May 16, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”Sounds thicken the sensory stew of our lives, and we depend on them to help us interpret, communicate with, and express the world around us.” Diane Ackerman A Natural History of the Senses I’m going backwards. May in Australia means cooler autumnal...
May 13, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn.’’ Nicholas Sparks The Notebook Have you ever seen an army of empty cicada shells marching up a tree trunk? They remind me of the Chinese Terracotta Warriors. And the noise...
May 5, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits.’’ Theodore Zeldin, Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives I ate ants last week. Little black ants from Paramatta. Farmed ants apparently. Now there’s an interesting conversation...
Apr 30, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”I like the ones without the tulips,’’ Steve Jobs on toilet paper in Wired (1996). Maybe I’ve been going about things backwards? A friend passed me an article on the endowment effect in an old copy of Scientific American Mind. It got me thinking about...
Apr 10, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”Only parts of us will ever touch parts of others.’’ Marilyn Monroe, Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters. Last Sunday I went out to buy the weekend newspapers. I don’t usually buy the papers here, probably because they don’t inspire enough envy. But...
Apr 7, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
I love European weekend papers. I love the juicy book reviews and profiles and I loved them most when I was in London and filled my basket with The Guardian’s Observer, The Sunday Times, The Independent. I’d sit in the park outside my flat devouring them until the...
Apr 4, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
For April I’ll be looking at community and friendship as a way into belonging. To kick off the month I hosted a Sunday morning tea, inviting neighbours and acquaintances in the area to celebrate Australia’s Neighbour Day on March 30. Nobody I mentioned it to had ever...
Mar 24, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”People would travel the world over just to witness these birds because they’re so famous and interesting and yet here we are, they’re commonplace, so we don’t take any notice. We don’t value them.’’ Associate Professor Darryl Jones, Griffith University,...
Mar 18, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”My Australia, the one I grew up with, and whose light and weather and range of colour shaped my earliest apprehensions of the world, was not dry or grey-green: it was dense and luminous.’’ David Malouf, A First Place I’m supposed to be doing admin but I...
Mar 16, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”I work on the assumption that I don’t want to impose anything on the landscape. I don’t care where the landscape is… Just so long as it’s the sort of place where I can work freely.’’ Fred Williams (1978) from Queensland Art Gallery Australian...
Mar 8, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”And why shouldn’t a woman be tall and strong?’’ Louisa Lawson, Australian suffragette and newspaper publisher (Australian Dictionary of Biography) Today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is ”inspiring change’’. That fits...
Feb 9, 2014 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera
”Really, what sort of man could go and name all the trees?’’ Murray Bail Eucalyptus Summer has returned to Varuna, the writers’ house where I’m staying in the Blue Mountains. I’m outside in the sun taking photos when I spot the gardener. I run after...
