Stateside with Rosalea

About this blog

From 2000 through 2010, I was privileged to write for an independent news website based in my native New Zealand. Scoop Media began as an aggregation of press releases from political and corporate entities, plus reporting and commentary. Some of the commentary on Scoop is original to the site; the rest is sourced and reprinted with permission from other online sites.

This blog is a collection of the columns I wrote for scoop.co.nz and its partner website werewolf.co.nz until the end of 2010, plus items I now post directly to this blog.

I've been re-posting my Scoop columns to TypePad. It will take a while to put them all up, so go to Scoop.co.nz and search for rosalea, then limit the results to "byline" to get 'em all at the source.

Stateside with Rosalea: Hawai'i

“If anyone wants to know what it is to be in hell without waiting for eternity, let him be in a divided Cabinet, knowing that every word and act is being reported and misconstrued by a traitor—with the knowledge that a man is among you who you cannot trust, and the possibility of another 30th of July hanging over your head.”

Thus spake Lorrin Thurston, Hawai’i’s Minister of the Interior in early 1890. The date he referenced was the one on which, the previous year, a Hawai’ian-born but Italian-educated surveyor, Robert Wilcox, marched with a rag-tag army to King Kalakaua’s palace and politely waited until the king might return from the queen’s private residence to sign the new constitution Wilcox had written up. The palace guard sent them packing, the king moved on to his boathouse, the volunteer militia was called out and borrowed 10,000 rounds of ammunition from the USS Adams, and the little revolution led by the man who fancied himself as another Garibaldi was quickly put down.

You’d think that that would be the end of Wilcox, but the fact that he was still getting in Thurston’s hair in 1890 is testament to the comic opera that is Hawai’ian politics in the years between the “Bayonet Constititution” of 1887, and the islands’ annexation as a territory of the United States in July, 1898. By 1901, Wilcox was a territorial delegate to the US House of Representatives, but his outspokenness about the “Dole Oligarchy” that had tried him for treason, and his pleas for consideration of native Hawai’ian rights fell on deaf ears in a nation that required him to use the “colored” facilities. (His mother was of royal Hawai’ian lineage; his father an American sailor.)

Gavan Daws’ history of the Hawaiian islands, Shoal of Time, is the source of the quote that begins this piece, and it is also what led me to using “comic opera” as a descriptor of the times he is writing about. The scary thing is that Daws relies entirely on primary sources, not Gilbert and Sullivan librettos. G&S, on the other hand, were not unaware of the goings-on in Hawai’i. Utopia, Limited was first staged in 1893, the same year that the Hawai’ian princess Ka’iulani was sent to school in England. The plot revolves around the fictional South Pacific island of Utopia, whose monarch, King Paramount, has sent his eldest daughter, Princess Zara, to Girton College in England.

“Utopia LLC” would be a fair description of what the sugar plantation owners in Hawai’i had always wanted, and strived to get repeatedly by monopolizing ownership of land and of every step of the production and distribution process. Not to mention the legislative process as well, especially after they overthrew the monarchy in 1893, and established a Republic the following year with Sanford Dole as President.

They engineered special treaties with the US in order for their product to be tariff free, and resisted suggestions that Hawai’i should become a state because they would have lost that special treatment. When the US removed the tariff from every other nation and territory exporting sugar to the US in favor of a bounty paid to US producers, the oligarchy suddenly saw the advantages statehood would bring. Even if coming under the US Constitution meant landowners losing their grip on who could and couldn’t vote in elections.

For its part, the United States Congress saw little advantage in adding Hawai’i to its territorial possessions until after the outbreak of the Spanish War in 1898, when the US invasion of the Philippines brought the Pacific and Asia into sharp focus. The Speaker of the House of Representatives at the time was Thomas Brackett Reed, who “had opposed the war, the annexation of Hawai’i and what he regarded as American tyranny over the Philippine people,” according to Robert V. Remini in his history of The House. “The best government of which a people is capable is a government which they establish for themselves,” Reed said. “With all its imperfections, with all its shortcomings, it is always better adapted to them than any other government, even though invented by wiser men.”

Hawai’i remained a territory for 60 years, not being granted statehood until August 21, 1959. Stephen Kinzer, in his book Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, opines that “The revolution of 1893 and the annexation that followed undermined a culture and ended the life of a nation. Compared to what such operations have brought to other countries, though, this one ended well.”

