Bad day at work?

 

School days

Recently I read about an experiment with adjusting the time high school starts

Looks like the results needed more schools to trial this idea before drawing too many conclusions, see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6626292/

However, as a parent and former teenager, I know the struggle to get to school one time.

Currently it frustrates me that my son needs assistance when I'm at my mental peak for the day, but I'm probably just looking at the internet anyway. 

This week I was observing to him that his older brother got himself to school, then his sister started asking for lifts when there was an early start. 

Now he, as the youngest, is now asking for a lift every day and is late more often than not.

I can't think of many occasions when I got a lift to high school and I've seen stories that (in the US admittedly) a kid making their own way to school is reason to question their welfare.

So I'm grateful that he's only got one more year to go before finishing high school, although I might be working in schools myself by that time.

Mix to remix

Recently I started experimenting with open-tunings and it has opened new musical ideas

In the past I found that replacing the low E string on the guitar with a D string from a bass held pitch better, and also that DADGAD was a lot of fun for riffing.

One time I settled on DDAE tuning, which was interesting as it switched around notes when picking arpeggios.

Anyway, this time I've gone for DGDGBD and really like the way it sits sorta between a guitar and a bass.

It was using that tuning that I started writing the song in the video at the top.

However, a recent Junto project asked for a remix and I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit the song.

I knew there would be vocal performances that were close enough to layer together for the thick sound one gets through doubling.

The remix below worked from those pieces and added a 909 beat and a wubby bass part.

Wisdom from Uncle Iroh

My Facebook Memories offered this gem today

Uncle Iroh is a wonderful character in an excellent couple of TV shows, that I've written about here (Netflix remake) and here (original Nickelodeon animation).

See more wisdom here

Nettles

Some years ago I became interested in nettle

I'd read about the amount of iron it offered and noticed it was growing on the property where I was living, under kurrajong trees in the leaf litter.

When I was young, my mother would bake filo pies with layers of spinach.

For many years I'd eat the filo and try to avoid the spinach but, when I left home, I found myself cooking it and enjoying the sentimental connection to this dish.

That's where I began with nettle, adding it to spinach and realising that I couldn't taste much difference.

Cooking removes the sting, but a quick blanch will too.

Then I tried nettle tea and found the zing of the iron a nice complement for the green flavour.

However, when I brewed nettle beer, I began to wonder why this weed hasn't been embraced more widely.

So I began letting it go to seed where it grew in my garden.

This year the conditions have been ideal, late winter rain has brought up patches of nettle and mallow.

It's an ideal crop, self-seeding and filling a gap between winter and spring vegetables.

While there are a couple of spinach plants that have survived, the nettle has offered enough leafy goodness for a few pies and now I'm wondering if I should brew a batch of beer.

Haiku workshop

Recently I was invited to give a short poetry workshop with primary school students

We discussed haiku and senryu, then they undertook an exercise making cut-up poems using my book Earthwords.

Fivebough field trip

Parkview Public School's third grade students were given a guided tour of Fivebough Wetland on 20 August to learn about the important role of this ecosystem, which attracts migratory birds from as far away as the northern hemisphere

In the much-anticipated follow-up to the Beak Technique workshop at the School in July, that illustrated the relationship between habitat and bird diet.

"This excursion highlighted the important role the landscape plays and how it has developed over hundreds of millions of years," said Red Earth Ecology's Jo Roberts.

Activities included identifying birds and beaks using binoculars, map-making, hearing about the history of the Wetlands and seeing small invertebrates in water samples using magnifying glasses.

"We're grateful to the Murrumbidgee Field Naturalists for the loan of binoculars," said Ms Roberts. "Their assistance was also appreciated in creating the educational resources shared with students."

The excursion also included walking along the Wiradjuri Loop at Leeton's Fivebough Wetlands that demonstrates First Nations totems, fish traps and other cultural practices.

Enthusiasm among the students was clearly evident, as they were keen to share their observations and detailed experiences with local flora and fauna.

"One highlight was watching a swamp hen through the binoculars as it caught and ate a fish," said Ms Roberts, who also noted the popularity of looking at the magnified water 'bugs', which was an eye-opening insight into the microscopic world that supports the wetland food chain.

Worksheets developed by Red Earth Ecology for the project were supported with a Country Art Support Program grant administered by Western Riverina Arts and Create NSW through funding from the NSW Government.

 

Worlds apart

This week I watched two science fiction films and got me thinking

It started with the sequel to Avatar, which I got curious about because the original film was a cultural phenomenon that led to a brief flurry of 3D movies.

