Misc

THE SLAM OF THE OFFICE DOOR as work finishes and Christmas holidays gegin is one of the finest sounds in human history, if you ask me. The year's work is finished and nothing more can be done. It is time to unwind 12 months of accumulated knots, spread them out on the great beach towel of an Aotearoan summer and
see them drift away in the sea breeze.

Chilling out is very good for us and no one is more persuasive in this regard than NZ Life & Lesiure's new well-being columnist Dr Libby Weaver. We need to slow down, she says and switch off. Today's tenacious technology enslaves us to a 24-hour locked-and-loaded state of connection and preparedness. Reject it. Be unready and unavailable - and feel no guilt. I am giving it my all this summer - flat-out doing nothing.

It's been a busy year as we've reshaped our lives and our businesses to the new 'norm'. Cantabrians taught us so much about the power of acceptance and its usefulness when facing terrible ordeals. We're healthier and more effective by accepting life's vicissitudes and refusing victimhood. In the words of a friend trying to distil the essence of Buddhism into a pithy phrase: "Shit happens; don't take it too personally". Succinct if not pretty.
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She’s a rock star of the nutrition world, a poster woman for the health conscious and a beacon of hope for a mind/body health solution. Meet NZ Life & Leisure’s new health & well-being contributor, Dr Libby Weaver

WHEN LIBBY ELLIS WAS A CHILD, she wanted to save the world. Even so, it was a stretch for the girl from the New South Wales country town of Tamworth to find herself centre stage earlier this year, receiving a standing ovation from 6500 Americans at a health and nutrition conference. But that’s the way the universe leads Dr Libby (now Weaver). She is still fuelled by a desire to help people and now the whole world is her oyster.

While Libby was at university studying journalism – her first route to saving the world – she realized that she liked writing only about health. While studying psychology – her second go at a helping-people career – she realized she was really interested only in understanding why people ate the food they did. So she switched to nutrition. When several of her early patients (autism and eczema) showed almost instant responses to dietary changes, she began to question why the role of food in ill health wasn’t paid more attention. From her mother, Libby had learned great respect for the nutritional value of good food and that, coupled with the almost miraculous results of her early work as a dietitian, took her back to her professor of nutrition with the question: “If I can achieve such radical improvements in the health of these patients, just with diet and (at the time) as a new grad, then why isn’t more attention paid to understanding this?”

THE CAR IN FRONT of me was festooned with flapping flags at every door. The silver fern spoke clearly: unequivocally proud of New Zealand. Another vehicle was also flying a flag: the Union Jack on a blue background with... how many stars? Were they Aussies or Aotearoans?

I’d like to know at a glance. A national flag should coalesce pride in an instant. It’s meant to be a visual symbol, capable of flicking a switch in our brains telling us “My country”.

It doesn’t. Who can tell at a glance whether it’s the flag of New Zealand or Australia? Is this why people in other countries often think New Zealand and Australia are one and the same? Mention you come from New Zealand and foreigners begin telling you about their uncles who emigrated to Australia.

In 2005 the visionary New Zealander Lloyd Morrison initiated a debate about a potential redesign of our flag. I joined that band of would-be flag-changers and was shouted at in RSA rooms and on street corners for my temerity in asking for petition signatures. However, for every angry former soldier who accused me of traitorous behaviour, there was another opinion that things change and symbols can outlive their usefulness.

Change is inevitable and anything is possible; that’s always been our mantra here at NZ Life & Leisure. I notice on page 140 of this issue, in a story written by young journalist Charles Anderson who retraced his grandfather’s WWII steps to Monte Cassino, that the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force trunk which accompanied his grandfather to war was stencilled with a silver fern. Didn’t our soldiers fight with silver ferns on their lapels? Those silver ferns lay over their hearts as they fought for their country and for freedom.

How to keep your joints in dancing order? Orthopaedic surgeon and knee specialist at Wellington’s Bowen Hospital, Russell Tregonning, has the answers
Words: Sylvia Varnham O’Regan

Our bodies have more than 50 joints, varying in shape and size. Hands and feet house many little joints while bones are few in arms and legs. Joints function to help move our limbs but they have varying degrees of mobility. “The extremes would be the shoulder joint, which is very mobile, and the pelvic joints, which are less mobile,” says Russell.

Thanks for all the potato feedback. In my last email (1st August) I mentioned my run-in with a particularly poor crop of Nadines and wondered if there was a place in supermarkets to showcase local specialities.  Gosh, I didn't realize the humble spud could stir up such emotions.
Kate
 

WHEN IT IS TIME to write my editorial, I sit down and reread all the stories that are in the new issue and each time the same thing happens – the stories and the people in them lift me up and propel me forward. I feel fuelled by their energy.

