns the glass or carafe of wine was served covered with either a slice of ham or cheese to avoid the impurities that could fall into the carafe and also the food would soak up the alcohol.

This royal providence avoided the alcoholic disturbances in the body that the poor peasants suffered as they were traditionally unable to afford a full meal and thus had tended just to drink wine.

Tapas is a fine representation of the wonders of Spanish cuisine that originate partly as a result of the Moorish occupation of the South and also because of the rich cultural and geographic diversity of the country.

Saturday 12th May 2007. Miami, Florida.

2007-05-12T14:52:00.000+01:00

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows...Pablo Picasso.

After breakfast at Einstein Bros I spent the morning at an education fair.

This afternoon Wendy and I headed over to Vizcaya, the winter home of International Harvester vice president James Deering.

The company manufactured farming equipment worldwide, and...there was money in threshing machines...He already had a Chicago mansion, a Paris townhouse and an apartment in New York City.

The lifestyle that was lived out in this home has all but vanished in America. Here we are returning to the glory days of the billionaire American industrialists who despite all their wealth and modern day success longed for the cultural highs of European sophistication.

For example the Adam-style library, with its dominant fireplace, was based on the work of George III's architect, Robert Adam. Another resplendent representation here comes in the form of the Empire period...remember, with Europe at war, the Empire Period was reflected by the darker art that harked to the days of ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. This is in contrast to the equally historically accurate Rococo period rooms.

Built between 1914 and 1916, Vizcaya (the house was named after a Basque province off the coast of Spain) was designed in the style of the European estates that Deering had visited. The design though was adapted to suit the sub-tropical climate of South Florida.

The estate originally consisted of 180 acres and included an area designed to resemble a Northern Italian village with a dairy, poultry house, stable, greenhouse, machine shop, paint and carpentry workshops and staff quarters...Working for Mr Deering though could not have been easy, he rarely entertained in the evening and he insisted that all staff were in bed by 10pm.

The house and garden are the creation of three separate architects. F. Burrall Hoffman designed the buildings, Diego Suarez laid out the gardens and Paul Chalfin supervised the artistic detailing on every aspect of the project.

Between them they created an estate that looked as if a family had lived here for 400 years with every generation adding its own period furnishings. This was achieved in great part with the furnishings, light fixtures, doors and fireplaces that were purchased by Deering on his shopping expeditions through Europe.

As a result the house contains one of the finest collections of 16th through 19th century decorative European arts, yet it remains comfortable in scale. The house was indeed built with all the modern conveniences of the early 2oth century including central heating, an automatic electric telephone switchboard, two elevators, refrigeration, a central vacuuming system and a fire control system; amasing when you think that so much of South Florida was still natural swamp in this period.

After Deering's death in 1925 a minimal staff maintained the house. The hurricane of 1926, which devastated much of Miami, severely damaged the house its surrounding grounds and formal gardens.

In 1952 Miami-Dade County purchased Vizcaya and opened it as a historic house museum. Extensive restoration has brought the villa and the remaining acres of gardens back to the way they appeared in Deering's day; once again home to the finest Italian Renaissance garden (i.e. consisting of rock, greenery and water...no flowers) in the United States.

The bayfront estate with its Venetian waterfront that includes a barge which you would pole over too by gondola, was chosen as the meeting place for the historic Summit of the Americas in 1994 where the 34 leaders of the Western Hemisphere met with President Clinton. It was also the setting for the 1987 meeting of President Reagan and Pope John Paul II and the visit in 1991 of HM The Queen.

It seems impossible to believe today, but one tenth of the population of Miami were involved in the building of this house during its two year construction along with the European artists and artisans who were brought over to ensure the highest quality finish.

And...it would be remiss not to mention the use in the buildings construction of local fossilised coral rock on which South Florida is built.

Our next stop is Monty's in Coconut Grove for fish and cocktails before we head on to the Raw food Market.

From fabulous wealth to the ghetto...Like so many places Coconut Grove is an area of contrasts. Wendy and I visit Charles Ave, just a block or two away from the high-end shopping district and sitting in the middle of fabulous homes on either side. This street was home to the first black community on the South Florida mainland which began here in the late 1880's when blacks, primarily from the Bahamas came via Key West to work here at the Peacock Inn.

Their first hand experience with tropical plants and building materials proved invaluable to the building of Coconut Grove. Besides private homes, the early buildings included the Odd Fellows Hall which served as a community centre and library. In 1895 they built the Macedonia Baptist Church which is the home of the oldest black congregation in the area and then came the A.M.E. Methodist Church which housed the community's first school...

BUT away from all this wonderful history I face the issue that this remains a black area and an area of poverty whilst all around it the area has grown into one of fabulous wealth???

The Organic Raw Food market proves to be one of trendy people paying inflated prices for food.

From the Art Design district to cracktown to Wynwood...

Tonight Wendy, Miriam and I head out to the Design District for an art walk around the galleries. We have a wonderful time yet it seems ridiculous that here I am relatively broke at this point in my life and yet shopping for original art works...yet as Wendy put it, what I do have is a greater understanding of the art, its interpretation and the technicalities that most of the others here swigging the free booze.

It was so Miami Vice as we drove down the back streets enroute to Wynwood amongst the crack-houses and their populous. It is great having a guide like Miriam who knows these streets like the back of her hand...and I am sure we must look like dealers with our Hispanic driver in the expensive SUV.

I don't think Wendy or Miriam could believe it when I headed off down an alley to photograph a crack ho dancing completely spaced out in the middle of this industrial street to the thumping vibe of a nearby warehouse club. it took quite a few attempts but she did not seem to mind...and that was sad, just seeing people so removed from the world because of drugs.

The Wynwood Art District is an association of art institutions, museums, galleries, collections, studios and alternative art spaces. Tonight I enjoy the Gallery Walk that happens here on the second Saturday of every month.

We spend a great deal of time at designcrib where the objective of the artists is to design and build a "lifestyle experience" through the collaboration of diverse creative disciplines.

The Lifestyle experience is born through the creation of defined spaces within the gallery that are true representations of a unique way in which artists are inspired to merge their creations to compliment each others work in each environment. The 3000 square feet are divided up in to 5 uniquely defined spaces where each area is a creative display and combination of visual art, fashion, furniture and design.

Its a very young art scene in Miami and its certainly all about the vibe, the party, the image and oh...the art. What was refreshing about the designcrib was that it was innovative and it had genuinely creative and well produced pieces that were about the art as much as everything else.

Miriam bought a beautiful piece from deluz dezign where I modelled a few pieces for the girls and...maybe one day I'll be back. This collaboration of cousins Jillian Renee Riley and Kaley Sturko brings a fresh face to the world of fashion with hand crafted originals. www.deluzdezign.com

We round off the night with dinner...it is now 1am...with Johnny (who has just closed his restaurant for the night), Miriam, Wendy and I dining at Hiro's Yakko-San in North Miami.

Friday 11th May 2007. Miami, Florida.

2007-05-12T14:51:00.000+01:00

Today is really the first time I have noticed the blanket of cloud that currently sits over the city, the result of the various wild fires burning throughout Florida.

After breakfast Wendy and I head downstairs to the gym where Wendy works out and from where I begin my explorations of the King Cole.

Built on the site of the former King Cole Northshore Hotel, which had been a popular holiday spot for the Jewish populations of Chicago and New York City, the current high-rise building dates from 1961/1962 and at the time of construction it was one of the nation's largest high rise apartment marinas.

Originally an apartment hotel you can trace the social history of Miami in publications such as the rules and regulations of the building. By the time of conversion into condominiums in 1974, the regulations had to be published not only in English but also in Spanish marking the growing importance of the Hispanic population in the city.

The King Cole was for many years one of the most prestigious buildings on Miami Beach (and its not too bad today either), set here with its superb waterfront location with sweeping views of the Intracoastal. Designed by the original developers Robert L. Blum [who attended Loyola University in New Orleans where I was the other day] and Robert A. Rautbord with resort style amenities, the investment in its development was some $7,000,000 dollars in 1961.

The design sought to resemble life aboard a luxury liner with the building nicknamed the SS King Cole. The facilities were exceptional: a putting green, olympic-size swimming pool, sun-deck, exercise room, steam room, solarium, billiard room, card room, library, cocktail lounge, coffee shop, teen rooms, social hall, public gardens and a private marina...this was living for the elite...Wendy's grandmother was one of the first tenants.

The eleven story luxury landmark at 900 Bay Drive, Normandy Isle was home to Miami Beach's largest marina at the time of the development. The entrance lobby bore a chandelier in the shape of King Cole's Gold Crown and the original tenants were all issued with keep-sake golden keys to their apartments and for King Cole lessees planning a trip out of town or arriving in Miami there was use of the King Cole limousine.

When the complex opened in October 1962 there were some 241 apartments and 108 hotel rooms along with 172 parking spaces (just see how our love affair with the car has continued to develop...even the wealthy at this time tended only to have one car).
The original plan had called for some 450 apartments but a decision was taken to offer larger apartments with more space and plans were cut to 259 units.

As an apartment hotel the tenants were offered all the facilities of a hotel with maid service, air conditioning and electricity included in the rent. There was also an option to take apartments unfurnished or fully furnished (where at the end of the specified period the furnishings belonged to the tenant).

The apartment hotel retained the services of the same basic staff from the old hotel. Keeping experienced, responsible and familiar personnel was a major attraction for lessees from New York and Chicago who had vacationed frequently at the old hotel. One of the most important being Anthony (Frenchie) Francia the Mixologist (cocktail waiter) of 12 years standing.

There are some wonderful stories about the buildings history such as that published in the King Cole Herald Volume 1, Number 1 of February 1962...Yes, the building had its own newspaper.

"Mr Blum and Mr Rautbord received a long distance telephone call [my how technology has changed] from Detroit recently asking if 24 year old Mary Margaret Revell could do an attempted around Miami Beach swim starting from the King Cole Yacht Basin".

Curving gracefully between Biscayne Bay and Indian Creek the cocktail lounge at the King Cole became the refuge of stars like Frank Sinatra who would take a water taxi here to avoid the paparazzi after performing at the Fontainbleau or the Eden Roc. I have even heard stories of John Wayne in the cocktail lounge.

And the building was the location of many firsts...

here we saw "strange looking contraptions. These are actually "walkie talkies" to keep in constant touch with every element of construction...to have instant communication with the sales office and model apartments...a continued speed-up of your new home[s construction]" being used on an American commercial building site for the first time.

A new type of crane was imported from Germany and was used for the first time in the United States in this construction. Moving on a set of tracks and curving with the King Cole building it was used "to expedite the placement of concrete, steel and men as
the construction moves from place to place and floor to floor".

The apartments were the first luxury block in the area to feature a twenty-four hour switchboard and answering service providing a complete intercom system throughout the building. And the kitchens were hi-tech all electric Hotpoint models.

The architects for the construction were Fridstein and Fitch of Chicago and Melvin Grossman of Miami. The three and a half acre site was in effect a city within a city, and all of this for an opening yearly rental ranging from $2300 to $6500 including utilities and daily maid service.

And...in 1974 another first. Arlen's (by then the owners of the building) began the process of selling the units as condominiums. Taken to court by the local authority for violation of planning regulations the resulting court case produced a historic decision handed down by Judge Rhea Grossman in what became a landmark case for Miami Beach apartment and hotel owners who wished to covert their properties to condo's in the future. The decision based on Florida State statute 711.21 allowed Arlen's to go ahead with the conversion.

After a day of research we head out to Bal Harbour via the stunning North Beach Band Shell (reminded me of The Soundshell in Napier) outdoor performance area.

We dined at Panini Cafe Bar in Bal Harbour Shops and after hitting Books & Books Wendy tried on a great deal of jewellery at Tiffany (and I looked like their regular customer...I don't think!).

It was Tiffany & Co that introduced the world to the engagement ring as we know it today. The six-pronged Tiffany setting lifted the diamond above its setting and into the light. By 1848 New York City newspapers had dubbed Charles Lewis Tiffany "The King of Diamonds" for the exemplary quality of his work.

In the spring of 1887 Tiffany shocked the world by purchasing the French Crown Jewels and soon Tiffany designers were creating a brilliance all of their own. Their designs were gracing all the famous families of the day...Astors, Vanderbilts etc and celebrities from sport, theatre and Hollywood were fans. Soon European Royalty could be added to the list. From Art Nouveau to Art Deco, Tiffany designs grace the world's museums but the world famous 128.54 carat Tiffany Diamond remains on permanent display in the company's flagship New York store.

My journey then takes me to Oleta River State Park before we take in some MIMO (Miami Modern) apartments.

Oleta River State Park consists of some 1,043 acres and is the largest urban park in the state. Located on Biscayne Bay the river is the most prominent natural feature of the park. As early as 500BC the river was home to the Tequesta Indians with the estuary providing a rich and varied diet.

When the Spaniards first arrived here they encountered deer, bear, panthers, bobcats, wolves, alligators and manatees. In 1841 the river was named Big Snake Creek as part of the route used by federal troops in the Second Seminole War travelling south to Loxahatchee.

In 1881 Captain William Hawkins Fulford explored the river and settled further inland in what is now North Miami Beach. By the 1890's with other settlers had come pineapple and vegetable farms and the town of Ojus.

As the river linked the Everglades with Biscayne Bay an Indian trading post was established at Greynolds Park and the river was re-named in 1922. Today the river no longer flows into the Everglades but it is home to many water-birds who feed along its mangrove-lined shores and it is a refuge for the endangered West Indian Manatee.

The West Indian Manatee matures at approximately five years of age and has a gestation period lasting approximately thirteen months with a cow nursing her calf for up to two years.

These gentle slow-moving creatures surface to breathe every three to four minutes and whilst they are shy and reclusive and harmless to no one and nothing they face many threats. The most commom 'problems' come from collisions with boats and barges; from being crushed or drowned in flood gates and canal locks; from the ingestion of fish hooks and monofilament line; from entanglement in crab trap lines and fishing trawl nets; from pollution as well as from cold-related illnesses and habitat loss

Living in a habitat of shallow slow moving rivers, estuaries, salt water bays, canals and coastal areas (particularly where seagrass beds flourish) with no system of defence makes the Manatee vulnerable.

In the winter they concentrate in natural warm water springs or the outfalls of industrial/power plants and in the summer they can be found more widely throughout their habitat, swimming offshore to graze sometimes as far as the Lower Carolinas on the East Coast and Louisiana on the Gulf Coast.

The Manatee eats aquatic plants that are submerged such as hydrilla, emergent such as spartina and floating such as water-hyacinths.

Tonight we chillout at Miriam's before we dine at Steve's Pizza in North Miami.

Thursday 10th May 2007. Miami, Florida.

2007-05-12T14:50:00.000+01:00

Well I am back on the Intracoastal in Florida.(If my memory serves me right the last time I was here was on New Years Eve 1999 when I began my epic flight back from Ft Lauderdale to Scotland in time to bring in the New Millennium).

This time I am in Miami and living in the iconic King Cole building with its Rat Pack history.

This morning Wendy and I head out on a drive amongst the quite amasing homes here in South Florida's swing city. My drive takes me around the mansions of Miami Beach, including the Disney-like castle at 4462 North Bay Road.

Our main purpose today though is to try and find the computer and we leave no stone unturned. We hit the airport taxi stand, the driver's off-duty rank, the airport lost and found, the Miami-Dade police...the search is exhaustive...but with no success.

In the late afternoon it is time for lunch in the trendy Lincoln Road district where we eat at the Cafe of Books and Books in the art deco Sterling Building.

The architecture of this area owes a great deal to Morris Lapidus who was born in 1902 in Odessa, Russia and who emigrated with his family to the lower east side of New York City.

In 1927 he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in architecture with his early enthusiasm being for theatrical set design. This evolved into a stellar career in retail store design before he moved to Miami Beach in the late 1940's where his focused shifted to the design of major hotel interiors.

He designed the Fontainebleau Hotel (1953) where Sinatra etc performed, on the site of the Harvey Firestone estate and in 1959 he redesigned six blocks of Lincoln Road removing all automobiles and transforming it into a pedestrian mall. His architecture makes great use of sweeping curves and joyful motifs and as he said "I designed Lincoln Road for people, a car never bought anything!".

My tour of the Lincoln Road district with Wendy and Mark takes in such highlights as the Lincoln Theater and the Colony Theater as well as a visit to the Banana Republic store housed in a former bank where the vault is now used as the changing rooms.

From this area with its mix of art deco and spanish mission style architecture to a tour of the deco style garden apartments that were built initially for the snow-birds...I loved my tour of the city's buildings and enjoyed details such as the fresco on the Hotel Clinton on Washington Avenue.

Art deco touches are everywhere and every building from the Colony Hotel to the Waldorf Towers on Ocean Drive is a treasure. From the clean lines of the Victor to the Clevelander Hotel revamp (a project with which Wendy is associated)...even the colonial style of the Betsy Ross somehow seems fitting...but the highlight is seeing the Versace home where Gianni met his end.

Then there are the less famous gems on Collins which also has the Delano and the Shore Club.

We also headed out to see spanish mission Española Way where we aim to eat Sunday night.

From little apartment block to little apartment block from deco to mission and the canals...this city is an architectural treasure with buildings like the Cadillac that would be stars elsewhere, but here they are just another of the plethora of gems.

I have noticed in Miami already that everybody has a "thang goin on". It is storyville and the official sport is people watching; from the body beautiful to the maids, I enjoy interpreting everyones lives.

We head back home for early evening cocktails on the terrace to watch the sunset with Wendy and Miriam before we are off out to Specchio on Harding Avenue to dine with the girls and Debbie and Johnny.

The food was excellent and the service exceptional. This restaurant is well worth the visit if you are in town. Popular with locals and educated tourists this is a must-eat if you are in Miami.

After dinner its back home with the crowd for a late night political debate.

A good day all round!

Wednesday 9th May 2007. New Orleans to Miami. USA.

2007-05-09T02:15:00.001+01:00

Breakfast was sunnyside up before Joanne and I headed out to the airport.

My trip to Miami took me via Houston and upon arrival I spent the rest of the day in the airport waiting to meet my friend Wendy who was flying back from a business trip to D.C.. Her flight was naturally a good hour-and-a-half late.

So we get in the taxi and head home to Miami Beach and we are so busy chatting and catching up that we leave her computer in the cab.

This is a major problem as not only is this the latest in hi-tech equipment but Wendy (who has had a very successful career as a power-broker on the hill) was returning from her consultancy work, and there is vital data on the machine...and
more importantly...the computer contains a great deal of personal information, photographs and recordings of her Dad, who passed away last summer...We need to find this machine.

Tuesday 8th May 2007. The Big Easy...

2007-05-08T05:08:00.001+01:00

Fire, Flood and FEMA...the three 'F's' that got New Orleans...two historic and one solely incompetent, a little like the city's mayor!

I start my morning with a leisurely breakfast, sunny side up.

Today Joanne is taking me on a tour of St Charles Avenue, the grandest boulevard of mansions in the south. The avenue follows the gentle curvature of this natural levee and it exudes the air of gentility we all imagine as stereotypical of the deep south.

Our first major point of interest is the Van Benthuysen House (built 1868-69) with its extensive side garden and columned pavilion it served both as the German Consulate before World War II and as the venue for Christine and Joe's wedding.

As many of you know I am a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright and my must see is the Unity Temple with its circular forms announcing clearly that it was designed by a Lloyd Wright student, Leonard R. Spangenberg. Home to the New Orleans Unity Society of Practical Christianity its planters and lines are clearly Lloyd Wright. Although this 1961 building was not open I went in and asked to have a viewing...the lady allowed me to look around and she gave me a postcard!

The circular staircase (which evoked memories of the Xanadu Gallery in San Francisco)is meant as a symbol that God is eternal and in the sanctuary the circular design is meant to symbolise unity and make you feel that God's arms are wrapped around you.

Our next major stop was the Columns Hotel which began life as the home of wealthy cigar manufacturer Simon Hernsheim. Designed by Thomas Sully in 1883 if you stripped off the later addition Doric columns (added to make this property more Southern) then you see the original Italianate-style house. This was the setting for the Hollywood film Pretty Baby based on the life of local photographer Ernest J. Bellocq.

Its back to Frank Lloyd Wright at 4101 with a double house made to look like a single residence and evocative of the Robie House in Chicago. Designed in 1963 by the New Orleans architect Victor Bruno it borders Palm Terrace which is a small street laid out in the 1920's and lined with small, low budget Hollywood Hills style stucco houses which really don't fit here...but I liked them!

Next stop is the Touro Synagogue (1909) home to the oldest Jewish congregation in the Mississippi valley. Named in honour of Judah Touro, a New Orleans merchant born the son of a rabbi in Newport, Rhode Island; who it is claimed never left New Orleans except for a visit to the battlefield at Chalmette. As a philanthropist he liberally supported Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and nonsectarian charities; he founded a public library, the Touro Infirmary and the Shakespeare-Touro Home for the Aged.

The building that bears his name is built in the Byzantine Revival style from a greyish-yellow brick with terracotta ornamentation to the design of Emile Weil. The 1989 addition, the Norman Synagogue House is considered the best contemporary addition to any building in the city and it is the work of Lyons & Hudson.

Think the great 'public schools' of New England with their architecture evoking the Old Country and you get a sense of the Academy of the Sacred Heart home to the school of the Les Mesdames des Sacré-Coeur, the elite teaching order founded in 1800 in France by St Madeline Sophie Barat.

This order traces the social fashions of the city. On arrival in 1818 they opened their convent and girls' school in the French Quarter before moving with the fashion here to the uptown district. On this site originally stood a mansion house from 1847 and after thirteen years in the old building the Mesdames engaged the firm of Diboll and Owen to design this colonnaded masterpiece. Further expansion led to a third story on the school building.

Whilst St Charles Avenue with its large and historic homes is symbolic of the south there are many architectural styles represented here such as the Brown Mansion (the largest house on the avenue) with its Richardsonian Romanesque style to the design of Favrot and Livaudais. Completed in 1905 this limestone building represents the style and continuing wealth of the city post the Civil War with the story going that cotton broker William Perry Brown offered Margueritte Braughn the "finest residence on the avenue" if she married him...she did.

There are great stories here. The Orléans Club for example is housed in an 1868 mansion that was built for Colonel William Lewis Wynne as a wedding gift for his daughter Mrs. George C. Garner and even today as a woman's social and cultural club it is a favoured venue for debutante teas.

The only grand house open to the public is the Milton H. Latter Memorial Public Library which is housed in a 1907 mansion that played host to the silent movie star Marguerite Clark who is pictured posing on the strong staircase in 1918 at the height of her Hollywood career. She was married to Henry Williams the well-known local aviator and heir and stayed here with her husbands' family, the second owners of the mansion.

In 1948 this became the uptown branch of the New Orleans Public Library and this baronial building in Indiana limestone is a treasure. Stretching over a complete city block and built for Mark Isaacs, owner of a Canal Street department store, it is another Favrot and Livaudais work set high on an earthen berm to dominate it surroundings. In the front two rooms I found original French ceilings that once graced a French Quarter mansion and in a back office I saw the delph style work of local artist John Geiser. In the grounds you can find one of the city's earliest free standing and purpose-built automobile garages...it would make a substantial cottage in its own right.

The property was given by real estate magnate Harry Latter and his wife as a memorial to their only son, killed at Okinawa in World War II.

Today sadly this treasure needs work but in a city with so much devastation and so little tax dollars coming in arthouse projects like this restoration would need a specific donation from someone genuinely interested in restoring this architectural treasure.

And no tour would be complete without Tara, a large white-painted brick house from 1941 designed by Andrew M. Lockett on a lot at 5705, to imitate Margaret Mitchell's iconic Gone with the Wind property.

We went all the way up to the lovely grounds of Loyola and Tulane university's.

