Cultural Edge

I (Mike) was on Google Earth the other day to ‘walk’ down Mt. Eden Road, the street of the Quaker meetinghouse in Auckland and where we shall live for a year. Cultural and generational edges came to the fore.

I grew up in Torquay on the southwest coast of England and a similarly temperate climate to North Island. And here, on Google Earth, was not only the layout of the streets familiar from many years ago, including how sidewalks (pavements) and road markings were laid out, but there were the palm trees as well.

We have heard many say that NZ is a throw back to Britain of the 50s (which quite frankly made be shudder–do they still have rationing?) but in these images it definitely threw me back to where I spent the first 17 years of my life. I did not find Quakers until Marsha took me to my first meeting at the age of 20, so here is Quakerism meeting my childhood in a mind acculturated to the U.S. And on top of that weighs the old empire, colonialism in a country that still wrestles with its own indigenous culture of the Maori. There is not one edge here to walk but a wealth of edges, real and imaginary.