Haydninvienna, 2026/2: walking around my cluttered mind

Back again! I'm a little surprised that I borrowed 3 library books last Thursday, and I've read all of them.

Happy New Thread!

Congratulations on finishing all your library books :)

Happy New Thread!

You will just have to go back to the library and get another three books.

>3 pgmcc: I may just do that.

>2 Alexandra_book_life: >3 pgmcc: Thanks.

>1 haydninvienna: Happy New Thread, and congrats on the books read. I concur with >3 pgmcc:! Go gather up a few more.

>1 haydninvienna: Happy new thread!

Happy new thread! I hope you have plenty of good reads to record in it!

Happy new thread!

>1 haydninvienna: Happy new thread! Now off with you, back to the library so that you can scoop up new reading material.

>5 clamairy: , >6 Karlstar: , >7 Sakerfalcon: , >8 Narilka: , >9 jillmwo: Thanks all.

>9 jillmwo: I did just that! I have physical access (while the fuel lasts, anyway) to 3 library systems and electronic access to 3 more. So yesterday I hied me off to the Redland City library at Capalaba, since I had a couple from there that needed to go back, and found a few things, one of which I'm reading at the moment: A Most Peculiar Book by Kristin Swenson. It's about the Bible, but possibly not the Bible as you know it. This is not a book to please a Biblical fundamentalist. To start with, there are at least 2 Bibles even within Christianity: "The Bible" to a Roman Catholic is a somewhat different (and larger) book than the one a Protestant like myself calls "The Bible". Then we can start talking about translations ... But obviously they all share some features, and then Swenson can get to work on what she calls "the inherent strangeness of the Bible." But I'd better say no more, otherwise Peter and Clam and @terriks may be getting the popcorn out, or clam will be pointing to the "No Religion or Politics" sign.

Swenson is the Associate Professor of Religious Studies (Affiliate (whatever that means)), at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I love the book so far.

A minor weirdness of a different kind is that i picked up Ben Okri's short novel Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted. This is only very mildly weird because the book showed up among my LT recommendations the other day, and my Firefox Library extension found it only in the Logan City system, and then only as a BorrowBox e-book. I dislike BorrowBox but borrowed anyway, and then I walk into Capalaba library and here's a physical copy, as bold as you please. For anyone who's read this: did you get an Enchanted April vibe? I am, but I'm not very far in and things may change.

Other matters: Mrs H is still in hospital, and the social workers are looking for a care facility place for her.

One of the trees that is a common street tree here is the Golden Penda, Xanthostemon chrysanthus. As the Wikipedia article notes, the flowers are a food source for many nectar feeding birds. Many of the trees here are in flower, and it's charming seeing the occasional flash of green, blue and yellow from lorikeets feeding on the flowers.

>10 haydninvienna: What a gorgeous bird! I hope MrsH ends up in her new home soon, and that it's nearby. That Kristin Swenson book sound fascinating. Please let us know if the Ben Okri is worth the time. I'm usually very skeptical of the LibraryThing recommendations feed.

>10 haydninvienna: A friend of mine volunteers in a used book shop and because she is "in charge" of the religion section, to keep her in the loop of things, I will forward articles to her explaining current publishing trends in things like journaling bibles, new translations, etc. I might mention this one to her. (And, honestly, the book sounds like it would be an interesting read for me as well...)

The bird is good, too!

>10 haydninvienna:
I hope you find a nice, nearby place for Mrs. H. and that it is all sorted soon.

A Most Peculiar Book sounds very interesting.

That bird sounds beautiful. I must look up an image.

I love the type of synchronicity you described regarding the Okri book. The way it happens precludes the machinations of an AI reading your posts and pushing actions into play. There must be something much more supernatural at play.

>13 pgmcc: Richard embedded the link to the bird's wikipedia page (with photo) in his post. Just click on the bird's name.

>14 clamairy:
Thank you! I had not noticed that.

>10 haydninvienna:
That is an amazing looking bird.

>10 haydninvienna: Good luck with the search for a place for Mrs. H, and thanks for the plant and bird info.

>11 clamairy: , >13 pgmcc: , >16 Karlstar: Thanks.

>15 pgmcc: They're quite noisy, and it's common to hear them but not see them — the colours hide amazingly in the green of the leaves. Also, walking along footpaths under the golden pendas after the lorikeets have been around, the ground is littered with bits of golden flowers — they feed on nectar, but not like hummingbirds. These are parrots. They get the nectar by tearing the flowers apart.

Just in case it's not clear, they're about the size of a. British magpie, but slimmer.

>17 haydninvienna:
That is a fair size, though probably average for a parrot.

>17 haydninvienna: They get the nectar by tearing the flowers apart.. I've known multiple human beings with that same characteristic...

Parrots generally are destructive little sh*ts even though they're pretty. There's a famous case of a shopping centre in Sydney, the facade of which was basically destroyed by sulphur-crested cockatoos. (A cockatoo is a parrot with a crest. Not all parrots have crests.) Sulphur-crested cockatoos:



are big and strong, and quite smart. Then there's galahs:



Back in the day, City Hill in Canberra was planted with ornamental spruces. I remember one afternoon seeing one of the trees shaking all over. So I went for a look and found it was full of galahs, which were ripping everything apart to get at the seed capsules.

Both sulphur-crests and galahs are pretty common here, as well as the lorikeets.

I did something eccentric tonight.

I've been thinking about a comment of Adam Gopnik's, in The Real Work, about Bob Dylan, to the effect that Dylan started as a bad musician and practiced for 10,000 hours, but he didn't become a good musician, he became Bob Dylan. If I understand the comment correctly, that's a compliment. Dylan is unique. And I suddenly wanted to hear the early Dylan song 'When the Ship Comes In'. It's on his third album, The Times They Are A'Changin', which I happen not to have in my iTunes collection. So I bought it and was playing it in the car going home.

