Milford Sound Multimedia

We got stuck behind the tour bus that caught on fire on the road from Milford Sound. By the time we arrived, the passengers had all been evacuated and the bus driver had already walked up the hill to the emergency phone by the tunnel. The engine fire was still small enough that a volunteer in another camper van thought he might be able to put it out. We gave up our camper's kitchen fire extinguisher to the effort. But the fire quickly got out of hand. There was nothing to do but wait for the bus fire to exhaust itself. It was pretty dramatic when the gas tanks exploded, one by one. It was even more exciting when the emergency brake cables burned and the bus started rolling downhill, towards us. Fortunately, it went completely off the road and didn't hurt anyone.

After it was safe to pass, we drove back to Te Anau (which is surprisingly nice for a tourist town and worth a visit). Look at the lupine! Iris did a happy dance.


So tall.

Attitudes and Latitudes

First, a gratuitous picture of Iris on the drive between Christchurch and Akaroa.

Now let's talk about the difference in attitude towards energy between the US and NZ.

Look at this cool clothes dryer that came with our first host family's new "spec" home. The smaller portion ratchets up for a small amount of laundry. The lower portion ratchets up for a big wash day. This family doesn't even own an electric (or natural gas) clothes dryer. (If it rains for an extended period of time, the hostess uses a small clothes rack in the garage.)

What builder in the US would put a clothesline, much less a cool and space-saving one such as this, in a spec (speculative) home, built with no particular buyer identified yet? In the US, builders of spec homes put in tons of energy-wasting appliances, vaulted ceilings and install marble or granite (or some other labor-intensive to maintain) finishes throughout.

We stayed with two families and went to a party at a third. There was not a single vaulted ceiling in sight, even in the two newer homes. Hot air rises. With the ubiquitous American great-room with vaulted ceilings, you have to heat a lot of air to sustain a comfortable temperature at people level during the winter.

Homes were built for easy maintenance. New Zealand has a labor shortage. (An island nation, they don't have desperately poor neighbors who will do their dirty work for them for next to nothing.)

Everyone saved their kitchen scraps for composting. The hostess of the townhouse pictured above had a very compact compost system that originated in Japan. (If I could get it in the US, I could fit them in my side yard and still have room to walk by. I gotta figure out a way to get a pair of those.)

Many people grew vegetable gardens. Even in small yards, people would tuck some edible lettuces or a few tomato plants among the flowers. They used their home-made compost. They talked about the thin topsoil and high winds in New Zealand and the need to constantly amend and improve their soil. They talked about soil in terms of stewardship of a precious resource. We hose our soil down the storm drains in the city and I am going to leave ranting about American farm practices to others.

New Zealanders import every drop of oil that they use. You won't find many gas guzzling cars on NZ roads. (Though you will see many diesel-powered camper vans like the one we rented; they are surprisingly economical with fuel.) Lacking a domestic car industry, they had no problem recently banning the importation of large trucks and SUVs.

About 2/3 of their electricity comes from hydroelectric projects. Another fraction comes from geothermal sources. Electricity is enormously expensive to store, and impossible to store on a large scale. Thus, electricity costs vary greatly by time of day. Homeowners are highly incentivized to use electricity after peak demand hours. One host family heated water only after 9 pm. If they use up the 240 liters they heat up each night before the following night, too bad. They plan their daily activities so that they don't run out of hot water.

Imagine that. Planning your daily activities in advance. Prioritizing energy and water use. Doing your own dirty work.

Doesn't the first picture of Iris remind you of the ads that energy companies in the US run? She already lost her new glasses. They were adorable, as you can see.

Motherhood stories in the news

The Washington Post ran an article about the divergence of motherhood. Well-educated women typically give birth in their 30s while less educated women do so in their 20s. Bringing Up Babies, And Defying the Norm profiled several college-educated women who bucked the trend by reproducing in their mid to late 20s.

Ginsburg is Latest Justice to Reflect on Faith is an article supposedly about faith. But I found the most telling quote at the end.

As for her career, Ginsburg said, being a woman provided more obstacles than being a Jew. She graduated tied for first in her 1959 Columbia Law School class, she said, but did not receive a job offer from any New York law firm. That she was a woman hurt, she said, but that she was the mother of a young child was "the real killer."

Most appallingly, I don't think things have changed much in the intervening decades. Read Joan Williams' book examining the plight of women in the legal profession, Unbending Gender: Why Family and Work Conflict and What to Do About It. Actually, the book discusses a great deal more than that and should be more widely read.