Luke 13: 31-35

Herod Antipas, the son and heir of Herod the Great, was in a tough spot. He should have inherited his father’s power outright but the Romans knew how to manage their client kings — encouraging their greed while, at the same time, promising shock and awe if they got out of line… and an intimidating mixture of public flattery and private contempt.

I was in the pretty, orange-tiled hilltop village of Scapoli — in central Italy — for an international bagpiping festival. It overlooks valleys of olive groves, vineyards and cornfields, across to forests where European bears and wolves still roam free in a very big National Park. In turn, Scapoli is overlooked by the peaks of the Mainarde and Matese massifs, spectacular in the summer sun.

It is a setting that gives a serenity to Scapoli, even at the height of the festival.

There is a bluntness to nouns-heavy English as a tool for understanding (not to mention explaining or talking about) the sorts of processes and relations physicists identify i

FOR our Remembrance Day service I've been asked to explain what my father's Second World War medals mean to me.

My attempt:

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New Zealand suffered 57,000 casualties in the First World War, my mother’s father among them. He was killed at Paschendaele on 4 October 1917.

Of the 104,988 New Zealanders who served overseas during the Second World War, 6,839 died and 16,543 were wounded. My father was among the wounded.

His medals are the Military Cross, the 1939-45 Star, the Italy Star, the 1939-45 War Medal, the New Zealand Service Medal.

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