On now to the Garden District and its historic homes...After the Civil War, New Orleans stood as the only intact city in the south and after Katrina, historic New Orleans stands intact!!!

The trees, the grounds, the impossibly huge homes...it is beautiful! My two highlights here were 1331 Third Street, the Michel Musson House that was home to Edgar Degas uncle. An Italianate house built for the Postmaster of New Orleans and President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, Degas immortalised his uncle in his 1873 work The Cotton Factor's Office.

The neighbouring and mammoth 1415 is reputed to have been the first house in the city with indoor plumbing.

The more I journey the more wonderful cast-iron work I see and that leads me to the Italianate villa built for Kentucky born merchant Col Robert Henry Short in 1859. The house is the work of Henry Howard but it is over-shadowed by the cornstalk fence made in Philadelphia by the Wood & Perot foundry. New Orleans' famed cast-iron was a statement of wealth and unlike its partner in the French Quarter, this cornstalk extends fully around the property.

Our final stop on this architectural tour is the City of Lafayette Cemetery No 1 dating from 1833. I couldn't come to the home of the jazz funeral and not visit a cemetery!

Indicative of the centrality of death in the creole culture of New Orleans, the city placed a cemetery and not a public park at its heart. The work of Benjamin Buisson it has wide avenues and above ground tombs designed to accommodate large funeral processions. A fascinating place to study the immigrant history of the city, this multi-cultural resting place also serves as a timely reminder of the mortality in us all. The Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys plot from 1894 caused me to draw parallels with the paupers' graves that were common in Britain until after the second world war.

I also loved the local colour with the cemetery keeper and his website...can't help thinking its a little strange e-mailing the dead???

From the Jazz funeral to the importance of November 1st, All Saints Day, New Orleanians are bright enough to see death as central to life...a lesson we all should note!

Ladies who lunch...

But then there is Commander's Palace. Erected in 1880 for Emile Commander who operated her restaurant on the first floor and lived upstairs, by 1920 a speakeasy was in full swing here. Since 1974 it has been the flagship in the local Brennan family restaurant empire. The culinary and the social summit of life in the Big Easy, Commander's Palace holds a well-deserved national and international reputation.

Well I had my Mint Julep with Joanne, Patsy and DiAnn and I had a wonderful creole lunch that included the legendery Turtle Soup and the famed Bread Pudding...and to round off my time in the city I enjoyed a wonderful homemade gumbo tonight with Joanne.

I cannot leave New Orleans without publically stating my thanks to Miss Joanne for all she has done to make my stay more comfortable and the project more interesting for all its participants...A real Southern Belle!!

Monday 7th May 2007. The Deep South...

2007-05-06T05:34:00.001+01:00

Today I am heading out into the Deep South of Louisiana and its Plantations.

For centuries, the sub-tropical air was filled with the sweet smells of sugarcane, as wagons rumbled from the fields to the docks. The muddy Mississippi established the great River Road as the symbol of wealth and culture in Louisiana claiming the title River of Riches.

My first stop is Houmas House and its gardens. Known as the Sugar Palace, this Crown Jewel of the River Road has gardens that are alive with plantings, ponds and fountains and great oaks that date back 500 years. These Plantations take you back to a time when sipping Mint Juleps in the glow of afternoon sunlight filtered by the old oak trees was the southern way of life...for some.

The French explorer LaSalle first landed at this site in 1682 and recorded the Houmas Indians and the great herds of Bison on the riverbanks surrounding the Houmas village. By the 1720's French settlers had acquired a Spanish Land Grant and were living here with the Houmas Indians, on grounds that were to become the Plantation.

Houmas House has it's beginnings in the 1770's when Alexander Latil constructed a two story brick dwelling which is today the rear wing of the mansion. A Houmas Indian Land Grant had been sold to Latil and Conway in 1774.

Sold in 1811 to the Revolutionary War hero Wade Hampton, the largest sugar producer in Louisiana, the largest slave holder in the South and Americas' richest man, he built the present Greek Revival mansion in the late 1820's, making Houmas House one of the first great columned mansions on the Mississippi River. It is only fitting that he should own the largest sugar plantation in America.

The building has an exterior appearance of stone but is infact brick and plaster that has been painted to give the appearance of a European exterior. Stone would be far too heavy for this Louisiana base but the effect remains vital.

The most noted owner though was the self-made Irish millionaire John Burnside who bought the estate in 1858 beginning his accumulation of sugar cane plantations (at a time when many were selling due to the impending Civil War). He went on to be the largest sugar planter in America and with over 300,000 acres and became known as the Sugar Prince of Louisiana. Sugar cane, a cash crop, was the white gold of this area.

Burnside was a genius and he managed to protect all his property from either side in the Civil War by declaring his British citizenship. Being Irish he was able to blow the smoke screen that neither Yankee nor Southern troops had any rights on his lands and if they were to trespass they would, according to Burnside, incur the wrath of Britain. So busy with their hatred of each other neither side challenged his assertion and so his property remained completely intact.

Born of French, Spanish, Irish and English history Houmas House is based on the concepts behind the great houses of England...

The Ladies side was upriver and included the Dining Room and the Ladies Parlour where the women of the house would play music and sew to entertain themselves.

The Gentleman's side included the Smoking Room (which still smelt of cigars) and the Games Room. With masculine decor from the unpretentious chandelier to the paintings of boats, from card games to billiards and from gaming chips to its dark colour.

I loved the historical touches such as the fly catchers that would be filled with sugar water and a little poison then placed on the table to attract the flies that would enter through the open windows and keep them away from food...the etiquette for such items was that when they were in use on the table the lady of the house was required to place her handkerchief over the offending item to keep it from public view.
The elegant wine and champagne server and the opium jar to store the pleasure of the privileged...and my personal favourite, the iconic three story spiral staircase.

This 23 room mansion is now owned by another Irish man, Kevin Kelly, and a wonderful job has been done in making the property appear as it would have in the 1840's. Whilst almost nothing save the elements of the buildings fabric are original to the home, they are authentic to the period.

There are treasures such as Andrew Jackson's travelling liquor box and the French Limoges China made for "The Houmas" in the 1830's, but the historical highlight has to be Col. John Preston's 1847 Louisiana Census map by LaTourette which was found in the attic in the 1980's.

History is all around and the levee you see just outside the house was part of that WPA project in the 1930's when the Federal Government kick started projects necessary to areas around the country in an attempt to give an economic boost to the depression era.

For lunch Joanne, Christine and I head over to The Cabin Restaurant which operates out of one of the ten original slave dwellings of the Monroe Plantation in a building that is approximately 180 years old.

Authentic, this establishment prides itself on the fact that you can view the original cypress roof inside and even the spider webs of 100 years ago cling to the ceiling. Walls are papered with ancient newsprint held there by way of a mix of flour and water...this was the way slaves insulated the walls of the original slave dwelling.

As you move from the main cabin into the extension you enter a two room slave dwelling from the Welham Plantation with its original roof and walls (approximately 140 years old). The main dining room (where we eat) was built onto the back of the cabin to resemble a garconnier (the visiting bachelor's quarters on a River Road Plantation) and this opens via french doors on to a brick courtyard that is surrounded by two further slave cabins from the Helvelta Plantation.

The complex is also home to the Schoolhouse which was the first black schoolhouse in Louisiana, built in 1865 by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. With local farming history and parts of buildings such as the Old Crow Distillery, New Orleans...you will never find another restaurant like this anywhere in the world, it is a sampling of Southern Louisiana history.

And...today is Monday, and traditionally Monday was wash-day. With little time to cook, the staple diet on a Monday was red beans and rice. You could cook your beans with little watching and this provided the freedom to tackle the chores...so what did I eat...red beans and rice.

Our next stop was Oak Alley, built 1837-39 by Jacques T. Roman and as well as being a fine example of Greek Revival it is famous for its spectacular alley of 28 evenly spaced oaks that pre-date the Big House by at least 100 years. Here I came for the view, as was also the case at Laura Plantation with its compact Creole architecture and its village of slave dwellings and assorted outhouses.

After collecting the kids from school it was back home for a lovely family dinner.

Sunday 6th May 2007. The Queen of the River, Louisiana.

2007-05-06T05:33:00.001+01:00

History is people because they make the events...

New Orleans is the home of creole culture. Creole is the name given to the native traditions born in Louisiana from the fusion of rich cultural, historical and geographic elements...

Without its history, if the city had taken a different journey, we would not have the joy that is New Orleans and its people.

Now because the slaves here were catholics they were not allowed to be worked on Sundays or Holydays and they were free to practice their own food and music traditions. The law was based on French Catholic law (and when the Spanish took over being a catholic country they saw no need for change). The freedoms associated with catholicism are a major reason why the creole culture of New Orleans was free to develop.

Festivals such as Mardi Gras have their roots in religion with the festival being a last 'fling' before lent. Even today the Catholic Church has a major influence on this city and people here have a deep affection for a Church which they saw do far more to get the city back on its feet post-Katrina than did their elected representatives.

Quick History tour...
The French/Indian War meant the loss for France of the colony of Luisiana ultimately to the British. To prevent such a British gain the French King ceded Louisiana to his cousin the King of Spain. Later in history, Napoleon was to demand the return of this territory; but needing money he quickly sold the territory to the United States in what became known as the Louisiana Purchase.
French Luisiana was a territory that covered all the lands drained by the Mississippi.

Today we set off from the Jean Lafitte Visitors Center to explore the blending of some 300 years of French, Spanish, West African, Caribbean and American (and some Italian and Irish too) influences that make the Vieux Carré one of the worlds' most distinctive architectural districts.

From the French colonial period (1718-1762) with its steep roofed, small dormer windowed half-timber construction that is evocative of Normandy (the wide porch and elevated living areas were designed to catch the cooling breeze); to the Spanish colonial (1762-1803) when the city saw two disastrous fires that necessitated major rebuilding (in an attempt to safeguard the city this was characterised by brick and masonry construction with thick fireproof common walls)...this tour is quite the trip.

Let's begin with the city and its architectural origins...

The symbol of the city is the Fleur-De-Lis. The King of France Clovis I in 496AD found his army trapped between a riverbed and an enemy army. As he pondered his fate he noted a yellow Iris growing midway in the river and realised that the river was shallow at this point and so he was able to cross his army to safety. Louis VII used the iris as his court symbol and the flower of Louis (fleur-de-lis) was subsequently used by Charles IV as a symbol on the French banner...Named for the Regent of France, the city naturally took the Royal symbol as its symbol.

The French military engineer Adrien de Pauger planned the first city blocks of New Orleans based in the area now known as the French Quarter. He drew nearly 100 city blocks with lots of equal size except one...his own house. What is now the Jean Lafitte Visitors' Center was de Pauger's home and later belonged to Edward Degas' maternal grandparents.

The French Quarter was an area bustling with cotton, sugar and lumber; a place where people shopped in open air markets; an area laid out with military precision on square blocks based around the public square.

The architectural gems of the French Quarter come in distinctive forms:

The Creole Cottage is one of the simplest housing plans with four spacious rooms that were interchangeable. With two shuttered openings and interior doors connecting each room to the next and a fireplace in one of two shared chimneys, the design allowed for ventilation, light and privacy. Creole cottages are one-and-a-half story houses with at least four shuttered front openings, casement doors or windows and a high roof running parallel to the street...and they are characterised by that wide porch gallery on the upper story.

The Shotgun House is characterised by its elaborate exterior decorative elements that are small and versatile and thus inexpensive. The name comes from the belief that you could fire a shotgun in the front door and it would go straight out the back without hitting any of the interior walls. Deriving from West Africa via the Caribbean the design became popular in the 1840's and spread across the South. With their narrow street frontage and welcoming porch with all four rooms placed one behind the other, these compact dwellings were ideal for the now sub-divided smaller lots available in the city. Also as tax was paid according to street frontage, the Shotgun became a very attractive option.

Characteristic of the Quarter are:

the Gallery which is a terrace supported over the sidewalk on poles, whilst the balcony is a cantilevered verandah.

The high gabled roofs that were designed to let light stream into a buildings second floor.

The projecting abat-vent over the sidewalk acts as an awning for passers by while its principal purpose was as a shade for windows and doors.

The deep set casement windows and doors regulate warm sunshine and cool breezes by means of wooden shutters
and secluded courtyards offer respite from the city bustle with the loggia and outside stairways offering sheltered breezeways.

The outside staircases and hallways not only offered natural air conditioning but also a tax loophole as tax was paid on the number of interior doors.

The Spanish colonial period ushered in the era of private courtyards behind houses with street access via carriageways reminiscent of the townhouses of Paris. These Spanish buildings have tall arched openings, loggia 'walkways' along the courtyard, and rear access to the upper floors...and they claim here that the word 'courtyard' is a local word created because this patio was at the core or heart of the home.

Across the Quarter you will find stucco protecting the 'native' soft handmade brick...some builders would draw lines in the stucco to give the appearance of more expensive stone.

Unusually for the Quarter the Pontalba Buildings erected on either side of Jackson Square by the Baroness Micaela Almonaster de Pontalba in 1851 are prominent brick buildings. The first apartment complex in the United States the twin building design was inspired by the Palais-Royal and the Place des Vosges in Paris. Featuring apartments upstairs with retail space below, the ornate cast iron galleries bear the baroness' family initials. It was the Baroness who is credited with remodelling the square and renaming it in honour of President Andrew Jackson...there is a story that the Battle of New Orleans hero's statue was placed with him tipping his hat toward the residence of the Baroness who was rumoured to have been his mistress.

A few city facts...

If you happen to be in the Quarter then visit Pierre Maspero's restaurant as the building is the only slave auction house left here.

New Orleans in the 1800's was a very educated city with the nuns responsible for educating the girls and the priests for educating the boys...and I mean all boys and girls...orphans, slaves, free people of colour and Europeans.

And if you believe that HRH Princess Grace of Monaco (the former Grace Kelly) was the first American born princess then think again. She was pre-dated by HRH Princess Alice of Monaco, a gal from New Orleans.

The architecture of the Quarter thus integrates both the decorative and the functional.

I have to thank the National Park Service (one of my favourite things about America) and our wonderful guide C. J. Longanecker.

Moving on... As you drive down Canal Street you get a sense of the devastation that hit this city, I remember seeing this area on the news, but more of that later.

Femme, Femme, Femme...the paintings of women in French society from Daumier to Picasso here on loan as a support to this city from the museums of France is being held at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

As we are to discover the French certainly did not sent their very best pieces here. As I heard it put today...they must have cleared out the basement. That was a little harsh and the French are certainly to be commended for their efforts to help out. So on now to the exhibition...

The image of the French woman excites an undeniable interest. For example French painting from the 1830's offers a compelling visual testimony to the changing role of women in the France of that time. In the countryside and amongst the urban middle classes women are beginning to show signs of emancipation venturing into the working world with new forms of sociability taking hold.

Today I see works from Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet and Renoir running through motherhood, class, prominence, professional and leisure opportunities to the emerging independence of the modern woman.

Be she artist, socialite or businesswoman, like the ground-breaking artworks this exhibition is an extraordinary gift to Louisiana with the fulfillment of a promise made to New Orleans just two months after Katrina sending works not just from The Louvre and other significant museums but from my personal favourite the Musée d'Orsay.

Beginning with the Women of the Third Republic (1870-1940) this is an important period in French history when women were going to start skiing mountains, driving cars and bathing in the sea. It was a period of propaganda paintings such as Auguste Trupheme's At School (1897) reflecting the ideal of public education. It was under the Third Republic that laws were instituted to make education free, compulsory and secular for both boys and girls.

This was the period when day care centres were established by an 1862 government decree to take care of infants whose mothers worked outside the home and when there was a growing awareness of childcare and nutrition. It was also a period when there remained a lingering belief that physical exertion might be dangerous to womens' reproductive health and so sport would become a symbol of the suffragette.

Throughout the exhibition you see women at the heart of the family as the key to preserving family structures. What was wonderful about this exhibition was its study of history through people, specifically women, from the down-and-out to the washer woman to the aristocrat.

Covering the hardships of life and women's quiet and conscientious ways of living to the excesses of Parisian frivolity where women were merely clothes-horses to show and reflect their husbands commercial successes; the exhibition also raised questions.

Few may want to admit it, but a great deal of the advances made in women's rights are a direct result of their lesbian sisters and that was reflected both in the paintings and the stories of male dress wearing, short haired, cigar smoking, gambling artists, writers and intellectuals who challenged the 'norms'.

Add into this mix the improved transport and facts such as women no longer needing a male escort to ride a train and we see wives journeying into the city for the first time. Traditionally a man could lead a double-life. Many were respectable gentlemen who ran their suburban homes with a rod of iron, but who enjoyed all the pleasures that were available when they were at work in the city...no longer could men operate in such splendid isolation.

A fact that will shock many is that the very upper-crust activity of ballet (a must for all respectable young girls) was infact almost a soft-porn experience in the 1800's. Ballet was at this time merely an accompaniment to opera and thus as a profession it was seen as only being fit for working class girls in scanty costumes (who if successful would eventually earn more than their fathers).

As well as propaganda work you also see the growing nostalgia of the urban bourgeoisie who placed a poetic stability and prosperity on the notion of the quiet life in the country.

It was from this exhibition today that we see the new fashion for following fashion on a global scale. The white wedding dress as a symbol of purity for example was pioneered by Queen Victoria in her wedding to Prince Albert and so began a fashion common even today.

In the late afternoon I am taking a devastation tour with Joe (Joanne's son-in-law and a great guide).

It was everybody's fault and nobody's fault...

The scope of the area that was underwater is huge. It is quite simply inconceivable. I am only touching the surface of the destruction (here in waterlogged New Orleans) that fell across the Gulf Coast, you are talking about an area the size of England.

There are still many people here living in trailers two years on. Many will live this way for years to come and many of these neighbourhoods will simply never come back.

Just think for a moment...

You are an unemployed single mother with a couple of kids on a low income facing poor schools. With no car and reliant on public transport you had no way of leaving the city. Unable to evacuate you sit it out...now nobody deserves that...but you are relocated to Dallas and people are bending over backwards to help you. Two years on you have a job, a home and the kids in school...why would you come back to the old neighbourhood? The ties are gone, your neighbours may never return; everything that was familiar has been destroyed...These are the challenges for the Road Home program that aims at helping people come back home?

And as for the media coverage...its not sexy to interview a guy in a quarter of a million dollar home who evacuated with his family and who returns to find his home destroyed, but he has insurance. Yes the poor suffered disproportionately but as usual the media skewed the story to give it a bias that would sell. The racial issue was made far more of than was the reality. The reality was that the poor suffered irrespective of skin colour.

Today I saw for myself the area where the 17th Street Canal broke and where they are still strengthening the levee today...but only on the break side which makes me wonder what happens when pressure is again applied, surely the side that held up will now be weakened? Should they not be strengthening all of the levee?

I saw the devastated neighbourhoods from upper middle class Lakeview to the Lower 9th Ward. I got to visit Musician's Village where Joanne volunteers building homes with Habitat for Humanity...

And on my tour I was a bit of a tourist by taking a drive down Desire Street as in
"A Streetcar named".

From all I have seen in this great city I have to note that New Orleans teaches you that life is to celebrate each and every day.

Tonight I enjoy a great family dinner at Kelly's house with Joanne, Kelly, Christine, Joe, Evan, Gracie and Emily. I enjoyed Crawfish Etouffee and my first ever frozen cosmopolitan.

I am really loving my time in the home of jazz and creole food, which are in reality only in existence because of the special blending of cultures that is peculiarly New Orleans.

Saturday 5th May 2007. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Louisiana.

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This is a city with music as its beating heart...it will clear your blues, rock your soul and jazz up your life!

Breakfast can only be the original muffuletta from Central Grocery in the French Quarter before we head over to the Old Ursuline Convent (built 1749-1753) and the original home to the Ursuline Nuns who came from France to relieve the poor and sick and to provide education for young girls'. The Convent was home to the first girls' school in Louisiana and the building today is the oldest in the Mississippi Valley.

Here we will find the Exhibition of The Vatican Mosaic Studio which is coming only to the French Quarter of New Orleans and indeed is the first such exhibition outside of the Vatican in 500 years. As such this is the first exhibition in the United States of Rome's Vatican Studios and like the Femme, Femme, Femme exhibition currently in the city this is an attempt by a foreign government to help The Big Easy get back on its feet by encouraging the tourists to return.

In this case the Vatican State invites you on a journey to see the evolution of the human spirit through mosaic art. Some thirty seven exquisite mosaics, reproductions of the art of Monet, Van Gogh, Rouault and Rembrandt are amongst the works with each mosaic the perfection of an art form practiced by the skilled masters of the Vatican Basilica dating to the 15th century.

The Vatican Mosaic Studio was begun during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572-1585) when in order to begin the decoration of the new St Peter's the Pope summoned to Rome expert mosaic artists from Venice. The Dome of the Gregorian Chapel was the first to be decorated in this craft (1578-1590). By 1727 Pope Benedict XIII had decided to raise the 'laboratory' to a permanent department.

Nowhere in the world has the execution of mosaic taken on the art form of the Vatican mosaicists and as such it is in Rome that you find the finest collection in the world of tesserae. Tesserae are the tiniest of stones from which this art form takes its name. The creation of enamels dates back to the early Middle Ages with the oldest mosaic technique being the cut technique.

By the late 1700's with the studio's invention of the filament enamel technique (Giacomo Raffaelli) we see micromosaics. These miniatures became hugely popular to decorate jewellery and tobacco boxes with the aristocracy on the Grand Tour being huge collectors. So popular infact that Popes would commission precious gifts for the Crowned Heads of Europe from the studio.

During the French occupation of Rome in the nineteenth century the imperial government acted both to promote and encourage the studio's activity.

My personal highlight was Angel which is created from a detail of the Navicella mosaic panel and which for me had the most wonderful earthy tones. But I must note that works like Monet's Rouen Cathedral: The Portal (in sun); Van Gogh's Church of Auvers and my favourite Van Gogh Starry Night; and Chagall's I and the Village are masterpieces that show the studios' true range.

You cannot though visit this exhibition without talking about St Mary's Church (erected in 1845 as the Chapel of the Archbishops) and the Old Ursuline Convent.

The chapel of St Mary's has the most wonderful pine and cypress ceiling and the building is a work of art in itself. A treasure of this tour was the opportunity to see the statue of Notre Dame des Victoires (Our Lady of Victory) a statue brought in 1727 with the original band of Ursulines from Rouen.

The convent buildings were erected by order of King Louis XV in 1745 and the convent is home to the oldest self-supporting staircase in the United States. As the nuns took care of the sick of the French Military Hospital this is where we find the first female pharmacist in North America.
Louisiana would indeed become the first state to require pharmacists to be licenced...and an aside is the fact that soda started in pharmacy's. The first pharmacists were chemists, Coke after all was born in a pharmacy and here in the Quarter one of the oldest soda fountains in the world can still be found in the pharmacy of Louis J. Dufilho. And as for the nuns, their school has gone on to educate leading medics, lawyers and Louisiana's first female Senator.

A point to remember is that although Louisiana is today a part of the United States in its earliest days land grants were not given by the British Crown (indeed unlike the original rebellious 13 colonies Louisiana was never Crown Land); Land Grants were originally in the gift of King Louis XV of France.

For the nuns though life has not always been easy indeed the great city fire of 1812 stopped literally on their doorstep.

Then we are off to the 38th New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival where I get to see my first ever pow-wow.

Enroute I see graffiti that serves to remind of the hatred directed towards FEMA by the residents of this great city. I also want to note that all the historic areas are open and very much alive and I am already discovering what a great city this is to visit even on a hot and humid day like today.

So on to the festival and lets start not with music but with heritage.