Oh to be fourteen again encountering this for the first time! And isn't most of it dreadful, musically speaking! But my goodness, isn't there something there? Listening to 'With God on Our Side' in the current world situation nearly broke me. And so, without more ado, this week's poem (in spoiler tags — don't click if you don't know the song and are a particular fan of certain current foreign policies):

Oh my name it is nothin’
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side

Oh the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh the country was young
With God on its side

Oh the Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
l’s made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side

Oh the First World War, boys
It closed out its fate
The reason for fighting
I never got straight
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don’t count the dead
When God’s on your side

When the Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now too
Have God on their side

I’ve learned to hate Russians
All through my whole life
If another war starts
It’s them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side

But now we got weapons
Of the chemical dust
If fire them we’re forced to
Then fire them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God’s on your side

Through many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side

So now as I’m leavin’
I’m weary as Hell
The confusion I’m feelin’
Ain’t no tongue can tell
The words fill my headAnd fall to the floor
If God’s on our side
He’ll stop the next war

>21 haydninvienna:
Very poignant.

>21 haydninvienna: Thank you.

>21 haydninvienna: I had never heard or read those lyrics before. OMG.

>21 haydninvienna: Don't think I've ever heard that before or seen the lyrics, thanks for that!

>23 Alexandra_book_life: >24 jillmwo: >25 Karlstar: My pleasure, sort of.

>24 jillmwo: >25 Karlstar: You surprise me. Dylan was part of the soundtrack of my teens. Sometimes I want something other than Bach or Haydn. Once upon a time I had all of the Dylan albums up to Nashville Skyline on vinyl, and I still have most of those on CD. Somewhere.

>21 haydninvienna: I am also not familiar with this one at all. Many thanks for sharing.

>10 haydninvienna: Can we get an update on your general thoughts on the book by Kristen Swenson? Were you able to finish it before it was due back at the library? Just curious as to whether you found it worthwhile.

>28 jillmwo: Answer is yes to both questions. The book should be approached cautiously though, depending on your opinions about the Bible. If you believe it's infallible or the literal word of God, at the very least you're in for a shock. She spends quite a bit of time on inconsistencies, provable errors and downright appalling or immoral behaviour, so be prepared for that. But a well-written, well-produced, engaging book. Give a copy to your favourite Biblical fundamentalist.

>29 haydninvienna: 😆

I have actually been reading a good bit, but nothing worth posting about.

However, went to the doc on Monday for the annual check-up (paid for by a benevolent Commonwealth Government — how socialist is that?) and was found to be fit and healthy for my age, all blood tests OK, and so on. Then today I had a mildly weird experience. I went into the shopping centre where Mrs H and I used to go for coffee and met a guy that I used to see there and chat to, and he asked me about “the woman in the wheelchair, was she your wife or your mother?” He may or may not have been serious, he’s a flippant kind of bloke, but … For the record, I am 7 years and 113 days older than Mrs H.

>31 haydninvienna:
Long may you be fit and healthy and youthful looking.

>31 haydninvienna: Good to hear!

>32 pgmcc: Thanks Peter, you too.
>33 Karlstar: Thanks Jim; the same wishes to you.

>31 haydninvienna: I am glad to hear that your check-up went well! It's nice to be youthful looking :)

Little while since I posted because what with Life and all, I haven't been reading much. But at one of the libraries the other day, I picked up A Book of Luminous Things, An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz. In it I found this:

Ancient Air
by Li Po
Climbed high, to gaze upon the sea,
Heaven and Earth, so vast, so vast.
Frost clothes all things in Autumn,
Winds waft, the broad wastes cold.
Glory, splendor; eastward flowing stream,
This world's affairs, just waves.
White sun covered, its dying rays,
The floating clouds, no resting place.
In lofty Wu-t'ung trees nest lowly finches.
Down among the thorny brush the Phoenix perches.
All that's left, to go home again,
Hand on my sword I sing, "The Going's Hard."
Translated from the Chinese by J. P. Seaton.

Seasonally appropriate, for us Down Under, anyway.

>35 Alexandra_book_life: Thank you!
On Tuesday this week I went to look at a place that might (fingers crossed) offer a place to Mrs H. While I was waiting for the person I was to see, I got chatting to a guy who obviously lived there. Turned out he's the same age as I am, but he needs a walker to get around, his digestion's shot, he has various other troubles, etc. I told his I was the same age and was rewarded with "Well, you're doing all right then!".

>37 haydninvienna:
And long may you continue to do all right then.

>37 haydninvienna: May you stay in good health!

>36 haydninvienna: I liked that one, thanks!

>37 haydninvienna: Keep doing all right!

>37 haydninvienna: Stay healthy. Eat those Wheaties for breakfast!!

>37 haydninvienna: And may you continue to do all right!

>38 pgmcc: >39 Alexandra_book_life: >40 Karlstar: >41 jillmwo: >42 clamairy: Thanks, all. >41 jillmwo: Actually, not Wheaties — more like overnight oats and rather a lot of strong coffee.

Having said which, I'm trying to keep in mind the motto well known to the Romans: nihil bastardus carborundum (well, if it wasn't it should have been). Part of my responsibilities as an Administrator is to deal with the joint bank accounts, which we still have 2 of in the UK. Neither has any significant amount of money in it, but HSBC wants a notarised copy of the administration order, for an account that has less than £5 in it. I think they can go hopping sideways: I'll just let the account become abandoned. So far, Santander has been more reasonable, but who knows? Surprisingly, the NHS Pensions administrator has been much easier to deal with: they just wanted a written undertaking, which I've provided.

The only joint account we had in Australia was easy: I just opened a new account in Mrs H's name which I can operate as administrator, and have notified the relevant authorities to pay any sums due to her into that account. Once the NHS pension payments start going into that account I'll close the joint one.

Still not much progress with finding her a care place, but she's waitlisted at a few, so there's hope.

And of course with all this schlock going on, my reading mojo has really got up and left the building. Never mind, it will come back. I can remember reading that if you pull a deep sea fish to the surface too quickly it bursts. That's kind of how I feel now. The daily pressure of looking after Mrs H is gone, and I now have a new kind of pressure that I'm still learning to deal with.