In 1993, the US Congress passed a resolution declaring that it “apologizes to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17 1893,” and for subsequent “deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” The resolution was signed by President Bill Clinton on November 22, 1993. Given that that date was also the 30th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, I doubt that the signing of the resolution even made the news.

One of the most striking things about the history of the annexation of Hawai’i is the role played by the US Navy, which was always ready to side with the business interests on the islands by supplying them with ammunition, manpower, and firepower. I have to wonder what Speaker Reed would say today if he could see the Navy’s current recruiting ad on TV: “Five oceans. Seven continents. Whatever it takes. Wherever it takes us. America’s Navy. A global force for good.”

(Shouldn’t that last word rhyme with “Reed”?)

 

Stateside with Rosalea: Alaska

When I think of Alaska, I think of dogs. No, not that yappy she-terrier of a former Governor who bites people’s ankles so she can stay the center of attention, but real dogs. Working dogs. Dogs that save people’s lives. Like Balto, the Inuit Siberian Husky who was one of dozens that mushed the Iditarod trail back in 1925 to save the lives of people living in Nome. Today, February 20, 2011, teams will leave Nenana to travel to Nome, replicating the “serum run” as it is known. You can follow the action on their blog here, and track them on SPOT Live here.

Sadly, the tale of the serum run is as much a tale of medical misadventure and bureaucratic bungling as it is about the valiant efforts of the 20 teams who covered 674 miles (1085 km) in five-and-a-half days at a time of a year when the days are short and the nights very long.

In December, 1924, the sole medical practitioner in Nome misdiagnosed the throat problems a young Inuit boy was having as tonsillitis. The boy dies. Another three children die before Dr. Welch finally realizes he is dealing with an outbreak of diphtheria.

There are 8,000 units of diphtheria antitoxin in the hospital in Nome, but Welch is reluctant to administer it because it has expired. The one child he does give it to dies, confirming the doctor’s fears. He had ordered a new batch of serum back in the summertime, but the port at Nome had closed for winter before the health commissioner sent it. Planes are out of the question, so the decision is made to use dog sled teams.

Serum is located in Anchorage, and sent by train to Nenana, where the first of the teams picks it up on January 27. Temperatures during the serum run went as low as -70F (-57C), winds in some places reached 80 mph (129 kph), many of the dogs died, and some of the mushers suffered terrible frostbite. The last team arrived in Nome with the antitoxin on February 2. The lead dog of that team was Balto. The statue of him in NY’s Central Park is dedicated to all the dogs that made the serum run.

At the time of the serum run, Alaska was a territory of the United States. In 1867, Russia had sold it to the US, and the purchased land was known as the Department of Alaska and District of Alaska before becoming a territory. Following the transfer, many elders of the local Tlingit tribe maintained that Castle Hill comprised the only land that Russia was entitled to sell, but native land claims were not addressed until 1971, with the signing of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Alaska became one of the United States on January 3, 1959.

In common parlance, Alaska is usually included in the category known as the Continental United States , but is not one of the Lower 48 or the Contiguous United States. The National Geographic style guide advises using “continental United States” to include Alaska, but if you go to this General Services Administration per diem calculation webpage and choose Alaska as your state, you receive an error message: You entered a location outside the Continental United States.

Instead, you have to go to the Department of Defense per diem website, which classifies Alaska and Hawaii as OCONUS, along with all the US territories and the rest of the world. The definition of the acronym CONUS varies by department. On the GSA website it expands to “continental United States”; the Department of Defense expands it as “contiguous United States”.

Which begs the question: Who put the “fed” in “conus”? (Go on, do the anagram!)

Stateside with Rosalea: Arizona

The 48th state has always been a pain in the United States’ left butt, geographically speaking. After the defeat of the Mexican army in 1847, the US could have taken over all of Mexico but chose not to and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo instead established a border that was based on an inaccurate map. Senate debate on the treaty was notable for the reluctance of the US to add a quotidian of poor, ignorant peasants—mostly Catholic—to its population.

Some years later, with the debate over slave vs. free states becoming embroiled with the ambitions of those Southerners who wanted to see a transcontinental railroad from San Antonio to San Diego, President Franklin Pierce authorized his US minister to Mexico to make an offer to the cash-strapped Mexican government for some additional land that included flat land suitable for the railroad. The Gadsden Purchase was completed via the Treaty of La Mesilla in 1853, and the treaty was ratified in the US Senate on June 1854. As this 2004 article in the Tucson Star notes, Mexicans view it not as a “purchase” but a belligerent act.