I liked the experience of 3D, possibly because it made me sentimental about the time I saw Creature From The Black Lagoon as a small child.

3D worked well with the alien landscape of the Avatar movies and there were films like Life Of Pi that I regretted not seeing in the cinema to enjoy the effect.

However, it always seemed like the 3D novelty wasn't going to last and I was aghast that the local Roxy Theatre in Leeton spent tens of thousands of dollars investing in it.

Cinemas had largely abandoned the format by the time the sequel to Avatar arrived and I'm curious whether there will be any 3D screenings of the third film in the series.

One thing I liked about the original Avatar story was the way it contained elements of Metropolis, particularly the use of a robot to infiltrate resistance to capitalist industry.

The titular avatars are attempting to support mining on the alien planet and the sequel takes the colonial narrative into the sea, where it presents a version of the whaling industry.

It's kinda grim, given how whaling persists today, but the audience gets to cheer the big fish smashing boats.

The next film I watched was Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, which is a Luc Besson film I had missed.

He's a director who would probably have been cancelled for various reasons if he was American.

There's a curiousity about the themes in his work for me, since I first reviewed Leon The Professional and thought the relationship between that character and a girl was also unlike the material from Hollywood.

Valerian is a natural successor to the successful film The Fifth Element, which again has a big age gap between the central characters, and in many ways I thought the recent film was more polished and better paced.

As I reflected on the two films I watched this week I found myself admiring the sci-fi elements from Valerian over those in the Avatar sequel.

Besson's film had so many more wow moments, where I'd shake my head at the imaginative twists, and it was surprising to see Herbie Hancock in there too.

 

Afterwards I read Wikipedia to see what I could learn and was surprised to read the French director had been influenced by the first Avatar film:

The release of Avatar served as both a blessing and a curse for Besson; he has said, "technically, I could see that we can do everything now. The film proved that imagination is the only limit." 

Then I read an interview with Besson where he criticised Hollywood movies for being too dark.

It prompted me to reflect on how much angst appears in American stories, and I appreciated the fun I'd had watching Valerian.

 

France has a great reputation for film and sometimes I find myself wishing that Australia had stronger quotas for local content, because our film industry has diminished in recent years as US productions gain tax-breaks to produce their blockbusters in our country.

There are many qualities of our local stories that I wished could be represented in more movies.

Another film I watched this week was Two Hands, which was called an Australian version of Goodfellas but really deserves to be recognised without that US lens.

I wish there were bigger budgets for local productions and hope we still have a film industry beyond making material for the streaming services.

Lamb to the Moorhouse

This morning I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole and arrived at a surprising subject

It started when I read Austin Kleon's newsletter and saw a discussion of copyright, which took me to a comment about Australia's publishing industry:

This is all sadly true. I'm currently writing a biography of an Australian author and have done similar research into publishing history in Australia in 19th and 20th centuries, and the same situation was at play. Local authors were passed over for imported (usually pirated) copies of British and European (in translation) books. Unlike United States, however, Australia had a very strict censorship regime, with customs seizing and destroying any imported books they thought obscene (this included destroying a shipment of Zola novels). In the U.S. scene, it may be worthwhile looking into Edgar Allan Poe, who argued against the "publishing" situation and lack of copyright. His Dupin series of detective stories, for example, had a French protagonist, in order to persuade American readers that it was imported and so worth reading...
When the Berne Convention on Copyright came in and some copyright protections were in place, things got better for American authors (into 20th century), somewhat. But not so Australia, in which "colonial editions" continued to be published until 1972! Australian authors for the main had to be published by a British publisher, and have their books imported into Australia. The distance meant they lost control over editing/proofreading of their ms before publication, and they had a lower royalty rate. Until 1950s it was a fixed 5% (when British authors had 15%), and until 1972 it was only raised to 10% - but throughout, there was no rising scale of royalty if a certain number of copies were sold.
Until 1968 when Australia (finally) updated its copyright laws (and international treaties), Australia had no copyright protections in United States: that meant that U.S. publishers (technically) could have done to Australian books what they did to British books in 19th century, and pirate them (but they didn't); but worse, without Australian copyright being recognized in American, they couldn't sell their books to an American publisher. They had to go through a British publisher, and have them negotiate with American publishers...
Censorship continued until 1972, with books banned here long after they had been unbanned or available in other countries. James Baldwin's novels, for example, were banned in Australia when they first came out in the 1960s.
Australian publishing hasn't really survived these initial set-backs. The industry and the literary culture is moribund.

This prompted me to consider the current discussion of Australian copyright and whether foreign-owned (so-called) AI (really, large language models) should have unfettered access to our country's cultural works for free.

