Malum Nalu

Leading Pacific academic Prof Ron Crocombe dies

One of the best known figures in Pacific Studies, Emeritus Professor Ron Crocombe, died in Auckland yesterday of a heart attack while on a bus to Mangere for a flight to his home in Rarotonga.

Prof Crocombe, 79, an historian who earned his doctorate at the Australian National University, was considered the world's foremost authority on the cultures of the Pacific. Last week he had been inducted as a fellow of the Atenisi University in Tonga.

The New Zealand born academic lived and worked in the Pacific as an administrator in the Cook Islands, director of ANU's New Guinea Research Unit in the 1960s and as Professor of Pacific Studies at the University of the South Pacific.

Even in retirement in the Cook Islands, he continued to consult and publish widely on Pacific affairs. “He is a phenomenon,” said one commentator, “there is no one quite like him. He is not a disciplined nor a discipline-bound scholar. Indeed, he has a healthy disregard for disciplinary boundaries and niceties.”

Prof Crocombe lived in PNG from 1962 to 1969 and returned many times. He gained an international reputation for his work on Pacific land tenure systems and his scholarly reputation will probably relate to this work.

He will also be remembered as the indefatigable encourager and publisher of works by Pacific islanders. During his directorship of the Institute of Pacific Studies, hundreds of Pacific Island students, teachers, administrators and others published big and small works of varying quality on a range of Pacific topics.

Quality was not necessarily Crocombe's primary concern. He was more concerned to boost the confidence of the island peoples' in their ability to write and reflect on their experiences.

His lifetime partner and collaborator was Marjorie Tuainekore Crocombe, until recently Director of the Centre for Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland.

Professor Crocombe is also survived by four children, 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. Prof Crocombe will be buried in Rarotonga later this week. A memorial service will also be held at the Pacific Islands Christian Church in Auckland next Sunday.

Good job, eh?

From the Bristol Evening Post:

Outside Bristol Zoo is the car park, with spaces for 150 cars and 8 coaches. It has been manned 6 days a week for 23 years by the same charming and very polite car park attendant with the ticket machine.The charges are £1. per car and £5. per coach.

On Monday 1 June, he did not turn up for work. Bristol Zoo management phoned Bristol City Council to ask them to send a replacement parking attendant.

The Council said "That car park is your responsibility." The Zoo said "The attendant was employed by the City Council... wasn't he?" The Council said "What attendant?"

Gone missing from his home is a man who has been taking daily the car park fees amounting to about £400. per day for the last 23 years...!

Total sum just short £2.9 million.

In Gapun, a remote village on the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, the women take a robust approach to arguing. In her pithy new book The Myth of Mars and Venus, Deborah Cameron reports an anthropologist's account of a dispute between a husband and wife that ensued after the woman fell through a hole in the rotten floor of their home and she blamed him for shoddy workmanship. He hit her with a piece of sugar cane, an unwise move that led her to threaten to slice him up with a machete and burn the home to the ground.

At this point he deemed it prudent to leave and she launched into a kros – a traditional angry tirade directed at a husband with the intention of it being heard by everyone in the village. The fury can last for up to 45 minutes, during which time the husband is expected to keep quiet. This particular kros went along these lines: "You're a f****** rubbish man. You hear? Your f****** prick is full of maggots. Stone balls! F****** black prick! F****** grandfather prick! You have built me a good house that I just fall down in, you get up and hit me on the arm with a piece of sugar cane! You f****** mother's ****!"

Such a domestic scene may be familiar to some readers, but for most of us arguing with our partners is not quite such an explosive business; except, perhaps, when discussing who is most responsible for a navigational hiccup on the way to lunch at the home of an old flame of our partner's, or getting to the bottom of who left the ****** ******* cap off the **** ******* toothpaste for the third ****** ******* time this ****** ******* week.

Human beings argue about everything from adultery to Zionism and we do so in different styles, whether we are submissive, passive, aggressive, abusive, abusive-passive, aggressive-abusive, submissive-aggressive or submissive-passive-aggressive-abusive.

But are there any broad differences between the sexes in the way that we argue? US research into marital stress on the heart has thrown up an intriguing finding about the way some are prone to "self-silencing" during arguments. The research by Elaine D. Eaker, published in Psychosomatic Medicine, found that more men than women had a tendency to bottle up their feelings during confrontations with their partners.

Tim Smith is a psychology professor at the University of Utah, whose own research has found indications that women's heart health is affected adversely by quarrels and men's when they feel they are losing control. There are clear indications, he says, that it is a male tactic to withdraw from arguments. "Women, on average, are more often in the role of the managers of relationship matters. They are often in the position of bringing up and pursuing things they would like to change. This is seen in wives making a request and pursuing it and husbands withdrawing and pulling back. The more of it a couple displays the weaker their relationship future is."

Montevideo article in The Australian

From Keith Jackson

Dear Friends of Montevideo Maru -

There's another Montevideo Maru story in the press - this time in The Australian - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25659669-28737,00.html - where Mark Day has written a fine piece of journalism.

A significant part of the story is contained in the final paragraph, where Veterans' Affairs Minister Alan Griffin indicates his receptiveness to an approach from the Committee.

This will be made in the context of a submission we are currently working on, which will be presented to the Federal Government later this year.

We want to ensure that the national recognition so long awaited will finally be offered to the full satisfaction of the families and friends of victims, the ill fated men of Rabaul.

Best wishes

Keith

Have a look at my young tyro

Have a look at my young tyro, two-year-old Keith, who continues to be the apple of my eye.
His beloved mum Hula, as regular readers of this blog know, passed away so tragically on Easter Sunday 2008 shortly after Keith's birth.
I've made it my mission in life that Keith, and his elder siblings Jr (8), Gedi (7) and Moasing (4) are all well looked after and raised.

Sunday, June 21, 2009