14 EDITOR’S LETTER
a pretty good caricature of Richard Nixon. I was a bored 10 year old, Nixon was on the cover of Time magazine (resigning in the face of impeachment), there was a pencil and drawing paper lying on the kitchen table so I copied Time’s illustration – mostly to avoid my mother giving me a job, which was the era’s standard response to a child complaining of boredom. My father, who desperately alighted upon the slightest hint of talent in any of his children, labeled me as good at drawing. One of the drawbacks of being part of a large family is being stuck with labels. It’s how parents cope with lots of children. I was also the one with the elephant memory. I was regularly instructed “Kathleen, remember this” especially when the family was in the car en route and my very busy parents (six children and a farm) couldn’t make lists of things that needed attention.
The truth is that I couldn’t draw – still can’t. (And my memory was never that good.) It must have been a monumental fluke – that copied caricature of Nixon – because it wasn’t half bad. Mum and Dad kept it for ages in a pile including my cleverer siblings’ essays, exam reports and, for an unfathomable reason, a newspaper cutting about the percentage of the prison population with dyslexia.
That probably didn’t help my brother, who’d been diagnosed with dyslexia at the time, though I guess he couldn’t read it anyway. (He’s not in prison, nor ever has been, and is the only one of us with a double degree.) Our family wasn’t known for sensitivity. Enthusiasm was more Dad’s thing. That early misallocation of a talent for drawing is why I hold people who can draw in the very highest regard. Our sub- editor Tracey Strange Watts can draw – beautifully.
This is why she is so good at sub- editing our pages and ensuring NZ Life & Leisure is without ugly phrases or misspellings. She painted a beautiful illustration of a peony (for Lombardy Cottage where they grow so well). I love it and sometimes, when I look at it, I am almost inspired to try to draw.
The creativity of the people in this issue could be daunting but no, their talent excites us all. We love their ability to see beyond the mundane and bring a better world into life.