While I am generally of the opinion that copyright is an antiquated model, it is the one that provides remuneration to a (small) group of creatives (but mostly the corporations that take ownership of works) and (in theory) incentivises the creation of new cultural material and other intellectual property.

Given the author of the comment quoted above wrote their reflection in 2022, I began wondering what they'd make of the contemporary debate about copyright.

However, I was reluctant to create a LinkedIn account and found that Lamb's Substack requires a paid subscription for me to ask, so I started looking for interviews with the author and soon found myself interested in the book he's been promoting -- a biography of Frank Moorhouse.

It looks like a good book and I'm really curious about the subject's experience of living in Wagga, where he worked on The Daily Advertiser newspaper.

That journal is usually referred to as The Agoniser by people I know, and it's become renowned as the place where sometime Nationals leader Michael McCormack wrote a homophobic editorial (that he's since distanced). 

So, before long, I've found myself interested in learning more about Moorhouse from digging into interviews with Lamb.

Muddy mix

My partner Jo and I go for walks along a nearby water channel

The Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area has many of these and the gravity-fed system is an engineering marvel.

Recently they've been enclosing some channels with pipes, which has led to our local channel dropping to a trickle.

Many birds seem to be enjoying the opportunity to fossick in the mud, also some humans too.

There are many sunken treasures, particularly witches hats and bits of metal.

I had passed a strangely shaped object a couple of times, thinking it was a dumped toolbox before I recognised the XLR connections and realised it's a wedge-shaped speaker box.

When I shared this photo my friends commented that it's "monitoring the water level" and offers "sub bass"!

Residencies make artists

I have watched many of Emily's pedal reviews and enjoy her observations

One of the things that jumped out in this recent video is her recollection of an artist residency.

There's a lot in there about elitism in the arts, as well as the rationale for her new album.

If you have been on an artist residency though, then you might recognise Emily's comment about how it made her feel like an artist.

I think this is one of the best aspects of a residency, where the residents identify as the role after doing there own thing elsewhere and not considering it art.

The best residencies have an open-ended quality that allows room for this development to occur. 

Magic kingdoms

This seems like the sorta thing Disney would produce if they used pollsters instead of test audiences

Or maybe it's just a question of where the audiences are located? 

Personally I pay Disney little money and have enjoyed their franchises, and am becoming really curious to see if the Shogun series can survive going beyond the book with a second season.

Sure, the Marvel and Star Wars spin offs have been hit and miss. 

I read Shogun for fun in high school and the TV mini-series at that time already felt dated.

So it's been fun to revisit the story but reminded me how much I wanted to see the battle just beyond the end of the book.

Toxic avengers

I'm beginning to think that "toxic masculinity" is a term that appeals to many people 

Rather than serving as a gentle way to change behaviours by suggesting something dangerous, it's become so polarising that it only succeeds in confirming biases in different directions across the gendered landscape. 

In that way it reminds me of the crisises that feminism has encountered whenever someone with a marginal identity asks if a political movement representing 51% of the population can claim to reflect their particular margin.

Usually those moments see the margins considered, possibly shifted or given new labels, then the small number of people it impacted either follow the renewed movement or find their own splinter to support. 

The feminst authors I've read are generally aiming to show solidarity with men where it will improve lives for everyone, such as reducing the burden of gender schema. 

However, I think history shows that one doesn't simply change the rules and expect the game to adjust -- more often it leads to a new code of sports or church for believers.

So I wonder if masculinity is toxic enough to die or if it will just get more extreme? 

How to take a great author photo

Humans of Boards of Canada

 

Ozzy! Ozzy! Ozzy!

The passing of Ozzy Osbourne has got me feeling sentimental

Feels like heresy but for the longest time I thought he was the worst singer in Black Sabbath's history and couldn't appreciate his solo work either.

My interest in heavy metal started in the mid-1980s when I began buying cheap vinyl, particularly Wasp's "Inside the Electric Circus."

That album didn't get a lot of listening, but was followed with an introduction to Motley Crue's "Theatre of Pain" and then things got progressively heavier with Guns n' Roses "Appetite for Destruction" and into Metallica just before "And Justice For All." 

The pursuit of thrash metal and headbanging at the rollerskating rink was accompanied with learning to play guitar, then Faith No More's cover of 'War Pigs' made me realise I needed to learn about Sabbath.

Their earlier material had slower tempos and those blues shuffles that now make Van Halen sound like they can't keep time because everyone is so used to hearing quantised rhythms.

Many late nights were spent exploring the extensive catalogue of Sabbath and I remember for the longest time I thought their peak was 'Zero the Hero':

That monstrous overdubbed guitar riff and horror movie clip really rocked my teenage world. 

