Posts Tagged ‘quake’

One Year Later

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

One year ago Christchurch was split apart by an earthquake. This Sunday on National Radio at 4pm there’s a remarkable interview with a survivor of the CTV building collapse. For now, I’m reposting my quake heroes from the day:

  • my 87 year old father who rushed into a madly shaking house to save his wife of 56 years
  • the doctors, nurses and volunteers who nursed my mother with such thoughtfulness under stress
  • the neighbours who gave us drinks and food
  • the motorists who behaved impeccably without traffic lights.
  • the neighbour who saved Dad when the house burned down 2 days later (electrical fault due to quake).

Photo: Allen Carbon

Tags:
Posted in Peace | No Comments »

Writing in the Shallows

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

I was writing a story on an iPad near Christchurch last week. Writing tools such as computers have become flexible, but perhaps less intimate, and I wonder if it affects my writing.  When Ted Hughes began writing on a typewriter he noticed he became less concise. Writing by hand had made him invest more in each word:

every year of your life is right there, wired into the communication between your brain and your writing hand… things become automatically more compressed, and, perhaps, psychologically denser.

The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, brilliantly examines how our brains react to computer use ( read a great essay about the book here). He says that working on computers can be distracting (rather than reflective) for the brain — so it stays in the shallows, barely engaging with the myriad connections at deeper levels. In that case the iPad might be okay for writing because you can fade out all but the sentence you’re on. But my iPad trial was interrupted by the earthquake — which came from the shallows with terrifying force.

Photo: Allen Carbon

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »

Christchurch Quake Heroes

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
  • my 87 year old father who rushed into a madly shaking house to save his wife of 56 years (happy anniversary parents!)
  • the doctors, nurses and volunteers who nursed my mother (and her broken arm) with such thoughtfulness under stress
  • the neighbours who gave us drinks and food
  • the shopkeeper who trusted me with credit
  • the motorists who behaved impeccably without traffic lights.

    • This is my growing list; each of the 400,000 plus residents of Christchurch will have their own heroes.

    Hero Update: the neighbour who saved Dad when the house burned down 2 days later (electrical fault caused by the quake).

    Click here for ways you can help support the people of Christchurch.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Peace | 1 Comment »