As is true of many native tribes and traditional cultures the struggle to maintain traditional art is a continuing struggle, but today I see a true celebration of craft. I have to mention the wonderful Savannah Lewis, a stunning elderly African-American lady who just ooses charm...and her hand-crafted pine needle baskets are true works of art...and no Savannah I didn't break the camera, infact you gave me one of my finest pictures yet.

I was also fortunate to be invited to sign Cecilia Pedescleaux's African-American 2007 Festival Quilt...so one day I'll see my name on a museum piece.

Now the food. My first sampling was crawfish bread, and the pheasant, quail andouille gumbo...but then there was the natchitoches meat pie...this city is a culinary delight...but our favourite was the alligator pie (i think we had six?). I even had my first ever can of champagne.

And what an atmosphere the music created, it was joyful. I have had many experiences this year and this festival rates amongst the very best. Trust me this was just the tonic I needed when I was beginning to think (with the car crash and the missed flights to add to my list) that life was beginning to get the better of me.

Then there is Joanne. She doesn't know the meaning of words other than fun, joy and enjoying each and every moment of our life. If you have ever doubted the resilience of this city then come meet its people...they just won't let their pride and joy die...As Joanne steadfastly states on her bumper sticker, New Orleans. Proud to call it HOME.

My musical highlight had to be Irma Thomas' tribute to Mahalia Jackson. What a woman, what a show...you could feel the spirituality moving in that gospel tent...and it was the only thing because you could not move for the sea of people...and she is right, HE has got the City of New Orleans in HIS HANDS!

Yet there were so many highlights: Ernie Vincent & Top Notes; Danza and boy can Evan Christopher play that clarinet; Dr Michael White and the Original Liberty Jazz Band with Thais Clark and all those second liners dancing with the colourful umbrellas; Willis Prudhomme & Zydeco Express.

Despite Katrina's best efforts this city just steps right up and greets you with a smile. It is a truly original city, a gem and it should be on everyone's wish list!

Friday 4th May 2007. The Crescent City of New Orleans, Louisiana.

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New Orleans was first sighted as an Indian portage to Lake Pontchartrain and Gulf in 1699 by Bienville and Iberville. Founded by Bienville in 1718 and named by him in honour of the Duke of Orleans, Regent of France; it is called the Crescent City because of its location at a bend in the Mississippi River.

After a somewhat epic journey from San Francisco I arrived this morning in New Orleans to be met by my friend Joanne. My first sights on the drive out to Stonebridge are of the Super Dome (made infamous in Hurricane Katrina) and crossing the Mississipi River Bridge.

We head out to make Algiers Point our first port of call as we tour around the neighbourhood of stunning historic homes before heading back across the bridge in a most atmospheric thunder and lightening storm.

Now Algiers Point derives its name from the stockade for slaves who had just arrived from Africa.

Our drive takes us through the warehouse district as a torrent of water floods from spouts. Crossing Canal Street, Joanne drives me around the somewhat flooded streets of the French Quarter. One can easily see from the river like streets just how easy it must be for this city to flood.

Off to the IMAX to see Hurricane on the Bayou, which was actually in production prior to Katrina as a potential warning about what could happen. Part way through filming these predictions came true and this is a prophetic film that you all should view to see the people factor in such disasters.

Focusing on the significance of coastal erosion and the loss of the wetlands, I learned from this film that the levee's built earlier in the Twentieth Century to prevent the annual flooding of farmland infact are the main cause of the increased threat from hurricane activity today. These coastal levee's are not to be confused with the levee's built to protect the city.

Interferring with Mother Nature the levee's mean that the soil deposited by the annual flooding is no longer available to rebuild and strengthen the wetlands which subsequently vanish due to erosion.

This erosion was further enhanced by the building of canals for boat navigation which brought with them the salt water that killed off marsh grasses etc.

This is all significant when we consider that every 3 miles of wetland reduces the power of the hurricanes surge when it hits landfall by 1 foot. In effect the wetlands act as New Orleans natural speed bumps.

The recovery as we all know was too late in coming and whilst many flood victims were indeed Afro-Caribbean and the bulk of victims were poor, the film also shows that in reality colour was no discriminating barrier.

As the huge costs of Katrina show, good stewardship of the environment is good economics too!

Our next stop is Woldenberg Riverfront Park and the Holocaust Memorial (2003) by Yaacov Agam.

Agam is a pioneer of kinetic art and this work operates on many levels...

from the central Star of David (a symbol of persecution and humiliation) to the dark colours symbolic of a dark period in human history (a period devoid of light, hope, morality and compassion).

Then there are the bright colours that symbolise the souls of the 6 million victims set against the chaos in these colours that hark toward the absence of empathy and religious and moral values in this period...values such as reverence for life itself.

Yet the bright rainbow of colours are also a biblical symbol of hope and renewal.

With the Menorah symbolising the faith and spirituality of the Jewish people, the rainbow is seen as a covenant between God and all humankind.

This memorial is full of symbolism right down to the all seeing eye that I could see there too.

Situated in the same spot, though hardly high-profile, was the Navy Landing memorial.

A real must-see though is the Immigrant Memorial that evokes liberty; but check out the fantastic sculpture of the immigrant family at the back.

As we walk along the river to strains of Summertime and the livin is easy, the muso quickly changes to Ain't She Sweet just for Joanne...we could be back in New Zealand with all the men just eating out of Jo's hand!

Over into Jackson Square which commemorates Major-General Andrew Jackson of
"The Union must and shall be preserved" fame...
This area when New Orleans was the capital of the Spanish province of Luisiana (1762-1803) was known as the Plaza De Armas. Indeed, in French Colonial times the square was known as the Place D' Armes and it was where the flag ceremonies took place transferring Louisiana from Spain back to France on November 30th 1803 and then from France to the United States on December 20th 1803.

We take a lovely stroll through the French Quarter and I get to see the cornstalk fence before we head over to the Cafe Du Monde (the original French Market coffee stand) for beignet's and a traditional local coffee with chicory.

From here I am off to the Cathedral of St Louis, King of France.

Louis IX, the Cathedral's patron was born in 1214 and became King of France from 1226-1270 being canonised a Saint in 1297.

It was in this Basilica that Pope John Paul II worshipped on September 12th 1987 and fittingly for a city often divided along racial lines...it was as Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans (1965-1991) that Harold R. Perry became the first African-American Roman Catholic Bishop of the Twentieth Century in the United States.

The stained glass was lovely but the highlight of this building are the superb frescos. Whilst I understand the reasons, in today's society, I do find it offensive that you are told to leave a church when you are engaging both with the building and its spirituality just because we have reached the witching hour of 4.30pm.

Tonight Jo and I will dine at Irene's which is an institution in the French Quarter. Tradition declares there are no bookings and so all comers queue outside for the doors opening at 5.30pm to secure a highly prized table...and we did!!

Then it is off around the myriad of art galleries in this area. highlights for me were the Fredrick Guess Gallery, Natalie Fine Art Gallery where the work in slate, glass and oils is really unique (nataliefineart.com), the work of Marcus Akinlana at the Royal Heritage Gallery and our preview tour of the Elisabeth Estivalet exhibition at the Axelle Fine Arts Galerie Royale.

Estivalet's work is not to everyone's taste with its angular perspective and its definitive lines, but her application with a palette knife gives her work a distinctive quality.

...And no Friday night in New Orleans would be complete without a visit to Bourbon Street topped off with a large Daiquiri...and then it's home...Oh, those Southern nights!

Thursday 3rd May 2007. Hoping to resume normal service soon.

2007-05-03T20:06:00.004+01:00

I can only apologise for the fact that I am behind with the blogs. The work from my final day in Christchurch through to the present will be updated as soon as possible, but you may have to wait for a few weeks until everything is back to normal.

I am recovering well from Tuesday's car crash and apart from missing my flights today, I should be able to get back on track very soon.

Once again apologies for the delay...normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

William

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Ruth and Jude

George had me try a variety of speciality root beers and tonight in the President's Club (where all manner of drinks and food are free for these first and business class passengers) I have brought my own drinks in the shape a of a bottle of the root beer that survived the crash Tuesday.

Tonight at last I am enroute to New Orleans via Cleveland. I have to say that the staff at Continental here in San Francisco airport have been truly wonderful to me, shame I could not say the same at Cleveland...but that's life.

Wednesday 2nd May 2007.

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Tuesday 1st May 2007.

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Monday 30th April 2007. The Board for Geologists and Geophysicists of the State of California.

2007-04-30T16:44:00.002+01:00

Today I am working out of the Board offices here in Sacramento.

The mission of the Board is to...

To promote and maintain high professional standards through rigorous licensing of qualified geologists and geophysicists and effective enforcement of professional standards that are commensurate with the potential health and safety, environmental, societal and economic impacts of less-than-well-informed decisions where geology intersects critical infrastructure e.g. schools, hospitals, transportation, affordable housing, safe and sustainable water supply, brownfields re-development, waste disposal, basin planning, emergency proceedures and private property.

I love it...I know I am sitting at a desk in an American office when over comes the polite announcement...

Morning everybody, the muffin cart is here.

Talking of food George and I popped out of the office this afternoon to lunch at Armadillo Willy's Flying Pig and I got to have my first Moxie Elixir.

Sunday 29th April 2007. Sacramento, California to Nevada

2007-04-30T16:44:00.001+01:00

Here I am on Main Street Hangtown, the real and original Wild West. Gold Rush fever hit this area and put California firmly on the map in the mid-1800's.

Placerville with its street names like Stage Coach Alley and its historic Bell Tower was known for its swift despatch of justice in this lawless land, the original hangman's tree was a large oak.

Originally known as Hangtown, Placerville was incorportaed on May 13th 1854 after being established here on the banks of Hangtown Creek as a rich mining camp in the Spring of 1848. Millions in gold was taken from its ravines and hills and it was a supply centre for surrounding mining camps as well as a transport terminus for the famous Comstock Lode Gold Mine.

John M. Studebaker and Leland Stanford are amongst its sons who contributed to the early history.

However the most revered is arguably John A. Thompson or Snowshoe who carried 60 to 80 pounds of mail on skis from Placerville over The Sierra to Carson Valley during the winter months...the origins of the mail will always get through?

A must-see here is Placerville Hardware with its old store interior, this is the oldest continuously operating hardware store west of the Mississippi River.

Now part of this building are the former offices of the Mountain Democrat which is the oldest business in El Dorado County in contiuous operation; the second oldest continuously published newspaper in California and the oldest continuously published weekly in the state.

The paper began in the early summer of 1851 as the El Dorado Republican before a change of ownership brought a change of name. The Weekly Observer that was located here in the 443 Main Street section of the hardware store was consolidated with the Democrat in 1889.

After a disasterous fire in July 1856, the merchants on Main Street decided to rebuild with fireproof materials meaning that many of the Main Street buildings were now constructed of brick and stone (with a layer of sand between the ceiling and the roof) and iron doors and shutters.

The El Dorado County Historical Society's Fountain Tallman Museum (The Biggest Little Museum in the West)in Placerville was a real find.

Housed in the oldest building in Placerville (the building is a construction of rock rubble and hydraulic cement) this was the site of the town's first soda works where water was bottled and sold to the miners of the Gold Rush. The Fountain Tallman building dates from 1852 and today it houses Placerville's early history as a mining town where prospectors could purchase their supplies, get a hot meal and relax.

Marilyn Ferguson the guide took us outside to look at the rock formations and you know it is real handy having your own geologist on call.

After investigating the mylonite we headed for lunch at Z-pie...beef fajita pie and veggie chilli soup, how Californian?

From here we are off to Lake Tahoe via Bridal Veil Falls. The scenery is simply breathtaking amongst the digger and the ponderosa pines.

Da ow a ga…Lake Tahoe

For many generations the Washoe people spent summers here, living near the shores of Lake Tahoe. Known as da ow a ga by the Washoe, the lake provided a sacred meeting place where summer gatherings were a focus of Washoe life for thousands of years. The Washoe often returned to the same campsites (building homes of interlocking poles covered with bark) each year; where familiar fishing and hunting grounds waited and where as the fishing season slowed they would gather seeds, nuts and other foods.

So we headed up to Lake Tahoe and then crossed the border into Nevada just to allow me another state on my list of states visited.

After our visit to Tahoe Keys we had tea by the lake at The Beacon Restaurant at Camp Richardson where I dipped my feet into the crystal clear waters of Lake Tahoe.

The colour of the waters here are spectacular and after leaving the lake we headed to the emerald waters of Emerald Bay and off on a hike to Eagle Falls.

The Hermit of Emerald Bay.

Captain Richard “Dick” Barter found his way to Lake Tahoe in the 1860’s. He spent long winters in Emerald Bay as the sole caretaker of a summer villa owned by Ben Holladay Jr.

Originally an English sailor, Barter was known to row all the way to Tahoe City to visit the saloons. On one such trip in 1870 he was nearly killed. While rowing home his small dinghy capsized in a sudden winter storm. The 65 year-old sailor tied himself to the dinghy and he rode out the storm. Afterwards he is said to have amputated two of his frost-bitten toes with his carving knife; he saved the toes to show visitors.

This near death experience prompted Barter to select Fannette Island as his final resting place. He excavated a tomb on the island’s summit and erected a small chapel over it. Despite these preparations Barter never made it to the tomb.

Whilst rowing home one night in 1873 his dinghy was caught in a wild storm. This time the dinghy flipped over and his body was never recovered.

Emerald Bay by the way is 3 miles long and 1 mile wide and the area was shaped ten thousand years ago by glaciers which slid down the mountains and brought the boulders, rocks and soil that had accumulated in front and on the sides of the glaciers with them. After glacial retreat the rocks and soil (known as moraines) were left behind.

And I have to note that I saw beautiful Blue Jays and Sugar Pines on my walk today.

Tonight I dined at a real family diner and a Sacramento institution, Leatherby’s Family Creamery.

Saturday 28th April 2007. Sacramento, California.

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American Freeway's...Beginning in the 1910's and carrying on to the 1930's US car companies bought out many of the great trolley/cable car systems and began systematically dismantling the infra-structure thus creating a need for a car in the world's leading economy. This is one reason why so many street cars could be found around the USA in the 1950's as diners and one reason why Los Angeles, the great City of the Freeway and modern transportation, is notoriously difficult to negotiate on foot.

I find this morning that my shoulder is also rather painful from the fall but I am up and off and George and I are heading back into the Bay area to picnic.

San Francisco Bay and its portal the Golden Gate were accidently discovered by Spanish explorers and it was only because of this discovery that a city was founded here.

Our destination is the Marin Headlands, but not before a lovely drive through the grasslands that lie between Sacramento and San Francisco.

Here at the Headlands you get spectacular views of the bay and the sailboats and Alcatraz...and of course the city and its bridges.

Towering almost 1,000ft above sea level this is an area of coastal bluffs, coves, wind-swept ridges, lagoons and beaches. It is home to back-country trails and historic fortifications.

It is up here that I catch my first sight of the state flower, the California Poppy, just growing wild.

We are actually picnicing at Battery Spencer which remained in active service until 1943. Completed in 1897 and named after Joseph Spencer, a Major-General in the army during the American Revolution this battery is part of defensive fortifications that in the past military strategists believed were vital.

The idea being that if enemy ships could be kept out of the Strait of San Francisco then the city would remain safe. The headlands thus became host to a variety of fortifications beginning with the earthwork emplacements of the 1870's on this strategic high ground, a key point for coastal defence.

For around 100 years the US military considered San Francisco Bay to be the most strategically important harbour on the West Coast. Early fortifications such as Alcatraz and Fort Point focused their short-range firepower on the inner harbour. Gun Batteries were built further afield as range and accuracy increased. These batteries had rifled guns, some with ranges of more than 10 miles, aimed offshore to sink enemy ships before they could reach the Golden Gate.

As a later fortification, Battery Spencer was constructed of concrete and partially buried behind a wide parapet of earth with the approach road below ground level to protect it from enemy view.

Immediately after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941 the US Army temporarily placed anti-aircraft guns near the toll plaza at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge and posted sentries on the bridge. The aim was to prevent the air attacks that would imperil San Francisco and its dazzling new bridge.

The Bridge which I picnic above today...

The Golden Gate Bridge was designed by chief engineer Joseph Strauss and was constructed between 1933 and 1937. The concrete piers at the base of the towers went in first, in cold deep water with a strong tidal current. The art-deco towers were then erected on the piers and the suspension cables were emplaced to allow the road deck to be installed in sections from each end.

Opened to vehicles in May of 1937, ahead of schedule and under of budget, here are a few facts about the Golden Gate:

220ft is the clearance under the bridge for shipping;
746ft is the height of the towers;
4,200ft is the length of the main span (i.e. between the towers), making the bridge the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1964;
7,650ft is the length of each cable, which are 36 and a half inches in diameter;
80,000 miles is the total length of wire in the two cables...that's more than 3 times the distance around the earth at the equator;
the roadbed can drop as much as 10ft under extreme load and temperature with the centre span able to swing 27ft in either direction;
43 million pounds is the weight of the steel used to construct the bridge;
600,000 is the total number of field-driven rivets holding the bridge together...

and yes, it took 27 years to re-paint and thus this has only been done once since 1937, but continual spot-painting occurs to retard corrosion.

We took a late afternoon view of the city from Golden Gate Parks' de Young Fine Arts Museum tower. From the observation floor you get a 360-degree view of the west end of the city taking in landmarks such as the Golden Gate Bridge.

This beautiful building was designed by the Pritzker Prize winning architects Herzog & de Meuron to integrate art, architecture and nature and it works!!

I was intreged by Andy Goldsworthy's Drawn Stone (2005) installation. Goldsworthy is known to use natural material to create forms that lie just beyond the realm of the possible in nature thus heightening the viewers awareness of the fine line between nature and culture.

This particular installation was inspired by California's tectonic topography where he has made a continuous seemingly random crack running from the edge of the road to the museum entrance. The stones used were originally from Goldsworthy's native Yorkshire.

We then head out to explore Golden Gate Park which is one of the largest urban parks in the world with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area encompassing more than 72,000 acres with 28 miles of coastline.

The Golden Gate Pavilion was dedicated in 1981 as a symbol of the friendship between San Francisco and its sister city of Taipei...but I do wonder...If you really believed in peace and love why would you need to vandalise the Pavilion by carving this into its marble?

We park along the Pacific Ocean here on Highway 1 (the Great Highway) to explore the 5 mile long Ocean Beach and naturally the Cliff House (of which there have been 3 in total, the first two being destroyed by fire with the current building being erected in 1909). This is also where you will find the Camera Obscura which was sadly closed, and the site of the Sutro Ocean Baths.

The first Cliff House was built by the real estate developer Charles Butler in 1863 and was a frame and clapboard edifice extremely popular with the well-healed who could afford to pay the toll roads, horses and menu prices; thus it was expanded in 1868.

By the early 1880's transportation had improved such that 'ordinary' folks could make the trip and the Cliff House was abandoned by high society. Captain Julius Foster who ran the operation for Butler then turned to a more sporting clientele.

In 1881 Adolph Sutro bought the Cliff House and 1,000 surrounding acres, moved into the cottage on the promontory and hired James Wilkins to make it a "respectable resort".

Adolph Sutro had been born in Aachen, Germany the son of a successful apparel manufacturer. He was well educated in engineering and science. After the death of his father, the revolutions in Europe changed his direction, and the young Sutro took his family to America arriving in San Francisco aboard the California in 1851 where he went into the sundries business.

Sutro visited Comstock Mine and saw the need for an engineering background so he secured the rights, sought venture capital and oversaw the completion of venting and drainage tunnels. He sold his shares for $5,000,000 and came back to San Francisco a very rich man.

This shore land he had bought was deemed worthless; yet men were employed, wells drilled, infrastructure installed and thousands of trees planted and the Land's End Scenic Railroad was born. However in 1894 the first Cliff House burned down, but only two years later he re-opened the site with a French Chateau style building along with the Sutro Baths.

The Sutro Baths officially opened to a dazzled public in 1896. Through their elaborate system of pools, tunnels and pumps the six swimming tanks were filled by ocean tides. Two acres of glass arched over the steam-heated pools, three restaurants, theatre and a museum with rare plants, animals and (as was popular at the time) Egyptian artefacts. This complex could service up to 25,000 people for a dime.

Classic Greek decor opened onto a massive glass enclosure with five tanks holding 1,685,000 gallons of water at various temperatures and the baths could accommodate 1,600 bathers. The water in te tanks could be changed in an hour with the tides.

A major San Francisco figure, Sutro was elected Mayor in 1895. A man of both art and intellect he amassed a large art collection in his lifetime and he is considered to have had the finest library in the United States at the time.

The baths were the last major recreation project of the millionaire Adolph Sutro (he died in 1898) and by 1937 they were losing money and the main tank had to be converted to an ice-skating rink. The baths were sadly demolished in 1966 when a fire levelled the structures.

In 1907 the Cliff House burned to the ground again and Sutro's daughter Emma rebuilt with the new Cliff House opening in 1909 upholding the tradition of fine-dining.

Two world wars and a depression though were to take their toll and the Cliff House was sold to George Whitney in 1952 being re-modelled several times before in 1977 the Headlands and the Cliff House were purchased by the National Park Service for use as a visitor centre. The Cliff House continues to be run by Dan and Mary Hountalas, as it has since 1972, and in 2004 it was restored to the elegance of its history.

The story of the schooner Parallel that was 'blown to atoms' in 1887...

The two-masted 148 ton Parallel left San Francisco for Astoria, Oregon with a mixed cargo and 42 tons of black powder and dynamite. Capt W. C. Miller fought against difficult winds for two days and finally gave the abandon-ship order putting the seven man crew into a lifeboat before the ship went on to the rocks off Point Lobos and the Cliff House.

The crew rowed to Sausalito but told no one of the dangerous cargo. Miller was later criticised for his actions.

A crew from the life-saving station (later the U.S. Coast Guard) at Golden Gate Park went to the wreck finding no crew onboard, but they did save a forgotten dog. At around 1.30 am on January 16th 1887 the ship exploded badly damaging The Cliff House and Cottage and Adolph Sutro's residence on The Heights as well as injurying three of the life savers. Debris was blown for a mile and the blast was felt 15 miles away at sea.

Friday 27th April 2007. San Francisco, California.

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The term Bay Area refers to the nine counties surrounding San Francisco Bay. A total of seven bridges cross the bay with the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland and Berkeley and the Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco to Marin County.

Apologies to all those people who have e-mailed to remind me that the blog is behind. I have had difficulty getting internet access and then this morning I put out my hand to save myself as I fell down the stairs and it has swollen up and thus it is very difficult to write or type.

I will update things just as soon as I can.

Anyway, today I am off to stay with Cousin George. This will be the first time I have seen him since Christmas 2005 in New York so we will have a lot to catch up on...

I did actually head out though in the late afternoon to Samovar on Sanchez Street. Since a tea tradition is common to nearly every culture from the exotic to the simple and from London to Marrakech, then I thought that I would drift off to a foreign land and have a Moorish Tea which consisted of Moorish mint green tea, grilled halloumi kebab and mini mint salad along with dolmas and olives, and medjool dates stuffed with chevre.

This is a tea service that has evolved from the ancient nomadic Berber tribes of Africa.

Tonight I got the chance to drive down the zig-zag of Lombard Street on our way to Little Italy. Enroute out of the city we headed to Fort Point to view the Golden Gate Bridge by night.

When the Golden Gate Bridge opened on May 27th 1937 100,000 people celebrated the engineering and architectural triumph over the waters that had been deemed unbridgeable. Yet engineer Joseph B. Strauss had linked San Francisco and Marin County with a record breaking span that swung 27ft in a stiff wind.

Off over the bridge and we stop in Mill Valley to eat at an In-n-Out, a Californian tradition in burger joints before heading home to Sacramento.

Thursday 26th April 2007. Dine Out For Life day, San Francisco.

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How many people are there in San Francisco, or indeed in any city around the world, that don't know where they are walking?