The production sounds flat today, but the chord changes that build toward the chorus are fun.

Anyway, the interest in playing guitar was fuelled by nights at my cousin's bedsit apartment.

We would rock his Marshall half-stack into the early hours, messing with an Alesis effects unit and drum machine.

My cousin Chris was a fan of Ozzy's lesser-known guitarist, Jake E Lee.

In particular I remember there was a lot of rewinding the videotape of a live show to appreciate this solo in 'Killer of Giants':

Listening now I appreciate the melodic sensibility balanced with squealing pitchbends and fingertaps. 

However, Ozzy's singing still grated on me.

How was it that someone who'd been at the birth of metal, launched so many careers and worked with so many of my favourite musicians could sound so flat and look so goofy?

Then 1991 saw the release of "No More Tears" and, amazingly, it still is amazing:

Those saturated colours of the MTV era, that remarkable riff from young Zakk Wylde and even the synthesisers sound gooder than I remember.

And, even as binge-drinking kid in denima jacket featuring Satan on numerous patches, that Beatles-esque segue in the middle was what made me pay attention.

I got the reference and it was audacious.

Years later, after recognising 'The Wizard' from being sampled by Cypress Hill, I realised I needed to reconsider Sabbath and found Ozzy's singing to be less of a problem for me.

I mean, I still think there are people who do covers of his material that elevates it -- such as Charles Bradley here:

However, for the little my experiences are worth sharing, I began to really dig Ozzy as I got older for the way his music took me back to these moments where I came to appreciate something that a younger me hadn't enjoyed.

I read his autobiography after finding a secondhand copy and it is one of the funniest things I've read since Ben Elton, although I would've liked more reflection on his trauma and those he inflicted.

Or even more detail about working with so many incredible musicians. 

The role of Ozzy's music has become bittersweet as people I associate with it have died.

My cousin Chris was an influence for so many years and more recently the tune 'Mama I'm Coming Home' was such a poignant performance at Ozzy's last gig.

When I shared it with my partner, she reminded me it had also been the last post that a friend had made on Facebook and I realised that I'd forgotten that moment for a reason. 

At the time I'd 'liked' the post and thought I was looking forward to her return to the Riverina.

Then, after events that don't need to be shared, I had gone back and unliked it for feeling as though I might have condoned suicidal ideation.

Sadly, it's another powerful feeling that I now associate with Ozzy's music. 

That's some spin

Surprised to see Leeton's Roxy on the front page of The Guardian today 

Even more surprised that it will host 76,000 local residents -- since there was uproar in the community that the venue had reduced capacity during renovations that cost around $12 million. 

However, the article details the Theatre is ONE "of 36 regional venues where the NSW government expects more than 76,000 local residents will see 10 travelling productions booked over the next 12 months, after the allocation of $700,000 from the Regional Arts Touring funding program." 

This article seems like an attempt to address criticism of the shocking shortfall in funding for essential organisations across NSW, such as 20% of the Regional Arts Boards who missed out in the recent four-year funding round. 

Said no? Don't know

Looking at The Guardian feels like watching Wheel of Fortune!

Viewing art through a broken window

One of the Riverina's most notorious artists has been served a court attendance notice more than three months after his shop displayed images of politicians and a billionaire in German World War Two uniforms

It's the latest in a string of controversies for Michael Agzarian, who has previously claimed the artwork was based on the sitcom, Hogan’s Heroes.

Local member Michael McCormack has described Agzarian's art as “beyond disgraceful” and reported it to the police.

At that time the authorities decided it had not broken any laws.

An interesting comparison that the same TV show was used by newspaper The Daily Telegraph in 2013, although the politicians represented were from the alternate side of Australia's two-party system.  

It's possible the court notice will draw on the Crimes Amendment (Prohibition on Display of Nazi Symbols) Bill, although the artwork carefully avoids representing a swastika but does include SS insignia.

An important distinction is that the poster isn't glorifying Nazis, in fact it's ridiculing them.

While McCormack has refused to comment on the current case prior to Agzarian's day in court, his name is attached to the Region Riverina's news story as supplying the image of the artwork.

The NSW Crimes legislation does recognise "a reasonable excuse" for "for an academic, artistic or educational purpose," so it might be that someone unhappy with the police's initial assessment may have exerted additional pressure to have the man charged.

It is worth noting the Agzarian had a long career in academia, before the controversies that followed his "treasonous" contributions to an exhibition in Wagga during 2005.

His artist statement from that time gives context based on personal experience.

