Ask Arthur 2021, Part 4: NZ seriousness, me, and fun

This is the final post in this year’s “Ask Arthur” series, and it’s quite varied. It starts out serious, then ends on a lighter note.

Today’s questions are all from Roger Green, and the first of the more serious ones is:

Knowing that New Zealand is far from perfect: What can the US learn in terms of dealing with Native people from how New Zealand has tried to do right by the Maori? Roger also asked a related question: How do we solve the race problems in the US and New Zealand?

I don’t know how much of New Zealand’s efforts/experiences are translatable to other countries and their specific issues, but I think the basic answer lies in the phrase Good Faith. What I mean by that is that both sides of the divide—because the existence of a divide is why racial problems persist—need to approach efforts to settle differences and problems in good faith: With honesty, integrity, and mutual respect. Humans being humans, sometimes there will be failures on any or all of those things. When that happens, it’s necessary to simply try again.

In practice, this includes some very fundamental things. For example, if a racial or ethnic minority describes their experience and vision of how things are, they must be heard and understood, not dismissed out of hand. The two sides (and for simplicity’s sake I’ll say two “sides”, but there can be many) may have mutually exclusive visions of reality because precisely their experiences are different. That doesn’t automatically make either side right or wrong, but it does mean that neither should dismiss the other side out of hand—even if what they say makes you want to throttle them. Listen first, learn where they’re coming from and why they feel as they do, and then the search for common ground can begin. I feel very strongly from what I’ve seen in both the USA and New Zealand that no real or permanent change is possible without good faith discussions, nor if both sides aren’t brought along: Leaving one side behind will ultimately cause the whole process to fail.

New Zealand’s attempt to reconcile with its past treatment of Māori has been fraught. It took a long time for the government to accept it needed to do anything, but in 1975 The Labour Government under Prime Minister Norman Kirk set up the Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims of actions and omissions by the NZ government since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840. Historic claims were ended in 2008, but contemporary claims can still be filed. The Tribunal’s rulings are advisory, however, and the government of the day can—and have—ignored the rulings.

At the same time, there's also been periodic backlash to the Tribunal from Pākeha (people of European ancestry), and also in other areas, such as, objections to the use of Te Reo Māori in everyday life by government and the media—even though it’s one of New Zealand’s official languages (an interesting side note is that it’s often said that NZ has three official languages: Te Reo, NZ Sign Language, and English, however, English has never actually been declared an official language, and is thought of as “official” because of tradition and common usage).

New Zealand’s experience with trying to recognise and compensate for historic wrongs is important, but it’s no magic solution. The settlement process hasn’t erased poverty among Māori people, nor has it alone helped health outcomes, etc. Most importantly, it hasn’t ended racism, casual or systemic. Māori (and Pacific peoples, too) are often treated worse by the criminal justice system (from police through to courts and prisons) than are white people. On the other hand, and not to put too fine a point on it, but, NZ police aren’t routinely armed, so it’s rare for a brown offender to be killed or wounded by police (it’s more often the other way around).

Like the USA, NZ’s issue isn’t merely how (in NZ’s case) brown people are treated now, it’s also about generations of poor treatment or neglect by government and the effect that’s had on minority populations. Both countries don’t spend enough on health and education for minority children specifically in order to try and break the cycles that lead ultimately to poverty, poorer social and health outcomes, and, of course, crime. At the same time, the USA definitely doesn’t do enough to teach and train police on issues of race and culture, nor in de-escalation of incidents and use of other non-lethal methods. The USA also has highly militarised police forces, which New Zealand doesn’t have.

In my opinion, the main thing the USA can learn from New Zealand is to—to put it bluntly—chill the fuck out. Americans—white Americans in particular—need to stop being so angry at other races when they don’t see things the same way, they need to actually listen to what the other side is saying, and they have to try to find a way to move forward together. That, in a nutshell, it what New Zealand tries to do, though far from perfectly. Racism is a human problem, but it can’t be cured by ignoring it or actively pretending it doesn’t exist. Both NZ and the USA have people who actively ignore or deny racism, however, the USA has a far higher percentage of people who do so.