I would argue many as I head back today along The Embarcadero that the answer is very few. Do you know what is under your feet?

The buried ships of San Francisco...Along the Embarcadero once stood a series of floating warehouses that acted as storeships during the gold-rush.

In the early 1850's with buildings in short supply, the ability to store incoming cargo until prices rose made warehouses immensely profitable. Some of those permanently moored vessels remained in place simply being covered by the in-fill as the area was reclaimed.

Vessels such as the Rhone, LeBaron and the William Gray which lies buried 18ft beneath the sidewalk along Battery Street between Filbert and the Italian Swiss Colony Building. There are infact an estimated 40 such gold-rush vessels entombed under the streets of San Francisco.

My first stop today is to be Levi's Plaza a pleasant spot to sit and write before I head off up Telegraph Hill.

The White Angel of San Francisco...

While I turned my head that traveler I'd just passed melted into mist...maybe we all see too little??

"It was Westering and Westering. And when the old men came to the edge of the continent and saw they could go no further, they broke down and wept. Down and out in the waterfront in Frisco. The end of the line. Out of work. Out of Food. And out of hope. San Francisco - at the end of the line - had always had more than its share of transient men, on the move, looking for work. During the Great Depression of the 1930's the number of people without homes and without food overwhelmed the city's many charities, as bread lines wound around city blocks, and each day, soup kitchens fed one hot meal to thousands who otherwise would not survive. Here at the foot of Telegraph Hill, from June 1931 through September of 1933, one woman carried out her own plan to help. Her name was Lois Jordan, the soup kitchen she set up on Abe Reuff's junk-filled lot, bounded by the Embarcadero and Battery, between Filbert and Greenwich, became known as the White Angel Jungle. "Seamen without ships, longshoremen with no cargo to load, railroadmen out of jobs, carpenters with nothing to build...penniless and friendless in a big city, they have been fed, clothed and mothered by Mother Jordan"".

It was certainly symbolic that the waterfront office-kitchen her men built for her was in the shape of a land-locked ship...symbolic for me of the fact that she was the one ray of hope in an otherwise desperate situation, the one passage out of despair and also interesting in the fact that under her soup-kitchen in the subterranean world lay all those buried warehouse ships that few, if any, of the men would have known about.

In 1876 a group of San Francisco citizens purchased four lots at the crest of Telegraph Hill and bequeathed the land to the city as a public park in memory of California's pioneers...and trust me don't drive up here, walk the steps, it's a great climb!

The view from atop Telegraph Hill only serves to confirm for me that the Bay Bridge is the more beautiful.

From White Angel Jungle at the foot of the hill to Coit Tower at its crest the Great Depression is played out in very different ways.

The tower was built in the depression era and dedicated in 1933 as a memorial to a true city character, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, who had died in 1929 leaving one third of her estate for the purpose of adding beauty to the city she loved.

Aged seven she had come to San Francisco with her wealthy Kentucky parents. She was destined though to be saved from a terrible fire by the volunteers of the Knickerbocker Engine Co. #5. Later seeing firemen struggling up Telegraph Hill she dropped her school books and joined them becoming in the process the #5 mascot, rarely was she to miss a blaze.

And her life was one of colour. She married Howard Coit of Telegraph Hill against her parents wishes, she smoked cigars and often dressed as a man to enable her to gamble in the saloons of North Beach. Indeed when an envious relative tried to shoot her and a friend who ran to her aid was killed she fled to Paris. In 1923 after years in Europe where she was a favourite at the Court of Napoleon III she returned to San Francisco where she died aged 88.

So as for her tower...It is a 210ft tall tower of fluted reinforced concrete by Henry Howard with interior fresco's by local artists. These murals were part of a 1934 Public Works of Art Project and fascinatingly for a tower built at the height of the Great Depression the murals contain a strong political message about American exploratory characteristics. These are scenes of bustling industry, inventiveness and commercial strength...This is the land of plenty, of the great American Dream...yet all this was painted against a backdrop of unprecedented poverty?

And a nice aside...the tower is designed as a fire hose nozzle reflective of Coit's admiration for the city's firemen.

And a little history...During the gold rush days a lookout station stood on Telegraph Hill to observe and signal the arrival of incoming vessels.

Now I am off to Lombard Street, the world's crookedest street with eight sharp turns on its forty degree slope which were constructed in the 1920's to allow traffic to safely descend the steep incline...but these switchbacks are world famous to every child because of Herbie, the Lovebug!! Here I get chatting to the mailman...now that's quite a job in these parts!

I really love the way this city flows with the topography of the land as I wander the streets of Russian Hill and Nob Hill...And I get to meet the coolest Big Issue seeler...I think its called Streetwise here, but anyway; he was an older African-American gent who had been well-travelled, though he kept insisting I was Irish.

Off through the Chinatown Gate to eat at Cathay House joining an illustrious list of diners that includes my fellow Chautauquan President William Jefferson Clinton and the likes of Chairman Jiang Zhen Min, Nancy Polosi and President and Mrs Bush Snr; but then again this has been the place to dine in San Francisco's Chinatown since the days of FDR and Eleanor.

Appropriately I am a rat having been born in 1972, but apparently that means I have been blessed with great personal charm, a taste for the finer things in life (well that is certainly true) and considerable self-control...the world will be the judge?

Tucked down Maiden Lane (no:140) just off Union Square sits an unimposing building that remains for the most part unknown to most San Franciscans and visitors alike and yet it is arguably this city's greatest architectural treasure. The Xanadu Gallery is a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece. As you descend from its bubble lights around the body of the building you really do feel that you are inside a champagne glass.

Designed as the V.C. Morris Giftshop this now gallery space specialises in art and antiquities from around the world and what a place for these treasures inside a champagne glass as it pours.

Today it is San Francisco's day to host Dining Out For Life supporting the fight against HIV and Aids and here it is a full 25% of your dinner bill that will be donated by participating restaurants to the fund.

I dine tonight at the ultra-trendy 2223 on Market, but even here in liberal educated San Francisco these people talk s*** politics. The conversations I listen too are so small minded and localised and ignore the great big world out there beyond America's shores.

Also I have to deal with stereotypes...sorry, but I first tried a restaurant called Mecca which I could not stand for more than a few minutes. It was wall to wall stud muffin, all waxed and buffed chests and identical. Why can't people think for themselves and be individual?..but then again, the conversation in this place is so boring and stereotypical!

Human beings can be so superficial and that saddens me. I wish more people would say what they actually want and act on their dreams and then maybe the world would be a better place?

Anyway, being loyal to the project themes I stuck to local produce...let's hope California's finest red will drown out the ignorance around me? By the way this is a fantastic spot. Great service from James Orona, my waiter and great food. It is buzzing here with a lovely cocktail bar for pre-dinner drinks...I didn't try it after all you look such a sad-o drinking alone...that's not my bag!

And thanks to the manager, Kyra Rice-Leary for a lovely evening!

Wednesday 25th April 2007. San Francisco, The Republic of California.

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San Francisco Bay formed at the end of the last ice age when a river valley flooded and Alcatraz is actually the rocky summit of a submerged hill...think of the topography of this area.

In more recent times California became the 31st State of the Union in November 1850. The immediate background to this being that American settlers on the northern frontier of what was then Mexico had declared themselves an independent republic in 1846 raising the Bear Flag on June 14th.

The Presidio of San Francisco had infact been the northern bastion of the Spanish Empire from 1776 until the Mexican Revolution in 1822.

Today Alcatraz is an isolated island that presents a unique ecosystem of flora and fauna brought to the island throughout its history. The island is now a haven for birds who can live here predator free and so it offers a protected home today for garden archeology. In many ways the island with its layers of history tells the tale of a developing nation.

Behind the pier building here on the Embarcadero stands Robert Arneson's Yin and Yang sculpture. Arneson was a founding father of the contemporary ceramic sculpture movement using humour and satire to confront and explore moral and ethical concerns in clay, bronze and other media with yin and yang being part of his 'Egghead Series'.

The first bridge I catch sight of in San Francisco is the one I come to view as the more attractive. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge or simply Bay Bridge was opened in 1936 (it is older than the Golden Gate) to link the city with Contra Costa and Alameda counties. At 8.5 miles the bridge is a suspension/cantilever structure with the divide from cantilever to suspension being a tunnel through Yerba Buena Island.

I head out along the piers today for Pier 33 and a journey to Alcatraz. The first thing I notice when stepping onto the island is the smell of fish?

Anyway, Alcatraz became a national park in 1972 ostensibly because of its military history, being the first permanent fort on the West Coast...

However, there is a little more to this...

In 1969 Indians (as Native Americans were then called) occupied the island to prevent it being sold to a private developer...

Were they here because this was the home of the first lighthouse on America's West Coast?
Were they here because of the Military era (1853-1933) with Fortress Alcatraz built to protect San Francisco from foreign invaders?
Were they here because the army later constructed a military prison for convicted soldiers and prisoners of war?
Were they here because this was the site of arguably the most famous federal penitentiary and maximum security prison (1934-1963) in American history?...
Or were they here from 1969-1971 as Native American political activists who for nineteen months called national and international attention to native American civil rights?

Most tourists are certainly here because of the federal penitentiary era, even though the majority of prisoners on Alcatraz were infact in the US military period and thus not civilians.

Tuesday 24th April 2007. The City by the Bay...

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San Francisco's Famous FOG...During the summer, hot air in California's Central Valley rises, drawing cool ocean-drenched air through the Golden Gate. A sea of fog creeps through the gap and spills over the coastal hills. Stiff wind usually accompanies this fog creating the city's natural air conditioning.

I begin my day with breakfast at my hotel where I meet again the two Scottish guys I met last night.

Downtown San Francisco is a really beautiful city with many elegant skyscrapers, a great deal of which date from the boom days of the early twentieth century, and thus are built in that ornate oppulence of the newly developing commercial empires...like the Hearst Building.

William Randolph Hearst 1863-1951, the founder of Hearst newspapers began his publishing career with the San Francisco Examiner on March 4th 1887 by announcing...

"The Examiner with this issue, has become the exclusive property of William R. Hearst, the son of its former proprietor. It will be conducted in the future on the same lines and policies which characterized its career under the control of Senator Hearst".

Many of these wonderful buildings are Gotham Cityesque in that pseudo-Gothic style that chracterised this period of American office building. The majesty of this architecture is a reflection of America's growing cultural and economic imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century along with its new found confidence as one nation with a national identity (post the Civil War).

But then again this was a nation that on gaining independence from Britain established itself with Senators and Congressmen evoking the glory days of ancient Rome and although the USA has not been an imperial power in the traditional sense of colonising lands (although the Philippines, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, West Germany, present day Iraq etc etc??)...anyway, American imperialism has come in the form of economic expansion in the traditions of western European territorial expansion.

The growth model that dominates Wall Street as opposed to a consolidation model, may well be the very reason why corporate America is losing its stranglehold. After all the markets of the world are becoming saturated in a similar way to the political playing fields that have been so irrigated by the world's self-appointed policeman that we now find ourselves in flood season; but all this is another conversation for another time!!

I am really starting to fall for this city which is extremely walkable and with a great vibe.

After my explorations I stop for coffee at Caffe Museo at my day's destination. I am visiting one of the great icons of San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art where I am attending the Picasso and American Art exhibition amongst other treasures.

Well let me begin by telling you that this is a beautiful building...and now to Picasso and his influence on American Art.

The artist Max Weber (1881-1961) is credited with having brought the first Picasso to the USA in 1909 on his return from Paris where he had lived with and studied under Henri Matisse from 1905-1908. That painting Still Life (1908) is exhibited for the first time as part of this show.

Weber persuaded the art dealer Alfred Stieglitz to present the first exhibition of Picasso's work at his Gallery 291 on New York's Fifth Avenue in the spring of 1911; the Cubist influence on American art had begun.

Picasso never actually set foot in the United States during his long life but as one of the most recognised and prolific artists of the twentieth century he brought cubism to international acclaim whilst working in a myriad of stylistic techniques and diverse media. From Weber to Gorky, Pollock to Lichtenstein (a personal favourite of mine) and Johns his influence was extensive.

Weber not only brought Picasso to America he was the first American artist to emulate his work. The small size of Still Life is in part one reason why Picasso's work came to America so early as the painting could be, and was, carried in Weber's luggage.

When developing his cubist ideas Picasso was heavily influenced by African Art and like Weber many of the most influencial American artists to become devotees were immigrants. These artists saw themselves not only as Americans but as international citizens and so American art was to become so influential in part due to this global perspective.

I really liked Weber's Trees (1911) which reflects this world-citizen idea with its foliage looking from a distance like a collection of American flags.

One of the highlights of this exhibit has to be Woman with Mustard Pot which was first seen in the States at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, the first major exhibition of modern art to be held in America. Another favourite in this show was Picasso's Female Torso (1908) and I loved the naturalistic The Bather (1913) by Weber.

By the mid 1910's synthetic cubism was emerging where works were made up of large areas of colour and pattern development such as in Picasso's Untitled (1915) with the built up image of a man with a pipe and Weber's Chinese Restaurant (1915) which for me was a reflection of the layering of modern life and its increasing rapidity.

It could be argued that cubism gave American art an identity helping it to move away from post-impressionism and thus allowed it to develop a different stylistic approach that utilised fully painted, schematic outlining and dot pattern forms (a major element of Lichtenstein's work). Works like Lucky Strike (1924) are the basis of American Modernism with people like Davis applying cubist principles to American cultural icons such as Lucky Strike cigarettes.

And so Picasso's influence on American art goes on...

The Studio (1927-8) drove Gorky to both explore and communicate surrealism in a way that subsequently impacted on others like David Smith the sculptor, who when working as a painter enjoyed the ability surrealism gave to explore both drawing and space.

It was from cubism and surrealism that the uniquely American Abstract Expressionism Movement (characterised by gestural brushwork and flattened abstract forms) emerges aided greatly by the second major exhibition of Picasso's work in America with the 1939 Museum of Modern Art, New York's Fall Retrospective of 400 works that go well beyond Picasso's cubist paintings.

Pollock's Galaxy (1947) was one of his first works in the drip-style of abstract realism for which he became famous and which we can link directly to Picasso's disturbing angular masks.

...and, of course, Warhol. Andy didn't really wish to emulate Picasso's style, rather he wanted to examine Picasso's fame...after all Warhol was the father of the cult of celebrity.

From this exhibition where another work that stood out for me was Davis's Early American Landscape (1925) I head to the Brice Marden retrospective of paintings and drawings.

I liked the earthy tones of his Red Rock group that for me were evocative of my time in Australia's Northern Territory. His linear painting style does manage to create a sense of his inspiration and I enjoy his blending of ancient Mediterranean and Asian cultures.

At the Matisse and Beyond: The Painting and Sculpture Collection works like Picasso's Scène de rue (1900) reflect his genuis as an artist in the traditional form. This show with works by the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Max Beckmann and Marcel Duchamp was a treasure.

You can see the geometry of Picasso's influence in Sheeler's Aerial Gyrations (1953)and I loved seeing Jasper Johns Flag (1958) a real icon of Americana.

Whilst Matisse's Femme au chapeau (1905) intinced me it was Paul Klee's Der Tod für die Idee (1915) that really grabbed my attention...

dying for a cause, this lithograph really spoke to me about war and protection of empires and cultures when maybe man needs to move on beyond preserving the known and comfortable and just let go and allow life to take us to the next phase of human development? So the world has become a globalised Americana culture. It happened because people allowed and wanted it? Why then waste time trying to maintain national identities that are the base of so much feuding and war? Homogenisation has its benefits, right?

Does modern art indeed speak to us or is it all intellectual crap? This is a question both with regard to my ramblings and a question faced when you encounter Mutt's (1917) Urinial.

As you may be able to tell I never got beyond the museum today...it was a real joy. And I must just mention one other work that caught my eye today and that was Le guéridon (1935) The Pedestal Table by Georges Braque.

Tonight I end my day with supper at Tangerine accompanied by David a New Yorker from my hotel who is a typical all-rounder being Presbyterian Deacon, IT Consultant, singer and successful professional actor all in one...and on my short walk home I saw at least seven VW Beetles; how appropriate...I guess it is true Herbie Does Ride Again!!

Monday 23rd April 2007. LA to San Francisco, California.

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Back to the airport via bus and subway enroute for San Francisco. After seeing the traffic here on LA's freeways I am sure the M25 has a contender for the title of world's largest car park.

At the airport the security checks are enhanced even from my last visit to the USA at Christmas 2005. You now have to leave your bags unlocked or go through extra security...I chosse to go through the extra security as I don't want my luggage riding around unlocked.

Anyways at the departure gates it is shoes off for the enhanced screening. I am not sure though that all of this works or whether this is simply typical American over-reaction to the terrorist threat?

Landed at San Francisco International Airport and this place takes the prize for greatest level of customer dissatisfaction. There is a very helpful information desk, just no staff to man it? Courtesy phones for information that don't work? and a meaningless collection of posters?...

I have had enough of this and so I march back through security...now that gets some attention and WOW some service.

So I get on the transit as instructed and encounter ignorant elderly American couple all baseball caps, bad taste lipstick/eye make-up and Gee Hank!...
Please don't worry about me or any of the other passengers trying to exit the transit, just you and Delores keep that door blocked now!...
And to crown it all the helpful staff in the train station send me off in the wrong direction...but this is America so...Y'all have a nice day now!!!

Finally I take the BART and the Muni which when it comes out to ground level becomes a trolley with the floor descending at the steps to meet the street rather than the platform. It is a great system once you figure out how it works and this place can't be bad after all they have a Dublin and a Dumbarton Bridge so it has some class!!

I arrive at the stunning Parker Guest House a compound of two Victorians on Church Street surrounded by stunning gardens and outdoor terraces.

Nearly 514 blocks of San Francisco, including much of Nob Hill and Van Ness Avenue, were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire with many of the fine examples of Victorian architecture lost. Yet there are still some 14,000 Victorians preserved in the city today and that is a treasure.

It is lovely here with my big bed, power shower, fancy freebie soaps and gels...its an establishment that gives you robes and it is clean and pleasant and not at all like the half star I stayed in in Los Angeles...and it is cheaper!! I am so happy to be civilised again and as I set off to explore these bay area neighbourhoods my first day in San Francisco shows me that it really is like the Herbie movies!

Tonight there is a wine social at the B&B and I meet up with two Scottish guys who are here on holiday. I then head out to explore the immediate neighbourhood and dine at Luna on Castro.

Sunday 22nd April 2007. Earth Day. Los Angeles.

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Ronald Reagan earned his place on the Walk of Fame as an actor and its good to see Lassie here too.

I am off to celebrate Earth Day at the Farmer's Market which I find filled with people with dark sunglasses detoxing after the excesses of last night. There is excellent organic produce and good street performers add to the atmosphere.

My next stop is urban obscura a site specific installation by Paul H Groh. Using the principle of a Camera Obscura the installation projects a series of overlapping images, reflections and light into the space creating an abstract moving collage of people, cars, lights and time of day.

I am very lucky to stumble upon the installation at the Woodbury University School of Architecture Center for Community Research and Design site at 6518 Hollywood Boulevard where Professor Paul is open for a private viewing today...I naturally join in and spend the next three hours enjoying the views and putting the world to rights with Paul.

Here I am inside 'the camera' and the white walls are painted with a semi-gloss and the black floor is gloss to add to the reflectivity. This is a piece of installation art that grew out of its context as the idea behind it was to bring the outside in by revealing the motion that happens outside rather than simply presenting a realistic video interpretation of the outside. Here the idea was to use the Camera Obscura to reflect the rapidity of motion in modern life. This is enhanced by having the sounds of outside miced in to accompany the motions.

I then head off to eat at the Pig'n Whistle...to engage again with history.

Hollywood was after all originally just a sleepy suburb of Los Angeles before it became the world-wide centre of the movie industry with producers attracted here because of the availability of vast tracts of land at low cost.

As Hollywood boomed in the Roaring Twenties its main road Prospect Avenue (a throw back to the days of the California Gold Rush) became Hollywood Boulevard and it became the place to see and be seen. You could catch a glimpse of stars like the cowboy Tom Mix in his sports car but the highlight for many were the Palaces built to the movies such as Sid Grauman's Egyptian and Chinese Theaters or The Pantages.

The Pig'n Whistle opened its doors next to the Egyptian Theater on July 22nd 1927. A fanciful hand-carved interior welcomed stars like Shirley Temple, Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable. It also housed many gatherings after movie premieres at The Egyptian and many industry cocktails. Here you could spot Cary Grant, Jane Wyman or Walter Pidgeon. Although part of a chain, the Hollywood restaurant was more elegant and the work of the architects Morgan, Walls and Clements.

The days of the ornate organ, the balcony and the baronial banquet room fell out of favour by the early 1950's; but in 2001 it was restored from a clothing store to its Italian Renaissance splendour.

From here I head to the point on Christopher Street West where on June 28th 1970 the first ever Pride March in the USA set off. Interestingly two of the key leaders of this march were clergymen (this sets an interesting context for the current debate in the Anglican Communion).

I must point out that the Walk of Fame is a death walk in the rain, I slipped and slided everywhere on my way home!

Saturday 21st April 2007. LA, California.

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Saturday in LA and I try finally to get some sleep this morning. The party room directly above me has seen some action each and every night and it seemed last night like the ceiling would come in on me. Anyway, its now 10am and they have started partying again.

This morning I spend time locating a San Francisco hotel and I have gone for a quality B&B on a US friends recommendation...after this dump I need to improve!

experiences and this city has so much more to offer than trashy tourism. I can do that when I am on holiday.

Well today I am at the iconic symbol of this City of the Angels, the Cathedral Church of Our Lady of the Angels and your first sight is not of a cathedral but of an ultra-modern complex that looks more like a university lecture hall or a modern art museum.

With its multi-storey car park, its shops and cafe and even its Parishioners Federal Credit Union Bank, this is catholicism for the twenty-first century...how refreshing!

The only real sign this is a church is the elegantly set carillion above the entrance gate.

I bought a book and headed off on a self-guided tour.

The plaza with its patio tables is very welcoming and as for the cathedral it is more like a concert hall and that I really like. This is very much a Californian church with its murals telling the early history of the church in the Republic.

The past though is not forgotten and the installation of a historic Spanish reredos (the traditional decorative screen that sits behind the altar of a church) owes much to Getty funding.

The tapestries that illuminate the walls run from St Margaret of Scotland and bring me again into contact with Rose of Lima all the way to Mother Teresa.

Symbolism though is all around and the baptismal font is not only a stunning piece of sculpture but as a plunge pool it evokes the Jordan beautifully.

See God's dwelling is among mortals. God will dwell with them. They will be God's people and God will be with them.

One failing though in this architectural gem are the confessionals that look remarkably like dungeons.

Down in the St V chapel you get the feeling of how traditional and hispanic the old cathedral must have been from the Stations of The Cross. There can though be no doubting that this remains a Hispanic community testified to by the handwritten intercessions I see.

The Mausoleum was creepy and yet beautiful, just as I felt at Recoleta in Buenos Aires...and likewise this is a spot for the wealthy I think.

I found Gregory Peck...does anyone know if this is "the" 'Gregory Peck', the dates seem to fit?

Many people have already bought their plots with names engraved and just the departure dates to be filled in. Modern as this cathedral is they thus have both full burial plots and cremation spaces...but I did not enjoy seeing the new resident moving in to one curtained off section...ugh! time to go and pronto!!

It was also very interesting to see the corporations who gave money to this building...and there was Bob Hope too, but it is Hollywood after all.

In the late afternoon I explored Grand Central Market a genuine locals market and not a tourist spot. Downtown LA has a deserted feel on the weekends with the offices closed and only the locals around.

Many of the people I encounter here live on life's periphery...the poor, the elderly, the drunks, the addicts, the poorly educated...the displaced.

