California Dreamin’ 2: Wit and Wisdom – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

If you buy this book, Mexico will pay for it. On the cover of a volume called “Trump’s America”

Letting everyone know

Story Roger Childs, photos by Pam Childs

Many Americans wear their hearts on their sleeves and have no hesitation in putting their message out.

In many shops and front gardens in Rockridge and Berkeley, there are posters stating WE STAND WITH OUR MUSLIM, ARAB & IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS.

Their best advertising carries a message; this on the side of a bus Babies sleep best on their backs alone.

Telling it on the streets

In the front yards of a number of houses in Webster Street there are prominent signs saying:

IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE

LOVE IS LOVE

NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL

BLACK LIVES MATTER

WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

SCIENCE IS REAL

KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING

Powerful stuff in six statements.

Buses go by advertising the facts about how they are powered: HYDROGEN FUEL CELL, HYBRID ELECTRIC DRIVE, ZERO EMISSIONS

There is a very strong commitment to recycling and reducing pollution. All households have three bins and one is for Green Waste.

Churches give out the positive messages as they do around the world: You are our neighbours and May Peace Prevail on Earth. In these troubled times, Amen to that.

Drivers are also given clear messages. From the serious Drive as if they are your kids playing in this street to the delightful Don’t park here, you can’t afford it.

Clever, eye-catching advertising

Plenty of positive messages in BART carriages and at the stations

~ FINDING BEAUTIFUL TRUTHS MIDST UGLY REALITIES Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco

~ On this train everyone is welcome Message on BART

~ WHERE LEARNING MEETS HAPPINESS School advert

~ Stay ivory free and Poaching steals from us all Advertising in a large San Francisco mall

~ Because the earth needs a good lawyer. Earth Justice advertising against polluting industries at a BART station.

Plays on words

There are also plenty of interesting names for cafes, restaurants and shops. Crepevine is a nice one; Lois the Pie Queen is evocative, and Kitchen on Fire conjures up all sorts of interesting images.

Then there are the usual clever T shirts. A personal favourite, with the appropriate pop group and psychologist iconography, is Pink Freud.

Shop names are also interesting and there is a Rockridge children’s clothing outlet we can identify with, called CHILD’S PLAY.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti Coast councillors have toured of one of Aotearoa's unique buildings, the heritage - listed Rotunda at the former Otaki Health Camp, the country’s first.

Jeremy Smith reports that the 105-year-old, eight-sided rotunda predates the Health Camp.

It wasn't actually built in Otaki, but was one of two built in Rotorua in 1915 as part of a military hospital, on the site of Rotorua’s present public hospital.

Later they were taken to Otaki for the opening of the health camp in 1931.

Full story in the main column (December 19).

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.