At the time, present-day Arizona was part of the New Mexico territory of the United States. The first Arizona Territory included parts of New Mexico, and was created by citizens who supported the Confederate cause, not the Union. The Wikipedia entry puts it this way:

At the outbreak of the Civil War, sentiment in the area south of the 34th parallel was in favor of the Confederacy. Territorial secession conventions were called at La Mesilla and Tucson on March 16, 1861, that adopted an Ordinance of Secession that declared itself independent of the United States and established the provisional Confederate Territory of Arizona with Owings as its governor, and petitioned the Confederate Congress for admission. The Confederate Territory of Arizona became officially recognized when President Jefferson Davis signed the proclamation on February 14, 1862. To commemorate this event, February 14, 1912, the fiftieth anniversary, was selected as the official date of statehood for Arizona.

In the light of current dissatisfaction with the United States federal government, it is interesting to compare a map of the states and territories claimed by the Confederacy with the list of states that have a reciprocal agreement to honor Arizona’s (optional) concealed weapons permits. With the exception of Delaware, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania and western states formed from territories after the Civil War, all the reciprocating states seceded from the Union. (I’m just saying!)

The Arizona Citizens Defense League claims it “was instrumental in the introduction and/or passage of the legislation” that is known as the Constitutional Carry law, which the ACDL says eliminated “the prohibition and penalties for law-abiding adults who carry a weapon discreetly without first seeking written permission from the government via a ‘permit .’” (Putting the word “permit” in quotation marks is anti-government code alerting sympathizers to a “tax” disguised as a fee.)

“The State of Arizona has long been the home to defenders of personal liberty and the freedoms enshrined and protected by the Constitution of the United States and our State Constitution,” said AZ Governor Jan Brewer in the April 2010 press release upon her signing of the legislation into law. Arizona has allowed “open carry” of guns since it first became a state; this legislation was to do with carrying loaded concealed weapons. Brewer succeeded to the office of Governor in January, 2009 after Democrat Janet Napolitano resigned to take a post with the Obama Administration. Prior to that, Brewer was Secretary of State, and criticized by some for being absent from the state when it held its primary elections that year. She was instead heading the AZ delegation to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Jan Brewer after casting Arizona’s vote for the McCain-Palin ticket.

Given her credentials within the Republican Party, and her attractiveness to the anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-gay marriage, pro-gun lobbies both within and outside the GOP, it’s within the realm of possibility that Brewer might make a bid for the presidential nomination herself next time around. A December 2008 article on the Arizona Republic website points out that “Nearly every race that Jan Brewer has run - from her first primary for the state House of Representatives in 1982 to the tough, often down-and-dirty contest for secretary of state in 2002 - has been contested, often fiercely. Often, she faced more experienced opponents, including incumbents.”

The article—unfortunately, in the light of the recent supermarket parking lot shooting in Tucson—goes on to say that “As a political neophyte in 1981, Brewer acknowledges being ‘dumbfounded’ upon learning that politics required approaching total strangers in supermarket parking lots asking for their signatures on her nominating petitions (‘And son of a gun! They'd sign it!’).”

But Arizona, like much of America, has always had a fascination with a gun-toting (or -touting) momma, especially one who sticks it to the government in some way or other. Back in 1899, when the saloon singer Pearl Hart was on trial in Tucson for robbing a stage coach at gunpoint, the local newspaper editorialized in favor of her stance that she “would never consent to be tried under a law she or her sex had no voice in making.” The jury took all of ten minutes to acquit her of the robbery charge.

2002 Scoop columns, July - December

7/5/02

Stateside: Fourth of July Special

"As the pamphlet 'Common Sense' was to the American Revolution, so 'Fixing Elections' could be to the movement for alternative voting systems in our day.... It deserves the widest readership possible." So says Richard Winger, editor …

 

7/15/02

Stateside: There Was An Old Lady In London

As you can tell from this column's title, I started writing it in Limerick. The medieval western Ireland city, that is, with its 1197 charter even older than London's. Limerick was the pot of gold at the end of my trip - even magically creating the perfect soundtrack …

 

7/22/02

Stateside: Aunt Minnie and the Mow-Ped

The United States Postal Service is conducting a trial use of that damned stupid epitome of everything that's wrong about research and development in this country - the Segway.