The quality of downtown housing I explore is dreadful and thank God for my smattering of Spanish...it's the locals lingo.

Anyway its not really safe down here and I wouldn't want to be this far off the beaten track at night so its back to the subway and into Hollywood where I will dine with the other tourists.

You may think I am nuts heading so far off the beaten track but then I have to admit the only times I have been robbed or attacked have been in the "safe" tourist areas and my theory is that this is because these are the areas attackers know they will find booty...

I am not advocating it, but I generally feel safer in the downbeat neighbourhoods.

Saturday night is a beautiful moonlit night over LA with a clear sky and a crescent moon this city certainly has its beauty.

Note to students…In response to the questions about why I did not visit Rodeo drive I ask you why would I spend time touring a street full of shops and restaurants filled with the expensive bobbles and trinkets of materialism which few of us will ever afford and shops that are staffed by personnel who seem to think God has ordained them better than you. We have been such places on this trip and found positive and negative

Friday 20th April 2007. The City of Angels, California.

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Terribly wet weather today which only seems to make the drivers here go faster. Anyway, I had breakfast at a lovely little spot I had passed yesterday, the Café Europe back down on Santa Monica Boulevard. The absolutely delightful Danielle not only makes a mean breakfast, but she even went to all the bother of finding exact and easy routes for me to get both to the Getty Center and to the cathedral…she was one cool Aussie.

LA has a reasonably good public transport system, but it is fair to say that this is a city designed for the car.

So as I head out today along Sunset towards UCLA the area and the homes begin to get very upscale. The Beverley Hills Hotel looked very nice as I passed and you soon realise you are in fantasy land when waiting on the bus you see the students coming from the university campus and leaving in Bentley’s and a stream of vehicles most of us will only ever dream of.

But I am happy on the bus, where I can watch the world go by. I really enjoy traveling as everything is an experience, the people you meet and particularly those you see but never encounter as you move from A to B.

Today I will get my first and only view of the LA beaches and it will be from the balcony of the Getty Center; a truly stunning complex that is a work of art in itself…and the views of LA from this vantage point are unsurpassed.

A memorial to J. Paul Getty (1892-1976), the Getty Center was opened in 1997 and builds upon the already world-renowned reputation of the Getty Villa which opened in 1954 in Malibu.

The Getty Center is a stunning complex and climbing up on the tram is an added bonus with the fantastic views you are afforded of LA and its luxury homes. There is so much going on here that you need to limit yourself if you are to truly appreciate the art. I have chosen to attend the Caspar David Friedrich to Gerhard Richter: German Paintings from Dresden exhibition that presents eighteen works from the two best known Dresden painters: Friedrich, the voice of German romanticism and Richter, the most significant German artist working today.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Friedrich revolutionised European painting. By choosing to work not in the figural mode and by focusing his painting on the German lands he made landscape his primary subject. He moved from the recording and idealised classical vision of the land to a subjective, even romantic response to nature’s glory.

I certainly enjoyed Cross in the Mountains and Evening on the Baltic Shore, but generally his work was too moody for me. That said, he did forge the Romantic Movement with all its nocturnal, moonlit scenes as opposed to the clarity one gets with daylight.

In this exhibition we get two interesting views of landscape: Friedrich holding landscape as the cornerstone of his practice to reflect emotion and spirituality and Richter the contemplative skeptic. Both men commonly exhibit evocative characteristics rather than offering “records” and what they offer the viewer instead is an ambiguous and contemplative experience.

For me coming somewhere like the Getty is a huge challenge. I need to come with a specific plan of what I want to see and even then it takes me the best part of the day just to examine and interpret a limited expose. I have never been able to understand those people who have 'done the Louvre' in an afternoon.

I hadn’t intended on it, but as I passed Fatburger (which claims to be the ‘last great hamburger stand’ and where I saw the saucy burger advertised with A1 steak sauce) I had to try it. This American chain certainly produces fresh and ‘real’ burgers, the type you get from the hamburger stand at a funfair. But this is America after all and along with the 50's feel and the dukebox, there is an ultra-modern touch with a special area for those who have ordered online.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy old git, although some of my kids would tell you I have always been so, there is something wrong with a culture where so many youngsters drive ridiculously expensive and powerful cars at equally excessive speeds with no thought of the costs, in all their attendant forms, that are involved.

Oh, and whilst I am on a roll and just having returned to my hotel to use the loo, why is it that hotels insist on so much waste? Take my soap for example. Clean the room, great, but if you know the same person is staying on then why take away the soap? A new bar with its wasteful paper covering every day is excessive.

Well tonight I set off with the manbag, to find the NOHO Arts Center in North Hollywood. I am heading out by public transport and on foot, and as I get lost I ask for directions from what turns out to be a very unhelpful sheriff, but at least the nearby fireman helped me out.

The NOHO arts area calls itself an arts district and there are certainly overtures in that direction, but the sense of community is certainly not aided by the areas soulless buildings.

As for the NOHO Arts Center itself we get off to a bad start. Almost double the price of Celebration and no press pack, lets hope things improve.

Well, at least the toilets were lovely and one thing American theatre is not going to do is rip you off with overpriced programmes, these come as part of the package.

Bush is Bad…It is easy to knock Bush, much harder to defend him and maybe that is why it is like looking for a needle in a haystack to find an American who will admit voting for him. Yet, 59,054,087 of them did.

But when I hear my fellow theatre-goers talking about “I”raq as we wait for the house to open I am reminded of just how ignorant and politically illiterate many Americans are.

We enter the auditorium to strains of patriotic Americana and the first thing of note is how the symbolism of the democratic donkey outweighs the elephant of the G.O.P. in this thetare design. Oh and the audience…

Well many of them flaunt their wealth in both dress and speech and I get to wondering again about the equality of wealth concentration in our world. What frightens me is that such a great concentration of wealth is in the hands of what appear to be such judgmental and narrow people.

The poor start to this play begins with a very late commencement and continues when the first performer appears and the tech guy was so out of it, the lady stood there for sometime before we got going. My sixth form students could have done a better tech job.

For a musical, it would have helped if the performers could have held a note and even better if these actors could act. They were totally unconvincing and that’s why they are still in fringe theatre with careers that are going no where fast.

Now as for the play…

The problem with Bush bashing is that we may yet find that Bush, Blair and Howard are judged very differently by history long-term. After all Winston Churchill, arguably one of the world’s greatest ever leaders, was considered no more than a maverick in his wilderness years when he stood against the tide of contemporary opinion warning against the threat of Nazi Germany and the failings of the policy of appeasement. World history now focuses, not on his isolation, but on his greatness, standing alone in Britain’s darkest hour on his march to victory.

Whilst these three world leaders are lambasted and whilst there is no doubt they have made mistakes, the bigger picture may yet show them to be the great defenders of Western civilization against extremism. Or it may show them to have failed in recognising the closing days of Western culture and as such no more than futile bigots? Time and history will tell, but we must all think rather than just bash, or we are no more than bigots ourselves.

This was anything but a balanced play and as for the acting it killed an already mortally wounded duck!

It would have helped if the writer had gotten his facts correct…all that garbage about the ruling dynasties of Europe and only the Americans truly electing their leaders…

Please, modern America is one of the most undemocratic countries in the world. That said, the writer did recognize that to be in elected office here requires money.

If Bush is Bad, then trust me this piece of musical theatre is 100 times worse.

Well, its now late Friday nite in LA and the brothers are out in force. Lowered suspensions, tinted windows; this is boggin heaven, yet there is no doubt that these boggins have money.

As for me, I met Luke Skywalker on the way home and ended up feeling guilty all my walk back to my neighbourhood. You see, he said hello and I felt guilty as I sharply answered him and walked on without engaging him in conversation…but then I wasn’t sure about talking to strangers at night in LA.

When I get home I enjoy an interesting Napa Valley wine. Interesting, not just because it was local cabernet sauvignon called Screw Kappa Napa, but because it is designed to encourage Californians into a ‘life after cork’ and the joys of the screwcap.

Thursday 19th April 2007. LA, USA.

2007-04-22T19:12:00.001+01:00

Today I explore Santa Monica Boulevard where there seem to be a somewhat endless stream of memorials to the dead of this community, brought about by the impact of the ‘gay cancer’; HIV/Aids. I literally walked for miles and miles and miles today finding that I am one of the few who walks in this city.

Finally I found the AMEX office and now I have cash (limited, but at least its cash). My bank card seems to have given up on me and now I am relying on the travellers’ cheques I have. I negotiated freeways to get here and at times it felt like I was playing “chicken” with the automotive world.

The first thing I did, on having cash, was to go and feed the distinguished looking elderly African/American gentleman who had asked me as I passed earlier if I could spare any change. You really would have had to have a heart of stone to ignore him.

,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

One of the great things about walking is discovering that which drivers never see. Today I discovered the Children’s Clock by Lynn Goodpasture (2003) on the corner of Melrose and La Cienega, which is part of the West Hollywood Urban Art Program.

,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Anyway…time has moved on and I am sitting writing notes here in Holloway Park and Veteran’s Memorial on Santa Monica Boulevard and despite all the traffic going everywhere I am transported back (don’t know why) to when I was sitting and contemplating life in the botanic gardens in Buenos Aires. I think it must be all the poetry here, and it makes for a most interesting memorial to our war dead.

Amongst my favourites are:

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart
O when will it suffice?
William Butler Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’.

There in the heat of the battle,
There in the heat of the fight,
Loomed he, an ebony giant
Black as the prisons of the night.
Swinging his scythe like a mower
Over a field of grain.
Paul Laurence Dunbar, ‘Black Samson of Brandywine’.

How sleep the brave who sink to rest
By all their country’s wishes blest!
William Collins, ‘Ode Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746’.

They fill freezers with food.
Neon signs flash their intentions
into the years ahead.
And at their ears the sound
of the war.
They are Not listening, Not listening.
Denise Levertov, ‘Tenebrae’ (fall of 1967).

Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown
Thomas Hardy, ‘The Man He Killed’.

I loved seeing Hardy’s work here as it transported me back to my early Twenties in the beautiful county of Dorset.

This particular memorial has a dedication to all the people of West Hollywood and the members of diverse communities who have sacrificed much – all sharing a common ground allied in struggles against oppression and intolerance.

,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.

After a morning of contemplation I dined at Hugo’s on Santa Monica where today as part of ‘Dine Out, Los Angeles 2007’ (happening all across the city) a minimum of 20% of my bill will be donated to Aid For AIDS to help prevent homelessness and hunger for families and individuals impoverished and disabled by HIV/Aids. I am really glad the money went to the charity, but the food was bland and the service very poor.

As I continue exploring the area you get a real sense of just how liberal politics is in Hollywood. I see banners proclaiming ‘Obama 2008’ and 'Peace is Patriotic' as I walk the streets. This is a democratic heartland and there is something to be said for that.

My other observation today is the obsession with the body beautiful. I have never been anywhere in the world that is so materially and aesthetically obsessed. People don’t even take off their sunglasses inside the restaurants. Maybe its fashion, or maybe they just want to look important…I naturally fit right in, NOT!

With my old clothes (that I am now traveling with in case of another robbery) and my backpacker look…

BUT, then again this down-beat look helps on my walk to the Celebration Theatre tonight.

I wanted to see theatre in Hollywood and I refuse to go again to see Wicked the campest, daftest show I have ever seen; (it is the Wizard of OZ before the wicked witch went bad and I endured this high camp, kitsch extravaganza with no substance two years ago in Chicago and I simply won’t endure it again)…

Anyway, I am off to see Beautiful Thing, a play that I don’t know except that I have seen the book in the library at school.

So I set out for my night at the theatre and after a bit of a poking around I found Kinasee Thai Bistro on the corner of Fountain and La Brea which saved me from having to eat the industrial produce of some chain. And what a find it is, the food in this unassuming little place is great.

The area surrounding the theatre is definitely the less salubrious end of Santa Monica Boulevard and when any weirdo approaches me I simply talk loudly and violently to myself and shake a little…it works, they seem to think that I am nuttier than they are and this is a tactic I use when walking home through the mean streets of LA tonight.

Having located the theatre I head inside to see a play that is billed as an urban fairytale set in the unloveable surroundings of Thamesmead…before the performance begins it makes me want to be back in dear old Blighty. I loved the fact that on the way into the theatre there was a full glossary of East End patter and a history of 90’s Brit Pop culture to help set the scene.

As a back-drop, Thamesmead was a centre of 60’s urban utopian idealism where slum clearance was hailed as creating the new-Jerusalem of high rise living. The reality, as the world came to observe, was social depravation and crime-ridden hopelessness.

This theatre is very well run and keen to make its mark. On arrival they had a press pack ready for me in my role as a roving educational reporter.

Wednesday 18th April 2007. Los Angeles, California. United States of America.

2007-04-22T19:11:00.000+01:00

Well here I am in LA and what is on my to do list...the Hollywood Sign, a visit to the Grand Canyon, Sunset Strip, Disneyland, a tour of the star homes? Some of these may well be included the itinerary but I am here to investigate the real Hollywood.

As I was passing I decided to drop into the gothic revival Hollywood United Methodist Church, which was sadly closed. However, I explored a little further and Laura from the church office came and opened the building for me. It was quite beautiful in all its darkness and the limited lighting really helped me get a sense of the majesty of the stained glass. Sitting here alone with the whole church lit just for me, I get a true sense of peace in the hussle that is LA.

This congregation plays a leading role in integration here in Hollywood. As a reconciled congregation the community welcomes diversity and opens its doors to all whilst lobbying for greater acceptance of same gender unions within the wider Methodist community.

A thought for the moment…I really believe that if Our Lord was alive today he would be throwing us all out of the temple for our hatred, our bigotry and the prejudices that we allow to exist in our world.

I dined tonight at a Hollywood icon where the great and the good have been dining since Hollywood made its mark. The Musso & Frank Grill so reminded me of dining with my dear friends Carol and Dick Duhme; indeed it was the Town Club in dear old Jamestown transported to California. It had that elegant charm of a 1950’s dinner club.

The Egyptian Theater, my venue for tonight, proves to be very arthouse. The Egyptian is actually the older of the two famous Hollywood theatres and it has a very deep stage. Pre-dating the more famous Chinese Theater, the Egyptian was built in the early days of cinema when movie theatres had to offer a stage show in addition to the movie if they were to attract customers to the new medium that was the movies. In the side aisles here you can still see the hidden boxes where singers once stood, hidden from public view, to accompany the silent movies.

I couldn’t come to Hollywood and not see a movie and this was definitely the theatre in which to see it. Less famous than its sister, but far more historic.

Tonight’s offering is Small Town Gay Bar an insightful and award-winning documentary that is a courageous examination of small town life in general.

Taking the gay community as its focus this documentary takes us into communities where even meeting your friends for a drink in a local bar could mean risking your life. It is a tribute to the brave, courageous, creative and passionate owners and patrons of gay establishments, but in highlighting one type of bigotry it is a deeper reflection on the moral compass of America.

The film was enlightening but the after show question and answer debate was fascinating.

Described as noble in its mission, cute but not hot, this was true of this piece of film-making. I was as fascinated by the portrayal of life in bible-belt Mississippi with all the bigotry and hatred of “niggers” and “fags” etc as I was by the life of the main characters.

The Redneck attitudes of ignorance make you wish that such hatred could not breed, with the preaching of the ‘God hates’ message destroying our environment in its very broadest sense. This was a powerful film reflective of mans continuing inhumanity to his fellow man…and yet, all we have is each other!

Tuesday 17th April 2007. New Zealand to Los Angeles, USA.

2007-04-16T04:33:00.000+01:00

I start my day with breakfast at Gabe's. My mate is coming back from work to take me to the airport, these Scottish Kiwis are so very generous!

The trying ticket agent at Christchurch simply did not understand the ticketing situation. She was going on about me being a visitor to the United States...I mean me, a visitor? I was going HOME, but then she doesn't know my history so just go with the flow and her procedures.

My flight from Christchurch takes me back to New Zealand's main city, Auckland.

In summary a last New Zealand lesson...

The isthmus on which Auckland sits is so narrow you can walk from one coast to the other - but then again wherever you are in New Zealand you are never far from the sea. This striking similarity with Scotland may be one of the many reasons I have enjoyed this country so!

Inland are the mountains, lakes, valleys, plains and plateaux that give this country its beauty. The North Island is dotted with volcanic cones and the South Island has its long spine of mountains.

The Polynesian people came here in canoes during mass migrations after their ancestor Kupe found the country and named it 'Land of the Long White Cloud'.

The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman dubbed it 'Nieuw Zeeland' when he arrived in 1642 but it was the British navigator Captain James Cook who came in 1769 and hoisted the Union Jack changing life here forever.

Apart from the missionaries though European settlement was not to begin in earnest until 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed confirming New Zealand as a British Colony and placing the Maori under the protection of the Crown with continued rights to their tribal lands. In 1947 New Zealand grew to maturity as an independent nation and today she remains a member of the British Commonwealth family.

My flight to LA was less than excellent service. It was two hours before we were served anything...not even as much as a drink of water.

Anyway I settle in and begin my movie marathon with Bobby set against the melting pot of hopes, dreams and tragedy that characterised America in the 60's.

June 4th 1968 was a night when a cross-section of America had gathered for the arrival of Bobby Kennedy at an election night party. It was a night when the Kennedy dream was to die. Bobby was shot dead and the countries life would take a dramatic turn just at a time when the nation was coming to terms with struggles related to race, sexual equality, class and the Vietnam War.

In a nation in crisis one man had seemed to have the ability to unify the races...what a story and what a major league cast dealing with major issues...and what a disappointment.

Next stop is The History Boys (a production I saw at least five times at The National)...The film is the same cast as The National production and I am getting very Arthouse at 30,000ft.

In a strange way this film took my mind to the real world that I've have seen this past year in all its manifestations. Not simply a world outside the ivory towers of academia, but a world outside of Western civilisation. The film served to remind me how much I don't interact well with that world and how much I enjoy the cloistered world of the classroom.

The History Boys took me back to those wonderful Grammar School days I spent in Bournemouth with the cream of young academics from the non-public school elite where I could exercise the socialist ideal of academic and socio-economic advance irrespective of one's socio-economic status...although I must confess the reality was very middle class, the film serves to remind just how sad the passing of the grammar school system was.

In a world of mis-informed ignorance I often hear myself scream, for God's sake someone pass on some genuine knowledge. That is why I have always loved The History Boys as it reminds me of sun-kissed S'level English lessons and June Head's Drama. It takes me back to the Gentleman's Club quiz team on a Tuesday night at the Iford Bridge under the tutelage of Dr Cruttenden.

And I have been lucky enough in my career to work with them all...Hector, Irwin, Dorothy and the Headmasteresque types (whom if you don't watch out they are how you metamorphosise into) with their academic snobbery based on no academic foundation and their hatred of the true intellectuals of the world of which they can never be one.

It does get very bumpy mid-Pacific...and so it is time for a fabulously depressing movie, Notes on a Scandal.

My last attempt at movie going was Marie Antoinette. After my Singapore experience with her mother I meet the French Queen at 36,000ft and she sends me to sleep...Sandra Marsh would be proud!

...Oh yes and this is the second Qantas flight where I have broken the soap dish in the bathroom.

TUESDAY AGAIN....

Descending into this vast metropolis through a thick blanket of smog, I arrive in LA before I have left New Zealand because of the time difference and so I am having Tuesday again.

It was on the airport bus into Union Station that I got to learn that my flight companion and I had more than the Birmingham University connection we had identified some fourteen hours before in common...we also had Bournemouth School (it is such a small world!).

It took some effort but I negotiated the subway and the bus out to my hotel. I have been spoilt in New Zealand which really does have excellent tourist facilities, not so here and the locals ain't proving that friendly either.

I've never seen so many hoodies in all my life as I do on the LA Metro, and here I am looking like the tourist with the coffin and its lime green cousin, the man bag and my back pack.

Well Gabe and Alex tried to warn me; let's just say that a half star would be the limit of this hotel...but when you are on a budget, then budget you must.

What is interesting is the way people treat you. On a public bus with all that luggage and me with my poly bags in toe. Because I am staying in a scuzzy neighbourhood people look down on you; very different to some of the treatment I have had this year as a Glasgow University academic, or indeed the sort of attention I get in my pin-stripe suit with my briefcase.

It is just as well I ran out of cash and it took a few days to update this blog, because I was out of here before my Mum could worry...It was the sort of motel where you expected the murder squad to turn up at any point to take away a dead prostitute from one of the rooms; trust me, never stay in a half-star...before this I didn't even know they existed!

Monday 16th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-16T04:30:00.000+01:00

Today is my last full day in New Zealand and I am spending it packing and getting lots of administrative work (particularly the blog) up-to-date.

I am moving out of the house share today and will spend the night at my mate Gabe's after the dinner party we are having for my departure.

The greatest compliment I could pay New Zealand is that wherever I have gone I have found that this absolutely delightful country has a neighbourliness that Britain lost forty years ago.

Dinner was exquisite. Gabe is quite the cook and he and his mates Steve and Per and I dined as well as I have in many of the top restaurants I have visited this trip...it was a great night with great company, thanks lads!

Sunday 15th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-16T04:11:00.000+01:00

I must be looking like such an old man these days. The young teenage group also waiting for the bus stood back politely to let me board first. Thank-you I said and 'sweet as' came the standard kiwi reply.

Today I meet up with my friend Lee Harris from the Canterbury Museum for brunch. She and I dine at the Swiss Cafe on New Regent Street and watch the tram going by with live jazz playing onboard as part of the city's International Jazz and Blues Festival.

It was funny that when the tram stopped outside they were playing and singing...You are My Sunshine (memories for me of the Marae).

Lee and I head off to explore Edmonds Rotunda which was presented on September 26th 1929 as a bandstand for the city by T.J. Edmonds of the Edmonds Cookbook family fame as a celebration of fifty years of residence in Christchurch.

Appropriately this is now a very nice restaurant and a great use of this former bandstand. It is only open Tuesday to Saturday but we did manage to get a look in the kitchens where they were preparing for a wedding function tonight.

Off via the central library for afternoon drinks at Viaduct on Oxford Terrace. Having a holiday home in Arrowtown, Lee insisted that we have a Central Otago pinot noir from Mt Difficulty and it was lovely.

In the late afternoon I am off to see Cats at the Isaac Theatre Royal where my mate Michael Lee Porter, one of New Zealand's top actors, is starring as Old Deuteronomy. After Cats mikie has one more production (directing his students at the university this time) before he heads off to Melbourne to begin a two year run in Australia touring with Phantom of the Opera.

Cats was a simply stunning production. The West End and Broadway could not have done better. This is arguably the best production of Cats I have ever seen. Even when the cloth got caught in the trap door they dealt with its removal very professionally.

I round off another perfect day with dinner at The Brickworks in Cashmere with Gabe and Steve.

Saturday 14th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-16T03:50:00.000+01:00

I began my day with a haircut from my good friend Gabe McCobb. He only does exclusive clients now and whats more I got my haircut as a gift...what a guy and what a hairdo. Christchurch's top hairdresser has given me the best haircut I have ever had, he made such a good job you could even argue that it would be worth flying to New Zealand for a haircut if that wasn't so extreme. That said if you are going to be in town I'll put you in touch.

I then spent a great morning with Gabe and Alex (his German mate)before we headed off into town to explore Lichfield Lanes where Christchurch's once dingy back alleys are getting a makeover and are becoming gentrified. I must say it is all being done very well and very arthouse.

After drinks at The Excelsior I had my first bulls eye from the British candy shop along with some toffee bon-bons.

Later in the day we met Steve for drinks at The Bohemian on Cambridge Terrace before Gabe and I dined at Nancy Ave Fish and Chip shop in St Albans.

