Festivals – Corpus

Find your dibbler!

22 October 2018 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

It’s Labour Day in New Zealand. This is the long weekend that announces the approach of summer. It’s time to pack away the winter duvet, dust off the camping equipment, sort out the seed potatoes and find your dibbler – you do remember where you put your dibbler, right?

However you spend the day, the public holiday is a reminder to honour the dignity and meaning of work. So whether you’re rostered on or enjoying a break, we recommend the following articles about working in healthcare,

A privileged job by Jillian Sullivan
In praise of Ronnie the nurse by Peter Wells
A lesson from Africa by Mary Morseth
Do you have anything for me to see? by Janine Winters
A career in medical oncology by David Perez
Choosing Paediatrics as a career in medicine by John Clarkson

Sue Wootton is co-editor of Corpus.

Light in darkness: Matariki and a winter carnival

2 July 2018 4 Comments

Sue Wootton

Matariki is the Māori name for the Pleiades, or ‘seven sisters’, a group of stars which in June or July becomes visible just above the horizon at dawn. Matariki means ‘the eyes of god’ (mata ariki) or ‘little eyes’ (mata riki). In Māori mythology, Ranginui, the sky father, and Papatūānuku, the earth mother, were separated by their children, causing the god of the winds, Tāwhirimātea, to fly into a rage, pluck out his eyes and hurl them into the skies.

Traditionally, the first new moon after the the appearance of Matariki signals the start of a new year. It’s a time for acknowledging the cycle of life and seasons, remembering the dead and celebrating the turn toward lengthening days.

Each year the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin celebrates the winter solstice and Matariki with a midwinter carnival. Thousands of people, young and old, gather in the Octagon in the heart of the city to enjoy music, street food and fireworks – but the highlight for everyone is always the lantern parade, a procession of children and adults bearing (or wearing) a gorgeous array of luminous flora and magical beasts. Light glows and flows around the Octagon, and face after face bursts out smiling. Click on the images below to share the experience.

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On Pride

9 April 2018 Leave a Comment

Ella Robinson and Hahna Briggs

This week – 7-15 April – is Dunedin Pride Week. Every year, during Pride celebrations across New Zealand, people ask why we still need Pride. Why do we still celebrate it after marriage equality? Why be so loud? What does Pride even mean? There isn’t a straightforward answer.

Pride means different things to different people. For some, it’s a time for finding or discovering representation. For others it’s about commemorating all those who actively fought (and still fight) for LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Intersex, and Asexual) people to be recognized as citizens with equal rights in New Zealand and around the world.

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An apple fall: Easter downunder

2 April 2018 Leave a Comment

Sue Wootton

Corpus is taking a bit of an Easter break. We’ll be back next week with three fresh articles. Meanwhile…

Easter: whatever your stance on the religious reason for the season, it’s hard to miss the spring-associated symbolism in all those foil-wrapped chocolate eggs and bunnies. Which is a bit weird, really, for those of us in Aotearoa/New Zealand, for whom Easter marks the turn towards winter. It’s the end of daylight saving; it’s goodbye to a long hot summer and (speaking from Dunedin) those lovely lengthy southern evenings. For us downunder, it’s autumn and it’s harvest time. Open the Corpus Easter egg to read a poem by the aptly named Robert Frost that celebrates nature’s abundance and that also says: sometimes, hands off – just let be.

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Laughter is the best medicine

18 December 2017 2 Comments

Liz Breslin

And, hot off the press, the scorching new wellness trend set to take 2018 by storm is – drumroll, please – choreographed group laughter.

I made that up, of course. It’s not nearly gobbledy-gooky enough to pass for a wellness trend. But it has been said since Proverbs 17:22 that laughter is the best medicine. Well, what Proverbs 17:22 actually says is:

A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

But ‘laughter is the best medicine’ has a better ring to it and it’s the sort of quasi-medical common sense that I’m absolutely inclined to believe.

Rhododendron Day

16 October 2017 4 Comments

Sue Wootton and Doug Lilly

Tick tock, tick tock. Ours is a busy culture built on clock time. With so much to do and only 24 hours a day in which to do it, no wonder sleeplessness, anxiety and overwhelm are some of the signature complaints of, well, our times. But there are other ways of living in time. There is seasonal time, for example.

Thus I could tell you it’s October in Dunedin, or I can throw a blanket over that clockwork time-bird ticking in its cage and go outside. What’s the time? Here it is: it’s seven-tui-in-the-kōwhai. It’s the time of the full-blown orange poppies, the time of pear-blossom-like-snow, the moment of wisteria-begins-to-purple. It’s the era of the slightly tattered tulips and the wind-blown dilapidated daffodils.

And most vividly of all, it is the time of the rhododendrons, a city-wide seasonal blaze of beauty, celebrated annually at the Dunedin Botanic Gardens (home of the world-renowned Rhododendron Dell) as Rhododendron Day. Season’s tidings, then, from the colour-full, spring-full south.

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