I also feel strongly that it’s up to white people to do what they’re able to do to practice inclusion as a part of daily life. That’s why I added a few phrases in Te Reo to my podcast, and why I always attempt to pronounce Māori words and placenames correctly—to the extent that if I hear a fellow Pākeha say it wrong, I’ll often immediately use the same word or placename in a sentence, but pronounced as correctly as I can. I also stand up to Pākeha who try to blame Māori for whatever it is they don’t like. Those sorts of individual actions don’t require government policies or actions, just a commitment to doing what’s right. But you can’t even start doing that without good faith.

Next up, Roger asked “What do you think about the efficacy of this legislation?”. The proposed legislation is intended to gradually outlaw smoking by raising the minimum age for buy tobacco and products. In practice is means that anyone who is 14 when the law takes effect will never be able to legally purchase tobacco. The idea’s certainly unique, but will it actually work? That’s where it gets more interesting.

Smoking rates in general have been falling for decades, although the rate among Māori people is roughly double that of other people. Young people generally seem to prefer vaping, which isn’t covered by the legislation. The obvious questions are, if youth are already moving away from tobacco, will this actually have much effect? Will making it harder to legally obtain tobacco actually stop enough people from smoking, or will it just add another illegal revenue stream for gangs? No one, regardless of what they think of the legislation, knows, and anything they say is merely speculation and opinion.

My own opinion is that I’m not convinced that it’ll work as well as claimed, but also that it won’t be as dire as some predict. In general, I favour drugs (including tobacco and alcohol, of course) being legal, and use being handled as a health issue, not a criminal one (distribution, especially outside of legal channels, and, far worse, to minors, is another issue entirely, and, in my opinion, should always remain criminal matters). Smoking and tobacco use serves no true societal function and carries enormous health risks (and so, costs), but so does alcohol use, and even caffeine, if abused. The health implications of all those things can add to our healthcare costs. Is the benefit of the legislation enough to outweigh the potential drawbacks? Obviously, I have no idea, but I’m a bit sceptical that it’ll be a magic solution.

Next up, a very different sort of question:

This is a tough AAA question, because you may not even know. But what are some of the words you've incorporated into your language since you've come to New Zealand? I imagine one is fiddly. I've never used it but I knew the definition immediately.

I recently used the word “fiddly” a few times to describe the recipes in the meal kit experiment, and it’s one I use fairly often. Most of the other words I’ve picked up are similar to that one: Often used in other Commonwealth countries, especially the UK. Others have come from NZ slang, such as, I used to say “heaps” to mean “a whole lot” (sometimes I still do). However, I no longer describe a good thing as being “choice” (unless I’m being silly), because it’s largely fallen out of fashion. Nowadays, a good thing might be called “mean”, which I don’t use. Beyond that, adding “as” to word adds emphasis, so something really good might be “mean as”, those meal kits were (supposedly…) “easy as”, and so on. I sometimes add “as”.

I also adopted “gidday” or “g’day” (from “good day”, meaning “hello”). To say hello, I also might say “Kia Ora” (Māori), or “Talofa” or “Talofa lava” (Samoan), all of which I learned in New Zealand. Beyond that, it’d probably be specific names for things, like “chilly bin” instead of “cooler” (USA) or “esky” (Australia). In other words, most of the words and phrases I’ve adopted are about everyday things and situations.

Interestingly (to me), some years back I noticed that some words or phrases I learned here started turning up in the USA, too. I’ve heard Americans use the phrase “at the end of the day”, which originated in New Zealand rugby commentary. I’ve also heard Americans use “no worries” in the way they once said “no problem”; “no worries” is fairly common in New Zealand and possibly still in Australia, too (we’ve been cut off from Australia because of Covid for so long that I really have no idea how they speak now).

There is, however, one word I have deliberately avoided using: Mate, because it just sounds flat out weird in what’s my still mostly American accent. I can’t imagine ever using that word without using an exaggerated fake Australian accent (I'm not actually joking about that last part).

Related to words and language, Roger next asks:

Have you ever learned a word, or a different definition of a word, in your adulthood in which: 1) you REALLY like the word AND 2) you know PRECISELY how you learned it? (mine include ersatz and penultimate).

Also, what words did you see in print and didn't realize how it was pronounced, but you had used the word in conversation and just didn't know THAT'S how it was spelled? (mine include facetious; I know there are others) To the first part, sometimes 1 (and penultimate is actually one of those), but I can’t think of any for number 2, let alone both together. This is mostly because of poor memory.