>43 haydninvienna: I'm so sorry. It's 'out of the frying pan and into the fire,' it seems. I do hope things calm down for you soon

>43 haydninvienna: Sending you my best wishes at this stressful time. I hope you can get the admin sorted out soon.

>43 haydninvienna:
Thinking of you and hoping you manage to get some rest to build the energy to handle all those issues.

>43 haydninvienna:. It sounds to me as if you're handling everything remarkably well. Step outside after the really frustrating phone calls. Breathe. You can only do so much on single day.

But the fact that you can see the beauty in the world around you (the parrots earlier in this thread, for example, and the poetry) means that you've got your head on straight. The space to read will circle around again and books are patient.

>47 jillmwo: Thanks Jill. I found your second paragraph comforting. It also reminded me of an old Ask.Metafilter thread about What do you look at/notice, as you wander through the world, that I probably ignore? ("I spy with my little eye"). There's some interesting stuff in there. (I've been on Metafilter almost as long as I've been on LT, although I don't post much.)

Things I look at:
• anything in the sky — clouds, the moon in the day sky, birds, aircraft;
• plants and trees;
• editing and suchlike on signs;
...
so I haven't entirely switched off yet.

I'm so sorry you're going through this and I can't imagine having that kind of partnership torn. All I can do is sympathize and wish you strength and peace as you do the best for you and for her.

>43 haydninvienna: That is a lot to deal with. It reminds me somewhat of what I had to deal with for my mom but on steroids. You will get your reading mojo back eventually. Take care of yourself.

>43 haydninvienna: You are dealing with a lot of things! I am sending my best wishes.

Your books will come back to you.

>43 haydninvienna: Good to hear that the accounts were managed easily and I hope they find someplace for Mrs. H sooner.

>49 Bookmarque: >50 Narilka: >52 Karlstar: >52 Karlstar: Thanks guys.

It's been an interesting week so far, in a number of ways. Monday was miserable, rain all day. Tuesday the rain broke up and I at least got the washing done. Wednesday I scared myself silly because I heard a knock at the door while I was upstairs but didn't get down in time — it was Australia Post leaving a card for a package that needed to be signed for, and which I could collect at the local post office in the afternoon. I spent the next four hours or so stewing about all the unpleasant possibilities. It turned out to be from the NHS pension authority in the UK, returning a couple of documents I'd sent them in connection with Mrs H's pension. Today is bright and clear although cool. Autumn is the best time of the year here.

As I noted above, I notice plants. There's a street I travel down on the bus which has a group of trees that I'm almost prepared to swear are tamarinds. Another street has three or four of what look uncommonly like baobabs. In both cases it's hard to be sure but I keep telling myself I'll drive down there and have a proper look.

I even managed to read some of the Czeslaw Milosz anthology (see #36) while waiting for the washing to dry.

I feel as if I have encountered baobabs through reading SOMETHING. Would it have been Kipling? Who famously writes about baobab trees?

stewing about all the unpleasant possibilities A wise friend once told me that this sort of thing is an unproductive use of one's imagination. It creates unnecessary stress. For the sake of your own sanity, you might want to minimize time spent in this fashion. (Yes, I know it's easier said than done and I freely admit that I am prone to doing exactly the same thing. The friend's advice still stands.)

>54 jillmwo: There are baobab trees in The little prince, for sure. And they do seem like something that Kipling might have mentioned, in the Just-so stories perhaps, although I can't remember any specific references to them.

>54 jillmwo: you might want to minimize time spent in this fashion: I know, I know. But it's still worth saying.

>55 Sakerfalcon: Definitely in The Little Prince, where they are more or less weeds. Don't recall any mention of them in Just So Stories. (Just checked the text of the latter on Project Gutenberg — no baobabs, at least not by that name. Paging @hfglen ...

>56 haydninvienna: Agreed. SANParks have placed a sign with a quote from the Just So Stories at the start of an elevated walkway in the fever-tree forest alongside the Limpopo River in Mapungubwe National Park, but no way can a fever tree be confused with a baobab!

After the discussion recently about the Guardian's dodgy 100-best list, here's another Guardian list which is a bit more defensible: Authors choose books to make you fall back in love with reading (link goes to the relevant page on LT Lists). Couple of old familiars here: Invisible Cities and a couple of collections by Jorge Luis Borges. Our good friend Susie Dent was a contributor. I notice also that there's a couple of choices in common with Michael Dirda's 100 best comic novels. (That link goes to Goodreads, unfortunately — the list doesn't seem to be available from the WaPo).

>58 haydninvienna: Seems like a much more approachable list!

>58 haydninvienna: I liked this list very much, thank you :) It's nice that they included Borges. I was also happy to see The Dark is Rising. Susan Cooper's books were among my formative reads back in the day :)

Followup to the mention of the trees in >53 haydninvienna: : I actually drove there this morning. The trees that I thought were tamarinds aren't, although they are some sort of legume. My iPhone app (iSeek) can't identify them, but the few pods on them are not like tamarind pods, which I'm reasonably familiar with — the fruit was fairly common in Doha. Maybe wait until flowering season, whenever that is.

The ones that I thought were baobabs iSeek couldn't identify either, but:


This one is dead, apparently (not surprising given where it's planted) but there are 2 other smaller ones on the same strip of grass that are still green.

That is a very interesting tree. I'm sorry it's deceased, but I swear I see a very interesting facial expressing on that largest trunk...

Latest in the occasional series Gee, We Can Do Some Really Net Stuff: a solar eclipse on Mars, captured by the Perseverance rover.

And while we're walking around my cluttered mind, how about this: The Global Diversity of French Fry Dips Is a Window Into the Way We Eat Today? I remember having some chat with @hfglen about the idea of a taxonomy of food: here's another bit.

>63 haydninvienna: Wow, an eclipse as seen from another planet!! That's awesome.

>64 haydninvienna: Great article. A restaurant near us had a great basil aioli for fries, we just found out last week that they've stopped having it, apparently it wasn't popular. It was by far our favorite.

>63 haydninvienna: That is awesome. Thank you!

>65 Karlstar: You will have to make your own! Trader Joe's has a lovely truffle aioli, if you want to try that.