Tonight I am attending Christchurch Symphony and Falling in Love Again. For a horrible 70's building it is an amazing auditorium and what a performance. The symphony was outstanding and as for Marlene Dietrich well
...Jennifer Ward-Lealand at times approached one of the twentieth century's great entertainment legends...but she didn't have the husky voice, her stage presence (though nice) was not seductive...really she was more Grace Kelly than Dietrich - that said it was a very enjoyable evening.

I am truly starting to feel that I am back where I belong. Its a Saturday night and I am at the symphony, my old school chum Stephen would be proud.

For a modern venue the Town Hall organ looks superb (I wish I could have gotten to hear it though), but I did get to sit with two lovely old ladies (one of whoms father is an old boy of Dulwich College, a school I know very well).

I am pleased also to see that people still dress for the symphony here in Christchurch.

Waiting again for the bus I take Gabe's advice and have myself my first ever Moro bar. It is New Zealand's equivalent of the Mars Bar and it was excellent.

Friday 13th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-12T21:20:00.001+01:00

Today I am off to the International Antarctic Centre where I can get to see New Zealand's famous Little Blue Penguin (a link back to our time in the Galapagos Islands).

Antarctica...what is it? Where is it? Why is it of such growing global significance today, and what important role does New Zealand play in Antarctica today?

Before we get started lets sort out that common mistake...Antarctica is a frozen continent surrounded by water whereas the Arctic is a frozen sea surrounded by land.

Did you know that Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, driest and highest continent on earth? A cold desert twice the size of Australia, sixty times bigger than New Zealand; or the size of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea...but this is only in summer however.

When the tilt of the earth brings dusk to Antarctica in April the sea begins to freeze spreading out around the continent during the cold months of winter. In fact the sun disappears for four months at Scott Base rising at the end of August, while at the South Pole it disappears for nearly six months. By the end of September/early October 17 million square kilometres of frozen ocean has formed around the coast more than doubling its size.

Antarctica is the world's 5th largest continent and yet rain has never been recorded down there. The snow that does fall has no moisture content and so humans dehydrate very quickly.

In July 1983 the lowest temperature of -89.2 degrees celsius was recorded at Vostok a Russian base high up on the polar plateau. Add the windchill factor to that and temperatures can plummet below -100 degrees celsius.

It is difficult for us to comprehend how cold that is, but walking out into that temperature would kill us within a minute. If the air temperature falls below that of the body then body heat will be taken away by the moving air. The faster the air moves the more heat it drags away.

The moisture in our lungs would instantly freeze and our blood would set like jelly. Our hearts would not cope. Fortunately Scott Base and other research stations on the periphery of the continent don't get that cold. Temperatures haven't been recorded below -57 degrees celsius at Scott Base. This is one of the reasons why almost all bases are on the coast. Only Vostok and South Pole Station are located inland on the Polar Plateau. The average mean temperature in Antarctica is -35 degrees celsius and at Scott Base -22 degrees celsius.

Katabatic Winds flow down the coastal slopes from the Polar Plateau under the influence of gravity. These wind gusts can exceed speeds of 180 miles per hour. The highest wind recorded on the continent peaked at 320 km/h. Antarctica is a large white dome shape because there are no valleys, forests, rivers, trenches and very few mountains. Nothing can slow the winds down from building up speed as they rush across the continent towards the coast.

Antarctica is the driest continent on earth. The amount of precipitation that falls is comparable to that of rain falling in the Sahara Desert. Only an average of two inches of snow per annum falls at the South Pole; Christchurch gets around twenty six inches of rainfall per year.

Because of the dry atmosphere where humidity is around 0%, and the strong winds, and the lack of water fire is the greatest danger for people working on the ice. This is one of the reasons why they hate smokers there.

It is also vital to keep up your water intake. Approximately one litre of water every three to five hours is required to prevent dehydration. When camping out in the field your fluid intake comes in the form of ice. This ice is very dry with little moisture unlike the wet ice in New Zealand. A lot of melted ice is required for daily requirements. Field workers can spend many hours just melting enough ice for their drinking and cooking needs. A small kerosene primus is used to heat ice for water and to cook dehydrated food while out camping.

The ice is like grains of sand from a beach or icing sugar. It doesn't melt easily in your hand and squeaks when walking on it. Survival clothing does not need to be waterproof, as it does not get wet! You can lie on the clear blue ice of Lake Vanda (in the Dry Valleys) for as long as you like and you won't get wet. The ice is dry!

Mount Everest may be the highest point on earth but Antarctica can proudly claim to be the highest continent. The average elevation of landmass is 7500 feet. The highest point on the continent is Mt Vinson Massif at 14,691ft in the Sentinel Range south of the Antarctic Peninsular.

On top of the already high landmass is an ice cap covering 98% of it. This ice block equates to 90% of all the world's ice and 70% of the world's reserves of fresh water. The thickness of the ice cap away from the coast is between 1.5 - 3 miles. If it was to melt today the world's oceans would rise by 150 - 180ft and the weight of the ice is so immense that if removed it is estimated that the underlying bedrock would rise approximately 1500ft.

The 2% of the continent that is ice-free allowed scientists to discover that Antarctica yields some of the most ancient of rocks at over 400 million years old. They have been formed under very high pressure and in high temperature conditions at great depths. In these dry valleys of rock the ground is permanently frozen half a kilometre deep. It hasn't rained or snowed in these valleys for over two million years and organic material is preserved for centuries. Despite the severe climate some plant life survives there.

Over 500 species of algae have been found in Antarctica along with some 125 different lichens and 30 moss species. The growth rate of lichen can be as little as a millimetre every 100 years or more.

Wildlife in Antarctica is abundant and is not endangered in any way. All wildlife are marine animals. There are four types of penguins, five species of seals, baleen and toothed whales, birds, around 125 species of fish, plankton and zooplankton...and that is it! No polar bears, no Eskimos and no Santa Claus!

Polar bears and penguins have never actually met. All wildlife rely directly or indirectly on Antarctic Krill (a small red six centimetre shrimp-like crustacean). The biomass of Krill is estimated to be as high as 500 million tonnes or 36 million square kilometres i.e. four and a half times the area of Australia. The Blue Whale alone eats up to 4400 kilograms of it a day! No wonder - it is some 40 metres long, has a tongue the size of a baby elephant, and the heart the size of a small car - hence it is the biggest animal to ever live on earth!

Antarctica has no peer as a wilderness. This vast land and its surrounding seas are dominated by nature, by cold, wind, ice and snow. The continent itself is barren. Antarctic wildlife depends on food from the ocean for its survival. Humans can only exist there with support from the outside world, survival is dependent on technology.

Antarctica does strange things to the human body. In the long dark winter you must survive months without sunlight. Body hair grows twice as fast and the body lays down more fat with the skin losing pigmentation during winter.

There are over 40 permanent scientific research stations in Antarctica most crowded onto the Antarctic Peninsula south of South America. New Zealand's research activity is concentrated on the opposite side of the continent on Ross Island, 3,832km due south from Christchurch.

Countries have established bases in Antarctica with the predominant desire to understand more about this great continent and its global significance:

Politically - by living within the stipulation's of the Antarctic Treaty (being there for peaceful purposes and guaranteed freedom of scientific research). This treaty is fifty years old this year and governs the continent.

There is no need for a passport in Antarctica as the continent belongs to no-one...several countries just occupy it! The Antarctic Treaty is a unique legal agreement that ensures the use of Antarctica for peaceful and scientific purposes through international cooperation. It bans all military activities and promotes freedom of scientific research on the continent.

Scientific work is principally based around three main themes: Antarctic Physical Environments Research, Southern Ocean Research and Antarctic Ecosystems Research; giving an insight into the importance of Antarctica as a global indicator of the earth's health. This region after all contains some of the most undisturbed ecosystems in the world with global environmental pressures such as climate change and ozone depletion having the greatest potential to impact on the very fragile ecosystem that exists.

The Antarctic is a great cooling tower for the planet and what happens to it WILL determine global weather patterns.

Environmentally - by encouraging on-going awareness and education of people to keep this land unspoilt and as pristine as it is now.

The geology of much of Antarctica is a pre-Cambrian shield similar to those of Western Australia and South Africa which are rich in minerals. Whilst mining is possible the Protocol on Environmental Protection now bans mining and mineral exploration for fifty years.

Antarctica could be mined just like Alaska if we don't fight to protect the last great 'and fragile' wilderness on earth.

New Zealand has carried out an annual science program from Scott Base since 1957. The current emphasis is given to the impact of human activities, ecosystems, climate research and terrestrial evolutions.

Antarctic science is exciting and covers a wide range of activities such as biological sciences, atmospheric and space physics, glaciology and medical research.

Antarctica New Zealand operates from the International Antarctic Centre. It also houses the United States Antarctic Programme operations, the National Science Foundation and the Italian Antarctic Programme. 70% of all personnel going to the ice each year leave from Christchurch.

Therefore Christchurch can proudly claim to be the Gateway to Antarctica, the Great White South. It has been this way since the early discovery expeditions of Robert Falcon Scott from Lyttelton at the turn of the century.

New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance in the early 1980's placed the programme under threat as it meant US warships were no longer welcome in New Zealand's ports. Until the late 1970's everything went down to Antarctica by sea but fortunately for the Antarctic Programme technology had improved such that aeroplanes and thus the US Airforce could take over the transport in the early 1980's and the naval role could be removed...avoiding any difficult diplomatic situations.

New Zealand continues to set firsts in the Antarctic and one of its greatest sons, Sir Edmund Hillary was actually the first man to reach the South Pole by land mechanized means when he became the leader of the New Zealand contingent of the British Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957/8 and pioneered along with his team a new route to the South Pole.

Antarctica is a unique ecosystem...The Antarctic ice and the air trapped in it can tell us a great deal about the past as the ice formed from snow that fell over thousand's of years. It allows scientists to tell when major volcanoes erupted, you can even tell that the industrial revolution has started.

This is an excellent attraction educational, fun and informative...and as you are reminded here "if Antarctica is well, the rest of the world will be healthy!"...We all need to look after it!!

I had great fun. One of the first things you learn here is that coloured flags are used to designate safe routes for vehicle and foot travel in the Ross Region with black flags indicating areas of danger or places of caution such as crevasses, sea ice cracks, fuel lines or communications cabling.

Practical planning means that all vehicles are attached to an electric plug at the hitching rail when not in use. The plug connects to the vehicle and keeps the engine, battery and coolant warm to make starting the vehicle easier. It also runs a heater in the cabs of the vehicles keeping engines warm reduces wear on the vehicle increasing its useful life.

I had to have a ride on one of those vital Antarctic vehicles, the Hagglund. It was better than a funfair and it was here that I began my staring role in a Thai family's holiday video. This continued when I took in the simulated Antarctic Storm and met the family again.

It was cold enough in the simulator at -5 degrees celsius before the temperature fell and the wind hit 60 knots...it was freezing!

The highlight though were the Little Blue Penguins (45cm). I have gone from the world's rarest penguins in the Galapagos to the world's smallest here in New Zealand.

The oldest penguin remains in the world have been found here in New Zealand at Waipara near Christchurch. The fossil has been named 'Waimanu' the Maori word for waterbird. It is believed the species inhabited the east coast of New Zealand some 60 - 62 million years ago.

Little Blue Penguins are nocturnal. Before the arrival of man marine mammals and sharks were the only predators of the penguin in New Zealand. Today sadly land based threats come from dogs, cats, stoats and ferrets. Further threats come from marine pollution like plastic wrapping and oil spills, and from threats such as urban sprawl into nesting sites and motor vehicles on beaches and coastal roads.

Unlike fish whose eyes work really well under water and most other birds who can only see properly on land, penguins eyes work really well on both land and under the water.

On these Little Blue Penguins there are approximately 10,000 feathers packed densely to provide a multi-layered plumage that is both waterproof and supple assisting in streamlining in water. The downy under-feathers trapping a layer of warm air close to the skin whilst the dense outer feathers offer a watertight barrier against the cold sea water.

Oh yes...and as they are birds and not fish the penguin needs air to survive and thus they dive only for about one minute at a time.

The Maori Legend... Taroa the albatross and Tawaki the penguin were constantly arguing about which of them was better at flying and fishing. Eventually Tane Mahuta the Lord of the Forest got fed up with their bickering and decided to settle the matter by offering each a gift.

To Taroa he gave the longest wing of any seabird so that he could sail the ocean winds far from land in search of food and to Tawaki he gave narrow flipper wings so that he could fly beneath the ocean waves to catch all the fish he needed.

Our time on this planet is short and we are only caretakers of the environment in which we live.

Got the bus back from the airport only to discover that it was a $7 fare and not the usual $2.50...tourist rates you see!...but if I walked one stop down it would only be $2.50. Anyway the lady driver was cool and as I am currently a local resident and she's seen me on the bus before I got a locals fare!

I dined at the oh so trendy Dux de Lux (...so cool it has one other branch only and that's in Queenstown) where few patrons are aware at first that this is not a meat restaurant, veggie and seafood only. Trendy it may be, lovely it wasn't!

Tonight I am off to the art house cinema where I see Miss Potter at the Cloisters Cinema. This movie theatre still feels like the small lecture theatre it once was.

I tried tonight to attend the late evening ghost walk. My friend, the Christchurch actor Michael Lee Porter had advised me that this show was not up to Edinburgh or even London's Jack the Ripper walk, but I thought I would give it a go anyway. Turns out that all the other tourists thought the same and there are no spaces available.

I had a drink at the Bard on Avon (just for a heat...it is a freezing cold night) whilst waiting for the bus that was forty minutes late. The one thing Christchurch needs to do is review its public transport system. The routes are not bad, if only you could rely on the buses turning up on time, or indeed turning up!

Thursday 12th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-12T04:58:00.000+01:00

Today I must spend working on the project and getting the administrative work done for the new American section of the project!!

That said, I could not come to Christchurch and not have an Asian meal. The Asian population in New Zealand has exploded in recent years and the community is now a significant section of society.

I dined with Gabe in town at Sunny Garden before we headed out to Shirley to Coffee Culture.

Wednesday 11th April 2007. Akaroa, New Zealand.

2007-04-12T02:11:00.000+01:00

About 850 AD according to legend, the first ancestor Rakaihautu with his magic digging stick dug out the mountain lakes. During the first six centuries of Moa-hunter occupation the tribal succession of Hawea, Rapuwai and Waitaha exterminated the moa and burnt out the primeval forests to create the open plains known as Nga Pakihi Whaka Tekateka o Waitaha.

The later migration tribes of Ngati-Mamoe (1505-1650) and Ngai-Tahu (1675-1830) crossed from the North Island to introduce kumara cultivation, warfare and intensified working of pounamu (nephrite-greenstone).

When Cook sailed off the coast on February 17th 1770 populous settlements extended from the Clarence River to the Otago Peninsula.

At Akaroa on June 12th 1848, H. Tacy Kemp as an agent of the New Zealand Company purchased the greater part of the South Island from the Ngai-Tahu people.

So today I am heading out to Akaroa the site of France's only colonisation attempt in New Zealand. Enroute I stopped for breakfast in Little River at the Little River Cafe and Store. Whilst in town I also took the opportunity to view the Allan Batt exhibition The Coast.

I spent a lovely day wandering around the town with PJ (my friends Jack Russell Terrier). The two key sites I wanted to visit were Akaroa Head Lighthouse. This light first exhibited in 1880 and it sits some 270ft above sea level with a tower that stands 28ft tall. The white light flashes once every ten seconds and can be seen for 23 miles in clear weather.

The other is St Patrick's on the site where Bishop Pompallier offered his first Mass on the South Island on October 25th 1840. This is the site of the first church in Canterbury (which like the old Cathedral in Canterbury, England was Catholic in origin). It was built in 1841 near Rue Lavaud and named after St Philip and St James. The second church, St Mary's was built near the French Cemetery in 1844 but was damaged by a storm in 1849.

St Patrick's was the third Catholic Church in Akaroa and was built in 1865. It is a stunning colonial and intimate church where the statue of St Theresa Little Flower of Jesus was identical to that in my grandmothers home.

Two priests Frs Comte and Pezant were aboard the naval vessel l'Aube that entered the harbour on the evening of August 15th 1840. The Comte de Paris colonists came ashore on the 19th and on Sunday August 23rd Mass was offered for the first time on shore. Bishop Pompallier arrived some six weeks later.

Akaroa was once the home of the Cocksfoot industry in New Zealand. Cocksfoot is a hardy strain of pasture grass that was first imported from England in 1852 and proved so successful that growing the grass for seed became an industry in itself. In good years as many as 100,000 sacks of seed were shipped off this peninsula to grow pastures all over New Zealand and New South Wales.

Harvesting grass seed was a seasonal job which brought gangs of young men to the Peninsula from all over the country. For a month or so they lived rough, worked hard and hopefully went home with some money saved up. Growing cocksfoot for seed only ceased when more sophisticated strains of grass were imported after World War II.

The Banks Peninsula was formed following violent eruptions by three volcanoes. The craters nurse the harbours of Akaroa and Lyttelton and smaller bays indent the rest of the coastline.

First sighted by Captain Cook in 1770 the peninsula was named for the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. Then inhabited by Maori of the Ngai Tahu tribe, there numbers were to be severely depleted in 1831 when Te Rauparaha and his warriors attacked the fortified Pa on Onawe Peninsula.

In 1838 Jean Langlois, captain of the French whaling ship Cachalot negotiated with a local Maori chief to buy the Banks Peninsula. On his return to France he formed the Nanto-Bordelaise Company which organised for 57 emigrants to leave on the Comte de Paris accompanied by the warship L'Aube captained by Charles Lavaud for the long journey to New Zealand.

When Lavaud arrived at the Bay of Islands he was told of the terms of the Treaty of Waitangi and consequent British sovereignty over New Zealand. HMS Britomart was immediately sent to raise the British flag at Akaroa. The Nanto-Bordelaise Company sold its assets and land claims to the New Zealand Company in 1849, the French settlers having chosen to remain at Akaroa. They were joined by a larger group of British colonists in 1850.

I lunched at Dooberry's (over-priced, small portions and poor service), before I drove back to Christchurch and returned the hire car.

Tonight I decided to cook at home but not before I walked to Northlands Mall in the pouring rain to get the ingredients for my butter chicken and got soaking wet...and just as I got home my flatmates arrived back with Pizza...so i'll cook another night.

Tuesday 10th April 2007. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-09T20:55:00.000+01:00

In planning the settlement of Christchurch the Canterbury Association London brought out about 3,550 settlers on 25 ships between 1850 and 1853. Sparsely inhabited the area supported a few nearby Maori settlements together with those Europeans already here.

The Pre-Adamite Settlers of Canterbury...From 1830-1850 the territory now known as Canterbury, long the home of the Maori, saw its first Pakeha settlers. Referred to later as the 'pre-Adamites' these settlers came from the British Isles, Europe, Australia, North America and other parts of New Zealand. Most lived on the Banks Peninsula. Akaroa where the French began a settlement in 1840 being their principal community.

They worked as flax traders, whalers, bush cutters, boat builders, carpenters, farmers, housewives, clergy, artisans, nurses, hotel keepers, merchants, domestics and general labourers. Active also in this area were the agents and surveyors preparing for the arrival of the first Canterbury Association settlers in December 1850.

Today I am taking things a little easier and I will begin my day with what they call High Tea (although it is only lunch time) at Warner's Historic Hotel in the heart of the City.

It is strange that in the England of the Antipodes Afternoon Tea is not a common or popular event...you would think a half descent tour operator would offer such a delight alongside events such as punting on the Avon.

The presence of a hotel building on the Warner's site dates back to 1863, when John Coker established "Cokers Commercial Rooms". The following year Mr William White took over and the building was renamed "The Commercial Hotel". He was succeeded in 1874 by William Frances Warner and forever afterwards the hotel became known as Warners.

The hotel remained in the Warner family until 1900. William Warner died tragically in a boating accident in the estuary in Sumner in 1896 and the hotel license was transferred to his wife Alice.

In 1900 a devastating fire consumed the front two storey wooden building and, Phoenix-like, a handsome and substantial brick building arose to take its place. The new "Warners Hotel" opened in October 1901.

Mr Percy Herman proprietor took over the running of Warner's Hotel for two years and was succeeded at fairly regular intervals by no less than eight licensees in the next 12 years.

Warner's originally was a three storied building designed by noted architect Joseph Clarkson Maddison. Around 1910 Luttrell Brothers were commissioned to add an extra storey to the hotel and were also responsible in 1917 for the demolition of the northern section of the building to make way for the construction of the Liberty Theatre.

The south facing portion eventually establishing the existing architectural character was completed around 1920. The hotel went through an extensive renovation and refurbishment in 1934 with several pieces of furniture remain today from that time.

For the last 50 years of the twentieth century the hotel went through various changes. Although undergoing a refurbishment in 1987, a drop in tourism numbers and competition from new hotels saw Warners accommodation change to a backpacker hostel.

During the mid 1990's a battle to save Warners began. The threat of demolition had been mooted in the 1960's and it came close again several times during the 1990's. In December 2000 the building once again changed hands ensuring it's survival.

Then began a complete restoration of Warners. The vacant section, left by the demolition of the Savoy Theatre, formerly the Liberty Theatre, is now Bailies Garden Bar. The ground floor bar and restaurant have been restored, with many features retained. The two magnificent Victorian Lantern ceilings, the oak panelling, and exposed floor boards have all been preserved with gas now replacing the original open fireplaces.

Did you know that Christchurch had the first telephone exchange in New Zealand? Well today it feels a bit like those days as I sit at my High Tea surrounded by a gaggle of blue haired old ladies...what makes women of a certain age dye their hair blue? If a teenager did this they would be considered a rebel. Oh, and the high tea, it was pretty poor, but the service was good.

It is another sun-drenched day in Christchurch as I sit here in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Cathedral Square enjoying the street performers. I am off down to the river before I head out of town to Willowbank.

The city is famous for its weeping willow trees but few know the illustrious history of this flora. After landing in New Zealand on the French whaling ship 'Le Nil' in 1838, Francois Le Lievve planted weeping willow cuttings in Akaroa that were taken from Napoleon's grave on the island of St Helena. The first willows planted on the banks of the Avon grew from cuttings taken from these trees.

Taking Shanks' pony it's quite a hike out from Papanui to Willowbank Wildlife Reserve which has developed out of a love and respect for wildlife and the environment, and the hike is well worth it!

The New Zealand Conservation Trust which manages this site is a charitable trust aimed at preserving New Zealand species. The trust has been very successful in the breeding, and thus the survival, of the kiwi and it is a key partner in Operation Nest Egg.

Operation Nest Egg allows eggs to be removed from the wild and flown or driven here to Willowbank where they are incubated and hatched. Once the chicks are strong enough they are taken to predator free islands until they reach the weight of 1-1.2kg. This allows them to get through the stage where they are critically vulnerable to predators. When they attain the magic weight they are returned to the area where the egg came from.

We need to remember that until the arrival of Europeans (in the last two hundred years) all of New Zealand was a predator free island where only birds and the Maori existed.

I spend a wonderful afternoon visiting the Wild New Zealand and Heritage New Zealand parks where I am introduced to many native species such as the Arapawa Goat, the Auckland Island Pig and the Pukeko and to introduced species such as the Llama (one of the world's longest domesticated animals, now over 6000 years), the Clydesdale (that Scot's work horse that was introduced worldwide from its home in the Clyde Valley)and the lovely (and very small) Red-Eared Turtle.

My attention though is grabbed by an animal you are unlikely ever to see. The story of the Waitoreke (the New Zealand Otter) began with the landing of Captain Cook who is credited with its first sighting in a pocket of native settlement in Dusky Sound.

Many theories persist as to whether this creature has actually survived here in New Zealand. Since Cook's time there have been additional otter sightings by a variety of people the earliest of which was by Haast in 1861 who wrote

"In the upper Ashburton River in a region never trodden by man I saw its tracks, the same as the European Otter only smaller".