For the second part, the only word I can think of that’s even close is the NZ colloquial word “pisstake”, which is actually a phrase “piss take” which comes from the phrase “taking the piss” which basically means joking around. Pisstake, then, is basically a joke, obvious or more subtle (and perhaps devious), or it might be used to claim someone is playing you for a fool: “That’s just a big pisstake.” The reason this is relevant is that I used to read one of New Zealand’s “general” magazines, and writers would use “pisstake”, however, up I’d never seen it in print, so I read it as a Japanese-sounding “piss-TAH-kay”. It was a real-life “doh!” moment—quite some time later—when I finally realised what “pisstake” in print actually was/meant. Now, to remember that for this answer, I used the word in a recent post, and it worked. Obviously. And that’s no pisstake, I can assure you.

And finally, Roger asks:

What board games or arcade games did you play as a kid? Which ones were you particularly good at and/or enjoy? Do you play games on your phone and/or your computer? Which ones?

This is probably my most pathetic/pitiable answer to a question in any AAA series, however, as a kid I was often alone, and so, I often “played” board games by myself: I remember “Mousetrap” and “Candyland” in particular. The first “Monopoly” set I bought was in German, so I was in high school by then. Before that, I played “Risk”. None of those were particularly engaging to me for very long, though I played ordinary “Monopoly” a bit in my 20s (mostly), and for a time I really liked backgammon—does that count? I wouldn’t say I was very “good” at any of them—although when I “played” the board games alone, I did always win…

When I think of “arcade games” I think of things like “Pac Man” or whatever, and I was in my 20s before I saw one—and I wasn’t all that interested. Maybe it was all the hype? However, in my early 30s I got a Nintendo system and played “Super Mario Brothers 3” (and went and bought 1 and 2 as well) a lot (and “Tetris”). Once in New Zealand, we bought a PlayStation (now called a PS One), and I played “Duke Nukem”, a FPS game that was also the first video game (as they used to be called) that I actually completed—and I won. I also played Crash Bandicoot (who recently left retirement and returned to the gaming world), Grand Tourismo, and others.

On my Mac, I had a few games, including some pinball games I really liked (I later bought the PC versions of two pinball games after I switched to PC for awhile). My favourite Mac game was called “Marathon” and involved aggressive alien taking over one’s spaceship and having to eliminate them. That game (and its sequel, “Durandal”) was later ported to the iPad (and available for free!), but I found it difficult to play without an actual keyboard or some sort of game controller, so I gave up. I also played "Castle Wolfenstein", which was the first game I ever actually finished, and successfully so. For awhile I was obsessed with SimCity, and even bought an add-on game, “Streets of SimCity”, that let me “drive” on the streets of the city I’d built. That was slow and kinda buggy sometimes, but to this day I still think it’s one of the coolest things ever. I never really got into the spin-off series, “The Sims”.

We later got a Nintendo portable thingee (not a Gameboy, but compact—I forget it was called and I don’t know where it is at the moment). I played Super Mario Brothers and Nigel played Donkey Kong—though I had to stop because using the little machine made me very anxious for some reason. Next, we bought a Nintendo Wii, and I played Mario Kart, among other games. I still have the PS and Wii, and I intend to hook them up again at some stage—because I can

The only game I play nowadays is on my iPad (and sometimes phone): “Words With Friends”, which is a social Scrabble-like game. I’ve been playing that since 2010 (with a few lapses). I used to play “Simpsons: Tapped Out” on my iPad, and I loved that they used some very subversive humour. I started playing that, I think, before Words, and I’d play both twice a day: In the morning and in the evening. I also sometimes played other games, like “Candy Crush” (til I got fed up with it), but none of them “stuck”. However, I stopped playing all my games when Nigel died, and didn’t resume Words for many months; I still haven’t gotten back into the Simpsons game. There are few others I play every once in a great while, but none of them are often enough to mention.

Thanks to Roger for all his questions, and to Enzo and Sherry for theirs. I wasn't sure I'd do an "Ask Arthur" series this year, but I'm glad I managed it. More or less. Same time next year?

