A Catholic Marriage

What will save New Zealand from the kind of racial strife we have seen in the United States and elsewhere is the treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840. It is a kind of marriage license that has kept the European settlers (mainly the British) and the earlier Polynesian settlers (mainly the Maoris) together even though their relationship is a rocky one. By the terms of the Waitangi Treaty the Maoris recognized the sovereignty of the British Queen. The Queen guaranteed the Maoris the rights to their land holdings, including estates, forests and fisheries. It is a Catholic marriage. Divorce is out of the question.

There is an interesting book I recently read by an historian from the University of California at Berkeley, Yuri Slezkhine. It is called “The Jewish Century.” He sees the world divided into two groups; the Appollonians and the Mercurians. The Appollonians are the ones who control the resources, factories, banks, in other words, the money. The Mercurians are the ones the Appollonians employ to mediate with the rest of the world, doing the jobs that they are unwilling or unable to do. The Mercurians are typically in entertainment, sports, commerce, the arts. In medieval England, for example, money-lending was delegated by the king to the Jews because to engage in it oneself was demeaning. Slezhine argues that every society has its Jews. In Southeast Asia it is the Chinese. In Africa it is the Indians. In Europe it was the Jews and the Gypsies. And in New Zealand it appears to be the Maoris. Of the occupations in which Maoris succeed, every one is on Slezkine's list of suitable occupations for a Mercurian; entertainment, athletics, art, commerce. Ownership of the means of production is not among them.

That will change soon enough, I suspect. If I were at a party with a young Maori counterpart to Dustin Hoffman's character in “The Graduate,” I would stand by the swimming pool and call the young Maori over.

“Young man,” I would whisper. “The future is in one word. Forty years ago that word was ‘Plastics.’ Today, it is ‘Internet.’”

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Lemonade out of a Lemon

If ever there was a town that made lemonade out of a lemon, it is Napier. Located in the heartland of New Zealand, Napier was completely destroyed in 1931 by an earthquake and subsequent fire. This is where the lemonade comes in. The earthquake left some 4500 hectares of brand new uplifted earth in its wake. Napier took advantage of the gift. The town rebuilt, making sure to replicate as faithfully as possible the art deco style of architecture that nature had gutted. The town is a virtual museum in itself.

The downtown streets are wide and treeless. A singular mark of the art deco style is the ubiquitous leaded glass windows in the shops and buildings of the main thoroughfare. The leaded glass is the work of one man, a glazer who reproduced the glass in his garage seventy years ago. Twisted barley cord columns called “Spanish Mission” are everywhere. The columns are topped with art deco designs and Maori tribal patterns. Spanish tiles decorate the roofs. Original storefronts that have kept Napier in the first third of the last century are preserved with tenderness.

It is Sunday afternoon when I walk through the town. All the shops are closed. A handful of townies are about. The wide streets are clean as a whistle. Down the center of one street is a double row of Phoenix palms, a gift to the town from well-to-do patrons. They accentuate the absence of greenery everywhere else in the town center. The salt laden wind from the bay is a plant killer. You need to be a mile away from the water before the tree line can start.

I ask Mike, my bus driver, what it is like living in Napier. He was born here. He has lived here all his life. He loves it. It is, he says, a nice town. I ask him if there is any crime. He says twenty years ago the freezing plant closed down. That left a couple of hundred Maoris out of work. The result was street gangs. He says that hasn't been bad recently. I ask him how he feels about the Maoris. He says he has a Maori son-in-law and a Maori daughter-in-law. “It’s not a racial thing,” he said. “It just isn’t smart to put 200 Maoris out of work.

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