For Your Indulgence

Lotus Plants, or Buddha;s Tears

DEAR FRIENDS,

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL WHERE EVER YOU ARE READING THIS IN THE WORLD.

One of my committment this year 2012 is to keep this blog busy. I will reopen the print version of this blog with The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea, starting next Friday. Here is a sneak preview of the first article for this year. Visit this blog as often as you can and indulge yourself in some creative ideas and discussions.

I asked myself if the column Steven's Window I created is of any value to me as a writer. I have given a lot of thoughts about it. At first I wanted to close the window for ever. As it turned out the loyal followers of Steven’s Window seem unrelenting in that the window must open again.

I did resist the temptation to open the window last year. This year is a new chapter in our lives. We have to pick up from where we have fallen and move on. The world is changing every second.

So many things happened in the year 2011 that were not brought to those who follow Steven’s Window column. I was unable to contribute anything for the column. I watched, the world go by, beginning with the political whirlwind and change of regimes in the world: Egypt, Syria, Tunisia, Lybia; USA captures and executes Osama bin Ladin, earthquake in Christchurch, then Japan’s worst Tsunami and near nuclear disaster, and at the home front, the change of the guards between the Somare group and the O’Neill group, and the worst ever plane crash in PNG. It was a year of change that history books will return to time and time again.

As for me I had to operate in two different countries in 2011. The first six months was spent in Hawaii, USA and the next six months in Papua New Guinea. I had to teach in two different universities with two different systems in one year.

Read more in next week Friday's The Weekender of The National newspaper of Papua New Guinea.

Best wishes for this year to you all.

Comments

The first PNG Writer: Hosea Linge

With so much going on around us we tend to forget about important foundations of our history. I could not get out of my mind the much neglected discussion on the first Papua New Guinean writer. Every now and then we need to acknowledge the important parts of our history as we move forward. I would like to acknowledge the first Papua New Guinean to write a book in the 1930s. A New Irelander by name of Ligeremaluoga wrote and published his book under the title The Erstwhile Savage: An Account of the Life of Ligeremaluoga in 1932. Ligeremaluoga is from Kono village in New Ireland Province. Ligeremaluoga’s book is by all accounts the first written account by a South Pacific Islander. Most of what we know as Pacific writing is dated to the 1960s and 1970s. Last month I presented a paper at the University of Hawaii to discuss another early Papua New Guinean writer by name of Ahuia Ova of Hanuabada, who published his memoirs in 1939, six years after Ligeremaluoga’s autobiography. ...

Well Done! Nora

Melanesian writers: Regis Tove Stella (PNG), Nora Vagi Brash (PNG), Sam Alasia (Solomon Islands), USP Fiji campus, 1999. One of the outstanding playwright and poet to emerge in Papua New Guinea is Nora Vagi Brash. She remains the foremost and the only Papua New Guinean female playwright. Nora was involved with acting in amateur theatre, radio plays, and street theatre in early 1970s. Her exposure to the world of theatre in England inspired her to write her own plays on her return to Papua New Guinea. The National Arts School employed Nora as an assistant lecturer in puppetry, dance, and drama. She then moved on to become one of the two artistic directors with the National Theatre Company. Nora wrote her own scripts for the puppets using tradional stories of Papua New Guinea. The National Theatre Company toured local villages and performed in the streets. They went to the Pacific Arts Festival in Rotorua and Wellington, New Zealand. They also danced in Point Venus ...

Milky Pine Power

Young Milky Pine ( Alstonia scholaris ) The importance of plant names in the local language is an example of a complex structure of meaning. Different plants are used for specific purposes in our traditional societies. The same plant known by a common name can have sacred names to different people. Most often these sacred names are linked to myths, rituals, and spiritual powers. Many people know the general names for plants, but different species have a different name or an additional word to indicate colour, wild plants, domesticated plants, or cultivated. Where plants have medicinal and ritual values they may have sacred names known only to those who claim ownership of the plant and its powers. The tanget ( Cordyline fruticosa ), for example, is generally known in Nagum Boiken language as hawa . This name includes the cultivated ones, which are red in color and appears in long and short round leaves. The green wild ones are...

Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

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