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Yes, ask again – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 1: To blog, or not to blog
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 2: Grief, coping, and living
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 3: Biblical endings and me

Ask Arthur 2021, Part 3: Biblical endings and me

The days in the year are winding down, so I better rattle my dags and get this series done. Fortunately (for me) several questions are related, so that helps things. However, today’s aren’t in any way related: One is somewhat controversial, and the other absolutely isn’t.

The first question is from my longtime friend Sherry, who I’ve known for far too many years to politely mention. She asked:

Based on your religious upbringing… do you believe we are in the "end times." That it will get worse. That Jesus will return and we will all live a perfect life? What do you believe?

This is actually something I don’t think I’ve ever talked about on this blog—no particular reason, I just haven’t. However, whenever the subject’s come up (and, to be fair, it rarely has), I’ve been pretty consistent: I don’t believe in the “end times” and never have.

The first time I can remember being certain that “end times” was nonsense was when I was a teenager, 20 at most. My mother and I were talking about life and the issues of the day, as we often did, and she said how there were “wars and rumours of wars” and how that was an indicator of the approaching “end times”. I matter of factly said to her, “but when has there ever NOT been “wars and rumours of wars” in all of human history?” It was at that moment that I knew for sure that I thought the whole notion of “end times” was nonsense.

When I was in university, I took a class in comparative religions, and had a lot of really interesting discussions with my dad (who, new readers may not know, had been a Lutheran minister for most of my life to that point). As part of that course, and wider reading I did then and in the years and decades that followed, I never saw anything to convince me that the whole “end times” thing was real or legitimate. Instead, I came to believe it was merely churches’ way of trying to control people by scaring the hell (so to speak) out of them. That conviction has only strengthened over the years.

I have huge philosophical and theological problems with the very idea, and not just because most of the Book of Revelation reads like a memoir of a psychedelic acid trip. I also find its underlying philosophy to be anti-Christian: Christianity was based on Jesus’ words, not the apocalyptic ravings of some anonymous (possible) druggie. Lutheranism—my own background—and much of Christianity was based on “justification by faith alone”, which is actually summed up very well: in Wikipedia:

In Christian theology, justification is God's righteous act of removing the condemnation, guilt, and penalty of sin, by grace, while, at the same time, declaring the unrighteous to be righteous, through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice.

In my view, Revelation and its “end times” is wholly and completely inconsistent with core Christian teaching (not the least because the Gospels don’t talk about the “end times” acid trip). Fundamentalist/evangelical/conservative Christians stress “end times” because it meshes well with their stress on authority of the church and its right to control every aspect of people’s lives. That level of authoritarian control is antithetical to Mainline Protestants (like Lutherans) and even modern Catholics in Europe and North America.

Because of all that, then, I believe that humans are capable of destroying the earth OR creating a paradise for all, and no supernatural intervention or acid trip journals are required for either to happen. It’s absolutely possible that things will get very much worse, or, things could get better—there’s no way to know which it will be. There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful, and other reasons to be worried, but I absolutely don’t think that Iron Age mysticism is a reliable way to determine what will happen.

As for the reason many people want to believe in “end times”, that, “Jesus will return and we will all live a perfect life,” that’s a matter of philosophy or religious faith. I personally don’t have any religion, so, in a sense, it’s not my fight. If the question was, “could Jesus return?” Sure—I’ve never seen any proof that it would be impossible. If that happened, could that also mean that “we will all live a perfect life?” Sure—anything’s theoretically possible. I’m just not convinced either will happen.

My own belief, since you asked, is that none of that “end times” stuff will happen. The Gospels, flawed though they are, provide a far better roadmap to what’s likely to happen if Christianity is true than the Iron Age acid trip journal ever could.

Thanks to Sherry for the question! It reminds me that I really should talk about religious philosophy more often.

Next, I have a completely unrelated question from Roger Green, one I’m including to kind of lighten things up a bit. He asked:

Are there any famous people with the surname Schenck? How about famous (or hemisemidemifamous) people named Arthur Schenck? My Google notifications are forever telling me about golfers, musicians, pastors, police chiefs named Roger Green..

I realise that you mean anyone other than me, and it kind of depends on how “famous” you mean. There were—past tense—a couple of famous people, and a couple other Schenck surnames I’ve run across over the years, but that’s about it.

