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 A decent read and a fascinating historical document.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

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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