>67 clamairy: We always have excess basil by August, so that sounds like a great experiment. Neither of us are truffle fans.

>63 haydninvienna:
Excellent video. Thank you.

>63 haydninvienna: and >69 pgmcc: Did you read the bit where it says that Phobos is apt to crash into Mars at some point in the next 50 million years? There's your plot for the next Hollywood summer block buster. Billionaire makes it to Mars but his wild hope for colonization is brought to an horrific end by Phobos crashing earlier than anticipated...

>70 jillmwo:
Did Phobos fall...or was it pushed?

Curiouser and curiouser!

>70 jillmwo: I did see the bit about Phobos falling onto Mars, but I already knew it. Phobos is a pretty weird moon anyway:

It orbits Mars much faster than Mars rotates and completes an orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. As a result, from the surface of Mars it appears to rise in the west, move across the sky in 4 hours and 15 minutes or less, and set in the east, twice each Martian day. (Wikipedia)

.
Also it's so close to Mars that it's not visible from Mars's poles.

>72 haydninvienna:
That is weird.

>72 haydninvienna:. So Martians likely have an entirely different means of marking the passage of time on their world.

Aargh. Just when you though life was complicated, it gets more complicated. I had an appointment with the general surgery clinic at the hospital this morning regarding my hernia, and the surgeon had a look and, er, a feel and said, "I think we'll need to do an open repair on this. Just let me talk to the consultant for a minute," and when he came back he said, "We'll book a bed for you." Apparently if you're going to be in overnight they book a bed for you even before scheduling the surgery. Which I don't yet have a date for, but it will be sooner rather than later. Of course, up till now we've been putting it off on account of the uncertainty regarding Mrs H, and in that time it's gone from something that they could have fixed with a keyhole op to something that needs the full drama. Bother, to put it mildly.

>75 haydninvienna: Oh. I am sorry to hear that. Sending you hugs, I hope everything works out.

>75 haydninvienna:
Sending you best wishes for the procedure.

>75 haydninvienna: Strength to you!

>75 haydninvienna: I'm sorry to hear this. I hope that everything will go smoothly once the op is booked.

>75 haydninvienna:. Ugh. Just Ugh. I'm so sorry you're having to cope with having a procedure just now. Take care of yourself. (Allow yourself time and some respite for recovery.)

>75 haydninvienna: Oh yikes. I'm so sorry...

Am I correct in assuming that "keyhole op" is what we in the states call laparoscopic surgery? Sorry you missed that window of opportunity.

>75 haydninvienna: Sorry to hear that, I hope it goes well.

>76 Alexandra_book_life:  — >82 Karlstar: Thanks all. >81 clamairy: Yes, "keyhole" means laparoscopic. In big-people talk, it's called "laparoscopic" here too.

ETA There is a sort of upside though. After a laparoscopic procedure, I'd possibly get sent home the same night, but after an open procedure I'll be in QEII Hospital for at least a couple of days. Seems kind of weird to think of it as a rest, but still ...

Just as a distraction, I was looking at the bookcases and the piles this morning. There's been some chat in Jill's thread about the magic number of 3,000 books. My library shows over 3,000 but that's a cheat: it includes 150 or so wishlist items and a couple of hundred in "Lost&Discarded", plus other oddities like a collection that's Michael Dirda's list of great comic novels. Of the ones I still have (2,357, it says here), I reckon that if I never buy another book (fat chance) or borrow another library book (equally fat chance), I can probably read all of the ones that I haven't yet read in the years remaining to me.

>84 haydninvienna:. Do you know that I've been having exactly that same thought: "I can probably read all of the ones that I haven't yet read in the years remaining..."

Up there in #36 I posted a poem from an anthology, Luminous Things, selected by Czesław Miłosz. Here's another:

A Journey
by Edward Field
When he got up that morning everything was different:
He enjoyed the bright spring day
But he did not realize it exactly, he just enjoyed it.

And walking down the street to the railroad station
Past magnolia trees with dying flowers like old socks
It was a long time since he had breathed so simply.

Tears filled his eyes and it felt good
But he held them back
Because men didn't walk around crying in that town.

Waiting on the platform at the station
The fear came over him of something terrible about to happen:
The train was late and he recited the alphabet to keep hold.

And in its time it came screeching in
And as it went on making its usual stops,
People coming and going, telephone poles passing.

He hid his head behind a newspaper
No longer able to hold back the sobs, and willed his eyes
To follow the rational weavings of the seat fabric.

He didn't do anything violent as he had imagined.
He cried for a long time, but when he finally quieted down
A place in him that had been closed like a fist was open,

And at the end of the ride he stood up and got off that train:
And through the streets and in all the places he lived in later on
He walked, himself at last, a man among men,
With such radiance that everyone looked up and wondered.

>86 haydninvienna: This is beautiful. Thank you!

Yet another poem, not from the Miłosz anthology (I found it serendipitously). It's longer than usual so spoiler tags in case of TL/DR:

Curiosity

may have killed the cat. More likely,
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems,
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
smell rats, leave home, have hunches,
does not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die –
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious
have if they live a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are dangerous, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat-price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat-minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth; and what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who never know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

(by Alastair Reid)

>88 haydninvienna: I like that one.

The walk took a different turn today. I had to go to Services Australia (a government body that processes various things for Mrs H) and after I'd done with them I went into the Big W store there (kind of like an Australian Wal-Mart but not quite) with the intention of buying a couple of pillows. I bought the pillows all right but also:
• Green Eggs and Ham
• Fox in Socks
• Where the River Bends by Jane and Jimmy Barnes.

All of these are for me (second childhood is looming, apparently). I think Fox in Socks is pure genius. Most of the other Dr Seuss books are pretty good, but this one is special. I can still recite a good deal of it from having read it repeatedly to the kids 30+ years ago.