My own view is that the hounding of Agzarian reflects a kind of "broken windows" policy by conservative politicians, despite further alienating themselves from the arts community and progressive constituents.

In criminology the broken windows theory proposes that visible signs of crime and disorder, if left unaddressed, can create an environment that encourages further crime and disorder, potentially leading to more serious offenses.

While many of McCormack's colleagues have argued for free speech, they fall silent when it comes to supporting their critics. 

I would suggest they should read Voltaire, but I've just learned that he didn't explicitly say or write the often-quoted phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

However, politicians have made so much money through defamation law cases that I doubt they care at all about giving Australians a right to express themselves. 

Meanwhile those hypocrits yell from "coward's castle" as words spoken in parliamentary chambers are reported under a different set of laws.

Muybridge by Guy Delisle

This graphic novel covers a lot of Eadweard Muybridge's life, innovations and influence

Guy Delisle's art and storytelling are so engaging that I had read through this book within less than 24 hours. 

Muybridge is a name that was only a little bit familiar to me at first and his photograph showing a horse has all four hooves off the ground while galloping is a technical feat, although it's hard to appreciate from over one hundred years later. 

I had not known about his role in demonstrating the use of photography for public relations outcomes by the US Government, after the beauty of Yosemite was captured within a decade of it becoming the first national park.

These old cameras were heavy and involved to use, which reflects a commitment to camping and working in a remote location. 

Looking up Muybridge just now, I'm pondering the photographers influence on Ansell Adams -- who would become synonymous with that landscape. 

The innovations developed by Muybridge really are remarkable and Delisle links the invention of synchronised photography with the famous "bullet time" technique.

It was also interesting to learn his presentations used a moving picture technology that pre-dated cinema. 

This influence is relevant a quarter of a century later, as the recent film 28 Years Later used a portable rig of iPhones to great effect.

Create NSW needs a kick in the arts

Recently I learned that a number of regional galleries and three of NSW's regional art boards were unsuccessful in securing four-year funding from the state government through Create NSW

While Minister for the Arts John Graham has asked we wait for the two-year funding decisions to be finalised,  many of the organisations needing financial support will have already had their planning for the future disrupted.

This morning there's an interview being broadcast that I recorded with ABC Riverina yesterday, where I outlined some of the benefits of funding creativity.

There's data that shows Australians engage with the arts more than sport, although I think it's a bit of a false equivalence since both activities reflect our national culture. 

Many don't recognise culture, as it's like the joke about fish not knowing about water since we're surrounded by it every day.

One of my themes is that spending money on cultural practices is an investment in the future.

When you look at art you are able to get a perspective through the senses and thoughts of another person, so art builds empathy -- which is sorely needed in contemporary times.

It is at best ironic and at worst a sad indictment on NSW's arts ecosystem that one fifth of the regional arts boards were denied funding in this round, as they are the organisations placed to assist non-metropolitan communities to access grants.

Orana Arts is one board that was denied funding and I've been part of their innovative Studio Collab project for a few years, gaining opportunities to learn and collaborate and network with other regional artists.

I'm grateful for their residencies and other opportunities to promote creative practices, such as my talk on the cut-up technique.

Brian Eno has argued in a recent book that, where children learn through play, adults learn through art.

I think it's an important idea, since we gain perspectives and learn new capacities through experiencing culture.

It's as simple as feeling emotions when watching TV, those aren't considered art often enough to recognise the skills developed by a team of people to present interdisciplinary media.

In my ramble with journalist Sally Bryant I mentioned how 40 years ago the band Mental As Anything had a hit song called 'Live It Up'.

That band was a group of art school students and their exhibitions were opened by prime ministers, but their music was an unexpected outcome from their creativity (and possibly a desire for free drinks).

The song 'Live It Up' went on to appear on pop music charts around the world for two years, even returning to the Scottish charts as recently as five years ago.

It is one of our enduring cultural exports and an example of how something like free art education can lead to surprising outcomes.

As the world becomes increasingly fueled by (so-called) artificial intelligence, there's a need to invest in art to develop human creativity.

There is also a need to promote art-making for the benefits in developing empathy and, as careers are lost to AI, it will offer a balm in the well-being that arises from engaging in activities within our communities and sharing in the joy of creating. 

NSW teachers were recently told the creative domain was a focus in the High potential and gifted education policy and that's exciting as it's an area that I believe can be taught. 

However, every teacher knows the role of modelling to demonstrate their lessons and it's vital for students to see the arts are valued.

So, c'mon NSW State Government, Create NSW needs funding to give the arts a boost and regional communities deserve better.