Many years later G.A.Pollock took up the quest discovering Maori knowledge of the creature. Many theories exist to explain the otters existence, the most credible being that it was brought to New Zealnd by Southern India's Tamil navigators who used the animals as fishing guides, in a shepherding manner to help them catch fish.

The Tamils were certainly in the Weka Pass and some believe they could have landed in Canterbury with the otters escaping and dispersing southwest to Southland and Westland.

This is an excellent reserve providing a wonderful insight into our natural history. I am particularly enamoured of the Heritage New Zealand section with its old farm machinery and a look into what life must have been like for those early settler farmers.

Tonight I am taking a nocturnal tour of New Zealand's birds and reptiles and you can certainly feel the cold nights drawing in. The highlight naturally was the Kiwi and I got to see around twelve. I could not have come all the way to New Zealand and not have seen a kiwi and I must say they are larger than I expected.

Weta's are often mistakenly taken for the kiwi but the clue is in the beak, the Weta has a much smaller beak. New Zealand's wildlife is largely nocturnal and so this tour is a must...I even get to learn that just as in the UK, all the swans in New Zealand are the property of HM The Queen.

Dined tonight at Thai Square in Papanui.

Easter Monday. Christchurch, New Zealand.

2007-04-09T03:09:00.000+01:00

I begin the day with brunch at Cafe Metro on Colombo. Today I am off the tourist track to arguably the finest building in Christchurch, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, which sadly most tourists ignore as it is not sited in the central tourist area.

The Cathedral stands today as an enduring symbol of the vision and courage of a bishop and the faith and generosity of his people. It had its beginnings in a small wooden building erected on the site in 1860.

The land had been granted to the Church by the Provincial Council and the small building served as chapel and home for the first resident priest appointed to the Christchurch Mission.

As the "non-establishment" church of the Empire and in this Anglican community, the land granted by the Provincial Council for the building was sited on the edge of the settlement in an area prone to subsidence. The resulting building is magnificent yet even today this remains an ugly industrial part of town. In any other city this gem would be set in parkland and would be a must see.

The original Church of the Blessed Sacrament opened in 1864 and was greatly enlarged in later years. It became the Pro Cathedral of the Diocese of Christchurch upon its establishment in 1887. Its first bishop, the Rt.Rev. John Joseph Grimes SM (Society of Mary) dreamt of replacing the ageing and inadequate church with a Cathedral that would honour God and grace the young and growing city. Grimes had been born in Bromley, Kent (a town in which I once lived, just 8 years before the Canterbury Association founded the City of Christchurch).

At the turn of the last century his dream became a reality with the Cathedral built to the designs of Francis William Petre bewteen 1901 and 1905.

The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament is regarded as one of the finest examples of church architecture in Australasia. Petre specialised in the building of churches and achieved considerable recognition in the field of architecture and engineering. He was a pioneer in concrete construction.

The Cathedral so impressed George Bernard Shaw that he hailed its architect as a "New Zealand Brunelleschi".

The foundation stone of the Cathedral was laid in 1901 and the contractors, J & W Jamieson completed the building in four years. Fifty men were employed on its construction which required more than 120,000 cubic feet of stone, 4000 cubic feet of concrete and 90 tons of steel. The Cathedral was blessed and opened on the 12th of February 1905 at a total cost of fifty two thousand pounds.

The Cathedral is often referred to as "the Basilica". While its style is Roman Renaissance and based on that of old Roman basilicas, it contains much that is original. Normally the dome would be sited above the junction of the nave and the transept. By placing the dome above the sanctuary the architect provided a visual climax to the interior which is rich in movement and delightful in its simplicity.

The whole of the interior presents a harmony of spacious arcades, colonnades with their varied (Corinthian and Ionic) capitals and an interplay of gracious arches. The ambulatory and gallery provide a cool special feeling and the beauty of the interior is further enhanced by the mosaic tiling in the sanctuary and ceilings of embossed zinc. The Cathedral itself is some 210ft long and 106ft wide with a dome that reaches 135ft. There is permanent seating for 600 but up to one thousand can be accommodated on great occasions.

Points to see...

The Bishop's Chair situated in the apse which establishes the building as a Cathedral, with the word 'cathedral' coming from the Latin for chair.

The Altar of reconstituted stone containing the relics of Saints Severinus and Lucidus (from the former high altar); St Anthony Mary Zaccaria (presented by Pope Leo XIII) and St Peter Chanel (the first martyr of Oceania).

The two stained glass windows by Zettler of Munich representing St Monica and St Augustine and the espousal of Joseph and Mary.

The Memorial Chapel containing the tomb of the first Bishop of Christchurch who built the Cathedral and the showcase of books recording the names of all who contributed to the building and conservation of the Cathedral.

The Lady Chapel containing the tomb of Bishop Joyce the fourth Bishop of Christchurch. The icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour here was brought from Rome in 1898 and the bas-reliefs on the walls were incorporated in the reredos of the former high altar. The 'Tapestry of Light' in the stained glass here is the work of Phillip Trusttum of Christchurch and was made to mark the Cathedral's 75th Jubilee in 1980.

The stained glass windows in the nave were made in Chartres, France for the Pro-Cathedral and they depict Sts Peter and Paul and the four Evangelists.

The two spiral staircases give access to the gallery and the North Tower houses four bells cast in Belgium in 1904 with a total weight of 3,660 kgs.

The organ is the work of Halmshaw's of Birmingham and was installed in the Pro-Cathedral in 1879. It is the only example of its kind remaining in New Zealand.

The four piers that support the dome are carrying more than 1721 tonnes and three of them contain spiral staircases to the galleries above. In the fourth there is a strongroom containing the Church records dating from 1864. The archives of the Diocese with records dating back to 1840 are housed in the South Tower.

The Sanctuary Organ in the gallery above was made by Bevington and Son in London in 1870 and installed in the Cathedral as a second organ in 1976 after service in three other churches.

The Sanctuary Mosaic was laid by Italian workmen who were brought over from Sydney for the purpose in 1916.

The Blessed Sacrament Chapel was created in 1975 from two existing chapels (and it looks so 70's). Two works of art were commissioned for this chapel; the bronze doors of the tabernacle are by Ria Bancroft and the tapestry is the work of Ida Lough, both of Christchurch.

The semi-circular windows over the West Door commemorate the Episcopal silver jubilee (1912) of Bishop Grimes. Representing the title of the Cathedral they are the work of Zettler of Munich.

I spent a wonderful afternoon in the company of the lovely ladies who maintain this splendid church.

Tonight I dine at Cafe Valentino on Colombo where the food was exquisite and the service good.

Easter Sunday. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-07T11:05:00.000+01:00

Easter Sunday lunch is at Torenhof Belgian Beer Cafe in the Provincial Buildings looking out over a sundrenched River Avon. Truly idyllic.

I dined on filet mignon and drunk the recommended Leffe Brune (how appropriate in this cloistered atmosphere to be drinking an Abbey beer).

Fitted out as a 1920's Belgian cafe the food and the service were excellent.

Today I aim to explore the Arts Centre (which immediately strikes me as having the feel of a small Oxbridge College), the original site of the University of Canterbury, and Christchurch Girls' and Boys' High Schools.

Classes commenced at Canterbury College - later to become the University of Canterbury - in temporary accommodation in Lichfield Street in June of 1874. It took a further two years to decide on a site and another year after that before the first permanent building was completed. The site is home to the oldest lecture theatre in New Zealand.

The driving forces of the early years were the College's first professors Alexander William Bickerton and John Macmillan Brown.

A pioneer science educator, Bickerton was genial and outgoing and effusive in his enthusiasms, many of which ran well outside his duties as a university professor. Macmillan Brown, the College's founding arts professor, provided the surer foundation of scholarly discipline. Like Oxbridge 'esprit de corps' (college spirit) was encouraged to develop the whole person through social activity.

Under the leadership of Macmillan Brown, Canterbury College was the first in the British Empire to admit women to its classes. From its foundation the College had a policy of 'educational equality' and between 1873 and 1944 of the 2,600 graduates. 730 were women.

My first stop is the Great Hall and it makes me feel as if I am back at school. With classroom space in short supply, a hall was a luxury for Canterbury College; but the Board commissioned Mountfort to design a 'Great Hall' and it opened on Diploma Day 1882. The first corbel installed was that of Helen Connon (later Macmillan Brown) who in 1881 became the first women honours graduate in the British Empire. By the 1890's the College had become a world leader in the education of women. Helen later married Professor Macmillan Brown.

In 1878 Christchurch Girls' High School commenced classes in newly-built premises on the Rolleston Avenue and Hereford Street corner of the site. By 1881, the building was already too small and the school moved to new premises on Cranmer Square. Helen Connon served for many years with distinction as Lady Principal.

The original school buildings were taken over by the College's School of Art, which remained there until 1957 when it became the first university department to move to the new campus in the Christchurch suburb of Ilam.

Christchurch Boys' High School on the north eastern edge of the site opened in 1881 and stayed longer than the girls' school thus having a much greater impact. By 1897 it was New Zealand's largest secondary school and to cope with its growing roll the school was extended three times in thirty years. Extra classrooms and laboratories as well as a gymnasium (now the Academy theatre) were added. Despite expansion the site became unsuitable for the school's purposes long before its move to Riccarton in 1926.

The 1890's saw a string of famous graduates from Canterbury College including the Maori Sir Apirina Ngata (M.A. 1894, L.L.B. 1897) New Zealand's first biculturalist; Sir James Hight (M.A. 1894), a leading academic and educational administrator between the wars; and Ernest, Lord Rutherford (more about this genius later).

Amongst other famous alumni are Sir Julius von Haast (whom we encountered on my journey around the South Island), Canterbury Museum's first Director and the College's first Professor of Geology; Denis Glover, poet; and Dame Ngaio Marsh, novelist and playwright.

From 1889 the School of Engineering was headed by Robert Julian Scott. Scott's cousin was Antarctic explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and both men exhibited a similar drive for success. Under Scott's leadership the School of Engineering was considered the most advanced in the British Empire with its graduates filling important posts all over the world.

Talking of eminent families. New Zealand's first university, the University of Otago, was founded in 1869 with one Rev. Dr. Thomas Burns as Chancellor (he being the nephew of one Rabbie Burns, Scotland's national bard).

As the first university in the Empire to accept women into its lectures Canterbury College was a pioneer. Although not always welcomed by men many women went on to greatness. Certainly some came for social contacts and it was not unknown for women students to court future spouses. The regime though could be tough...one woman student was even expelled for wearing trousers for the purpose of bicycle riding.

The Grand Design... Benjamin Mountfort arrived in the port of Lyttelton on the Charlotte Jane in 1850. Working in the Gothic Revival style that he had studied in England, he quickly became one of the province's leading architects.

Gothic Revival, or Victorian Gothic, refers to the period of mock-Gothic architecture practised in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was in effect a return to the building styles of the Middle Ages; a time believed by many to be a watershed in human achievement - both in way of life and art...Therefore worthy of imitation.

Perhaps hard to understand today, Victorian Gothic Revival architecture intertwined with deep moral and philosophical ideals with the style representing a marriage of spiritual and artistic values.

Mountfort's Canterbury College buildings were all built to High Victorian Collegiate Gothic (like my old school at Brighton College and many nineteenth century public schools...Christ's College here in Christchurch is another good example). The style was considered the most suitable for expressing a Christian Oxbridge tradition.

Faced with interminable delays, budget cuts and professional demands there had to be inevitable compromises. Almost all of the buildings in the Arts Centre complex though were in place in time for the College's 50th Jubilee in 1923.

Built in 1877 the Clock Tower (where I am currently) is the oldest stone building at Canterbury College and was designed to reflect that Christian Oxbridge tradition and it feels just like the porters lodge of my old college at Merton. Canterbury College was infact known as the Antipodean Oxford.

The architectural unity here is remarkable in view of the fact that the buildings were assembled piecemeal over half a century. This is due primarily to architect Samuel Hurst Seager who in 1913 persuaded the Board of Governors to accept his 'grand design' for two quadrangles on either side of the new library and for the buildings to be linked by the arcades that have become a much admired feature.

Mountforts' work is one of the reasons Christchurch is such an admired city...the Canterbury Museum and the Provincial Council Chambers are just two of his other works. After all the city's colonial character is reflected in its neo-Gothic buildings such as the Arts Centre, Museum and Cathedral.

Between the two World Wars the site became more and more crowded. After World War Two strenuous moves were made to improve accommodation for the University. These moves eventually led to a new campus in the north-west suburb of Ilam. In 1975, when the university had completed its move the fate of the city centre site and buildings remained unclear. However an early suggestion to create a cultural centre was finally taken up and The Arts Centre Trust was formed in 1978 to administer the site.

The Arts Centre is now the cultural hub of the city with more than forty art galleries, craft studios, shops, theatres, cinemas, cafes, restaurants and bars. Its famous market bursts into life each weekend and is a mecca for New-Zealand made art and craft as well as international foods and live entertainment.

So this is quite the historic site. The original home of the 1873 Canterbury College and then appropriately (considering its future use)the site of the first TV broadcast in New Zealand in 1952...but the real highlight has to be Rutherford's Den.

Ernest Rutherford was born on the 30th of August 1871 on a small section at Spring Grove (Brightwater) near Nelson. He was the fourth of twelve children born to James Rutherford, a mechanic and Martha Thompson, an ex-school teacher. He was the genius who went on to explain how radioactivity was produced by spontaneous breakdown of atoms; he identified the nuclear structure of the atom and he was the first person to split the atom.

In 1897 he won a scholarship to Nelson College, where in 1889 he was head boy.

Ernest moved to Christchurch in 1890 to attend Canterbury College, the beginning of a career that would take him to the universities of Cambridge, McGill, Manchester and back again to Cambridge.

In 1892 he completed his BA and then he completed his MA with first class honours in mathematics and mathematical physics in 1893. It was during this time that he asked permission to use the room that has now become known as Rutherford's Den. In 1894 he took geology and chemistry and graduated BSc in 1895.

Whilst attending Canterbury College he boarded with a widow, Mary Newton, who was involved in the women's suffrage and temperance movements. He later went on to marry her daughter May on June 28th 1900 at St Paul's Papanui (where I took you last week).

They had only one child, Eileen who was born in 1901 and who died nine days after giving birth to her fourth child in December 1930.

In 1895 at the age of 23 he set sail for England to take up his Exhibition of 1851 Scholarship to Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory (where he would later become the Professor of Experimental Physics 1919-1937). He became a professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada in 1898.

During his nine years at McGill he wrote 69 papers and in 1903 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

1907 brought Rutherford back to England as Head of Physics at Manchester and the following year he was awarded the Nobel Prize (not for Physics, but for Chemistry).

Knighted in the 1914 New Year's Honours list, Sir Ernest returned to the Cavendish Laboratory as Director in 1919 and in 1931 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Rutherford of Nelson. He included a kiwi, a Maori warrior and Hermes Trismegistus, the patron of knowledge in his coat of arms.

Rutherford was involved in a number of causes during his life. He campaigned for women to be granted the same privileges as men at Cambridge University and he supported the freedom of the British Broadcasting Corporation from government censorship. Rutherford advised New Zealand University colleges on the appointment of their physics professors and in 1933 he co-founded and became President of the Academic Assistance Council which was established to help academics who had left Germany after Hitler's rise to power. He even chaired a meeting of the Democratic Front at Cambridge University where he supported the ban of aeroplanes in warfare.

He died in Cambridge on October 19th 1937 after a hernia operation and his ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey in Scientist's Corner (near Sir Issac Newton); the only New-Zealander to be granted such an honour.

A great man, yes...but why all the fuss?

Rutherford's Science.

"It is given to a few men to achieve immortality, still less to achieve Olympian rank, during their own lifetime. Lord Rutherford did both".
- New York Times eulogy on Rutherford's death.

For centuries it was believed that atoms were the smallest lumps of matter and that they could not be divided into smaller parts. In 1897 Professor J. J. Thomson at Cambridge had described a particle smaller than an atom, which he called an electron. This research set scientists to find things smaller than an atom. Rutherford, who was studying under Thomson at the time went on to spend much of his life working on research in nuclear physics.

As well as identifying the structure of the atom, he explained naturally occurring radioactivity and was the first person in the world to achieve artificial transmutation (changing one element into another). He was the first to identify and name alpha, beta and gamma rays (the discovery of these particles can be described as the beginning of modern nuclear physics); to identify and count individual atoms and describe them thus giving us a basic idea of what matter is like.

The sheer volume of his experimental work is impressive and his scientific achievements were many. He explained naturally occuring radioactivity, identified the structure of the atom and became the first successful alchemist by changing nitrogen into oxygen.

His ground breaking research meant he was the first to identify and name alpha, beta and gamma rays, the first to identify and count individual atoms and he enabled the age of the earth to be accurately dated for the first time.

During the First World War he led research into the detection of submarines. He worked with radio waves and at one time held the world record for the long-distance transmission of wireless signals.

From his early work grew many of today's technologies including the smoke alarm, the Geiger counter and radioactive dating of minerals.

So let me take you into the Den of world famous scientist Lord Rutherford of Nelson who was a student at Canterbury College from 1890 and where in 1894 he and fellow student J A Erskine asked for permission to use a cloakroom to conduct their experiments. Although cold it was a suitable place for Rutherford's work as the concrete floor minimised vibrations...this is the room that was destined to become Rutherford's Den.

This area beneath a former lecture room is where Rutherford carried out his first experiments whilst a Canterbury College student. The exhibition space is excellent and many of his greatest achievements are on display such as the diagram showing the curves of decay of radioactive elements and his gold foil experiment that provided the first experimental evidence for the structure of the atom.

New Zealand is rightly very proud of him and he of his native land. He never forgot that free public school education at Nelson College which paved the way for his future success and on his death he bequeathed one hundred pounds to his old school. It is appropriate then that his appearance on a New Zealand banknote on November 3rd 1992 was on the $100 note.

Tonight I get to attend Evensong in the Cathedral. A lovely touch was when the Dean came amongst the congregation about twenty minutes before the service to extend his welcome and after the service both he and the Bishop were there to wish one and all a very Happy Easter.

Festal Evensong was the perfect way to round out a truly wonderful day!

Tonight I dined at Two Fat Indians - the art of a pint & curry...trust me, no-one makes a curry like a British Indian.

Saturday 7th April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-07T09:48:00.000+01:00

Today is one of the few days I have had in New Zealand with poor weather. The rain though does not bother me as I have the house to myself and so I am spending the whole day doing project work.

Friday 6th April 2007. Out to Hanmer Springs. New Zealand.

2007-04-07T09:26:00.000+01:00

Today I am heading out to the hot pools at Hanmer Springs via the Waipara wine region.

Its Good Friday and everything closes, even the supermarkets and DIY stores...everything. Apart from service stations and a few dairy's that are open this is a genuine holiday.

On my journey I pass Frog Rocks and I must say it feels so much like home as we drive along you could easily be in blighty!

Lunch is at Culverden Tearooms before I arrive in the village of Hanmer Springs.

The hot pools were known to the Maori before they were discovered for the Europeans by William Jones in 1859.

After the hot pools I have drinks at On 47 in this ski resort town which is a larger version of Ellicottville (for our Twenty First Century Learning Center students).

And today I will dine at the Hurunui Hotel, with its roots as an old coaching inn from the early days of Canterbury when the track north through the Weka Pass to the coast and Nelson was one of the provinces main routes.
This accommodation house was established in 1860 soon after a quarantine dip had been established to prevent the spread of scab through Canterbury with sheep being driven south from Nelson dipped before being allowed to go on to Canterbury.
As it is Good Friday you cannot buy alcohol, even though this is a pub, without the purchase of food...its the law.

Back to my house share and it is quite a place. There are four dogs (one a pit-bull and one an Alsatian), two cats and a budgie as well as five people living here.

Thursday 5th April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-07T01:46:00.000+01:00

Christchurch was established as a model Anglican settlement from the top-down with all classes represented from the outset and a rigid social structure...a Victorian utopia as opposed to the ramshackle developments often brought by colonisation.

The Chalice sculpture that stands in the centre of Cathedral Square commemorates both the new millennium and the 150th anniversary of Canterbury's establishment...Where better to explore that other Victorian invention, Christmas

Today I am moving out of my hotel and into a house share in Papanui.
It is yet another beautiful dawn as I begin my day as a culture vulture.

I begin my day with breakfast at Le Cafe at the Arts Centre before heading over to Canterbury Museum where my first stop will be the Hallett Station, Antarctica.

Haere Mai...Welcome to Canterbury Museum.

Cape Hallett Station was a joint United States and New Zealand base built in 1956 for the International Geophysical Year (an 18 month scientific investigation carried out by 67 countries). The station was an important base for weather reports supporting communications systems and an emergency landing site on the flight path between New Zealand and the McMurdo Station/Scott Base.

Originally just four main prefabricated buildings were set up amongst an existing Adelie Penguin Colony to contain sleeping quarters, sick bay, mess hall, communications and meteorological equipment, science spaces and a garage with diesel generators. There were smaller huts with a refrigerator, spare power plant, radio monitoring equipment, laboratory and dark room. Held away from the main areas was a building used for inflating meteorological balloons, seismometer hut, two huts for geomagnetic measurements and an aurora observation tower.

Planning...The geomagnetic dome was made of fibreglass with a tongue and groove wooden floor and walls fastened together by brass bolts (non-magnetic) to avoid affecting the scientific instruments. Used for weather recording and observation it contained a variograph to record tiny changes in the earth's magnetic field. Positioned on the roof of the laboratory (which had stabilised foundations to reduce weather or vehicle interference) it was kept free of magnetic contamination by ensuring it contained no metal furniture or other items.

All food and supplies needed to be purchased a year in advance (as the station was supplied principally by ship) and these were not replenished for a year. Spare parts and additional supplies were kept separate from base buildings in case of fire. There was even a need to haul fire fighting equipment out on to the ice every time a plane was scheduled in case of an emergency landing.

There were two major fires in the early 1960's and after the winter of 1964 the base converted to summer-only operations. With the increased sophistication of long-range aircraft the need for the base declined and the site was abandoned in 1973; although equipment, stores and buildings remained for anticipated future use.

Never re-occupied except as an emergency shelter the base was removed as part of a clean-up in 2000-2006.

The Adelie Penguin Colony on Seabee Hook is one of the largest in the Ross Sea region. Fossilised and frozen evidence suggests the penguins have lived continuously in the area for between 1200 and 2000 years.

Construction of the base had a significant impact on the colony as penguins occupied all suitable building sites. For the initial building works of only 0.83 hectares, 7580 penguins were evicted from their nesting sites with the area fenced off. The population of breeding pairs fell from 62,900 in 1959 to 37,000 in 1968, a 59% drop.

To be fair...in 1966 12 hectares of Cape Hallett were designated a specially protected area under the Antarctic Treaty in recognition of its outstanding biological diversity; in particular its birdlife. The area was enlarged to 32 hectares in 1985 to include extensive vegetation and in 2002 after a review the Antarctic Specially Protected Area was extended to 74 hectares including the penguin colony and station site.

There have been scientific benefits. The colony has been the subject of many studies since 1956 looking at population size, colony history, physiology, behaviour, genetic evolution, winter foraging journeys and response to human and skua disturbances.

The history of human impact and the subsequent closure of the station together with the availability of reliable and repetitive data make this area unique for scientific study on the impacts on, and recovery of, the colony following substantial ecosystem disturbance.

There can be no doubt that human impacts on the local environment were significant though. By the 1970's with the addition of buildings, antennae and roads the site had grown to 4.4 hectares. The poor human waste disposal practices of the day along with the debris from dumps on the sea ice aggravated the effects on local wildlife. In some places accumulated trash covered nesting sites and other wildlife such as the Skuas suffered high mortality through wing injuries, intestinal damage through ingestion of waste and poisoning through ingesting lead battery parts.