The first non-related Schenck I ever heard of was Joseph M. Schenck, who was a Russian-born US film executive, beginning in the early days. He partnered with Darryl F. Zanuck to create Twentieth Century Pictures, which in 1935 merged with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century Fox, which he was chairman of until 1957. The reason I heard of him is because I remember by dad telling me about how his classmates teased him by posting newspaper clippings of Joseph’s conviction for income tax evasion (for which he later received a presidential pardon). Reading the Wikipedia article linked to above, I can’t help wondering if he was actually gay.

The second Schenck I ever heard of was Charles T. Schenck, but that was only because I was studying political science and came across Schenck v. United States, a landmark 1919 Supreme Court case that upheld Charles’ conviction under the Espionage Act of 1917 for handing out flyers urging people to resist the military draft. That was the ruling in which Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” and used the phrase “clear and present danger” as a reason to suppress free speech.

The next one was Rocky Schenck, who directed the Visiting Kids video for “Trilobites”. I included that video in a 2017 blog post.

Finally, in checking to make sure I hadn’t missed any, I ran across a German-born French painter, August Friedrich Schenck, who I’d never heard of and know nothing about, other than what I read. On the other hand, that same quick check showed me there are apparently a lot of lawyers with the Schenck surname.

As for famous "Arthur Schencks", I must report that none of us appear to be particularly "famous"—I mean, other than me, obviously. I'm a bloody legend, as we all know.

Thanks for the question, Roger!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Yes, ask again – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 1: To blog, or not to blog
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 2: Grief, coping, and living

Ask Arthur 2021, Part 2: Grief, coping, and living

I decided to take a break from the “Ask Arthur” series over the Christmas holidays. I think that most people (including me) don’t want to deal with too much thinking at that time of year. Still, with the year winding down, it’s time to get back into it.

The first question is from my friend Enzo, who I’ve known for many years, since back when Nigel and I were living on Auckland’s North Shore. He asked:

What’s your top five best tips for coping with grief?

This is a really good question, and my answer to it has been evolving for two years now, and I’m sure that’s not going to change any time soon. Nevertheless, there are certain themes that keep popping up, so they’re a good place to start.

1. Feel. What I mean by that is that a grieving person should be and feel free to experience whatever emotion they’re experiencing at the moment. We must be free to cry and/or laugh when we feel like it without judgement from others—or ourselves. Emotions are the way the body and psyche heal, in this context in particular, from the trauma of losing a loved one. I’ve noticed how often grieving people will self-censor and not say what they’re really feeling for fear of being judged, either literally judged by people they know, or more figuratively by what I call “The Unseen Other,” the (probably) imaginary person we picture frowning and sighing deeply at the way we deal with our grief (this same Unseen Other often keeps people from trying new things, by the way). One of the best bits of advice I can give anyone is to cry or laugh whenever they want to. In time it’ll become more of the latter, but that takes time and space to happen.

2. Triggers are inevitable. There will be times when something—anything— can suddenly trigger a bout of crying, or even heavy sobbing. That includes things like a photo, a birthday card, the way the light falls on a familiar tree in the neighbourhood, the birth of a new relative, a new movie, or even the song used in a TV commercial (this last one happened to me with a Christmas ad this year). Such things can seem to come out of nowhere, and the feeling of being blindsided by the emotions is part of what can make it truly awful. On the other hand, they also tend to disappear as suddenly as they arrived—IF we allow ourselves to experience whatever we’re feeling (see Number 1). If we try to suppress or ignore what we’re feeling, it can drag on and on. Triggers are inevitable, but the pain they can cause doesn’t have to hang around. And there’s one more important things about triggers: They can also give us happy feelings, like nostalgia, love, or warmth. This is something that becomes more common as time passes, but triggers of deep sadness can occur for many years. Just ride them out.

