A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.

Gulls as flags. Sandy Bay Rowing Club, Marieville Esplanade Sandy Bay. June 2011.

For some reason unbeknownst to me the two excellent, substantive and thorough book reviews I’d drafted this week have disappeared!

Thus you are stuck with the truncated versions.

Sofia Petrovna by Lydia Chukovskaya: a fascinating rendering of the effect of Stalin’s Great Purge on one woman, written at the time by an author who similarly suffered. A decent read and a fascinating historical document. Well worth your time.

The Pearl by John Steinbeck: based on a Mexican folk tale, an interesting story of the risks of bucking established patterns and roles in life. This colourful reconstruction on life as an indigenous Mexican pearl diver won’t challenge you too much, but it is worth a read.

Comments

Tash said…

...however, all reason will still be lost during the teen years.

1 July 2011 at 10:11

Tash said…

Cool gulls ... great colors ... teriffic photo.

Bummer about the lost reviews. I speed read The Pearl in high school, just before the class in time to take a quiz - which means I got zilch out of it. Will re-read. 3 of my favorite Steinbecks, in order of preference: Sea of Cortez (felt like I was on the boat/shore with them), Travels with Charlie, and East of Eden.

1 July 2011 at 10:17

Kris McCracken said…

Tash, poor old teens. I can see why The Pearl might not resonate with a teen.

1 July 2011 at 15:51

Roddy said…

Isn't it great when you have spent days compiling a vast array of facts only to come back later and find nothing. It happened a couple of times to me. Extremely frustrating. The redraft looks nothing like the original.

1 July 2011 at 16:03

Kris McCracken said…

It never does.

5 July 2011 at 09:17

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

This will hurt me...

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