‘Surge of memories’ of old Cherry Farm days

THE story of Julia AranuiFaed (ODT, 11.8.18) and Ken Bragan’s suggestion (ODT letters, 20.8.18) that tributes to the work of Dr Charles Moore and Presbyterian minister Ian Proven should have been included, has prompted a surge of memories of Cherry Farm.

Dr Bragan, whom I seldom saw, was in 1966 a visiting clinician to Villa D — a female, nonforensic, locked ward, with freedom limited to 30 minutes a day under escort.

Ian Proven was responsible for arranging a transfer to the library for me after I began freaking out about my daily task.

That involved being locked behind the steel door of a bathroom with a nurse aide in charge of a massive bunch of keys, and then bathing a number of female dementia patients before washing their soiled underwear in an old washing machine.

Dr Moore, on sabbatical at the time of my admission, was instrumental in the facilitating of my return home and to the two parttime jobs left a few months earlier.

Both men I remember as human faces, palliative in the midst of inhumane practices.

Unlike Dr Bragan, I don’t read into the narrative of Julia AranuiFaed denigration, by means of omission, of previous pioneers.

Nor can I agree that such pioneers have a place in what is a most inspiring, very personal, life story. Nola Harris

Abbotsford

Not fascist?

CHRIS Trotter asserts that the United States is not fascist (ODT,

27.7.18). Right.

Fascism was European, manifest in the United Kingdom as a brutish political party, the National Front.

Historically, Americans have been killed and beaten by Redcoats, state police, racists, strikebreakers and the National Guard.

Still, conformist fascism did not take root in a diverse, individualist country.

President Trump’s call to physically attack working journalists covering his rally was a mere shade of 1930s’ Weimar thuggery.

Alan Beck

Dunedin