 

7/27/02

Stateside: "I'd like to give you a disease."

As opening lines go, I've heard better but the tall dark handsome stranger with the big rig and the twinkle in his eye looked worth the gamble. "OK," I said. "Let's see what fate has in store for you then," said my Doctor Without …

 

7/29/02

Stateside: 11 September 1: 27 July Nil

I cried when I watched Laila Harre's concession speech, and I'm not entirely sure why. I guess it's because she's one of the people I would have given an all-round Minnie Award to for her integrity, her hard work, her quick grasp of the business .

 

8/5/02

Stateside: Where have all the students gone?

That plastic comb I call a brain has attracted all manner of tissue-paper scraps this week. Iran, it seems, is about to host a celebration of its 7,000 years of history - in Cuba.

 

8/12/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Watermelon man

Forget the presidential pretzel; I nearly choked on a cheerio watching a football game last Monday morning. To be truthful, it was just a newsclip of the back of Andrew Mehrten's knees as he waited to take a penalty kick while two blokes - "buck …

 

8/18/02

Stateside: 37 Cents Can Buy You Love!

Ever had one of those moments when you wish the Red Sea would open up and swallow you? Charlton Heston apparently hasn't or he wouldn't have done that cringingly egotistical video this week about how he's got symptoms consistent with the early stages of Alzheimer's. …

 

8/26/02

Stateside With Rosalea : North To The Future

Well, beat me with a Klondike Bar if those independent-minded mainlanders up north don't make history this Tuesday, August 27. Alaska - the word means 'mainland' - is holding its primary elections that day and also on the ballot paper is an initiative …

 

9/2/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Just browsing

Cue sound f/x: audio of Klondike Bar hitting flesh. Woman's voice: "Ouch! Oooch! No! Don't stop! This chocolate and ice cream is delicious!" So. Alaska nixed Measure 1 for alternative voting by a margin of 2 to 1 last week, and I'm bravely …

 

9/9/02

Stateside: Two Movies And A Lecture

"I can't slip you the tomahawk 20 minutes of the day, but I can give you a wonderful life the other 23:40," says Sy to the woman he loves but has just told he is "two-spirited" (gay). They are both students at a university in Seattle, …

 

9/16/02

Stateside with Rosalea : The TV Duel

Midweek, a Yugoslavian work colleague went out of his way to tell me what a great team the Tall Blacks are, thus saving me from the conspiracy theory that had been forming in my mind since the previous weekend. Who can blame me for thinking that …

 

9/23/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Middle-politics

Halfway through each President's 4-year term, the entire US House of Representatives and one-third of the US Senate is elected, thus mid-term elections are seen as a way of measuring how effective the President has been in building support for the …

 

9/25/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Civility

Ooops! I said I'd provide a Wednesday-lite column and then forgot that I'd have to write it on Monday night, my time. Blame it on the Civil War. Or at least on the epic documentary called 'The Civil War', which first aired in 1990 and has now been …

 

9/30/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Who votes and what for

I'm somewhat discombobulated this Sunday morning from having just seen a US Democrat visiting Iraq say that Presidents are capable of lying and that the current one is. His comment came during an interview on 'This Week', and the comment and its fallout …

 

10/2/02

Stateside With Rosalea : I Long To Hear You

Google searches take you to strange places. I was looking for stories about 'American Candidate' - the FX cable TV program to choose a presidential candidate for 2004 - and the search tickled me with an american candidate for sainthood. Her name is …

 

10/4/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Pollies on Parade

On the last Sunday of September each year, Berkeley holds a street parade called "How Berkeley Can You Be?". It's a great opportunity for the locals to poke fun at their own reputation for outrageous ideas, and in election years it comes at just …

 

10/7/02

The wheres and what-withs of voting

In this third background piece on the California elections, the topic is polling places and equipment. On Monday, October 7, California's Secretary of State is coming to Alameda County to declare absentee voting open. In California, the Secretary of …

 

10/9/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Quiet, please!

The monarch is here. She flew in from Canada to be at a garden party last Sunday at the Museum of California in Oakland, which is where I saw her. No, I don't mean Betty Windsor! I mean the monarch butterfly. Thousands of them have arrived, as they …

 

10/14/02

Slimin' Simon and His Gray Eminence

I wasn't going to write about the California Governor's race so soon, having heard from a pollster that it won't get interesting till two weeks before the election, but really! the events of this week beggar even disbelief.