3. It’s a journey, not a race. This is one thing that many people—those who are grieving and those who care about them—forget. There’s no such thing as a set timeline, and certainly no linear path. The grief will last as long as it lasts. I’ve seen plenty of grieving people worried about, and even feeling shame about, how long their grief journey is taking. Whether it’s people telling them they need to “get over it” (sadly, that really happens), or just a grieving person feeling that they “ought” to be feeling “better”, the result is still awful. I’m deeply sceptical of anyone—even mental health professionals—who try to put a fence around someone’s grief, something I’ve referred to as “six and done”, that we’re “allowed” to grieve for six months, but then we have to be “over it”, or starting to “move on”. It never works that way in real life. Some people absolutely do adjust more quickly than others, but that fact doesn’t mean that there’s something “wrong” with the people who need more time. It’s arrogant to decide for someone else how long they’ll be “allowed” to grieve, and stupid to tell them to “move on” (we move forward, not “on”, by the way). Each person is a unique individual, and their journey through grief is unique, too. Each person’s grief journey will take as long as it takes.

4. There’s no “right” way to grieve. This relates to all three of the previous points: Not everyone feels their emotions, some people won’t experience any real triggers, some people seem to have moved past their grief quickly, and some people will be the opposite on all those things. Most grieving people are probably somewhere between those extremes on one or more of the things they face in their journey, but whatever one’s reality may be, it’s perfectly normal for them. Just because person A seems to no longer be grieving after a few weeks doesn’t mean that person B is wrong for grieving a lost loved one years later. Instead, it merely means they’re different from each other. Only the grieving person will know what’s right for them personally. Give them time and space and they’ll get through it.

5. Breathe. All of the things I’ve talked about relate to the tendency we have to judge ourselves or to worry about the judgement of others. Because of all that, a grieving person may get a bit panicky about where their journey is at, or maybe that sometimes they need to sob heavily. In the early stages of grief in particular, it’s important to take one day at a time (as we all should), but sometimes we need to take one hour at a time, or one moment, or even just one breath. There will be times on a grief journey when the whole thing is absolutely overwhelming, and it may feel like it will never end—maybe that it can’t. When things get too overwhelming, the best thing to do is to just breathe. Some people find it helpful to concentrate on inhaling slowly, pausing, and exhaling slowly, but the larger point is that sometimes the best thing we can do is to forget about time, and everything filling it, and simply breathe. One breath at a time leads to one moment at a time, one hour, one day, and the more that happens the easier everything becomes. And then we grieving people can truly move forward.

As I said above, my advice on all these points has been evolving over the past couple years. I’ve talked about many of these things as they relate to my own journey in various blog posts, labelled ”A Survivor’s Notes” (posts about my grief journey), and also ”Building My New Normal” (which talk about my “journey out of grief”). All of which means that if I was to do this again next year—or in a few months, even—my answers might be very different. But the advice to just breathe is one thing I doubt will ever change, because, really, that sums up everything else.

Thanks to Enzo for the question!

Next, I have a somewhat related question from Roger Green:

Other than Nigel, whose death did you most mourn? Also what death of a public figure most affected you?.

The short answer would be that I’m not sure. That’s because that Nigel’s death ripped apart the fabric of my life to such an extent that everything, including my perceptions of my own past, is in a state of flux. I’ve also become more fatalistic about life and death, which has kind of retrospectively diminished the impact of anyone else’s death.

Still, my parents’ death affected me greatly at the time, but I was quickly overwhelmed by the need to survive as I set out on my new adult life. Before that, it was the death of the woman I called “my adopted grandmother” (she started out helping my mother do the housework, and eventually became a treasured member of the family—one I often think about to this day). I don’t remember my actual grandparents, since I seldom saw them and they died when I was still quite young.

I’m glad you asked about how the death of a public figure affected me, because I don’t think I’ve ever actually mourned a public figure—certainly not the same way I’ve mourned someone I knew in real life. The first time I remember the death of a public figure affecting me was John Lennon in 1980, when I was 21. While I remember the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King, I was a very young child—not even in preschool yet—when JFK was assassinated, and still in the third year of primary school when Dr. King was assassinated, so I didn’t understand what was going on.

I was also affected by the deaths of Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela, and, only recently, Desmond Tutu, among others. Some public figures’ deaths affected me more than others, of course, and I’m sure there are more I’ve forgotten about. These are just some I remember.

