A day with Kim Hill
The radio legend's last show is this morning
Kia ora and welcome to The Weekend brought to you by Coffee Supreme. When I was growing up, Sunday mornings were for Kim Hill replays. I would walk sleepily into the kitchen where my parents were making pancakes and listening to interviews from the Saturday Morning programme that had aired in New Zealand the day before. Hill has been working at RNZ for 38 years, so many thousands of people will have their own Kim Hill stories — the familiarity of a voice on a radio. She is known for her blistering interview style, but also her open curiousity and willingness to learn. This weekend, Toby Manhire profiles her.
-Shanti Mathias, staff writer
A day with the doyenne of New Zealand media
“Interviewing New Zealand’s best interviewer is quite a scary assignment,” Toby Manhire told me, about his day with Kim Hill. “She’s a fascinating person — she does not like talking about herself, or being a celebrity broadcaster — she wouldn’t like being called that.” In his piece, Toby asked Hill if she would ever go on Celebrity Treasure Island and got a resounding no. “For anyone under 50 who listens to public radio, she’s been a constant presence, and she’s loathed by people, too. She genuinely has transcended a job in the media to become a cultural institution, which sounds pretentious, but it’s true.” After a morning watching Hill do her thing in the RNZ studio, Toby had lunch with her — but her thoughts on the chicken soup will have to remain a mystery. The final episode of Saturday Morning with Kim Hill airs today.
An assortment of Kim Hill thoughts, from the state of RNZ to interviews she tries to avoid
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The creative mastermind who makes Santa Parade costumes
I had high ideals of avoiding Christmas content until December 1 BUT Auckland’s Santa Parade is tomorrow and I simply could not resist this short, beautiful profile of Ronelle Thompson, who makes the costumes for the event — work that takes all year. As someone who has recently become enthusiastic about sewing, the scale of it is incredible, and the piece is beautifully described. “Last year Thompson thinks they used every bolt of red tulle in Auckland to make a series of umbrellas into Pōhutukawa flowers,” writes Gabi Lardies. “There are hats in the shape of rat heads, with white sequin fabric, big blue plastic eyes and silver pipe-cleaner whiskers; brightly-coloured lycra dresses with circle skirts; and a soft pink sculpture elephant on a wheeled frame, bigger than the both of us combined.”
More sewing: how are New Zealand brands responding to mass, violent strikes among garment workers in Bangladesh?
Tenderness for turtles
This week, Alex Casey met turtle-rescuing legend Donna Moot. She tells me about the story: “There is something so endlessly moving and fascinating to me about people who dedicate so much of their lives to helping out struggling critters. A Christchurch hero, Moot has seen thousands of rescue turtles through her doors since she started Turtle Rescue NZ in 2007, and it was an honour to spend an afternoon with her learning all about the extremely tricky turtle situation New Zealand is facing. Did I come home asking if we could build a pond to house two lovely lady turtles? Yes. Did it work? No.”
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Robert Lord’s very relatable diaries
One of the best kinds of reviews are when you learn something about the world from the review. I’d never heard of queer New Zealand playwright Robert Lord, but through a review of his collected diaries by Sam Brooks, another queer playwright, I got a sense of who he was and how his work fits into a bigger picture. Here’s an excerpt. “The entries are full of parties, strife, jaunts across the world and a decades-long love for a man he treated pretty badly. There are so many famous names dropped from across the world and country, although somewhat hilariously, not Meryl Streep, who only features in a photograph of a workshop of one of Lord’s plays that she participated in (perhaps he wasn’t a fan?). It is also a portrait of the rare writer who spent as much time writing, it seems, as he did partying.”
Isolation and connection as the parent of a vulnerable child
Kiki van Newtown’s children are immuno-comprised. In this extract from a new book about loneliness in the age of the pandemic, she reflects on the experience of lockdown. “While most people were lamenting the loss of public “third spaces”, us neurodivergents and introverts were celebrating this recalibration of what social life is supposed to look like. The renovation of digital platforms for connecting and collaborating opened up a precedent for accessibility that I hadn’t previously experienced. Staying home removed the debilitating hubbub of the commute, the workplace, the bar. It reduced the whiplash that exists between the public contortion of trying to move through an unaccommodating world, and the private exhaustion that inevitably follows.”
Everything else
Are the days of “learning to code” coming to an end?
What the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine told the New Zealand movement pushing for peace
HJ Kilkelly’s most “on brand” author encounter in this week’s Books Confessional
I loved this glimpse of new MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp’s wardrobe from Metro
12 graphs that show New Zealand isn’t doing as badly as you think
IF you were caught up in Priestdaddy hype in 2017 then you will want to read Patricia Lockwood’s account of meeting the pope in 2023
“I’m desperate for kids but my partner is stalling.” Help Me Hera!
Wellington’s huge cycling upgrade is ambitious — and surprisingly cheap
I’ve had a few opportunities in my life to go behind the scenes at a museum and each has been an incredible thrill. This photo-essay of Canterbury Museum moving its collection so its building can be refurbished produced the same effect
Would you want to be a livestreaming shopping influencer?
Tommy de Silva wonders how to feel about the new exhibit of a vital taonga at Auckland Museum
Hate your tattoo? This is what it’s like to get it removed
Extremely interesting interview with the extremely interesting John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats plus one of my favourite of his songs
Making sense of a childhood as a research subject