 

10/16/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Not a pretty story

Monday night I'm standing in the JetBlue terminal at New York's JFK airport looking at the rack of travel mags and the words on one cover leap out at me - "Bali" it says in fluorescent orange, "still paradise?"

 

10/21/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Here come da judges

On October 17, President George W. Bush gave an address via satellite to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which was meeting in New Smyrna, Florida to honour Hispanic businesswomen. After congratulating the women on their achievements …

 

10/23/02

Cheap 'n' Cheerful East Coast Quickie

Stateside With Rosalea - October is the height of the fall foliage on the East Coast, so

 

10/29/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Battered voter syndrome

The Democrats really are too tragic. To hear them begging voters not to desert them for third party or independent candidates this election is like hearing an abusive partner in a relationship begging to be forgiven for past misdemeanours - just so ...

 

10/30/02

Stateside With Rosalea - New York, New York

Columbus Day this year was observed on October 14. As usual, it wasn't observed by everyone, including my employer, so I had to take a day's leave in order to have a long weekend. But it was a holiday for most schools and federal and state employees, …

 

11/4/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Is everybody happy?

The Republicans really are too comic. (Should there be an 'al' in there somewhere?) The sight of the Prez and his Vice lickety-splitting it up and down the country trying to get out the Republican vote is as much fun as watching a couple of chickens dancing …

 

11/6/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Horse sense

After this year's dramatic - or should I say, theatrical - market slide, the media puzzle only deepens. Was what happened on 14/11 or 15/11 any more significant than what happened on 9/11?

 

11/7/02

Stateside With Rosalea - One in twenty

Poor George. The golden apple slipped from his grasp, after all. Ironically, the Republicans' success in the South, on the East Coast and in the Midwest was probably the cause of their loss here in the California Governor's race. By the time the polling …

 

11/13/02

Are YOU buying into WWIII.com?

Monday, being the 11th of November, was Veterans Day, which is observed as a holiday by sufficient people for there to be 'holiday sales' at many stores, but it's not a holiday for the NY stock exchange. Well, why should it be - war is and always has …

 

11/20/02

Stateside With Rosalea - A House is not a home

Featuring on the Chron's front page last Friday was a photo of San Francisco politician Nancy Pelosi resplendent in red, celebrating her historic win as "1st woman chosen House minority leader". Well, to paraphrase an old saw, you can paint a donkey lipstick-red …

 

11/27/02

Stateside With Rosalea - We can be heroes

One balmy summer evening in 2000, as newly endorsed VP candidate Dick Cheney innocently aided and abetted terrorists by giving an audience of millions a monument-by-monument description of the flightpath to take for a landing at the Pentagon, my home was …

 

12/4/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Hale and hearty

Last Thursday was the fourth Thursday in November, so it was the national holiday known as Thanksgiving Day. According to my trusty Readers Digest 'America A to Z', the original celebration at Plymouth in the autumn of 1621 was a three-day celebration …

 

12/11/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Off with her head!

December 8 marked the third anniversary of me and my luggage spilling on to the footpath outside one of the most expensive hotels in San Francisco. The Amtrak bus, which had come across the Bay from the Coast Starlight LA-Oakland train, was supposed to …

 

12/18/02

Stateside With Rosalea - Mickey vs Mouse

I really do wonder what I used to do to amuse myself before the Internet. Last week, curious about an icon with a large E inside a square, I clicked through to find myself squarely back in the eighteenth century. Article 1 Section 8 of the US Consititution, …

 

12/24/02

Stateside With Rosalea The Seven Barbies of Kwanzaa

Clearly I watch too many PBS documentaries, like the one on the 'Mystery of the Three Kings' that aired this week. But the weather's been badder'n a blister on a postie's foot at Christmas, so what's a girl to do but venture gingerly back into TV-land …

 

 

 

 

Scoop.co.nz columns: January to June, 2002

This time I'm posting the links to my Scoop columns as they appear when you go to the website and search for "Rosalea" and then limit the search results by my byline and the year.

1/7/02

Stateside With Rosalea : A Flea In Her Ear

I have become obsessed with San Jose, or Santa Jojo Jo as I am sure she is really called. It is she who lured away NBC television from San Francisco and now trumpets her victory from a transmitter atop Mt Loma Prieta, disconcertingly just out of reach ...