Where the River Bends is a cookbook, written by a couple of rock musicians. Jimmy Barnes is an Australian legend: born in fairly severe poverty in Glasgow, he became a figure on the Australian rock music scene in the late 60s and lived the wild, dissolute life that you'd expect until he met Jane, who was a diplomat's daughter. And she cooked for him and he decided to marry her. Forty years later they are still together and still cooking (they've appeared together a few times on Adam Liaw's cooking show on TV here). The book is not just about cooking — it's about them and their large family, children, grandchildren, whatever. The food might not be quite what you expect: for example, tagliatelle in creamy porcini mushroom sauce (using home made pasta). The book is almost worth it just for the photography, of the food, them, their family and the house.

>90 haydninvienna:
The Barnes book sounds very attractive.

>91 pgmcc: It is. It's beautifully done. Incidentally, the dish that Jane cooked for Jimmy 40 years ago was an Australian classic, Apricot Chicken, although I won't guarantee that she used this recipe.

>92 haydninvienna:
The dish also sounds lovely. However, I am not supposed to eat apricots. :-(

>92 haydninvienna: I like that recipe. Looks doable and it has the virtue of being uncomplicated.

>93 pgmcc: Why is that?

I have a giant bag of dried apricots from Costco here. Unfortunately they are sulfured, which means there are uncomfortable (and often audible) repercussions to their consumption. Perhaps if I use them sparingly in a chicken dish they might not cause so many issues.

>92 haydninvienna: Are apricots common in Australia?

Against Trish's advice, I bought a fresh apricot last year, so I could say I tried one. I much prefer them dried.

>96 Karlstar: They can be a little mealy. I suspect they're better right off the tree.

Here we can get (with a bit of searching) dried apricots of two different origins: local and Turkish. The former are definitely sharper in taste and so IMHO better for savoury dishes like the one we're discussing. Turkish ones are sweeter and better suited to dessert. It may be worth reading the label on the packet and doing a taste test before blazing away and throwing an unknown into this recipe (which sounds great, though I would consider using a different flavour of soup powder -- the family, self by no means least, loathe the taste of onions).

>95 clamairy:

Why is that?

When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes I was given a Heath Service guide that gave me specific dietary does and don'ts for the condition. Where fruit was concerned there were some very much no-nos, some "in moderation" and not too bad, and some "est as much as you like". Apricots, melons, pineabble, mangoes and pears were in the no-no camp due to the speed with which they release sugar/glucous. I believe the measurement is a GI, some sort of index. The not too bad included bananas due to their slow release of potassium and any glucous content. Eat as many or as much as you like included apples, strawberrie, blueberries, and virtually every other type of edible (i.e. non poisonous) berries.

>99 pgmcc: Interesting. Thank you.

>96 Karlstar: Apricots common in Australia? In short, yes. But of course the fresh ones in the supermarkets are a pale shadow of the real thing. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I had a backyard in Canberra, I had a tree. The fruit from that tree: absolute nectar of the gods. >97 clamairy: Absolutely right. >99 pgmcc: Having to avoid supermarket apricots isn't much loss. "Glycaemic index" is the term you're looking for.

Dried fruit usually is sulphured, I think to prevent mould, but health food stores usually have unsulphured ones.

>98 hfglen: try a different soup mix by all means, but then it wouldn't be authentic, would it? Apricot Chicken isn't exactly haute cuisine, and it's a long time since I last ate it. Note also that there are lots of much fancier recipes. I linked to that one because AFAIK it's the Ur-version as I remember it.

>101 haydninvienna: It's my understanding the sulfur is primarily added to prevent discoloration. When I buy organic unsulfured apricots they are brown, not bright orange. I really like the tart ones, but they are hard to find. Commercial ones are all 'Mediterranean style' so almost sickeningly sweet.

>102 clamairy: You could well be right. Here, I think they've become slightly sweeter since I was a child, but yours may have been sweetened somehow. Are they softer as well?

>101 haydninvienna: I have an apricot tree and today I discovered that, for the first time ever, it has fruit on it! I can only see three little green apricots, and who knows if they'll actually ripen, but it's a start!

>104 tardis: Best of luck! I don't know how long a summer you get in Edmonton, but if thy ripen you're in for a treat. That is, if the birds don't get them first ...

>103 haydninvienna: No, they aren't sweetened. I believe the tart ones are picked & dried before the apricots are ripe. This batch is from Turkey. They are delicious, but I can only eat one or two.

The tart ones I used to love always came from California, and Google says: Tart, tangy dried apricots are most frequently made from the heirloom Blenheim apricot, which is primarily grown in California. Unfortunately, farmland devoted to Blenheim apricots has shrunk by more than 80% over the last few decades.

>104 tardis: Oh, good luck!!!

>106 clamairy: Unfortunately, increasing sweetness is a trend with almost all fruit, as that's what consumers seem to prefer. We're even making fruit less healthy.

Just "walking around" — ouch!

I had an interesting morning yesterday. The reason for the obscure sentence above is that I've apparently done something to my right knee, and it hurts, more at some times than others, but at its worst, bad enough to be, er, bloody painful. Yesterday morning I decided enough was enough, and took myself to the emergency department at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital (the very same one in which Mrs H is languishing). Treatment at hospital emergency departments is free here if you have a Medicare card, which everybody does. So I waited a while, and my knee was examined by a very nice lady physiotherapist, and then x-rayed, and I came away with a sort of elastic sleeve on my knee, which helps a lot. She talked about the meniscus in my knee, which I'm a bit vague about, but apparently a small tear in it is painful in just the way I'd been experiencing. It will heal eventually, but if it gets worse I'm to go back.

While I was waiting for the x-rays to be processed and interpreted, I finished reading A Book of Luminous Things, the anthology i mentioned up in #36 and #86. Definitely worth buying my own copy. I was interested to note that there's quite a few Chinese poems in there, translated by several translators, but there's a few translated by Arthur Waley, who was AFAIK the first translator of Chinese poetry into English.

Just saw this now (hope the link will open OK for you): Meta’s AI support bot happily handed Instagram accounts to hackers.

ETA: Especially read the last 2 paragraphs. "Nuff said.

>108 haydninvienna: Ouch. I hope your knee will get better soon!

>109 haydninvienna: 'Nuff said just about sums it up.