Classless

All history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles 

Young perspectives

A student asked if I had a girlfriend and I replied, "yeah for about 23 years now."

"What?" She exclaimed, "Why haven't you proposed?"

"I've tried a few times," I explained.

"23 years," the student pondered. "I thought you were about 19."

Growing together

It's my daughter's 18th birthday today and I'm prompted to reflect

One of the wonderful aspects of being a parent is seeing those glimpses of personalities in little babies develop through childhood and blossom into adulthood.  

There are so many lessons that one learns about themself in the process, particularly that opportunity to revisit memories of one's own childhood from a new perspective.

I found a new gratitude for my parents and was able to let go of some painful experiences too.  

A key moment for me in fathering a daughter was recognising my own sexism, which came as a surprise after identifying as a feminist and studying that topic through one of my university degrees. 

It came after years of viewing my daughter with some suspicion, based on what I now see as a resourcefulness to get what she wanted without asking. 

A family member had written letters to each of my three children and, after they were discarded, I looked over them and recognised a distinct shift in tone within the correspondence directed to the girl. 

That prompted me to reflect on how my own interactions had subtle, yet observable, differences that meant I treated my daughter differently to her brothers. 

Over time I worked to consider my attitudes and address the perception that I might be unconsciously sexist in my behaviour. 

This isn't to say that I don't worry about how the world treats females, particularly how their needs are different, but it was a step toward recognising I wanted her to retain those capabilities and strengths that had been previously a source of conflict. 

In psychology they identify positive and negative conditioning as ways of shaping behaviours, and I guess I'm trying to articulate that the opportunity to be a father to a daughter helped me to recognise a broader range of strategies in parenting. 

There's more I can write about identifying my biases, but for now I want to conclude with gratitude for seeing another child reach adulthood and how my capacity for love has grown. 

Tadpole at heart

 

John Cage on silence

"Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. 

"For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. 

"When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation."

Bills horse trough

Darrell Jones is shown cleaning a Bills horse trough at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum

George and Annis Bills established a trust fund to support working horses that led to 700 troughs being installed throughout NSW and Victoria between 1930 and '39.

Sketchy zine

Made this zine while I was waiting for my partner yesterday

It uses drawings from the sketchbook diary that I kept for a month in 2013, inspired by my family and the work of James Kochalka.

That project developed my comic-making skills surprisingly quickly and gave me an appreciation for how much work Kochalka put into his American Elf series.

This zine will likely be a parting gift to my class when I finish up next week and I hope it shows them the joy of drawing and self-publishing. 

I've used the format promoted by Austin Kleon, see here. 

You should print a copy of the zine and leave some lying around your part of the world because, assuming they don't become litter, it'd be great to be distributed! 

Little things

Red Earth Ecology are planning an excursion to Fivebough Wetland

Today Jo and I made this little guide to waterbird diets and it's a zine, so it can be folded up to fit into little pockets.

Kid art

Saw this in the art classroom at school

I feel a bit sheepish for sharing this pic, since it's not my art and I can't attribute the artist.

However, it made me feel sentimental for when my kids would draw pages of random-looking characters. 

Whelm

Recently I found the word "whelm" used in a book and thought it was unusual, so I looked it up

What I found was shocking! 

(Okay, shocking for a word nerd.) 

How is that when you're underwhelmed, you're not underneath by feeling engulfed, submerged or buried; and when you're overwhelmed it is more likely evoking that experience of being under the thing? 

Griffith during WWII

June McGrane (30 June 1932 – 21 May 2021) shares details about life in Griffith when the second world war raged, 1939-45 

She remembers the trenches dug at the high school and air raid drills, as well as a bomb shelter built in the site now known as Memorial Gardens. 

One remarkable recollection is the concern of locals for the real possibility of an invasion by the Japanese after the bombing of Darwin, because there was only one place in Australia where they grew rice! 

June was a long-serving volunteer at Griffith Pioneer Park Museum, where this interview was filmed during February 2017.
 

Humanities paper title generator

 

Not love

Two in every three men are liars

That's my takeaway from the study that found "One in three Australian men say they have committed intimate partner abuse." 

One of the questions was "Have you ever behaved in a manner that has made a partner feel frightened or anxious? (emotional-type abuse)" 

I know I've made my partner anxious when I raise my voice and overtake cars on the highway. 

Not saying that it's right, but it does seem a very low bar to be considered "intimate partner abuse."

Love

I'm grateful for the love of my family, particularly my partner of 23 years: Jo

This morning my Facebook Memories had this post and it's illustrated with a graphic she published to my profile yesterday:

In last night's subconsciousnews I dreamed that the vibrational field created by Jason and my love for one another was so powerful that it spread throughout the entire Universe in all directions of space and time. 