 

1/14/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Same As It Ever Was

That first full week back at work after the holidays is a killer, isn't it? At least I had some light relief in mine... a visiting researcher came and asked me for a box cutter so he could get open the boxes of equipment he'd brought with him on the ...

 

1/22/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Tempis Fugitives, Etc.

Who would have thunk it? Not only am I old enough to remember the days when steam locomotives roamed the earth, but I've lived long enough to see the demise of the lead balloon. I suppose THAT went down like a presidential pretzel. Suspicious Old ...

 

1/28/02

Stateside: Madam Rosa's Tea-cup Prediction

One of the places I visited on my little trip to San Jose at the end of last year was San Jose State University. It's pretty much right in the middle of town, and is a very pretty campus with a mix of Spanish-style and modern architecture, having ...

 

1/30/02

Stateside: Clinton’s Address Today At Berkeley

As President George W. Bush so very nearly said in his State of the Union address: drivel is real and it must be opposed.

 

2/4/02

Stateside: Memories Are Made Of Mist

One of the hidden extras about being an ex-pat is the unseemly delight you experience in the presence of something that reminds you of your original home. That bloke on a peak in Darien could not have squealed more loudly than I did at my first glimpse …

 

2/11/02

Stateside: Watch Out! Drivel Hijacking Ahead

I'm sorry, gentle readers, but your abject correspondent cannot report on the opening ceremony of the winter Olympics on Friday night. After a hard week of scrivening it was just too much to have to board the iron horse for a trip to San Francisco's ...

 

2/13/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Snapshots

Looking south down Highway 1, which will take you to Montara where there is an AYH hostel in a lighthouse. Denny's is a family restaurant chain currently running a promotion called "Re-ignite the Dream" to raise a million dollars for a civil rights ...

 

2/18/02

Stateside: Putting Your Back Pocket Into It

For someone like me, who comes from a country where a political candidate risks censure for 'treating' prospective voters by throwing a couple of snarlers on the barbie, the huge amounts of money that are spent on political campaigns here in the States ...

 

2/25/02

Stateside With Rosalea : The Running Girls

I guess I should take my own advice every now and then. If I'd looked at the SmartVoter website instead of referring to the Chronicle's 'Voter's Guide' last Sunday I would have realised that actually Gray Davis has three challengers from within his party ...

 

3/04/02

Stateside with Rosalea : "Bastards!"

Such was the headline in the 'Sydney Morning Hotpot' last week, quoting actor Michael Poe's outrage at learning his fellow Australians had been disenfranchised by their election system all these years. Poe discovered this on a flight from LA when someone ...

 

3/11/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Politics And Art

Well, you can't say that Scoop doesn't bring you the real scoop or that Mama Rosa doesn't deliver the good oil. Didn't she tell you - at the time of the very first debate between the Republican candidates hoping to run for Governor of California ...

 

3/18/02

Stateside with Rosalea : The Mastodon's New Hose

There's a popular US saying that refers to something being so obvious and so discomforting that nobody even mentions it - "the elephant in the living room". One such creature loomed large in the nation's living rooms last Sunday night when CBS broadcast ...

 

3/25/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Hanging Together

Sorry I'm late. Just got in from church. Don't usually go there, but a fellow Oceanic who recently moved into the neighbourhood wanted to check out St Joseph the Worker, which is just around the corner from me.

 

4/2/02

Stateside: The Mum is dead, long live the Mum

Here's a cartoon I'd like to see: the Queen Mum is leaning down out of her cloud in heaven, grabbing two young whippersnappers by the ears and banging their daft heads together.

 

4/8/02

Stateside With Rosalea : The Bay

Daylight saving begins today so I shall spare you, dear reader, any further brooding ruminations on the state of the world and point out instead that it's Cherry Blossom Festival time in San Francisco's Japantown. Not only that, but Herb Caen Day celebrations ...

 

4/15/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Household Spanish

"In an unprecedented event in Mexico's history, this past Tuesday the Mexican Senate denied President Vicente Fox Quesada permission to travel to Canada and the Western United States." So began the email sent on Friday night to subscribers ...