>108 haydninvienna: Meniscus tears, if small, will eventually get better, I hope it doesn't take long! Sounds like your knees must be in generally good condition.

>108 haydninvienna:
Sorry to hear about your knee problem. I hope it heals quickly and does not slow you down too much. Get yourself a cane and affect a mysterious gait as you wander the world.

>109 haydninvienna:
It is this type of thoughtless AI usage that is typical of the drip-drip-drip-…approach that will continue to undermine the integrity of the internet. Google’s AI summaries on its searches are continuing to contain errors.

>113 pgmcc: The physio suggested that, actually.

>110 Alexandra_book_life: , >112 Karlstar: , >113 pgmcc: Thanks all.

>108 haydninvienna: I was interested to note that there's quite a few Chinese poems in there, translated by several translators, but there's a few translated by Arthur Waley, who was AFAIK the first translator of Chinese poetry into English..

If I may say so, that's quite a bit of arcane knowledge, even when it's someone like you who has been reading poetry for aeons. (Not a reflection on your age, just a comment on the depth of your knowledge.) But how did you ever come across the name of the first translator of Chinese poetry into English? That's not something that might qualify as "General Knowledge" on the televised QI...

By the way, yes, the meniscus will heal, but you should probably be careful not to overexert on the walking for the next week or so. Give it a fighting chance to begin the knitting together that's necessary. (And the use of a cane is a bother, but it's wisest not to overlook it just on the grounds of it being a bother. Be good to yourself as your nice physio said.)

Sorry to hear about your knee. I hope it will be healed soon.

Sorry to hear about your knee. I hope it heals smoothly. Get a cane with a dragon on the top. :)

Also, I do not enjoy AI. It takes the fun out of searching the internet - the summaries are often not what I'm looking for. :(

>108 haydninvienna: Oh no... Did she give you instructions on how to speed up the healing process? Please don't overdo it. Allow yourself time to heal.

>118 catzteach:
I also find the summaries often miss the point and if it is about something I know a lot about I find that they always, and I mean always, contain factual errors. The push for AI usage is obviously driven by the desire of corporations to withdraw the cost of humans from their processes. This is happening at the expense of people's livelihoods and the quality of the service the corporations provide their clients and customers.

>120 pgmcc: Just spent an hour on the phone with Services Australia trying to sort out something re Mrs H's possible move into care. Services' budget for phone operators must be enormous. What's the betting that next time we have a right-wing government here, some genius will want to replace the phone operators with AI chatbots? Now there's a scary thought.

>121 haydninvienna:
In 2007 I worked for a company that installed voice activated systems to handle customer service calls. Eircom (if it was still called Eircom at the time) was one of its most successful installations.

Apropos our discussion on AI errors.

German court finding.

A German court has declared that Google AI summaries are Google's own words as Google implemented the AI and provided the AI summaries. The consequence is that Google is liable for damages to companies defamed in the summaries. The case is around two companies which took Google to court over AI summaries that incorrectly associated them with dodgy business practices.

>116 jillmwo: I meant to answer you sooner but Life got in the way a bit, and consideration was necessary.
Thank you for the vote of confidence in my knowledge of poetry! Given that I encountered real poetry for the first time back in high school when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, I suppose that I probably have been reading it for aeons. However, I wouldn't call myself an expert!

The bit of knowledge about Arthur Waley came partly from the man himself. I thought I remembered reading, in the introduction to his One Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, the story of how he came to be a translator of ancient Chinese and Japanese literature, but the bit I remember isn't in the Gutenberg text (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/42290/pg42290-images.html#Page_3 ). (I have a reprint of the book which I probably bought some time in the 1970s, and the story may have come from there, but I can't find that book at the moment.)

The story went that after an unsuccessful stint in an export business he got a position at the British Museum, and found that his first job was sorting modern German bookplates. He heard that a new position was available as assistant to Laurence Binyon, recently appointed as Keeper of Oriental Prints and Manuscripts, and to escape from the bookplates he asked, successfully, to be appointed as Binyon's assistant even though he knew nothing of ancient Oriental languages. Many of the "Oriental Prints and Manuscripts" were Chinese or Japanese, and to make it possible to work efficiently he began to learn both languages at the same time (!!). He was told that the only Chinese poetry was Confucius's Book of Odes, but he hadn't gone far into the Museum's holdings before he discovered "hundreds of volumes of poetry". So he set to work and translated 170 of the poems, and published the result in 1918.

Nowhere did I read that Waley was the first, but it's clear from the introduction to the Gutenberg text and the titles of scholarly works listed in the Wikipedia article on him that he was at least very early to the game, and I know of no earlier translators into English — into other European languages, not saying.

Ah ha! From the introduction to the Gutenberg text:

In making this book I have tried to avoid poems which have been translated before. A hundred and forty of those I have chosen have not been translated by any one else. The remaining thirty odd I have included in many cases because the previous versions were full of mistakes; in others, because the works in which they appeared are no longer procurable. Moreover, they are mostly in German, a language with which my readers may not all be acquainted.

With some hesitation I have included literal versions of six poems (three of the “Seventeen Old Poems,” “Autumn Wind,” “Li Fu-jēn,” and “On the Death of his Father”) already skilfully rhymed by Professor Giles in “Chinese Poetry in English Verse.” They were too typical to omit; and a comparison of the two renderings may be of interest. Some of these translations have appeared in the “Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies,” in the “New Statesman,” in the “Little Review” (Chicago), and in “Poetry” (Chicago).

I have to say that Professor Giles's translations seem to have fallen dead-born from the press as far as posterity is concerned. "Professor Giles" is Herbert Giles, who was Professor of Chinese at Cambridge between 1897 and 1932. There are several of his books in Project Gutenberg, but no poetry that I can see.

>117 Sakerfalcon: >118 catzteach: >119 clamairy: Thanks for the good wishes about my knee! It seems to be holding up at the moment.

>124 haydninvienna:. This is a wonderful write-up to be greeted with this morning. There's a bit of the history of translation, a bit more of the introduction of Chinese and Japanese poetry to the community of literature, and a fun allusion to the Victorian scholars of Cambridge. Civilization is wonderful.

