Whanganui artist and Quartz Museum curator Rick Rudd - our city's hidden treasure. Photo / file
Whanganui artist and Quartz Museum curator Rick Rudd - our city's hidden treasure. Photo / file
Our city's hidden treasure
Four of us seniors from the Kapiti Coast have just spent a wonderful weekend in Whanganui, cruising on the river's paddle boat steamer, perusing the riverside market and delighting in the Bason Botanic Gardens.
But I am prompted to write wondering whether the city's residents understandwhat a treasure they have in the place that was the absolute highlight of our stay - potter Rick Rudd's Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics.
We were blown away by this magnificent collection demonstrating every aspect of the potter's art which we all agreed is the equal of, if not better than, anything we have seen in years of visiting museums and art galleries overseas.
Yet we were the only visitors during the two hours we marvelled at the works on display on Sunday afternoon. Your readers don't know what they are missing.
As John Roughan mentions in his article, quantitative easing does not fix the problem just prolongs it, the US proved that.
LVRs should be kept on existing housing, but allow 100 per cent loans on new builds, to push the market to create more housing.
This is not a switch that can just be turned on. Builders need time to gear up, but if there is a driving force towards new builds it would give them confidence to do so.
A lot of empty-nesters who own their own homes might see that they have an ability to build a new home, and sell the old one.
GARTH SCOWN Whanganui
No thanks to US Thanksgiving Day
In December 1600, exactly 400 years ago, boat people, fleeing from religious persecution in Europe, landed in America.
Their boat was the Mayflower, but the flowers of May had long gone, and as the northern winter snows deepened, they faced starvation.
Local American farmers kindly shared their supplies of turkeys, pumpkins and corn with them, and the boat people's colony thrived.
Over the next three centuries, millions more boat people arrived from Europe, bringing with them guns, germs, and steel railroads in an effort to drive the Americans from their ancestral lands.
When I was a 12-year-old, I took the tram from Aramoho to the Majestic Theatre every Saturday and watched Hollywood propaganda about the goodies, 'Amerikun' cowboys with six-guns, slaughtering dozens of the baddies, half-naked 'Injuns' with bows and arrows.
We now know that this slaughter resulted in the deaths of millions of Americans and the descendants of those invaders are celebrating this week by gathering to devour gluttonous piles of roast turkey, corn fritters and pumpkin pie.