Additionally, two deaths affected me well afterward: Harvey Milk’s assassination in 1978 and Matthew Shepard’s murder twenty years later. In 1978, I was in high school and deeply closeted, and so, not willing to feel anything, however, I think that I felt the White Night riots were justified, though I certainly never told anyone that back then. In 1998, I’d been gone from LGBT political activism for several years, and Matthew’s death hit me because he symbolised all the victims of the very hatred and prejudice I’d fought against when I was an activist. He wasn’t a “public figure” until he was killed, and then he became a one: A symbol of all the young gay people we couldn’t save from anti-LGBT hatred, and also all those we’d lose in the future. And we’ll continue to lose, even now. It’s fair to say that the deaths of Harvey and Matthew affected me more than that of any other public figures.

Thanks for the question, Roger!

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Yes, ask again – The first post in this year’s series.
Ask Arthur 2021, Part 1: To blog, or not to blog

Ask Arthur 2021, Part 1: To blog, or not to blog

It’s time to begin answering this year’s “Ask Arthur” series, and I decided to start with a question from sort of the middle of the ones I’ve received so far because it’ll give me a chance to talk about some of the issues in the background to all of this year’s posts—and where I may be headed with this blog.

The question is from my pal Roger Green:

How do you see blogging these days? A lot of your recent pieces have been about health (yours, including your mental state; NZ COVID). Conversely, no run of holiday ads so far, and spotty music sharing...

There are two ways to answer that question: About blogging in general, and what I think about it for me personally. Or, in other words, the answer’s complicated.

There are plenty of people who see blogging as dead, just a relic from the Early Internet, those days of dial-up connections and no YouTube or Social Media. By the time I started this blog in 2006, all those things were going (and broadband Internet was common), as were podcasts. That means that the ways that people could express themselves had expanded enormously. While people tend to not to refer to, link to, or comment on blogs as they once did, the medium endures.

It seems to me that most blogs these days are trying to monetise the content one way or another, such as advertising (which seldom actually pays very much), sponsorships, subscriptions, or even just cross promotion of other content one either has to pay to access or that generates income in other ways. My guess is that this trend will continue, and folks who don’t try to monetise will be the orphans of the blogosphere, a tiny minority, like the people who still use a rotary landline telephones (though such a phone would actually have to produce tones, so not quite as antique-y as non-monetised blogs will become).

When I began podcasting (something else I’ve done very little of this year), I said that I saw it as an extension of this blog, though it turned out its audience was much bigger (“much”, in this case, being a term expressing relativity, not actual size; both audiences have always been small). Similarly, my YouTube Channel (not touched for five years) was something that I originally intended to be a visual component of this blog and my podcast. For example, I sometimes posted the script for my videos on this blog, but I always posted the videos themselves (and I posted the videos on my podcast site, too).

In other words, I was “maximising the reach of my content” before that was a thing. Well, it already was a thing, just not all-pervasive—or as monetised as now. I still think it’s useful to have different ways to share the stuff one creates, regardless of whether there’s any attempt to monetise it or not.

Having said all that, it could seem odd that I still believe in the usefulness of blog posts and the value of integration of content when I’m doing very little of any of that. There are, of course, reasons for that.

2021 turned out to be yet another crap year for me, and I’ve just not had the necessary “oomph” to do much. That’s true in general, actually, not just about blogging or whatever, as I’ve spoken about in a couple of posts recently [HERE and also HERE]. It’s hard to blog without the will to do it.

Even so, there are specific reasons for where things are at with this blog. Roger mentioned health as an example of something I did talk about this year. My own health is an ongoing topic, of course, one I’ve always promised to be honest about. Covid has, without any doubt whatsoever, dominated New Zealand’s news and civic affairs this year, so those topics would always loom large, too.

There’s an unusual reason why I haven’t posted any Christmas commercials this year: I was recently going through old posts to research new ones, and I noticed that the videos that were most likely to be gone were TV commercials. It annoys me whenever videos are removed (to me, it’s like dumping documents from an archive), and the result’s aesthetically ugly for this blog. As it happens, I came up with a solution, and I’ll talk about that tomorrow. So, the lack of Christmas ads actually has nothing to do with me, or the state of me, but, rather, forces entirely outside my control. Phew!

None of that’s true for music posts, since a long time ago I started only embedding “official” videos which almost never go away. Instead, the reason there have been so few of those has mostly been for the reason I mentioned before: Lack of "oomph".

