Central

Central Stories, the museum in Alexandra, Central Otago, where I lived for the last year, has, in its collection, this wooden grinder, perhaps it wasn’t a grinder at all, perhaps it was for making butter, I’m not sure. However in my imagination, I would like to think that it was for turning wheat into flour in order to make bread.

I photographed it two or three times over a few months but usually from further back.

The handle in the base of the device was fun to turn. It made the wooden section on the left of this image rotate, while simultaneously the base turned in a contrary direction. I found it riveting to watch. I even liked the sound it made.

I’m sorry that I have only this one photo left, but it was the last, and I think, the best, bread or butter!

Okinawa Butterflies

One of the great delights of coming to live here in Central Otago is that I have met
an entomologist who is an expert on butterflies. At his home he has, as well as a beautiful Japanese wife, a comprehensive collection of butterflies from that country. This photo is of him showing me a book of specimens from Okinawa. These I would like to see for myself some day.

Correction. These are moths not butterflies! Thank you Brian.

More Butterflies

Getting over all the travel turmoil of the last few days and more and more my mind is going back to the collection of butterflies that I saw in Alexandra. That is, the collection put together by a soldier on the Solomons in World War 2. I posted about these a few days ago.



I don’t want to be too woowoo but I can’t help thinking that there is something extra to these butterflies. If I hadn’t known anything about their history would I have felt the ‘pressure of the more’. If I showed them to a total stranger and held them up against recently caught specimens would they be able to detect a difference? I’m not sure.

I intend finding out, and will use my camera to test the proposition.