It was so significant an event that it was taught as history in text/books on other planets, and also anecdotally in the form of oral myths and stories passed down the generations among all sentient beings. 

Wandering in wonder

 

Recently Naviar Records called for contributions to appear in an exhibition in Japan

Marco wrote that his inspiration came from the Ainu, Japan's indigenous people, in his email to the Naviar community:

I've been working on this installation for a week now, studying and collecting sounds from my local environment, learning and understanding more about where my culture comes from. To someone who's been in contact with indigenous cultures all their life, this might seem like a childish game; however, for me, it's been an enlightening experience.

It brought to mind a project that I started to write songs reflecting my own heritage, which began around the time of Anzac Day and was inspired by the idea of that event being Australia's version of an ancestor celebration.

My contribution is a draft of one of those songs, drawing on the history of the Wanderer butterfly in Australia.

The lyrics are:

From foreign skies it came,
A fire-bright drift in golden flame—
On cyclonic winds, torn and tossed,
Somehow carried life across,
After this flight over the seas.
A stranger turned sovereign by the breeze,
In the year 1871,
Met the blush of Antipodean sun.

On winds of fate, it crossed the sea,
A monarch's flight to lands so free.
From foreign shores to Sydney's light,
The Wanderer took its maiden flight.


Milkweed bloomed—a bitter crown,
Bred the brood in orange gown.
Wings like stained glass kissed by fire,
A tale of travel, cocooned desire.
Not born of bush or Dreamtime's lore,
Arrived at a eucalyptus shore.
An exile once, now a monarch of air,
This Wanderer dances on blooms with care. 

The rationale for this symbol is:

In my backyard is a mint plant that I hoped might grow to replace my lawn. Many butterflies land on the flowers when it blooms.

I started researching their varieties as I began photographing them and became interested in the Wanderer, which is the Australian version of the Monarch in the Americas. It has distinctive white spots on a black body and magnificent wings coloured like autumnal leaves.

This type of butterfly arrived in Australia around the time my father's great-grandparents migrated here. It is thought it may have been blown here by a cyclone, but found the imported milkweed plant that supports Monarch caterpillars and was able to survive.

My parents were both born in North America, so I've come to adopt the Wanderer as a symbol for my cultural identity.

I've performed the song using a ukulele, as it is an instrument from the Pacific – the ocean that unites Australia, Japan and the USA.

And the bio I've provided is something I'm going to add here (mostly for future reference, sorry for appearing kinda bigheaded but it's my blog hey!):

With a focus on the Riverina landscape, Jason’s interdisciplinary art spans text, digital media, and community-driven initiatives, including his work with Naviar Records' Crossing Streams exhibition and Red Earth Ecology. As a writer and musician under the pseudonym Bassling, he has contributed to online music magazine Cyclic Defrost, won the Murrumbidgee Short Story competition, and collaborated internationally on projects like the Shinobi Cuts Remix Chain.

And in Japanese: 

ジェイソン・リチャードソン（オーストラリア）
ジェイソン・リチャードソンは、オーストラリア・リヴェライナ地方の風景を軸に、言葉とデジタル表現、そして地域コミュニティとともに行う創作活動を横断的に展開しているアーティストである。
Naviar Records の「Crossing Streams」展や Red Earth Ecology などのプロジェクトを通じて、自然と文化、個人と土地との関係を探求してきた。

ジェイソンの自宅の庭には、芝生の代わりにと植えたミントが茂り、その花に蝶が集まるようになった。
それらの蝶を撮影するうちに、特に「ワンダラー」と呼ばれる蝶に惹かれるようになる。これは、アメリカ大陸に生息する「モナーク（オオカバマダラ）」に類似した、オーストラリアの在来種である。黒い身体に白い斑点、そして秋の葉を思わせる色の翼を持つ。

この蝶がオーストラリアに渡来したのは、ジェイソンの曽祖父母がこの地に移住してきた時期と重なる。サイクロンに乗って漂着した可能性があり、北米から持ち込まれたトウワタ（milkweed）の存在によってオーストラリアの地に定着できたとされる。

北米にルーツを持つ両親のもとに生まれたジェイソンにとって、この蝶「ワンダラー」は、自身の文化的アイデンティティの象徴となった。

本作では、オーストラリア、日本、アメリカをつなぐ太平洋を意識し、その象徴的な楽器であるウクレレによる演奏を取り入れている。 

Memes make the news

Surprised to see a popular meme illustrating an article on a major news website today

It's a sign the mainstream media is continuing to become more detached from reality.  