>125 jillmwo: Thank you! Civilisation is indeed wonderful, so far as we have it. At times the internet isn't too bad either: Giles's book is available on archive.org, and it would indeed be interesting to compare his translations and Waley's.

On a personal note, back in the early 1970s in Canberra I lived for a while in a house owned by John Frodsham, who was also a translator of ancient Chinese poetry: An Anthology of Chinese Verse: Han Wei Chin and the Northern and Southern Dynasties. That's available for not too much money. But maybe this is a rabbit-hole I shouldn't start down.

Big news: looks like Mrs H has a care place. Offer has been made and accepted. I went there this morning and it looks pretty good. Own room with own facilities, even a TV. Staff seem pretty nice. The hospital is of course eager get the bed back for an acute care case, and will ship Mrs H there by ambulance tomorrow morning.

Only down side is that it's a trifle further away than ideal, but that's life I suppose.

>127 haydninvienna: This is great news, and I hope the place is as good as it appears. Fingers crossed for you both!

>128 Alexandra_book_life: Thank you!

>127 haydninvienna:
I hope it works out well. Best of luck with it.

>127 haydninvienna: That's great news! I hope the place is as nice as it seems and that Mrs H will settle in well.

Oh I hope that will be a great new home for her with the support you both need.

>127 haydninvienna:. Wonderful news. You can take in a huge breath. Exhale and then relax (not quite all the way perhaps but mostly..) She's going to be taken care of. (And yes, travel may be a bit more challenging, but we live in a mostly imperfect world.)

Seriously, I'm glad that you've gotten things at least somewhat in order.

>127 haydninvienna: Oh, that is excellent news. I hope you find a way to get there via mass transit so you can read going there and back. On the upside maybe the new place being a little more distant will force you to limit your visits to once a day so you have a little more time for self-care, which I strongly suspect you have been neglecting to some extent.

>127 haydninvienna: That's good news! I hope they give her the best care.

>127 haydninvienna: Good news, all things considered! Strength to you and Mrs H

>130 pgmcc:  — >136 hfglen: Thanks all. Another bit of good news this morning: Mrs H has been approved for an Australian old age pension. That and her small UK superannuation pension will just about cover her aged care fees. That's a huge relief.

>134 clamairy: The Brisbane urban area is huge, and both Calamvale (where I live) and Forest Lake (where the care home is) are near its southern boundary. Getting from one to the other by public transport takes at least 2 bus rides and takes over an hour (and that's on a week day when the buses run every half hour — on a weekend when they're hourly, God only knows). Still, we'll see.

Has anyone here read Dinner at the Night Library? I saw it in a list of suggestions from the Brisbane libraries website. It looks interesting but I’d prefer a view from the Pub.

>137 haydninvienna: More good news!

And now Mrs H has safely arrived at the care home. Although I saw the room yesterday, I hadn't really appreciated how much space there was. Mrs H has a couple of large armchairs that are presently cluttering up our loungeroom, and I think they'd go well in her new quarters.

>140 haydninvienna: Excellent news! I am happy for hear that.

>138 haydninvienna: I haven't heard of this book. It does look interesting, I hope you will enjoy it.

>139 Karlstar: , >141 Alexandra_book_life: Thanks!

>142 Alexandra_book_life:: I don't have the book yet. The Brisbane system has 10 copies, and none of them are available. So far I haven't put a hold in for it.

>127 haydninvienna: Huzzah! That is excellent news.

>140 haydninvienna: That's great! I wish it were closer to you, but I know you'll find a way to make it work!

>140 haydninvienna: That's good news! It'll be nice if she can have some familiar furniture in her room.

>140 haydninvienna: That's excellent, especially if she can have some familiar furniture, plus that way a visitor will have a good chair.

Not sure if it's entirely fair to count Expanding Universe: Photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope as a "book read" but I'm going to anyway. This is a big (30cm square), fat (3.5cm thick), heavy (2.5kg by my kitchen scales) utterly gorgeous art book, published by Taschen, of photographs by the Hubble Space Telescope. What is there left to say about Hubble and the wonders it has shown us? Having all of these photographs together in one place is just a little overwhelming.

There isn't much text, although there's extensive annotations on the photos. The text is given in English, German and French. A couple of quotations:

... its unexpected gift is that in addition to great science the telescope is making great art — art like nothing ever seen before.

Since what we see in these pictures are astronomical facts, the photographs cannot be considered abstract. And yet the most telling comparisons, if one steps back from the scientific treasure they represent, are to the paintings of such modern masters as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Murray Dessner, Cy Twombly, and color-field painters like Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler. Some of the star-crowded views of our own Milky Way neighborhood even evoke the light-inspired French Impressionists, and the pirouettes of spiral nebulae echo the whirling skies of Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night. To see these pictures purely as art rather than as the farthest-reaching science may be contrarian and, to scientists, close to heretical. But it is not unforgivable, and it can be deeply rewarding for those of us who have trouble wrapping our minds around the immensity of what Hubble is telling us. What modern painters have attempted is to organize the chaos of the human imagination on canvas, to create a visual, comprehensible dreamscape of the unconscious.

And of course Carl Sagan's comment that we are a way for the universe to understand itself.

One odd thought occurred to me though: some of the Hubble photographs of distant galaxies look strikingly like some of the objects briefly glimpsed near the end of the "starflight" sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey. So which of Clarke and Kubrick was the space traveller?

ETA If anyone is smitten, you can buy it direct from Taschen for the astonishingly moderate sum of US$40. Bet shipping would cost a bob or two though. (I got it from the Logan City library.)

>148 haydninvienna:
That is very interesting. Your comments made me think of two things. 1. Possibly Pollock et al were actually realist paints with futuristic vision. 2. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard. The novel contains views on the art of Pollock et al and it is very funny. Hilarious in fact.

In re the quoted comment mentioning van Gogh's "Starry Night": see today's Astronomy Picture of the Day.

>150 haydninvienna: I like that. Very nice and not something I'd have encountered without your linking to it. Thank you!

>150 haydninvienna: Cute.

