THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 184, 31 December 1942, Page 2

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

HE Home Front, which a year or so ago was mainly a matter of building air-raid shelters and slit trenches, and having one’s husband called up in the middle of the night for the surprise Home Guard parades, has now graduated into the shopping basket stage. From wondering what she should seal up in an iron ration tin, the housewife now wonders just what she will have to put in any tin, and sometimes what tin there will be to put things in. Stabilisation of prices, and how this affects the housewife, is the theme of a series of talks (on the Home Front) over the air from 2YA on Monday mornings at 11. Poco a Poco The first great American Ro-mance, the story of Princess Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, is té have an airing from 2YA next Monday forenoon, January 4, in the For My Lady session. And remembering all that Pocahontas

did for North American solidarity, we hope that all enthusiastic adherents of the United Nations who can will listen in. For those who don’t know much about this trans-Atlantic Flora MacDonald, we might mention that she interceded to secure the release of John Smith, one of the founders of the colony of Virginia, who had been captured by the Indians, and generally showed friendship towards the English settlers. Of Captain John Smith we know little, save that he wrote A True Relation of the Events Connected with the Colonisation of Virginia, and General History of Virginia, and that (possibly as a result) Pocahontas didn’t marry him. Instead, having had her Big Moment, she went off and married an obscure Englishman called John Rolfe with whom no doubt she lived happily ever after. At any rate, we hope the NBS will confirm that. Listening to Steve Highway Night Express runs up and down and all over America, and the driver at the wheel meets drama, perhaps not at every turn but often enough to have a pretty full repertory of stories with which to beguile the hours for his companion. These stories, amusing, dramatic, or exciting, just as they are told by Steve Grady the driver, are retailed episode by episode for the benefit of ZB listeners, and if they all end as satisfactorily as did the ones which we have heard, life in America must be as one hundred per cent. as we are sometimes told it is. Highway Night Express begins at 1ZB on January 16, from 2ZB on

January 6, from 3ZB on January 27, and from 4ZB on February 3, and is heard at 6 p.m. on Wednesday and Saturday. Political Jetsam "Jetsam on the Rising Tide" is not twin entertainer with Flotsam, but refers to German refugees on the rising tide of European politics, 1937-39. It is the title of a Graeme-Holder play (1YA, Sunday, January 3): not light entertainment but drama which includes murder. We first meet our leading refugee (who has left Germany because he will not say Heil Hitler, or force others to do so), trying rather illogically to force an Englishman to stand up during the playing of "God Save the King". From that point the theme is how he and his wife adjust themselves to their new English environment, and those who like their meat strong or perhaps we should say their tide high, should listen for what follows. Fast Work Usually, when we see that there’s to be a commentary on a race-meeting, we decide to prop the rake up against the apple tree and step out of our clodhoppers to listen-in; because, although we are not able: to say off-hand whether any particular horse is a trotting horse or a galloping horse, we always find it a stimulating experience to listen to the unbelievable crescendo achieved by the announcer all the way up the straight. But now we're all a-jog because we see that the 1YA announcer is going to attempt the impossible, namely, a running commentary on the Auckland Racing Club’s meeting at Ellerslie on Jan- >

uary 9. If we were the announcer we’d just take it easy and stay in the box with our binoculars. No Bicycles for Andrea While the opera lover will probably swallow Lohengrin’s swan and Siegfried’s dragon, he has to draw the line somewhere, and Giordano found himself on the wrong side of the line when he introduced bicycles into the equipment for his opera Fedora. He had, however, better luck with his opera Andrea Chenier, which follows the factual story of the poet who, himself a revolutionary, fell victim to the guillotine. The story and setting of this opera are unusual, and as the music is not often heard, we shall listen for it from 2YA on the evening of Sunday, January 10. seneenene ef