Imagine, I think to myself, if we had an entire country full of people with the same creativity, passion and work ethic… how far could we go with this Aotearoa of ours? I know it is more than 100 years since we had the highest per-capita income in the Western world but we could get back there. Think of the choices we would have as a nation.

It’s “that” year again – no, not the Rugby World Cup but election year. I am listening closely to all the talk and wondering if it is true that conservatism is accumulated along with years. Scrabbling over a redistribution of the tax take isn’t showing me a hopeful future. There isn’t a tank of money sitting somewhere, waiting for a kinder person to turn on the spigot, is there? We have to earn that money from overseas. We have to get more New Zealand-produced food into the supermarkets of India and Asia and more tourists to part with their dollars in our country. We need strong, willing, educated, hard-working and able citizens to achieve these goals.

In the previous issue we spoke to Sean Simpson, whose high-tech company is creating biofuel from industrial gas waste. LanzaTech has just been identified (at the latest Icehouse Ideas Conference) as potentially this country’s first-ever billion-dollar company. Imagine creating more companies in that mould. Our cast of characters in this issue does give me hope for the future.

The huge range of vitamin supplements available offers remedies for everything from anxiety to insomnia. But are they necessary? How do we find out which extra vitamins we require? Words: Sylvia Varnham O’Regan

I WANT TO APPLAUD NZ Life & Leisure for printing Kitty Brown’s letter of disappointment with Issue 39’s cover. I read a lot of magazines and I know it is very rare for them to publish negative feedback. Good on Kitty for having the guts to write in in the first place and for you taking it to print. I think we can all grow by looking at the opinions of others; constructive feedback is a vital part of our world. We cannot always get everything right and appeal to everyone’s tastes but, although I absolutely love your mag, I can appreciate Kitty’s comments. After I read her letter I had another look at the cover and realized that she was bang on the button. Sometimes having real-life raw images in a magazine is a great way to get across messages you are trying to portray.

Gail Kennedy, Napier
 

I HAVE TO RESPOND to Kitty Brown's very negative comments about the July/Aug cover because the model is my lovely granddaughter. I eagerly await each issue since I started receiving the magazine early this year and there are always very interesting stories. Keep up the excellent work everyone and "get a life" Kitty Brown.

Barbara Ingle
 

THE COVER with the clean and washed vegetables?  Most of us urban vegetable garden legends clean and prepare our harvests before entering our kitchens to keep the soil from our food-prep areas.  And, hey, what’s a bit of artistic license? Keep up the good work, NZ Life & Leisure. I have just restarted my subscription after having twins – will read them in small instalments I am sure!

Amanda McCreadie

COVERS ARE the trickiest task for a magazine editor. I reckon every cover takes about a day off my life and as I’m now into the second decade of editing magazines the toll is mounting. The thing is that half our magazines are sold in supermarkets or bookstores which are full of tempting titles from all over the world. Thank heavens for you, our 15,000-plus subscribers who order NZ Life & Leisure by the year. Your reward, in addition to a well-deserved heavenly one, is that we enter you in every subscriber prize draw. Often, when we phone a subscriber to tell them they have won a prize, we hear, “But I didn’t enter”. Well, you don’t have to enter if you are a subscriber; we do it for you.

Anyway, back to the bookstore – this wasn’t meant to be a hard sell for subscribing although one final point is that it is much cheaper if you do ($50 a year as opposed to $58.20 if you buy every issue).

So – covers. Art director Yolanta and I spend a great deal of time trying to anticipate what you are going to love when you spy NZ Life & Leisure in the magazine rack.

I WAS REALLY THRILLED with the sheer variety of stories and layouts in the May/June issue of your magazine – even more so when it arrived in the post on a dreary, wet, autumn day.  I immediately made a cup of herbal tea and hid in my room under a blanket for some indulgence.  I have friends who keep bees so will be showing them Planet of the bees; a friend's husband is a circus performer so will be interested in Join the circus. My own husband rides motocross bikes so I may encourage him to join the Farm Jam next year so that I can have some girlie time!  I enjoyed Zest for success as I just love lemons;  I love the look of them, their smell and taste and I even burn lemon essential oil every day.  Also, this time I really enjoyed your fashion feature.
I believe NZ Life & Leisure should be in all high school libraries as a source of inspiration to our up-and-coming generations.  There are so many ideas for various lifestyles and ways of earning a living which our teenagers may otherwise not be exposed to!  Well done all round.

Sonya Young, Auckland

YOU HAVE NO IDEA how I devour your magazine; nothing else gets done until I have read every word of it. Keep up the good work; it means so much to receive the mag and read about all the amazing entrepreneurs we have in New Zealand.  We are blessed to have a wonderful country with clean air, green grass, trees and birds. Living away from it will certainly make us more appreciative when we return.  Desert life has no comparison but does bring a totally different landscape and culture which we have been fortunate to experience.

Jude Hall