We kind of just stumbled on this Historic Houses Trust open house when we were driving around yesterday. The house is Rose Seidler House and is described as:
One of the finest examples of mid-century modern domestic architecture, the house contains a collection of original furniture by important post-war designers Eames, Saarinen and Hardoy.
Awarded the Sulman Medal in 1952, it has been a highly influential house, stimulating much social comment and intellectual debate. The house, contents and grounds have been carefully restored to the controversial 1950 scheme.
Here are some of the photos I took:
Unlike a lot of historic houses, this place had a really warm, welcoming feel to it. We just wanted to move right in! It was in a beautiful setting too - right on the edge of a national park. The reason my son has no shoes on in the last picture was that he had been running around in the bush with a Bush Turkey. He also confessed later to having used one of the toilets!
Here are some pictures from our day (more to follow):
Today's Lindy Hop workshop was really great. It was called the "Dance Like a Ninja" workshop, where they had the levels split into white and red belt. I took the red belt series and learned a lot of new moves. I took notes because I know I won't remember a lot of them. I also got good pointers too, because I can always use improvement on my form. AND I still have the problem where I come in too early at the beginning of the swing out instead of being led into it (learning how to follow completely and not back-leading, especially if the guy has no rhythm, is the hardest part of dancing for me.) We went over how to break out of the traditional Lindy style, swivels, and incorporating jazz movements into your dancing (which is harder than it sounds).
I hope that one day, I can dance half as well as this couple does:
They are a married couple who compete nationally. I took a workshop with them last year and they are incredible dancers (as you can see from the video)-very energetic and dynamic, so the workshop was a lot of fun. Mike Roberts was teaching two of the workshop sessions today as well.
So...one of my long-term goals is to get to the skill level where I can compete one day. HOWEVER, there are championships coming up here in January and yes...I've decided to enter :) They have contests called "Jack and Jills" where you don't have to have a partner. You just rotate and they judge how well you dance with different partners. They have a Newcomer category that you enter if you have never competed before, so that's what I'm going to do. I don't expect anything to come from it, but I really want to try it out and see how it is. Plus, it sounds like a lot of fun no matter what, and I always learn new styling moves by watching people who are much better than I am! I'm going to take the beginner's level lessons to fine-tune my form and get a solid foundation. I can take Lindy 2 and 3 by January, so hopefully that will prepare me so I don't make a total fool of myself.
We've all got our idiosyncrasies when it comes to writing--a special chair we have to sit in, a certain kind of yellow paper we absolutely must use. To create this tremendously affecting memoir, Jean-Dominique Bauby used the only tool available to him--his left eye--with which he blinked out its short chapters, letter by letter. Two years ago, Bauby, then the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle France, suffered a rare stroke to the brain stem; only his left eye and brain escaped damage. Rather than accept his "locked in" situation as a kind of death, Bauby ignited a fire of the imagination under himself and lived his last days--he died two days after the French publication of this slim volume--spiritually unfettered. In these pages Bauby journeys to exotic places he has and has not been, serving himself delectable gourmet meals along the way (surprise: everything's ripe and nothing burns). In the simplest of terms he describes how it feels to see reflected in a window "the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde."
I was a bit hesitant to read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly at first. Not because I'd heard anything negative about it, but because my hypochondria tends to make my chest tighten up with anxiety while reading/watching anything about any sort of medical or health problem or situation. But while I was lightly skimming the book in the book store, I realized this memoir did not seem to dwell on details of his condition (not to say that isn't in there at all), but was more of a reflection on life and how we can choose to live it.
I'm so glad I read this book. It's an inspirational and haunting story that reminds the reader of all the important perspectives on life and death that we all know but don't think about very much. The overall theme is common - live each day of your life to its fullest because you never know which day will be your last. But the way it's presented is completely unique. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of those rare gems of a memoir that is thoughtful and inspirational without being cheesy, contrived, cliche, or sounding like something we've heard often or a Chicken Soup book.
It's short, which is not shocking since the entire thing was written by Bauby blinking out the letters and words with his left eye to a transcriber. It's divided up into very short sections, and he shares a different thought or experience in each. It makes the book incredibly accessible. I borrowed the copy I read from a friend, but plan on buying my own copy soon so I can pick it up often and open it up anytime and read a random section.
The same friend also watched and loved the film adaptation. I'm going to try to watch it, but I need to wait until I'm in the right mood. What was inspirational and unique in the book seems like it could be intimidating and claustrophobic in a film. But I do want to see it, and the film apparently gives the viewer some relief from the condition with flashbacks of Bauby's life before the stroke.
There are two kinds of itches. There are the ones that feel so good to scratch, even if there are consequences later - and there usually are. These are the best ones, but they have an evil cousin. You feel a tickle, or a strange sensation, something isn't right - the balance is off. Instinctively your hand reaches for the source, and the outcome is not that guilty satisfaction. Rather, your thumbnail skims the surface of your eye, or snags your pantyhose, or encounters a scab that did not care to be agitated. This is what I am experiencing.
I am sitting with that unsettling discomfort, a spider crawling up the back of my leg. I am trying not to swing because I know it will bite. Isn't that just the most awful place to be? You know the issue is right there, you are in a place where you could reach out and touch it, but you also know it is going to hurt.
'Squash the fucking thing' D says 'stop pussyfooting around'
I used to love this song in the late 80s and still do. It reminds me of seeing the Go Betweens live at the Old Greek Theatre in Melbourne and makes today's awful weather in Sydney more bearable. I think the setting of the clip is Brisbane city and suburbs. Does anyone else recognise any of it? Brisbane is not a city I know very well.