 

4/22/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Hullo Sailor

A supreme court? Steady on, Old Girls! Faint though it is, there is still a glimmer of hope that a stay-at-home Kiwi will win an Academy Award for best director/best picture without Aotearoa having to become the 52nd state of the United States. Australia, …

 

4/29/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Time For A Sesqui

Talk about Tam and Tem, the new hot men! Midweek I switched from one channel - where Mr Temuera Morrison was looking dangerously polite in a promo for the new 'Star Wars' movie - to another, just in time to catch Mr Lee Tamihere being interviewed on the …

 

4/30/02

Stateside with Rosalea - Photo Supplement

Two postmodern R2D2s, eager to board the Muni light rail on San Francisco's embarcadero, are dwarfed by the double-decker Bay Bridge slung above them. When travelling on the lower deck in the fog, you feel like you're in a Star Wars movie set.

 

5/6/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Maltese Blue

There was welcome relief this week from the steady stream of US, Israeli and Palestinian ambulances that have populated TV's local and international news since September 11. Un-PC as the Maltese Cross (late of Jerusalem and Rhodes, and now based in Rome) …

 

5/13/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Portnick's Complaint

I'd be less than Irish if I didn't notice an unusual word popping its head up over the babblescape three times in as many days. Not that "stout" is all that unusual a word - why, I saw it 30 times in one beer chiller just last weekend. Hey, …

 

5/20/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Tourist edition

Golly, it was an eventful week. What with a 5.2 earthquake to get us going - the building I live in swayed like a blues mama - and then the new tabloid format of the 'San Francisco Examiner', with its flip-over two front pages, followed by the …

 

5/20/02

Stateside: The People vs. the Executive Office

Heaven knows, I didn't go to the Amelia Earhart Symposium at the Western Aerospace Museum on May 17-18, 2002, in order to become intrigued about that pioneering pilot's disappearance. She flew. She fell out of the sky. Joni Mitchell wrote a song about …

 

5/27/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Where You From?

I've now lived for almost three years in a land where men have fannies and wear drawers, and I've got so used to the local lingo that it's been a while since "u" muscled its way into the 'hood, behaved badly, and spoiled my sense of fun. These …

 

6/4/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Uncle Sam's Waistband

Pardon my delving, but what is going on down there? It would be very nice, thank you, for a nation as well-respected as New Zealand is by the people of the US not to give the words "proportional representation" a bad name. It is a concept …

 

6/10/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Leadership As Spectacle

It was the umbrellas that did it - fair brought a tear to me rheumy eyes, they did. There they were in their random glory, poking up above the sea of Union Jacks being waved by the squish of people in the Mall at the end of the Golden Jubilee weekend. …

 

6/17/02

Stateside With Rosalea : Adventure With Pictures

Let's not start at the very beginning. It's such a very good place to end. Herewith therefore, the reverse account of a trip from West to Midwest USA.

 

6/24/02

Stateside In Dublin: The Pub That Roared

Last Sunday, 16 June, was something of a novelty date in Dublin. As happens every year on the day the events in James Joyce's 'Ulysses' took place, Bloomsday celebrations were in full swing.

 

6/28/02

Stateside with Rosalea : Up north (With Pics)

From Dublin I flew to Manchester, where a security alert meant that we were all put onto a bus on the tarmac and whizzed through immigration without so much as a stamp in our passports. I took a train directly from the airport to Leeds. Trains in England …

 

