THE SANCTITY OF HOUSESITTING IN LOW-KEY PALMY

After two days of hot and humid weather, Palmerston North finally cooled down with late afternoon showers yesterday, which alternated between steady droppings of rain that made soft, pitter patter sounds on the roof and drizzle throughout the night. The weather couldn’t seem to make up its mind. I thus awoke at 6:30 this morning to birds singing and a strong island breeze. Realizing I had to take the recycling and garbage bins to the curb, I stepped out of the house and dragged all three to the end of the driveway, relishing the way the breeze whipped my hair around this way and that. Last night, I anticipated another humid and sunny day, but the sun hasn’t wanted to greet Palmy residents today.

I spent Christmas alone housesitting for one of my supervisors. Not one to sit in the house all day (though I’ve been known to sit in my office reading for the large part of the day), I spent some of the gorgeous sun-filled afternoon outdoors, weeding out the competitive plants that seemed to have proliferated while I wasn’t looking. Later, I meandered into town and decided to peruse the list of upcoming movies at the Downtown Cinemas. Having given into my movie craving a few days before with “I, Anna”, a Charlotte Rampling indie, which cost me a whopping NZ$16.50, I began creating a mental list of movies to watch, an event that lasted exactly a minute.

The day was overall quiet, like a ghost town that was keeping residents hostage in their houses. The Sunday before had the same impression on me. No one milled about in the streets as they normally do, save for a few stragglers scattered on the grass in the Square just behind the mobile soft serve ice cream truck.  I figured everyone was at church. Not seemingly a Christian place, I slowly learned that many people actually celebrate church day in this town. Although, I must say that perhaps, it should not be so surprising in light of the new information I acquire from documentaries on the telly that teach me about New Zealand’s conservative history. One example of the right-minded (in political terms) tendency of the parliament, I learned yesterday through a documentary broadcast on the Heartland channel on Sky TV that the Kiwi parliament imprisoned many peaceful protestors of World War II. Perhaps in response to the unwelcome attitude of the parliament, many decided to set up an organic, independent commune for pacifists, to which many people even today still gravitate. But, I was surprised to learn about New Zealand’s version of America’s “Red Scare” during the McCarthy era, that the Kiwi government would commit such a heinous breach of civil rights. During the “Red Scare”, hundreds of people were blacklisted and arrested for their association with the US Communist Party.

Still on Christmas Day, walking about the centre of town, I began noticing landmarks and features of the city that I hadn’t noticed as well before. I go to the City Library on occasion to have a coffee at the indoor café or to peruse the books that I want to read after completing the two I already have on loan, and I pass down this street a number of times. But, on this day, without the usual visual distractions of throngs of people, I noticed the number of quaint, independent coffee shops along this street called George Street, which is apparently highlighted in the Lonely Planet as the café centre of Palmerston North. I peeked into the cafe store windows, the Red Tomato, Cuba Café, and some others, the names of which I can’t remember to get a glimpse of the ambience. Each displays a variety of motifs and colours, reflections of the owner’s handiwork and personal taste.

Most of Christmas Day, however, as has been the case over the last several days since starting the housesitting task, I’ve sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by rows of windows and scenic backyards, reading journal articles and re-writing parts of my literature review. Slaving away is too mild a term for such a mundane task. My mind drifts in and out of my labour since chunks of the discussion about resilience, which I might have mentioned in another blog post, has been dedicated to discussing the food system, a topic I’ve covered in previous academic pursuits. But, just as I think I might pass out from the redundancy, I find something that adds some insight to the literary discussion as a whole. Luckily, I’m not scheduled to write the "Introduction" chapter, which is really my research framework, until March 1. I’m happy with the flow of my work, thus far, and am pleased with the emerging outcome of my review. I realize I owe much to my supervisor, who "lent" me her house for some two weeks because the sanctuary of living alone in a quiet neighborhood (even the barking dog next door renders me companionship) at the West End of the Square has given me the mental space to think through my literature review.

 

A MONTH OF MORE LEARNING

Two weekends ago, I explored the road running along Moginie Village, a highway that inhabits sheep and dairy farms. I set off after reading and writing for what seemed like hours to me in my room.

This Saturday morning was quiet in our flat, the loneliness of it manifested in the hollow echo of the hallway, made known to me as I walked the short, carpeted distance to the exit door.

The sun was shining blindingly as I stepped out onto the miniscule foyer that greets entrants paying a visit, a fact I hadn’t understood from the darkness of my bedroom. Cushioned at the far side of the flat, my room is hidden from view by the bushes that protect me from being seen by people crossing the courtyard, and thus doesn’t see direct sunlight. From the vantage point of my room, my senses were deceived, as I discovered.

Walking briskly, taking care to step away from the cars racing down the highway, I pursued the distance with a vengeance, like a woman with a mission to learn what was on the other side. I approached a sign orienting my location in Palmerston North to surrounding towns: Masterton, 28 kilometers; Levin 18 kilometers. Was I going in either direction?