There have been many times in the past when I seriously considered just giving up on blogging, podcasting, everything. Other times, I’ve plotted ways to do more of everything. I never claimed to be consistent! The truth is, I couldn’t monetise my stuff even if I wanted to: Any income would be taxed by two countries, and the tiny amount I’d have left over just wouldn’t be worth all the hassles and stress that would come from complying with tax laws in two countries. That means that the only reason I do any of this stuff is for no other reason than that I enjoy it. This year there just wasn’t enough joy “en” it.

Which leads inevitably to the question, will this be any better for me next year? Dunno. I don’t have enough information or whatever to base a prediction on, primarily because I can’t even begin to guess what state of mind/body I’ll be in next year, and that matters a lot. But it’s not the only thing.

It’s discouraging when I’m already tired and worn out, anyway, to see that most of my blog posts have had maybe a couple dozen views in the first few days after I publish a new post (it does rise over time). Much as it’s nice to be able to provide a diversion for a couple dozen folks, it does feel like a lot of work without much payoff. Among the posts that used to get the most readers were the ones in which I talked about US politics (several of which are in my “all-time highest ranking” posts). The drop off in page views accelerated when I stopped talking about that. But I still don't feel like wading into US politics. It’s just too toxic and negative, and I don’t want that in my life.

I definitely do still like blogging (whether anyone reads it or not), and recording podcasts (whether anyone listens or not), and I also still think I’d like to resume making YouTube videos (whether anyone watches or not). My goal is merely to create, but on my terms and timeline. I feel like those are all moving in the right direction, and I guess I’ll know soon enough if I’m right or not.

Thanks for the question, Roger!

It’s not too late to ask a question: Simply leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom de question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, though keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog. You can also send me a private message through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page.

All posts in this series are tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

Yes, ask again – The first post in this year’s series.

Yes, ask again

For several years beginning in 2012, I had an annual year-end series of “Ask Arthur” posts (I also had two July series, but gave up that idea). I didn’t do one in 2019, of course, but I realised that if I want to do a 10th anniversary series next year, I couldn't very well skip another year. Like last year, then, I thought, “why not?”

As in previous years, I'll leave the questions open until I near the end of the series. If I don't get any questions, this'll be a very short series, but whatever happens it'll end on or before December 31..

These “Ask Arthur” posts offer a chance for people to ask me nearly anything, and I try to answer whatever I’m asked. I’ve never had topics that I decided in advance are “off limits”, but I always said that if I couldn’t answer something for whatever reason, I’d say so. So far, I've never had a question that I wouldn’t answer.

Over the years, I’ve been asked about myself, my past, about life in New Zealand—mine or in general—about being an expat, what I think about various topics or events in the news, and so on. I'm also completely open to answering questions about grief, too, something that some people seem to be kind of afraid of asking about (even though I've blogged about it a lot over the past two years). In other words, there are many different topics, and many possibilities.

To ask questions, leave a comment on this post (anonymous comments are allowed; all comments are currently moderated, so there may be a delay before yours appears). Or, you can email me your question (and you can even tell me to keep your name secret, although, why not pick a nom du question?). You can also ask questions on the AmeriNZ Facebook page, however, keep in mind that all Facebook Pages are public, just like this blog, so if you ask a question there, anyone can read it and associate it with your name. Instead, you can send me a private message (not a comment on the page itself) through the AmeriNZ Facebook Page (private messages aren't public—at the moment?).

Finally, as I always note, this idea is stolen from inspired by Roger Green’s “Ask Roger Anything” (“ARA”) posts. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Or, something like that.

So, over to you: Ask your question whatever way works best for you, and I’ll do my best to answer it.

All posts in this series will be tagged “AAA-21”. All previous posts from every “Ask Arthur” series are tagged, appropriately enough, ”Ask Arthur”.

Previously:

What do you want to know? (December 2012)
Ask Arthur (July 2013)
Ask Arthur – Again (December 2013)
Ask Arthur Again, again (December 2014)
Ask Arthur yet again (July 2015)
It’s that time again (December 2015)
It’s ‘Ask Arthur’ time again (December 2016)
Let the 2017 asking begin (November 2017)
Let the 2018 asking begin (November 2018)
There was no “Ask Arthur” series in 2019.
Sure, why not ask again? (December 2020)