2001 Scoop columns

Since 2000, I have been writing a column for scoop.co.nz about my life here in the United States. The dates are US-style, but NZ is 19 hours ahead of the California, so my post on September 11, 2001, is dated on the 12th.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0101/S00049.htm  So long, it's been good to know ya  1/23/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0101/S00083.htm  Reality happens  1/29/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0102/S00016.htm  What does New Zealand mean?  2/5/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0102/S00050.htm  Seattle on a  budget  2/12/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0102/S00088.htm  Lemon tree very pretty  2/18/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0102/S00128.htm  An American life  2/26/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0103/S00020.htm  Lucky for some  3/5/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0103/S00076.htm  Whoopy Tai Yai Oh!  3/13/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0103/S00123.htm  The last weekend of winter  3/19/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0103/S00170.htm  How dare you fail!  3/26/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0104/S00005.htm  Special  interests   4/2/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0104/S00049.htm  Clumsy rhino, hidden mynah  4/9/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0104/S00094.htm  A few of my favorite things  4/16/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0104/S00113.htm  Cartoon network  4/23/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0104/S00149.htm  Yeah, right!  4/30/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0105/S00038.htm  Out and about  5/7/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0105/S00076.htm  A fine tub o' tuna  5/14/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0105/S00117.htm  Dinosaur botty coughs  5/21/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0105/S00165.htm  Arts Edition  5/28/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0106/S00017.htm  North of the border  6/5/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0106/S00052.htm  Moral dilemma month  6/11/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0106/S00095.htm  Diorama  6/18/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0106/S00139.htm   I hear the cottonwoods  6/27/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0107/S00003.htm  The Laramie Project  7/2/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0107/S00040.htm  Freedom's chimes flashing  7/9/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0107/S00087.htm Web Van Winkle 7/16/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0107/S00131.htm What's in a name?  7/23/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0107/S00176.htm Job's lot  7/30/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0108/S00029.htm Centipede shoes on the road  8/6/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0108/S00065.htm Botti, Benson and Godinez  8/13/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0108/S00105.htm Extra: Mini Cooper's CV  8/17/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0108/S00110.htm 20/20 vision  8/20/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0108/S00147.htm Tragedy at Ford's Theatre  8/27/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00003.htm Bubble nation  9/3/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00039.htm Make work pay  9/10/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00054.htm Not a good morning  9/12/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00120.htm  Peace and love district no 9  9/17/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00151.htm To whom it does concern  9/19/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00178.htm  Rugby kicks ass!  9/24/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0109/S00179.htm Think big. Move fast.  9/24/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00002.htm  Bizzaroland 10/1/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00039.htm Cowgirls aren't in Kansas  10/8/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00050.htm  Columbus Day photo special 10/9/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00081.htm  Travel Special: True grit  10/15/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00082.htm  John Ashcroft for President! 10/15/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00114.htm  Musical edition  10/19/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00119.htm  Ladies' week  10/23/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0110/S00153.htm  You go girl!  10/29/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0111/S00021.htm  Pass the envelope please  11/5/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0111/S00069.htm  What you lookin' at?  11/12/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0111/S00106.htm  San Francisco's Streets  11/19/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0111/S00145.htm  Thanksgiving   11/26/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0112/S00002.htm  There goes the sun  12/3/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0112/S00042.htm  Pass the perspective please  12/10/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0112/S00090.htm   Praise be  12/17/01

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0112/S00090.htm  The year in review  12/30/01

 

 

Scoop.co.nz columns, 2000

Back in September, 2000, the editor of Scoop asked me to write some articles about the US Elections. After the election result was announced by the Supreme Court in December, he asked me to continue writing about life in the US. Here is a list of links to the stories I wrote in 2000:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0009/S00165.htm US Elections: The equestrian events  9/25/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00004.htm US Elections: Undecided voters suddenly sexy 10/2/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00040.htm US Elections: The 4YK problem 10/9/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00070.htm US Elections: Great entertainment  10/12/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00086.htm US Elections: Friday the 13th  10/16/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00125.htm US Elections: Baiting with weighted breath 10/24/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00149.htm US Elections: Using Field glasses to read the polls  10/26/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0010/S00163.htm US Elections: Dot-com vs Dot-org  10/30/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00028.htm US Elections: Tight as a tick on a smelly rat  11/6/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00030.htm US Elections: After the people vote  11/6/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00064.htm US Elections: Two horses win six-legged race  11/09/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00074.htm US Election: Surgeon General issues health warning  11/12/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00102.htm US Elections: PR nightmare  11/16/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00113.htm US Elections: The only game in town  11/20/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00143.htm  Rosalea Barker: Three little magic words  11/24/00 (includes reference to recount)

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00151.htm US Elections: Austin, we have a  problem  11/27/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0011/S00156.htm US Elections: The custard thickens  11/27/00

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0012/S00006.htm Rosalea Barker: Radio with pictures  12/4/00 (about the Florida recount)

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0012/S00044.htm Rosalea Barker: Keep going down the path!  12/08/00 (ditto)

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0012/S00048.htm Rosalea Barker: One shot deal don't matter  12/10/00 (Gore)

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0012/S00085.htm Rosalea Barker: Ada v. Gloria  12/14/00 (the decision)

 

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0012/S00132.htm  Stateside: Christmas in Seattle  12/28/00

Rosalea Barker: The Omega and the Alpha | Scoop News

Rosalea Barker: The Omega and the Alpha | Scoop News

This was the starting point for my columns about the states in the order in which they joined the union. The first thirteen states are listed in the order in which the former colonies ratified the US Constitution.

Rosalea Barker: Rest stop | Scoop News

Rosalea Barker: Rest stop | Scoop News