EDITOR’S LETTER

Greetings from the desk of Kate Coughlan

BUSTER AND I are sitting here on a chilly, squally Friday afternoon glaring out at the world. He is yowling to remind me that feeding time is approaching (in case I had forgotten). I’m tempted to box his ears for being annoying.

It’s not entirely Buster’s fault that I am in such a mood. The world is intruding, and I am having trouble filtering out some of the negativity. But — as ever — I find the quickest way to “rebalance” is to pick up this magazine and become immersed in the lives and thoughts of people doing worthwhile things. Surrounding ourselves with positive people enhances mental and physical wellbeing. So, dive right into this issue and rub shoulders with a new bunch of uplifting souls.

Meet people ploughing through life with a determined and often singular view. They are independent types, practising skills that might be considered obsolete in our modern world. Bygone, but not forgotten, arts are followed with enthusiasm by people doing things the way their grandparents or great- grandparents might have.

Building houses from earth bricks is an art as old as the hills and a value proposition immortalized by three little pigs. Many of us living in “modern” sandwich- construction houses would be delighted for a home built from something other than straw and sticks.

Claude and Gabriella Lewenz (page 20) live in the country’s largest hand-fashioned earth brick home. They built it themselves. And they bring a wide range of other skills to their well-lived life. She is an artist, and he is an inveterate creator of everything from kitchen cabinetry and dining furniture to terrazzo flooring and fireplaces. You name it, Claude can build it — and probably has, often looking to the past for a template.

The farther backwards one looks, the farther forwards into the future one can see, British prime minister Winston Churchill advised the young Queen Elizabeth in 1952. The whakataukī — “Ka mua, ka muri” — expresses the same sage advice: “Walk backwards into the future.” Steve Jobs and Marcus Aurelius also weigh in on the value of the past to illuminate the future.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” wrote Jobs, while Aurelius, being a Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, saw things in political terms. “Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”

I’m looking backwards to the lives of my forebears and wondering what to take from them. I think they were all too darn busy to hear the voices of negativity, so that’s something. I don’t want to return to an era without household conveniences as I see no value in red-knuckle drudgery. I cook, mostly from scratch, as my grandmothers did, and I grow veggies like my grandfather but without his profusion of success. Curiously ( just saying, Buster), none of them had time for the indulgence of domestic pets.