This will hurt me...

Another Moon (well, another photo of the same Moon). Sullivans Cove, Hobart. July 2013. Theme Thursday and the HEAT is on for me to get everything ready in time for Ezra's birthday!

Passover on the overpass. East Derwent Highway, Lindisfarne. March 2012. Theme Thursday again and I share a photograph of an overpass that sits right outside of Henry’s classroom at Lindisfarne North Primary School . I have become something of a FIXTURE on Mondays at this overpass as Henry and I (and usually Ezra as well) walk in to school and then in the afternoon I (usually sans Ezra) walk in and then we walk back. Now, I mention this because ever since I have had children I have noticed a disturbing trend. See, when people see me walking to and from school with the child you attract all sorts of comments like, “what a wonderful father!”, “great to see!”, “Henry’s so lucky!” etc etc etc. I’ll do it (probably) 25 times this year. Jen will do it closer to 150 and no one will mention it. There will be no pats on the back or words of encouragement, because people just assume that this is the mother’s role. Next week I am taking Wednesday off and will be accompanying Ezra to the Little L...

Late afternoon and vampires start circling Royal Hobart Hospital. August 2010. Today already feels like a living version of the first joint-authored treatise of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. A Critique of Critical Criticism . Indeed, supplementing the first draft of my critique of critical criticism will be much sweary-language and quiet groaning. I’m in pain.

Mid-morning in Winter and the sky already looks like this. New Town. August 2010. Crikey Moses, it is Theme Thursday yet again, and – all things being EQUAL – it was forty years ago today that Betty Friedan lead a US-wide Women's Strike for Equality. This strike was held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which effectively gave women the right to vote in the United States. This timing inevitably causes raised eyebrows to those of us down here at the arse-end of the world .. Unrestricted women's suffrage in terms of voting rights was granted in New Zealand in the 1893! The [then] self-governing colony of South Australia granted both universal suffrage and allowed women to stand for the colonial parliament in 1895 . Upon Federation, the Commonwealth of Australia provided this for women in Federal elections from 1902 (except, of course, Aboriginal women). So that puts us Antipodeans a good twenty years ahead! Spare a thought for the...

It is autumn and here are some clouds. May, 2010. So it was my birthday and all I got was two cranky little boys. And some really cool stuff. As I Step Over A Puddle At The End Of Winter , I Think Of An Ancient Chinese Governor, by James Wright And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate? -- Written A.D. 819 Po Chu-i, balding old politician, What's the use? I think of you, Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze, When you were being towed up the rapids Toward some political job or other In the city of Chungshou. You made it, I guess, By dark. But it is 1960, it is almost spring again, And the tall rocks of Minneapolis Build me my own black twilight Of bamboo ropes and waters. Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved? Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness Of the Midwest?Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter. Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains? Or hav...

The sun always shines on TV Bellerive. April, 2010. Word was passed on to me the other day concerning a disturbing event that confronted crafty knitter, sometime blogger and erstwhile commenter Blackie in the middle of the night. Awoken by a rustling sound, Ms Blackie assumed that the culprit must surely be a roaming dirt magnet . However, a brief spot of reconnoitring revealed the true malefactor was not of the toddle genus, it was in fact a plain old Mus musculus exploring some half finished knitting. Now, it is not my business to get into the rights or wrongs of musophobia, nor have I any knowledge of whether or not a Gertrude of Nivelles appeared in the guise of a strapping young man. What I can say, however, is that in the middle of the night I'd rather find a mouse explore my half-completed shrug still on the round (in a Continental fashion) than a tattoo-d escaped convict doing a poo in my handbag!