Yesterday was a very strange day at work. Dramatic events in state politics meant we spent most of the day watching press conferences on the Internet in someone's office. I even bought a packet of Jaffas in the afternoon for one of the press conferences.
Amidst all this drama, another drama was enfolding in our building which I will call The Great Toner Cartridge Swindle. Apparently these bogus toner cartridge collectors were doing the rounds of offices around the city stealing toner cartridges. Their MO was simply to knock on the door of an office and say they were here to collect and replace the used cartridges. They would then fill up their box with brand new cartridges and off they would go. They must have been pretty brazen as they hit our office once earlier in the week and then, despite numerous warning emails from building security, someone (and I am so glad I wasn't that someone!) let them in again yesterday. This resulted in the following sign being plastered all over the office (which I actually found kind of amusing):
The weather has also been fairly dramatic too, ie, the rain just bucketing down non-stop. I think the drought has well and truly broken in this part of Australia. This has been very fortuitous for the very junior member of state parliament who was given the water portfolio to cut his ministerial teeth on and is now, as a result of yesterday's parliamentary bloodshed, the Premier of the entire state!
He is obviously being set up by his party colleagues so had better take this warning to heart:
I think this picture really symbolises where the state Labor government is headed at the moment. It is an interesting truism of Australian politics that you can never have all the state governments the same political persuasion as the Federal Government (except during the interim stage after a change in the Federal government). I think the writing is well and truly on the wall for this lot even without Federal Labor in power.
As someone who has had a fair bit of involvement with this government, I actually felt kind of sad to see Iemma go yesterday (and I am sure I will get flamed for saying this!). I genuinely think he was sincere about trying to push reforms through but the party machine just too strong for him in the end. I think he always saw himself as a short term Premier and was just trying and do what he could in terms of reforms before the party machine caught up to him. Having resisted these reforms, there is no doubt where the current government is headed now.
(This is actually Museum train station, not the Museum itself - some of you may recognise it from one of the Coke ads).
This video (not mine) is of some trains at the station and is pretty much the sight I see every night going home from work. The station is pretty cavernous but not as hellish as other city stations like Town Hall where you can barely move due to the crowds and where I always worry that someone is going to be jostled onto the tracks one day.
I was thrilled to have another chance to see Junot Diaz last night. His first event was immediately after The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao was published, and I had not read it, or his very well regarded short story collection Drown, so I did not go to last year's signing. The paperback of Oscar Wao came out on Tuesday, hence yesterday's event. In the year between the two events, I read and loved Oscar Wao and Junot was busy winning the Pulitzer Prize for it.
Junot is an excellent speaker and an awesome guy. He's funny, intelligent, and humble. I've also enjoyed listening to several audio interviews with him - the always amazing KCRW Bookworm program has had him on the program twice, and you can listen to the interviews in full - here are links to the interviews for Oscar Wao and Drown. iTunes also did a recent Meet the Author interview with him, you can listen to that here. And finally, here's a great Barnes and Noble Meet the Writer audio interview.
The event was awesome - it was completely packed and Junot was awesome. He read to us from an old story called "The Sun, The Moon, The Stars" about a guy who cheats on his girlfriend and she finds out. They have a trip to the Dominican Republic planned together, and they decide to go on it anyway. The story was hilarious, and one of my favorite lines of the evening was an aside he spoke to the crowd in between sections of the story, "Having trouble with your fucking partner? Travel not."
He also read a little section of an early draft of a novel he's working on now, called Dark America. It's not set on this planet, it's set on a different planet that also has a country called America, with a different history than ours. It's about two Cyborg killers, going through a hard time in their relationship.
I haven't read Drown yet, but I own it now. I picked up a copy of both his books at Strand on Wednesday to take to the signing. I'm looking forward to reading it.
A side note - I stood in line behind a women who got two books signed and then said the words all authors probably dread hearing at a signing "I brought something for you too." Oy. Junot was incredibly nice about it, "Oh....is it a story?" Of course it was. He asked (jokingly and politely), "Is it any good?" She declared that it was "wonderful." Ok. She could have left it at that. She went on, "I'm confident that one day I'll be where you are." Wow. That's bold and ballsy to say that to a Pulitizer Prize winner! I thought she was obnoxious and blushed on her behalf. He was very humble and nice though, and said that she shouldn't shoot for that - she should aim higher, she doesn't want to be where he is. Which is sweet. Of course any unpublished writer would be happy being where he is (most would be thrilled with lower, too).
He's awesome and unusual in the way he signs. He doesn't sit up at the big podium and have people climb a few stairs to get to him and stand on the other side of the table while he signs your books. He walked over to the front of the line and introduced himself to the first person there and signed books standing up while talking to them. Each person got an introduction and a handshake. It was very cool. I got there really early and was toward the front, so I don't know if he ever went to sit down out of exhaustion (there were hundreds of people), but it didn't seem like he would.
Which TV chef would you want to have prepare a meal for you?
I probably wouldn't eat his cooking but at least I would get a laugh. Todd is actually the handyman who doubles as the 'gourmet chef' on the now defunct, SBS TV show 'Life Support'. Brendan Cowell who plays Todd has since gone onto bigger and better things such as the lead role in the fantastic Australian film Noise and is currently playing Hamlet in Bell Shakespeare's production (which I unfortunately missed when it was on in Sydney).
Here is Todd, I mean Brendan, talking about his botched audition for Noise:
He is such a talented guy. He can come and cook for me any day!
Here is where I was lurking for this week's portrait:
Here is the photo I took (not quite the effect I was hoping for):
This is my son's portrait contribution for this week (I am in the middle):