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I wrote a letter to the editor once - I forgot to sign it..

Mike's Pith & Wind - Letters to the editor
‘The advent of social media’ must be the opening line for ten thousand essays, but I shall persist.
That social media is putting newspapers out of business is beyond debate and you’d think that the letters to the editor page might evaporate even quicker than most, given the forum that social media gives every man and his literate dog, but it hasn’t proved to be the case. Yet.
In fact, I now find that I’m reading the letters page more avidly than ever, which may have less to do with the hypothesis above and more to do with a phase that I’m going through associated with my age.
The fact that the letters published in The Age (I don’t read the other one) and in newspapers generally, are filtered by editors or sub-editors means that the quality of the writing in the published letters is significantly superior to Mr or Mrs Suburbia dashing something off the top of their heads on Facebook at 7.30 in the morning or 10.35 at night knowing that, unless they’re especially evil or subversive, they’ll be published and read and responded to by 7.35 or 10.40 at the latest.
Traditionally the subjects of letters to the editor are germane to the current hot issues published in the rest of the paper, but there are usually one or two letters that sneak in that follow some extraneous thread of their own or are entirely tangential - and those are the ones that I tend to get the most enjoyment from.
The feeling that I get from reading these letters is that the writers are genuinely concerned.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Scott of the Antarctic
“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From it's own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, not falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory”
Vaughan Williams ‘Sinfonia Antarctica’ opens with the above lines. The music was a development of the film music that Williams wrote for the 1948 film ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ that starred John Mills as Scott and Kenneth More as Evans. I remember seeing it as a youngster with some pride and interest as Scott had sailed from New Zealand on his ill-fated expedition and a statue of Scott stood at the corner of Worcester Street and Oxford Terrace in Christchurch from whence.. read more