When I was young I wanted to be a journalist and gained a qualification, but found the jobs were all in public relations.

For many years I wondered how media organisations got away with using photographs from libraries that didn't reflect their localities.

Of course, it was an economic decision based on the fact they no longer had the advertising revenue to pay the wages of photojournalists.

Given the recent examples AI-written articles, I'm expecting to see a sixth finger appear on the handshakes of politicians in coming weeks!

Feeling sentimental

Remember the sound of a librarian stamping a book? 

These days all I hear at the library are people talking on their phones!

Neve's iPad art

For years my daughter would rarely share her art

It seemed to be another aspect of the time she spent in her bedroom during high school, which was understandable as the middle child and a teenager.

Anyway, she's now home from uni and brought a few prints of her artwork that have now taken positions on the fridge.

I’m stoked she’s sharing them freely, after my years of nagging to get a look!

Representing Leeton Shire in London

Happy to see my name among the contributors to the Cities and Memory installation at the Barbican Centre in London

There you can hear the dawn chorus at Leeton's Fivebough Wetland, a location which is also part of a project that Red Earth Ecology are developing for a local primary school next month.

Return of the Firefox effect

Some years ago I was enthralled by glitchy images when I browsed the internet

On this blog I dubbed it the "Firefox effect" and that might've been misleading, although it's where I usually see this result.

Today I was using an older laptop and saw it again, with this being one of the glitched pics on my feed that caught my eye.

Pickle in my pocket

My kids came home from the city with this and I'm not sure how I feel about the plastic packaging

Battle Critters

I made this role-playing game for a math-based exercise in my teaching

The idea is to use a six-sided dice to roll to pick your critters' super powers, then roll a second time for how many iterations.

Such as rolling 2 for extra heads, then rolling 3 for three of them to draw onto the figure.

This super power bonus (+3 for heads) is noted when you roll for attack, then is added to the other figure to tally each critter's energy.

Each round you must roll higher than your opponent's attack roll and roll below your defend score to avoid them, until energy drops below 0.

The attack roll has the super power bonus added to increase likelihood, and these two numbers form the damage taken from your opponent's energy if they don't avoid it.

Games last 3-6 rounds, take about 10 minutes and benefit from creative descriptions of the action.

I should probably incorporate the rules of gameplay into the design of the sheet, but that will wait for another draft.

How will COVID-19 impact the arts?

We're all still living in the pandemic

Despite the rush to return to crowded venues and the low numbers of people maintaining their immunisations.

Studies are presenting shocking results of the impact of the coronavirus on our bodies, such as this one.

Interestingly, the persistent cognitive impairment appears to be contained almost exclusively to the right hemisphere.

This means if you have lasting cognitive issues from long COVID they will affect your intuition, creativity and emotional reasoning more than your ability to do math or memorise prose, for example.

Along with the rise of AI, I wonder how this will play in the spheres of artistic production.

End of Democracy Sausage?

Australia's compulsory electoral voting system means most adults* have to play a role

In previous elections this provided an opportunity for the schools selected to host AEC voting centres, as everyone nearby would visit their hall on the nominated Saturday.

This led to the pheomena of "democracy sausage," where voters would be enticed to buy processed meat wrapped in white bread and slathered with tomato sauce.

However, recent elections have seen a massive shift in voting behaviour as people choose to get their electoral duties out of the way ahead of time. 

As a result, the schools' P&C committees no longer run fundraising like cake stalls and sausage sizzles.

It's a remarkable shift in Australian suburban culture that reflects the growing isolation of individuals, as they shun community groups like P&Cs and no longer linger outside the school hall to catch-up with locals. 

Six years ago I predicted the demise of "democracy sausage" when I posted this meme on Facebook and, while the recent election result was an improvement on previous years, it is surprising to see there were no sausage sizzles on my path to the voting booth last week.

* -- I acknowledge that not all adult Australians will vote, and it's not just the "donkeys" as prisoners and some of those serving in the armed forces or police will avoid having their name on the electoral roll.

Boys who won't listen

This week I had a sexist phenomenon confirmed

Some time ago I read there is a percentage of boys who will not listen to a woman when there is a man present.

It always seemed sorta ridiculous, yet somehow plausible given the rife nature of sexism.

Recently I've been on a placement in my teacher training and ended up in a kindergarten class.

I asked the teacher if she had seen this phenomenon of boys ignoring female teachers.

Her experience was having a student repeatedly give her a blank look, until the male gardener walked over to repeat her words and this boy responded to her instruction.

So I offered my services to be a mansplainer to the boys.