Flowers Flowers Flowers - And It's Still Winter, Well, Just

After a reasonable amount of smugness over recent-ish post about winter flowers in our garden, we decided today to go a bit more public ... and so trotted off to the Botanical Gardens for a bigger canvass.

Actually we had to bolt for the exit gate after our thousandth wildly burgeoning flower bed - the little floras were just blooming and busting out all over the place - but these are some of the photos we did take before we fled - with flowers which practically jump out (VERY BIG INDEED) into your living room/office/sling room/wherever if you click on the image ...























'You likey?'

Reversing Empathy Fatigue

We all know it's easy enough to fall into empathy fatigue with respect to world poverty - but every now and then you see something that re-sensitizes you - perhaps through a specific situation.

Like this set of photos of school buses - with the initial three in first world Asia ...




... and the last in New Delhi, India ...


Of course it easy enough to respond to the lack of opportunities for kids but such re-sensitizing can be the way into something more general.

In fact, I had a double exposure this week.

Pressing my dentist for an explanation for the difficulty in getting an appointment with him, he confessed he spent part of each year in Central America giving free dental care to those who could not other-wise afford it.

Mmm ... .

Thomas Edison - The Universal Exposition, Paris 1900

Paris - Highlighting the Pavilions and Sites of the Universal Exposition of 1900

Rummaging round my computer I found I had quite a lot more Thomas Edison footage of Paris in 1900 at the time of the Universal Exposition ...


So I thought I indulge myself - and try your patience - and put together another small video of some of the various bits I have.

Each of the titled photos below is for a section of the film ...

Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero Palace

La Place de l'Opera

L'Esplanade des Invalides

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 1

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 2

Dancing in Les Champs de Mars

Ascending the Eiffel Tower

So - again - sit back ... you know the drill by now!

Okay?

London 1903 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

Thomas Edison was (among many other things) traveling and filming in various parts of the world round the turn of last century.

He was in Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1900, catching a myriad of angles on the city, such as the carriages, buses and pedestrians at the Place de L'Opera ...

Paris 1900 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

... and in London in 1903 - again catching the life of the streets, though now in much clearer film footage due to the technological advances in film stock over the three years. Though - curiously - the camera is much more static.

Both these productions are (for me at least) like serious time traveling - you get up close and personal with ordinary people going about their daily business, like taking a taxi at one of the entrances to Hyde Park ...


... and catching boats at the Embankment on the Thames - perhaps to work ...


There's the general bustle of the traffic, with individuals occasionally moving into the middle or into the foreground to make a more human connection ...




There are familiar landmarks, such as the Law Courts ...


... James Gibbs's St Mary-Le-Strand ...


... and St. Margaret's Westminster and Big Ben ...


Familiar brand names flash up every so often, like old friends - just to bring this world a little closer to our own - such as Nestles ...


... and Lipton's Tea ...


And there's the (perhaps unexpected) chaos of the traffic in often dust-clogged streets ...




So sit back, relax and enjoy the show ...

London 1903 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

Any of the landscape familiar to you who know or visit London?

I remember more than I thought I would from my time there in my teens and early twenties.

David Hockney - Return To Simplicity

'Andalucia. Courtyard, Seville' (2004) - Watercolor on paper 29.5 x 83

I've long been interested in David Hockney, as much for his being gay and out as for his art work - the paintings, etchings and photographs.

So I'd been wondering what he was doing in the new millennium and was happy to find this video of him chatting with art historian Robert Hughes about the ideas underlying some of his latest work.

The discussion focuses around work done in Andalucia in Spain in 2004 - in Cordoba, Seville and Granada.

Hockney says he's currently interested in certain simplicities, at least in one aspect of his production. As a technical program, there's no pencil under-drawing - just painting directly onto the canvas with 'as few brush strokes as possible' and a limited palette. Sometimes of only four colours. And he's exploring how to create space with only a few lines.

This links to an abandoning of his sometime use of photography as the intermediary between what he sees and a painting. He now feels that many things are 'unphotographable' - suggesting that with a camera you miss patterns apparent when painting or drawing directly from the subject, such as those made by the internal columns of the mosque in Cordoba ...

'Andalucia, Mosque, Cordova' (2004) - Oil on canvas, 136 x 48 in

... patterns you'd not be aware of working from a photograph back in the studio. A photographic image can make you more aware of what's at the edges and so direct the construction of a work with respect to this phenomenon.

'Andalucía Fuentes Córdoba' (2004)

Much the same could be said of work produced in Norway and Iceland in 2002 ...

'Tujfjord Nordkapp II, Norway' (2002) - Watercolor on paper, 36 x 72 in.

'Mountain and Cloud, Iceland' (2002) - Watercolor on paper, 18 x 48 in.

One thing is certain - Hockney never seems to run out of new things to explore and so continues inexorably to excite the art loving public - both professional and dilettante.

I'm in!

Fanny Brice (1891-1951) - Straight From The Heart

I was curious about the original of 'My Man' - it was sung by Fanny Brice in the 'Ziegfeld Follies' of 1921.

Blew my socks off!

The period sentimentality of the arrangement and style of singing was irradiated away by being sung so honestly straight from the heart - the intimate almost-just-talking towards the end is particularly powerful and affecting. I think.

So I looked for other things and found, in a complete change of pace, the next clip, more in the vein of ...