Even today stumps, anchors and foundations still indicate the stations existence and beneath the ground lie buried dumps, timber, guy anchors and rubbish dumps. Under the water is a layer of accumulated rubbish.

Clean-up of the site is not a new phenomena designed for this environmentally conscious age. In 1971/72 3000 fuel drums and 50 tons of scrap metal were removed before the base was abandoned. There was a further clean-up in 1984-86 with three huts re-established for use as a field study centre.

Mobile huts, fuel stores, a bulk fuel tank and other debris were removed and some penguin nesting sites restored. However, waste and building materials were burnt, while scrap metal, old vehicles and equipment was blown apart with explosives and left on the sea ice to fall to the sea bed.

Fuel stores left on the site began to fail during the following decade polluting ponds and soil. Between 1993 and 1996 the United States Antarctic Program removed 82,010 litres of liquid (of which most was fuel). The dismantling since 2001 saw the bulk fuel tank drained and in January 2005 the Italian Antarctic Programme vessel Italica returned 28 metric tons of material to New Zealand.

We must remember that we do not own the earth, the earth owns us.

And now that Victorian invention...the Christmas Card. The custom of exchanging greetings cards was a serious business in the Victorian era with cards being either handmade or at least chosen with great care.

Published cards first appeared in 1843 in England, but it was between the 1850's and the 1870's that the custom of exchanging cards became common with the commercial production of cards beginning in London in 1862 and mass production beginning five years later. Cards and fancy paper envelopes were often re-used to make new cards with mid-Victorian cards often composed of multiple layers of embossed and perforated paper trimmed with lace, ribbons, beads, shells or silk flowers.

I came to the museum today with the aim of seeing certain things and my other planned visit was to the late nineteenth century replica Christchurch street which I must say was exceptionally well done.

A special thanks must go to Lee Harris of communications at the museum for the time she gave over to the project.

After a very profitable morning I am off to explore the art world. I find a major difference between the museum staff and the very unhelpful duty manager at the Court Theatre.

My next stop is the Christchurch Art Gallery Toi Maori:The Eternal Thread exhibition.

The Christchurch Art Gallery was opened in May 2003 and it is the largest art museum to have been built in New Zealand for the past fifty years. Te Puna o Waiwhetu honours an artesian well spring on this site.

Designed by David Cole the galleries curving sculpture wall is made from 2,184 panes of glass and was inspired by the city's River Avon. The swish glass and metal exterior supports s three level complex inside which there is a sculpture garden and more then 5,500 items ranging from paintings and ceramics to textiles and glass.

A Maori Prayer

Kawea te Muka Whenua ki te Rangi;
Tuia ki te Ngira wairua.
He Aho Tapu, he Aho Mutunga kore.
Kokoia! E ara ee!

Cast the early fibre toward the heavens,
Let it pass through the eye of the spiritual neddle.
A sacred thread,
An eternal thread,
And with prayer for its protection,
May it continue to excel.

"Maori art is inseparable from Maori culture. It is like a living organism that exists in the spirit of our people and drives them toward wider horizons and greater achievement.
As Maori we call ourselves Tangatawhenua, literally People of the Whenua (placenta). The land is referred to as whenua as it is a living substance from which we evolved or were born. We are fortunate in being Maori, because it enables us to understand our relationship with the elders who held us as children, and told us stories that link us with the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, rivers, trees and the living creatures and plants that help us to sustain life.
Our oral history says that we were born out of our land, Aotearoa, and have lived here since the beginning of time. Today, we are known as New Zealand. It is a beautiful modern country full of mountains, rivers, green pastures, forests and friendly people. This exhibition reflects the history and the evolution of the Maori people from the first ray of light that separates the earth and the sky to the strands that weave us into the lives and cultures of the world. As Maori, we are caught in an ancestral thread that leads us into a world of creativity that has no end".

The Kakahu (cloaks) are part of us and we of them. Together we can enter new and exciting spaces. Our ancestors walk with us as we travel with them...the ancestors gaze out across time to this moment where the eternal thread of the weaver's work links the earliest time of creation with the present and future and connects the Maori with the rest of the world.

Maori weaving is full of symbolism and hidden meanings embodying Maori spiritual values and beliefs. The cloaks are more than works of art, they are powerful symbols of spiritual leadership. They encircle the wearer in honour and are worn at important public and private occasions. Today, cloaks continue to be woven by hand using a traditional technique called Whatu, a method of finger weaving using neither neddle or loom.

Also on display are kete or baskets, which are woven through a traditional technique called raranga which is widespread across the Pacific Islands. Generally made of flax these are either one colour or patterned and decorated with feathers, shellfish or dyed strips of fibre . The patterns used are often associated with particular tribes and often represent natural elements such as creatures, plants, sea or forest.

As traditional techniques are handed down from generation to generation, so young Maori weavers and artists are applying traditional techniques to contemporary materials such as copper wire, fishing line, acrylic and even UV lighting and fluorescent paint.

Today I lunch at Le Bon Bolli sitting on the terrace in glorious sunshine. Local boy Phillip Kraal was the chef tournant at the Ritz in London and the personal chef to King Hussein I of Jordan before returning home to acclaim in his home town with Christchurch's premier restaurant. The food was lovely but the service was appalling.

My next stop is the original site of the Canterbury Museum. The Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings housed the museum from its opening on December 3rd 1867 for almost three years.

With the Avon flowing gently by, this building is designed like an Oxbridge college in miniature (even down to the bicycle at the bottom of the steps). In its gothic revival style it was certainly designed to give the city a strength of character that pre-dates its existence.

I find the buildings very English. A cloister complex with a small quad, pleasant stained glass and a council chamber that could be the Assembly Hall of a prep school.

My initial reactions to the buildings are confirmed by my research...The only purpose-built provincial government buildings still in existence anywhere in New Zealand, the Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings (1858 -1865) were designed by Benjamin Mountfort, New Zealand's leading gothic revival architect. Whilst the style of the buildings looks back to Europe, pride was taken in the use of local timbers and stone.

The Victorians were very keen on the architecture of the Middle Ages. The Houses of Parliament in London had revived that style and gothic revival had become England's national architecture. It is no surprise then that Mountfort was influenced in his choice of style for the Provincial Buildings. Built in three stages one can observe how Mountfort became increasingly skilled at adapting this European style to the colonial conditions.

The earliest timber buildings were relatively plain. The Council Chamber, where the councillors actually met, was at the heart of the building and was most impressive with its arched ceiling of native timber and the galleries for the press and public at either end along with the fine tracery on the bay window on the south side.

In 1859 work was begun on the second group of buildings. The province was better off financially and could afford something more elaborate and spacious. The result was a building even more strongly gothic revival in style.

The two timber buildings were connected by a long, low-ceilinged corridor paved with flagstones which even today has the atmosphere of the hushed cloisters of medieval monks.

The third phase of the building plan was Mountfort's masterpiece. By 1861 the numbers on the Provincial Council had increased to 35 making it a tight squeeze in the small timber chamber. Mountfort drew up plans for a new chamber accompanied with social and dining facilities (giving them the same name - Bellamy's- as those in Westminster) and accommodation for a housekeeper. With these buildings Mountfort used variety of local stone as the main building material.

The stone chamber is in the high Victorian gothic style with magnificently elaborate stonework. 'No other nineteenth century New Zealand building equalled the inventiveness, scholarship and attention to detail found in the stone council chamber'. There is a double-faced clock, believed to be one of only five in the world, stained glass windows and carvings (done in Christchurch by William Brassington). The timbers used in the interior of the stone chamber include native kauri and rimu.

The windows in the stone chamber were made by the English firm Lavers & Barraud to Mountforts designs and they are considered the finest set of secular Victorian stained glass in New Zealand. The texts present an example of Victorian popular wisdom and were presumably intended to exert a beneficial influence on the councillors using the chamber.

While one of the texts is attributed to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), the author of Gulliver's Travels and another to Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the bulk of the texts are to be found in the Book of Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha (the biblical books received by the early Church as part of the Greek version of the Old Testament but not included in the Hebrew Bible).

The buildings sit beside the River Avon as a part of the story of early European settlement in this area. The early Maori had also recognised this area as a prime site and according to oral tradition, Waitaha and Ngati Mamoe established a settlement in this are known as Puari. It was on the high ground above the Otakaro (River Avon) and it was a mahinga kai area for later Ngai Tahu who used the area for seasonal gathering of food.

So what exactly is a Provincial Council?

It is basically a miniature parliament.

British colonisation of much of New Zealand occurred as a series of planned settlements. The Canterbury Association, a group with strong connections to the Anglican Church, brought its first group of migrants out in 1850. There were already five settler communities in other parts of the country, but they were very scattered and, of course, the means of communication and transport at that time were very slow. It was decided that each district, or province, would be largely self-governing. In effect, six miniature Parliaments were to be set up to govern a country of fewer than 50,000 settlers.

The Provincial Councils took themselves very seriously, modelling themselves on the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster.

Three years after it was established Christchurch was still a struggling village but in 1853 elections were held for the office of Superintendent and later, for a twelve-seat Council. The only people who could vote were men over the age of 21 who owned property. (It was 40 years before New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the vote). There were no secret ballots and no restrictions on treating the voters, so elections were very festive occasions!

The Provincial Council first met in temporary accommodation but plans for a permanent building were begun almost immediately. On January 6th 1858 the foundation stone was laid and the day declared a public holiday with a procession through the town, a nine-gun salute and the band playing Rule Britannia. The buildings were first used by the council in September of 1859.

The provincial system continued until 1876 when New Zealand government was centralised. The buildings passed into the ownership of central government and continued to be used by various government departments. The stone chamber was used for special occasions such as luncheons and balls, as well as serving as a meeting place for bodies such as the Anglican Synod, the Arbitration Court and the Maori Land Court.

Christchurch people though were not happy with this arrangement and they wanted their buildings back under local control. Success came in 1928 with the passing of the Canterbury Provincial Buildings Vesting Act which stated that the buildings were to be 'preserved and maintained as a memorial to the foundations of the province of Canterbury'...and today the buildings are administered by Christchurch City Council.

For Maundy Thursday I had hoped to attend evensong in the cathedral but the time had been changed and I had already bought my theatre tickets for tonight.

Pre-theatre drinks are at Barcelona on Oxford Terrace and as I look out over the manicured lawns and flowerbeds this so reminds me of that lovely little park ?? (in the real Canterbury near my friend Aidan's old house). Bathed in glorious sunlight these beds could almost compete with Eastbourne's carpet gardens.

Tonight I am off to see Joyful & Triumphant by Robert Lord focused around that great kiwi cultural institution...the family Christmas.

The play follows the Bishop family over forty years and it is much more than just a skilfully crafted expression of the subtle dynamics of family; it is a study of social history. Trust me nostalgia can be great when it is well performed and this was.

Well having moved out to the suburbs I am back trying to catch night buses and in a city where public transport doesn't run very late.

On the bus and whilst writing my notes our bus comes under attack with stones and eggs...guess Christchurch has its problems too. We have to stop and as our Muslim driver puts it "I f***** hate alcohol. It happens all the time with these kids and the booze"...and he has a point...and I must admit to getting quite a fright tonight.

Note to my fellow traveller's...I have now bought a 'mini-coffin' to hold all my extra luggage...oh, and its lime green!

Wednesday 4th April 2007. Lyttelton and the Bays. New Zealand.

2007-04-07T00:40:00.000+01:00

Take yourself back 700 years to a time when Christchurch was the site of a vast tract of wetlands where the early Maori were the only settlers.

The first peoples chose to live here because of the rich resources of the wetlands building their Whare on the high ground along the sandy terraces above the Otakaro River.

Freshwater springs on the northern boundary of the settlement of Puari provided clean water even when the river was in flood.

The site gave the people easy access to fibre plants for clothing, baskets, fish traps and cordage. The waterways and wetlands provided fish, eels and waterfowl and towards the West swamp forest provided timber for whare and canoes.

Puari was a settlement of about 800 people that was lived in by Waitaha and then by the Ngati Mamoe.

Today I take a drive out through the suburbs that are built on these former wetlands heading first to New Brighton and its pier.

A pier had stood on this site between 1894 and 1964 before it was demolished. The current pier (a very plain concrete structure) was opened on November 1st 1997.

We then head on to Mount Pleasant to see the Boat House. I have seen many houses shaped like boats in my time but this one even has a funnel. Sumner is our morning coffee stop where I have brunch at JDV @ The Rock.

Along the waterfront here there is an interesting war memorial of attractive lamp-posts with the names of key theatres listed...In grateful rememberance of the services rendered by Sons of Sumner...Lest we Forget.

Remember that the price of peace is eternal vigilance.

Now its over to Lyttelton via Evans Pass and Rapanui Bush. We make a stop at Windy Rock Point a lookout now dedicated to the New Zealand Artillery of the 1939-1945 war. This whole area is filled with former Battery's that were established for the areas wartime defence.

Since 1849 the port here at Lyttelton has fulfilled a vital role providing a transport link between South Island businesses and essential suppliers and overseas purchasers. Today over 1300 vessels dock annually carrying cargoes from fruit, fish and dairy products to timber, containers, coal, petrol and motor vehicles.

The South Islands main port with the flexibility to handle a wide variety of ships and cargo Lyttelton is an essential economic asset for the well-being of this community and its industry. The port provides a huge base for the areas infrastructure and employment. Indeed, it was out here at Purau Bay that the first European settlement was established when the Greenwood Brothers set up their farm in 1844.

Our drive takes us via Corsair Bay, Cass Bay, Rapaki, Governors Bay, Ohinetahi, Allandale, Teddington, Charteris Bay and Church Bay...through all these little places until we get out to Diamond Harbour.

The scenery was simply stunning and the islands of Lyttelton Harbour set a spectacular scene.

Here we dine at Godley House (1880). The house sits atop Diamond Harbour's first headland and it sits in three acres of gardens that look out towards Lyttelton Harbour. Built by the ship chandler, ironmonger and speculator Harvey Hawkins as a family home the building is a grand affair designed for entertaining.

After lunch I took myself off to the Garden Gallery.

Here I am in rural New Zealand and I see a spread in Hello about Uncle (the favoured uncle of one of my very best friends)...I can't wait to e-mail her and tell her about it...such a small world.

My route back to Christchurch takes me via Dyers Pass and what a view I get from Coronation Hill Reserve out over the city and the Canterbury Plains (spanning 190km the plains are New Zealand's largest area of flat land at low altitude). They say the 955m Christchurch Gondola which offers 360 degree views of the city, Lyttelton Harbour and the Canterbury Plains gives the best view...I would have to disagree.

My final stop today is Victoria Park which opened on June 22nd 1897 in celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of HM Queen Victoria...and I could not resist having a go on the chute and the swings.

Tuesday 3rd April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-03T02:36:00.000+01:00

This is what they say about just three of my stops in New Zealand and I agree...that's why I have extended my stay!!

New Zealand's awesome landscapes, lush forests, amazing wildlife and mild climate make it a haven for many outdoor activities and a great place to unwind. This spectacularly beautiful landscape includes gorgeous beaches, lush rainforests, geothermal and volcanic activity and majestic mountain ranges. It has a temperate climate and fascinating animal and plant life...there are so many different landscapes, environments and ecosystems close to each other.

New Zealand has a population of 4 million making it one of the world's least crowded countries. It is a haven for those seeking rejuvenation and relaxation as well as an adventure playground for thrill seekers from the beautiful beaches of the North Island to the stunning Southern Alps in the South Island.

Haere mai, talofa lava, kia orana, malo e leilei, bula vinaka...there are many ways to be welcomed to Auckland with its blend of islands, Polynesian culture, glistening harbours and modern city environment which creates a desirable lifestyle ranked amongst the best in the world. Auckland is known as the City of Sails for many reasons but predominantly as it is rumoured to have the highest number of boats per capita in the world, testament to its Americas Cup victories.

Auckland's warm coastal climate encourages outdoor pursuits. It is cosmopolitan and cultured with museums, art galleries, restaurants and cafes, diverse languages and ethnicities. The city pulses to the cool, rythmic beat of a Polynesian drum and as New Zealand's largest city more than a million people call it home.

Accessible remains of pre-European Maori occupation are etched into the slopes of Auckland's volcanic cones. Climb Mount Eden where defensive fortifications are clearly evident along with the rectangular pits the Maori dug to protect their harvest of Kumara. The city is an archaeological wonder built on an isthmus of 48 volcanoes, once home to Maori tribes which cultivated its rich soils, the fertile valleys and islands are now home to award winning wineries.

With its wide open spaces, floral and architectural beauty and a range of activities to suit all tastes Christchurch is the Garden City. Bordered by hills and the Pacific Ocean it is situated on the edge of the Canterbury Plains and is in an area of tremendous geographical contrast. Although the largest city in the South Island it is still incredibly friendly and at the same time elegant and sophisticated.

Rotorua sits in the heartland of New Zealand's Central Volcanic Plateau. As well as being the spiritual home of the Maori it also boasts the title of nature's spa of the South Pacific hosting some incredible earth forces.

Manaakitanga...Feel the Spirit is a deep-rooted concept in Maori culture. For more than 160 years the Arawa people of Rotorua have been guiding visitors through the natural thermal wonders that they have called home for six centuries.

From the moment you enter Rotorua you know it is like nowhere else. Lazy drifts of steam escape from cracks and crevices in thermal parks, among manicured gardens and even via gratings in residential streets throughout the city. These constant steam drifts and the distinctive tang of sulphur in the air let people know they are in Rotorua, New Zealand's only geothermal city.

Within a few minutes walk of the central business district the stark beauty and splendour of the volcanic landscape is displayed in many forms from hissing geysers which hurl spray 30 metres into the air from deep within the earth's crust to continually bubbling and plopping mud pools. Geothermal activity provides the source of Rotorua's fame as a spa resort. Picturesque cobbled streets, beautifully laid-out gardens and striking Tudor architecture celebrate the city's colonial past.

After a full day of project work I am more than ready to dine tonight at the wonderful Cook 'N' With Gas at the Arts Centre before I head over to see Bombshells at The Forge.

This Joanna Murray Smith play is a one woman show that is described as savvy, sassy and exquisitely crafted...and it was. Transformed across a series of monologues we head through 'six shades of modern women' and through life, love, triumph and tragedy.

From child, to mother, abandoned wife to widow, bride to the negativities of a career woman (this role is set as a stilted performer and arguably there is some degree of self-portraiture there for the theatre world). The monologues are observant, truthful and witty and this performance was quite simply excellent.

As I walked home from the theatre tonight across Cathedral Square the spiritual heart of this city was bathed in the glorious lamplight of a misty moon and it was inspiring!

Monday 2nd April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-02T22:02:00.000+01:00

I spent this morning working on the project and then headed out to lunch at Moko on New Regent Street before meeting up with Michael to go and spend the day at his parents...It is great meeting locals (Michael is my friend from Wellington).

Tonight is the big dining night when I am taking the Christchurch Tramway Restaurant. Trams initially disappeared from Christchurch's streets in 1954 before their recent re-introduction in 1995 after a forty year absence.

Our journey begins at the pseudo Victorian Cathedral Junction. This glazed retail arcade is based on the ideas of John Britten who first muted his proposals for the site in the early 1990's. However before his ideas could be realised he passed away (1995) and with his estate choosing not to continue with the project the site was abandoned for seven years.

The vacant site became a car park and earned the name Little Bosnia or 'the bomb site' due to its shabby appearance.

When Britten's estate sold the site in 2002 the expanded vision included not just a shopping arcade but twin towers with 87 luxury serviced apartments, the conversion and restoration of heritage buildings on Worcester Street into a boutique hotel, underground and multi-level car parking and open public spaces.

Some of the original decorative elements including the name, logo and fired clay punga panels were either kept and integrated or redesigned for the new project. New features were also added such as the Gloucester Street gates, fully automated tram doors and a performing mechanical clock.

Tram 411 was built in Australia by the Melbourne (where I have been on the trams) Tramways Board in 1927 as a passenger car. It continued in service until April 1982 when it was withdrawn and placed in storage.

In 1986 the Maroubra Junction Hotel in Sydney bought car 411 and installed it as a dining area known as The Trattoria amidst poker machines and a bar.

The Sydney Tramway Museum acquired it in June of 1995 and in 1999 it was converted into a dedicated operational restaurant car, fully air conditioned in a fabulous colonial style. Car 411 arrived in Christchurch on 21st December 1999 commencing operations on January 7th 2000 here on the Christchurch Tramway. Since then it has been a part of the dining, entertainment and cultural heritage of this city.

So tonight Michael, Ang and I dine "where dining is not only a culinary delight, but a step back into history".

Sunday 1st April 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-01T05:10:00.002+01:00

This morning I head for breakfast at Moko on New Regent Street (which today celebrates its 75th birthday). New Regent Street was marketed as ‘The most beautiful street in New Zealand’ when it was opened by Mayor D G Sullivan.

A double row of Spanish Mission style shops and cafes, despite its beauty only three of the forty sites were actually bought before its opening in 1932.

The site was previously the home of the Colosseum building and the designs of Harry Francis Willis ensured that the new shopping arcade would be erected with continuous facades. As a shopping street designed in a single style, New Regent Street can be considered the forerunner of the modern day shopping mall.

A feature was the welded steel girders that ran the length of the street and today it remains the only New Zealand street built in a single architectural style.

Whilst built as Spanish Mission (a style that finds its home with the Spanish missionaries of California) the undergrounding of services, systems of ventilation, lighting and the extensive steel reinforcing were all considered major developments for the time.

Today as I sit on the bus heading through the suburbs of Christchurch it becomes increasingly obvious why they call this Garden City "English". I could easily be in Bournemouth (particularly Charminster) as I travel through bungalow heaven.

I am spending the day in Papanui where I will be joining a house share with four other guys for the next month whilst my stay in Christchurch is extended.

Its a day of project work and hanging out my washing in suburban Christchurch.

Saturday 31st March 2007. Christchurch. New Zealand.

2007-04-01T05:10:00.001+01:00

This morning we had our last team breakfast at The Boulevard with Joanne, Patty, Tina, Jill and Alex, before we headed off to create DVD's of our photos.

People in New Zealand are so friendly. I am moving hotels today back to the Oaks Smartstay and the two lads from the photo shop help me carry all my luggage across town during their lunch hour.

This afternoon I walked out to Papanui and watched a cricket match at St Andrew's College.

The Papanui Bush of around 70 acres was important to the Maori for its bird life. The name Papanui means 'bird-spearer's tree platform'.

Papanui was the Canterbury settlements first village growing up around the bush that was early Christchurch's nearest source of timber and firewood. The early days were tough and wagons were frequently to be stuck in the boggy Papanui Road. Pit-sawyers had to be employed to cut out the bush by 1857 when Papanui's population had grown to two-thirds the size of Christchurch.

The rich swamp ground was drained and became market gardens, orchards and dairy farms supplying the city with the 5' 3" gauge northern railway reaching Papanui in 1872. Along with the steam tramway's arrival in 1880 suburban growth was encouraged between the city and the village such that Papanui had its own Town Hall (1881-1909) before amalgamation into the City of Christchurch in 1923.

Exploring the Churchyard of St Paul's (which was the first church west of Christchurch built on the plains) I am looking for the grave of Edward Dobson (one of our engineers from yesterday's Otira Tunnel trip).

My hunt proved fruitless but I did find a most interesting grave belonging to Pte 58561 J. Montgomery of the Canterbury Regiment who died exactly one week after the ending of the Great War at just 22 years of age.

I then head back into town to catch one of those very trams that led to the growth of Papanui...or so I think. We are double booked and so I have to postpone until Monday. Instead Alex, Jill and I head over to Little India on New Regent Street (which celebrates its 75th birthday tomorrow) for dinner.