Deb Curreen Author

  It is still with some surprise that I wake each morning to find I am living with a bellbird; one who still sometimes roosts at night in the peach tree outside my bedroom window and chatters to me in the mornings. She always starts with song, waiata, and karakia, prayer, before she begins our daily discourse while I sip coffee from my favourite mug, ironically, a ceramic cup made by a local potter with a tui on the side. “Drink from me,” the mug sings to me each morning, alongside a boiling, hissing kettle as I cast my eye over my true favourite, a cream mug embossed with gold dots and a capital “M” for Mere on it that  my grandson, Rawiri, had given to me last Christmas. Shortly after I had purchased my little cottage near the bush that overlooked Bethells Beach, "m y bellbird", as I now think of her, had flown onto my  bedroom windowsill one morning while I sat in bed reading the online news, checking emails and sipping coffee. There was a bowl of chopped fruit beside me.

In the foamy and rowdy wake from the resignation of our esteemed leader, PM Jacinda Adern, I have been imagining to myself how a modern-day epistle from Saint Paul, the new testament letter writer would read. Bearing in mind that Paul was a learned man, well studied in theology, a social commentator for his time and an accurate essayist of the political and cultural climate, plus and advocate for the disadvantaged and certainly not a misogynist. A man of relevance and intelligence, someone that I would enjoy a little chin wag with over a glass of Pinot Noir from a local vintner. Because it's the 21st century and I possibly face copyright issues in using Paul's name and title, the letter to the Aotearoans is written by Saint Millie of Pariri, as women can be Saints now, as well as Pastors, Vicars and Prime Ministers. They make damn fine ones too! Of course we have yet to see the feminine grace sit in the big chair at the oval office but let's hopes she black, and a liberal C

  Welcome to 2024 - the year of the brave and the free. I just made that up. Who knows how brave we will need to be this year or how freely we will get to live our lives. To be free or be freed (sorry Shakespeare). To not be free suggests slavery of some form. Being too free can invoke ideas of rebellion and law-breaking, lacking a moral code and a certain disregard for others and society at large. So where is the fine line between freedom and slavery.   During the covid pandemic, a friend said to me, "What do you think of all these conspiracy theories?" I replied, "Well...they're conspiracies so I don't believe or even read them." My friend then told me that she did believe them. It was the strangest thing for someone to admit to. Someone that I previously had thought was sensible and intelligent but was now being carried away by a bunch of misinformation, written by total strangers on the internet, neatly packaged as conspiracy theories. When I was conside