... in which Fanny Brice does a 'cuckoo, swan wanna be' number in the film 'Be Yourself' (Barbara Streisand did somewhat of a re-make of this in 'Funny Girl' as everyone knows) ...

Finally, a satire on an opera singer ...

... which would get the crowd going, super big time ... in any gay club I've ever known!

Intellectual Teaser

Look at the following seven words carefully ...

banana
dresser
grammar
potato
revive
uneven
assess

... and cudgel your brains to see if you can determine what it is that they all have in common.

Other than having at least doubles of one or more letters.

MMM!

The thinking bit!

How are you going?

Okay - what they also all have in common is that, if you take the first letter, put it at the end and reverse the word, you end up with the same word.

Something silly (I know) but it helped pass the time with my first coffee of the day!

Bernadette Peters - Ourselves ... as a Serious Cabaret Singer!

Bernadette Peters is the way many (most?) of us would like to imagine ourselves ... if we were able to step through that magical mirror into our other more theatrical and alternate careers ...


I saw her in concert in Sydney a few years back - and still have some of the glittering golden 'coins' she threw out into the audience in her opening song, 'Pennies from Heaven'.

She performed both the following and contrasting Stephen Sondheim pieces.

'Not A Day Goes By' from 'Merrily We Roll Along' ...

... where here she nearly looses to a degree that's almost uncomfortable, particularly at the end - but then maybe it's planned that big cos a live audience is not as close as the camera.

What do you think?

The other song is 'Hello Little Girl' from 'Into the Woods' - with Peters being less than a little wolf-ish ... to an innocent Red Riding Hood.

The lyrics are so incredibly witty and close to the bone I thought I'd put down the first verse and the last lines ...

Look at that flesh, pink and plump
Hello, little girl...
Tender and fresh, not one lump
Hello, little girl...
This one's especially lush,
Delicious... Mmm...
Hello, little girl, what's your rush?
You're missing all the flowers
The sun won't set for hours
Take your time ...

There's no possible way
To describe how what you feel
When you're talking to your meal!

... hope you're chuckling away!

So, are any of you guys Peters devotees?

'Who Really Was My Great-Grandmother Louisa?'

This morning I was looking at an 1860 something photograph of my great-grandmother - over coffee and a croissant, as you do ...

Louisa (nee Smith) at 18 - My Paternal Great-Grandmother

... and realized there were no family stories or histories about her. Not a single one!

Plenty about her husband Jean Theodore. Who called all his sons 'Jimmy' cos he couldn't remember their 12 individual names. And told them to use a dictionary when asked the meaning of a French word - rather than admit he didn't know the English one. The anecdotes go on and on. And on.

I kept looking at the photograph, almost trying to will something out of the image.

The clothes were mid C19 - I did know that she came to this country as a teenager from Scotland around that time. I wondered if this photo was taken before she set out for Australia. Or - less likely - on her arrival in Melbourne. Certainly not in the remote bush where my great-grandparents established themselves. The reverse states in pencil that she was 18 at the time of the sitting.

And why did she make the then perilous journey to Australia? My great-grandfather emigrated from France during the Gold Rush of 1852 and established a vineyard and winery in Bendigo (which still operates) - he was shrewd enough to realize he probably wouldn't find gold but there were other more indirect ways to get your hands on the precious metal!

Did she come here alone? It's hard to image it. With whom then? And what happened to them?

Her father, John Smith?

John Smith c1860

Or these recently uncovered relatives on whom I've already posted? Also, tantalizingly, named Smith. Were they a family group of a father and two daughters? If so, what became of the mother? My mind is racing into Hollywood stories of ... well, you know the formula!


How and where did she meet her husband-to-be? Was it an arranged thing? Before she left Scotland. My great-grandfather had already been in the country nearly a decade when she landed in Melbourne sometime around 1860.

Jean-Thedore and Louisa Embedded in Their Family (1897)

Just a zillion intriguing questions ... and no nearer to having a single clue about my great-grandmother - apart from where she was born and her teenage journeying.

Back to the photo? Maybe there's something I've missed. Something on the back that will reveal all!

By the way, one of my given names is a very old Scottish one, now not at all used. I like to think that there's at least this tiny thread back to this intrepid pioneer woman.

Robert Browning (1812-1889) Recites 'How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix' (1838)

Of course I'm having yet another blue stocking moment ... but I was so intrigued today to find a recording of the voice of the English poet Robert Browning. Had to share!



It was made in a sort of impromptu way at a party given by Browning's friend the artist Rudolph Lehmann on the 6th May 1889, the year of the poet's death.



Colonel Gouraud, sales manager of the Edison Talking Machine Company, had brought a phonograph to record the voices of all those present.



Browning was reluctant at first but finally recited part of his 1838 poem 'How They Brought The Good News From Ghent To Aix'.



Perhaps due to nervousness in the face of recording for posterity, Browning forgets his words after ...

I sprang to the saddle, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

'Speed' echoed the wall to us galloping through ...

'Speed' echoed the ...

Then the gate behind us shut, the light sank to rest ...

... and says ...

I'm terribly sorry but I can't remember me own verses,

but one thing I shall remember all me life is the astonishing [?]

by your wonderful machine

Robert Browning

Other voices join in and there's a lot of 'bravoing' and 'hip hip horraying'.

Absolutely remarkable to be able to have any sense at all of the voice of this great man of letters.