The Memo #20
Why I loathe airports and other interesting stuff I read this week that I thought you might like too.
Musing of the Week
I despise airports. As someone who flies frequently for work, this isn't ideal.
It doesn't matter which airport, whether I'm coming or going, dropping off or picking up. The feeling deep in the pit of my stomach remains constant - I don't want to be there.
Flying isn't the issue. It's the fact that I’ve convinced myself airports are these classist, fancy warehouses, devouring our time and oozing with emotions I can’t avoid.
From couples awaiting each other at arrival gates to families separating at departures, tears are omnipresent. Airports are the epicenter of the human condition, the intersection of countless stories, where raw, unfiltered emotion is on full display.
When you travel for work, though, you miss being a character in all that. If you're like me, the closest you get to human connection is hearing your name called over the speaker.
I wish I could say I'm one of those frequent flyers who glides through the terminal, unphased by the sea of emotion - the Teflon traveler. But I'm not. Even on my best days, I still get teary-eyed walking through an arrival lounge. Seeing kids running to meet their nan with handmade signs, a woman in uniform embracing her partner, or friends welcoming an adventurer home - it all gets to me.
Then there’s the fact that nowhere else does the class system play out so blatantly. You'll be patiently waiting when a thick Kiwi accent blurts over the speaker: "All the people who are better than you can board now. Everyone else who is poor like you can keep waiting." We even segregate where that waiting takes place. (In truth, anyone who gets to fly is bloody lucky - 80% of the world's population has never flown, and only 2-4% fly abroad in a year.)
I also have this philosophy that life isn't meant to be lived on carpet tiles. Anywhere with carpet tiles is designed with the durability required to absorb people's time - the bank, the post office, the dentist... Nowhere you actually WANT to be, and certainly nowhere anything consequential in your life is going to happen. As such, I choose to spend as little time as possible in these places, and the airport is no different. You're surrounded by people sitting, waiting, as if everyone's life is in limbo.
I don't have a seek-professional-help disdain for airports. It's just a low mood triggered by a certain place. Maybe I should take up sailing.
Saying goodbye to our friend Natalie Vaughn during the Covid era, featuring tears and time absorbing carpet tiles.
Weekly reads
Kiwis' Property 'Dream-Scrolling' Habits Revealed from RNZ. This was a strong contender for fact of the week - about one in eight Kiwi adults would rather go online and look at houses they cannot afford than have sex.
The Grammar Way by Alwyn Poole for KiwiBlog. Some of the finest New Zealanders I know attended Auckland Grammar (though others from the school have fallen far short of expectations.) Traditionally regarded as the gold standard for boys' education, the school now ranks 49th in national academic performance. More concerning is the stark disparity in outcomes for Māori and Pasifika students. While 62% of all students progress to degree-level study, only 21% of Pasifika and 18% of Māori students make it to university. Poole’s original article for The Herald is here. In contrast, Baradene College boasts an impressive 86% university entrance rate.
The Plight Of Big Sisters by Kelli María Korducki for Business Insider. It doesn’t matter where you’re from, eldest and only daughters shoulder a far greater share of responsibility than any other kid in the family, this is a great piece on why that happens.
Save Yourself From Burnout With This Simple Formula by Karen Nimmo for Stuff. It’s that season - ‘the only energy you can invest is available energy. To make more energy available, you have to withdraw it from something else.’ (Thanks for the recommendation Dad!)
What If Ronald Reagan's Presidency Never Really Ended? by Daniel Immerwahr for The New Yorker. An interesting piece on the startling similarities between the Republicans poster child president and present day Trump. Reagan held reactionary beliefs, his background was in entertainment, he often struggled to distinguish fact from fiction and he delegated most policy decisions to his advisors.
Reagan tolerated a gap between rhetoric and reality because, for him, rhetoric was what mattered. “The greatest leaders in history are remembered more for what they said than for what they did,” he insisted. (The example he offered was Abraham Lincoln, apparently rating the Gettysburg Address a more memorable achievement than the defeat of the Confederacy.) When it came to policy, Reagan was happy to hand things off to “the fellas”—his generic term for his aides, whose names he could not reliably recall.
The Divorce Tapes by Beth Rayner for New York Magazine. A harrowing long read. This is a deeply personal and complex story about family trauma, secrets, and the impact of childhood sexual abuse. The author discovers audio tapes her father made by secretly recording every phone conversation during the years before her parents' divorce.
Huge Opportunity: Could You Be The Guy Standing Behind The PM Looking Furious? by Hayden Donnell for The Spinoff. The Spinoff has been really good lately.
Graph of the Week
I’m really interested in birth rates at the moment, this here is for Australian women. In New Zealand, the median age women are starting families is 30, while the median age of fathers at the time of the birth of their first child is just over two years older than that for mothers.
Quote of the week
“There's a second component of reading that many people don't realise exists: searching for the good books. There are a huge number of books and only a small percentage of them are really good, so reading means searching. Someone who tries to read but doesn't understand about the need to search will end up reading bad books, and will wonder why people who read a lot like to do something so boring.” — Paul Graham
Term of the week
Hyper-Aged is the technical description for any population where the proportion of people aged-65+ is more than 20%.
Fact of the week
There are currently more people in space right now than there has ever been before in history - 19 in total.
Happy Reading,
Maddy x
P.S How about Philip Polkinghorne huh?