Rumours of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

There are two kinds of blog readers: the kind who notice when someone doesn’t post in a while, and the kind who notice the silence only when it ends. I am of the latter sort, myself, but for those of you who are of the former, this reassurance: I am indeed alive.

Alive, but not in the best of health – hence the nearly three month silence. After struggling for some time with a variety of issues with which I will not trouble you, I have now received a “working diagnosis” of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (which, yes, is what the Caped Gooseberry has had for lo these many years).

Sitting up – as opposed to sitting down – is something I don’t have as much energy for as I used to, so sitting up at the desk for the hours needed to produce a blog post on the computer has not happened in some time.

A painting of a woman dressed head to toe in flowing blue-black, collapsed on a green sofa piled with cushions. She is looking at the closed yellow book in her right hand. Her left hand dangles off the side of the sofa.
Battery unexpectedly flat.
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Posture & Penmanship in Paintings: How Not To Do It

One cannot overstate the importance of good posture for an ergonomic writing habit, as I recently discovered while extending my ambidexterity to handwriting. (Ergonomic: ergo, meaning therefore, and nomic, meaning in the nature of a gnome – viz. you’ll end up wizened like a gnome if you don’t do it properly).

Of course, no sooner had I schooled myself in the Right and Proper way of positioning one’s assorted body parts while writing, than I discovered endless examples of those who were doing it in a Wrong and Improper way. Especially in art. Let us consider a collection of these Improprieties.

But first – and at intervals throughout, to keep your eye in – let me show you someone doing it right. (Note: nearly all these writers are writing with their right hands. For greater left-handed representation, hold a mirror up to the screen.)

 A woman in a late nineteenth century dress and hairstyle, sitting at a table with an envelope in her left hand and a pen in her right.
Albert Edelfelt: Dam som skriver brev. NM 2653

The Lady Writing a Letter is sitting up straight – neither leaning on her desk nor slumping in her chair (though I am prepared to believe her corsetry is assisting in this respect). Her upper arm is in line with her torso, and her lower arm is at approximately 90 degrees to her upper arm, and to her torso. Her arm rests gently on the paper, but her hand is not dragging at the page.

One girl leans over her page as she writes. Another girl leans on the table next to her and watches.

This girl is demonstrating the problem of bending over one’s page: it becomes impossible to keep one’s arms at the right angles, and they begin to stick out like chickens’ wings.

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Strange and Heroic Police Deaths

The New Zealand Police website, I recently discovered, has a couple of pages dedicated to the memory of police staff who have died in the line of duty – either as a result of a criminal act, or as a direct result of duty. And there are contained in these two pages stories both poignant and strange.

Drowning

Drowning was a common cause of death for coppers, particularly in the early years, including a number who died in various bodies of water over the years “while on police business” – unspecified.

The first New Zealand police officer to die in the line of duty was Senior Constable Henry Porter, who “died while doing night rounds” in Port Chalmers near Dunedin in the winter of 1887. He was checking that a hulk in the port wasn’t being targeted by arsonists again, and due to a lack of site safety, he accidentally fell in and drowned.

View of old Port Chalmers looking from the hill above the harbour, looking down towards the wharves, 1870s

Ten years later, Sergeant Florence O’Donovan and Constable Alfred Stephenson drowned while rescuing people during floods in Napier. (It is worth noting that Florence O’Donovan was a man, with a great big bushy beard to avoid any confusion. The first woman to become a sergeant in the NZ Police was Betty Bennett in 1961 – later Inspector Bennett.)

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