After walking for what seemed like hours, I finally descended upon another valley, which dipped up and over another hump. A sign attached to a wooden fence read Silver Fern Farm. Unknown to me of the distance I had fastwalked, I asked a little girl living in the house on the farm how to get into town. She said, “you have to keep walking that way,” in her soft New Zealand accent. I followed the direction of her finger and began to see familiar sights, ane eventually a roadsign directing me back to Massey University.

This December was busy, filled with activity, one in particular of great importance to me (the Agrifood Network Conference), where I learned that early scholars can start networking and showcasing their research that was, like me, beginning to materialize in the early stages. I learned that conferences are a good place to do that and a good place to network with more senior scholars. I hope to present my findings at the XXI Agrifood Network conference. The venue of that one will be decided at the one next year, which will be in Melbourne, Australia.

The conference was new to me, but it exposed me to the food network research goings on in Oceania and Southeast Asia. Massey University, being a land grant, agricultural research university, is right in the thick of it. Massey U has some of the highest funded food research projects in the country, I discovered. The topics on provenance and Bourdieu’s habitus engendered some fresh perspectives for me, revelations that are always good for researchers – like a fresh breeze after a moment of stale, dinner wind. The food security scholarship, which I have been re-reading . . . and re-reading, and re-reading  . . .  was starting to feel like the latter to me after polishing up my book manuscript over the last three years. Needless to say, my literature review is proceeding and progressing much better than I thought. I spent the last week doing more re-writes, becoming almost obsessive over “getting it right” that I couldn’t move to the section on planning, which is important to establishing the planning perspective in my intended research.

I finally got the Christmas care package from my folks in Massachusetts this afternoon. Tropical nuts are sold by the grams here and are too expensive for my student budget, so seeing these nuts in my care box was very exciting. The dried fruit are an added plus.

I read Yahoo and CNN to stay on top of news in America. My heart broke, along with everyone else’s, after learning about the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Those beloved children. New Zealand also experienced a gun massacre in Ala Moana beach, which changed gun ownership laws around the country. There has not been another gun massacre since the legislative change. Something to think about for American policymakers and voters.

NOT A TYPICAL SATURDAY, BUT TYPICAL ENOUGH

My interactions with the outer world has been reduced to cyber space, where my greetings are restricted to an over-active finger that clicks “like”, “share”, “logout”. No conversations except the ones I have with myself, commenting and exclaiming out loud. Facebook it has to be for the budget-minded student for a while, I’m afraid.

If I haven’t mentioned this before, the skies above the north island are inherently temperamental. Being an island climate, grey clouds roll in and are held at bay by the warmer rays, which descend on the rolling hills of Palmerston North and beyond.

I experienced the morning market on Church and Albert today (Saturday) for the first time, where mostly Asian and Maori sellers showcase the green thumbs of the farmers. (Don't know yet where the vegetables come from.) Designed for early risers, it was not as busy when I strolled in around 11-ish. To get there, I decided to cross Victoria Park at the bottom of the bridge on Fitzherbert Avenue. Birds calling out to each other in the course of swooping from branch to branch, fluttering wings barely missing my alert ears, are a welcome sight compared to the cars zipping on the road. The sounds I heard were only those of wildlife. Civilization was a muffled cacophony in the distance. I sighted British elms, gum trees and wild cherries along the gravel road.

At the end of this brief traipse, I stepped out onto Cook Street, in the area where the Aquatic Centre sits, only to discover that I was at the other side of the Square, a fair distance from Church and Albert streets. Because I had completed rewrites of my literature review, I decided to view this errand as a half day off before I return to my desk and shave off unnecessary bits of my review.

The Mini-mart, which sells Indian spices, was along the way. So were several coffee shops. Unfortunately, after Victoria Garden the remaining distance of this route was pretty drab, offering little in the form of vegetation. Soon, I was engulfed again by a steady stream of asphalt, Pacific Island architecture, and oh yeah endless coffee shops.

At the end of the day, I look upon this day as my having discovered the must-dos, bucket list items that I had been putting off for weeks because of my preoccupation with the literature review (notice how I treat the litreview as a third peson so as not to get too emotionally involved with it). Oh, and I managed to sneak in a few hours at a café, where I nursed an Americano while perusing through magazine articles about artists, musicians, and actors. The orange-lemon infused water, a signature quencher for this particular café, did its job, the perfect partner to my parched throat.

I even borrowed a library book about the Kennedys from the City Library, where I used the card I applied for on Friday for the first time.

After a long six-hour nap at dusk, as I had stayed awake through the night, I was back to the grind again, slicing through my paragraphs and consolidating thoughts and themes to make my review more readable.

I’ve moved to the other side of campus to Moginie Village, another residential hall for mature, postgraduate students. I am still on top of the hill, but the sights are different. Instead of looking into my neighbours’ kitchen, bedroom, and living room, I now see birch trees when I open the shades from my bedroom. When I cook, I see birds, possums, and other trees I don’t recognize. When I take a short route towards the cherry trees fronting a cow paddock, I see sheep, some already sheared in preparation for the heart of the summer. A different sensation, indeed.