The 15 buildings in the Harbour St-Tyne St precinct, and the life around and within many of them, create a unique and impressive New Zealand ambience. They are worth visiting just about every time you pass through Oamaru.
The Landmark process began in 2022, and earlier this month, the Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust gave Heritage New Zealand formal assent to include the buildings in a proposal for Landmark status.
If the government approves, the area will join the Treaty of Waitangi grounds in holding this premier standing. Others are also lining up for approval. The Wellington National War Memorial’s application is with the heritage minister, and work is under way for the Christchurch Arts Centre and Kerikeri Basin.
If too many sites gain landmark status, however, exclusivity will be lost.
★★★
Discussion of the word fulsome a few weeks ago received, dare Civis say it, a "fulsome" response (to use one of fulsome’s meanings) from Oamaru reader John Chetwin. He said he found himself shouting in agreement about the unfortunate evolution of the word.
John finds the word "impact" causes him as much anguish because it has almost completely usurped the roles of the verb to affect and the noun effect.
"As a consequence, we have lost the use of three words in one hit: affect, effect and impact. In this case, I believe journalists have a lot to answer for."
Craig Radford, of Dunedin, reported that, while unaware of fulsome’s origins, he also avoided the word because of its ambiguity.
He eschews "decimate" for the same reason.
It was a Roman army punishment; the execution of one-tenth of a unit in response to a mass infringement. Later, as Craig also says, it was used to wipe out a tenth or a significant portion of an army. But now it is widely used to mean the almost total destruction of anything.
While Craig notes that shifts in meanings are not new, sometimes the process now happens within a few years. Gay and woke are two prime examples.
★★★
Elly Kennedy wholeheartedly agrees about the superiority of curved sinks over the modern square variety. She believes many new inventions are more awkward than they need to be. She prefers the old method of manual dialling to the modern approach of punching in numbers, and she laments that so many things are designed to be thrown out rather than fixed.
Janet, no surname supplied, still regularly uses the Kenwood mixer she received in 1974 as an engagement present. Civis suspects many even older Kenwoods are still chugging away.
★★★
Words have a way of quickly becoming fashionable. Recently, Civis read twice about "slop" within five minutes from two different news sources.
Civis heard the word again just before writing this column. Two of the three uses referred to AI slop. The third was "slop" as the stream of disposable objects consumed.
Peak use of slop as a noun was about 1910. It’s quickly on the rise again, aided no doubt by sloppy uses of the word.
★★★
Civis’ gripe a few weeks back with "American" to mean from the United States came to prominence last week. TVNZ’s news was not the only outlet to proclaim the election of the "first American Pope". Also "sloppy", perhaps.
Where the heck did Pope Francis come from if not Argentina, part of South "America"? Some outlets corrected themselves to the first North American Pope, although they might have wanted to specify the United States.
