About Harvest Bird

Harvest Bird is the blog of Megan Clayton, a writer and university teacher who lives in Sockburn, New Zealand.  Of Sockburn, another New Zealand blogger once wrote:

I remember, the name was the first thing I noticed when I looked at map of Christchurch. Sockburn. Sock, Burn. Sockburn is an industrial zone. The whole area is a testament to human kind’s ability to manufacture, warehouse and dispatch.

In these environs Megan maintains a secret garden behind two fences, designed to keep out door-knockers and keep in her Norwich Terriers. She shares this domestic abundance with her husband Señor Mojito, an epicurean gamer with a love of Realpolitik, and their young daughter.

By day Megan is an employee of Concrete University, where she teaches preparatory courses in the humanities and is a union activist.  By night, her literary, cinematic and musical interests fit around the care of her daughter.  Her friends and family people this journal, in which those without an online identity are represented pseudonymously.

The name Harvest Bird is the title of a chapter in Dragon Rampant, a 1939 travelogue by Robin Hyde. It has been Megan’s online alias since June 2000.

Let us be tired, let us forget to pretend that we have voices or thoughts, and sink into our own speech, the slow rustling murmur of many laden heads, meeting the keener voice of the scythes. Can’t you hear the harvest bird calling, early this year? He never forgets to come to China. Some of our people say he sings: ‘Work now, work now,’ but others say it is ‘Worship now.’ I will be wise for once, I will tell you what you are going to say. You are going to say ‘There is no difference, Ground is written on one side and Sky on the other.’