>150 haydninvienna: I liked this a lot! Thank you :)

Just found a note in our mail box:

Had you noticed the barking?

>155 pgmcc: Except when he told me off through the fence, not really. There’s a couple of the nearby houses that have small dogs, but they’re not obnoxious.

>154 haydninvienna: Interesting. Does that look like a child wrote it?

Well now. Big day yesterday.

Services Australia first, for an appointment that was arranged a couple of weeks ago when things were different. Mrs H was in hospital for just on four months, most of the time as a maintenance patient (that is, being fed and generally looked after, but not actually being treated). The general rule apparently is that they will allow you five weeks as a maintenance patient on the public tab, but after that it costs A$85 a day (the figure is set under an agreement with the Australian Government, which funds public hospitals). I received a bill for about $2000, and expect another one. In the covering letter, the hospital suggested we enquire with Services about rent assistance. That was what the appointment was intended to be for. But now Mrs H has a government pension with a rent assistance component, so the original need for the appointment has disappeared.

However, here's where another quirk in the system popped up. Turns out that if you get an Australian government pension, and your circumstances are such that you may be eligible for a British pension, you are legally obliged to apply for it. I didn't know that. I don't have a problem with doing so except for one small thing: I mentioned above that I am Mrs H's administrator and guardian, under an order of the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal. I've had enough grief from British banks about that order that I really don't want to sign a UK pension application under it. British banks don't know what to do about it (although the National Health Service pension administrator didn't have a problem).

BUT: The letter giving approval of Mrs H's pension had attached to it a form which you can fill out and Services Australia will then apply to the UK Department of Work and Pensions on your behalf! So I did that, and we'll see what happens.

Next to IKEA for a small shelf unit which I wanted for a particular specific purpose. I have now bought stuff from IKEA in four countries, and I've had a love-hate relationship with them all that time. Choose carefully and there's good stuff to be had (there's a reason why they sell literally millions of BILLY bookcases). But oh, the wandering around trying to find something even if you know exactly what you want and can use the in-store system to discover its location ... anyway, I got my shelf and then had to find my car. That IKEA is in a big homewares mall, and the car park is underneath. By the time I re-emerged, I'd become rather disoriented and Apple Maps seemed to have forgotten where the car was. So I wandered around the carpark for a while, eventually found my wheels, and went home for lunch.

After lunch, off to the care community to visit Mrs H and return some forms to them. That was fine except that the person I needed to see was in a staff meeting so I had to wait for a bit.

Finally, late in the afternoon, on the bus into South Bank for another concert. I think I'll do a separate post about that.

Isn't it wonderful to be a retired gentleman of leisure?

The concert: in the QPAC concert hall again. The Australian Chamber Orchestra again, with a program that included Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, which I have loved ever since I first heard it, probably more than 50 years ago.

The idea of the program was to tell a story about the Fantasia and its influence on English music. It started with a "mixtape" of small bits of music that had some connection with the Fantasia or the theme it was based on, including a song by Kate Bush, and the 11th Variation from Elgar's "Enigma" variations. (The connection was said to have been that Elgar conducted the first performance of the Fantasia, in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910. According to Wikipedia, that's not so, but Elgar was certainly there, because the Fantasia was followed by the first performance of Elgar's oratorio The Dream of Gerontius.)

The first half ended with a concerto by a composer called Garth Knox, supposedly a setting to music of Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It was commissioned for this concert series by the ACO. I don't see it becoming a mainstay of the repertoire, somehow. Noises. Bits of the poem read aloud, although not enough of it to make sense if you aren't already familiar with it. Lots of stage business (at one point, the violist/speaker has a violin slung round his neck, like the mariner's albatross). No, just no. I really, really don't want to sound like an old fogey, but this really is the musical equivalent of a shark in formaldehyde. I don't know what Tognetti¹ & Co were smoking when they commissioned this, but i wish they'd stop. I noticed that the woman who had been sitting beside me didn't reappear after the interval.

After the interval though, all was forgiven. A little string symphony by one Elizabeth McConchy: pleasant enough but not memorable. An "Elegy for Viola, String Quartet and String Orchestra" by Herbert Howells, whom I've at least heard of. And then the Fantasia in all its beautiful, unearthly glory. The ACO doing what it does best: being one of the finest small orchestras in the world. ETA the performance got a standing ovation, and deserved it.

On the way home, of course, I misread my bus connection and ended up having to call a cab. But hey, that's life.

And in all of this, my knee still hurts and I've put my back out. Getting old sucks, but it's still better than the alternative.

Later in the year, the ACO is doing a program that's just the last three Mozart symphonies. Not missing that one if I can help it.

¹ Richard Tognetti, longtime Artistic Director of the ACO.

>154 haydninvienna: That was nice of them!

>158 haydninvienna: >159 haydninvienna: That's a couple of busy days, I hope your back isn't too bad.

"Isn't it wonderful to be a retired gentleman of leisure?" When people ask me what I do with my time, I tell them I drive people around to appointments. Which unfortunately is too true.

>158 haydninvienna:
Retirement is very busy.

>159 haydninvienna:
I have noticed a trend about concerts advertising very popular classical pieces; the piece you buy the ticket to hear is always at the end and some contemporary weird stuff is in the first half of the concert. Have you noticed this on occasion?

I hope your knee and back get some relief soon.

>162 pgmcc: I had almost exactly the same thought last night. Silly in a way — after all, they've already got your money — unless they actually want you to hear the "weird stuff", which TBF I sometimes do enjoy. But that Gavin Knox concerto was just so weird.

I can remember only one previous occasion that I've reacted as strongly as that to a performance and it wasn't to the music. It was at the Australian Festival of Chamber Music one year. You are of course familiar with J S Bach's Goldberg Variations, which is a set of 30 variations on a theme, for harpsichord or another keyboard instrument. Every year at AFCM they had one night which was devoted to Bach, and this time it was the Goldberg Variations, but not quite as we all know and love it. The performers were Mahan Isfahani, a well-regarded harpsichordist, and James Crabb, who is as far as I know the only practitioner of the "classical accordion" (and long may he remain so).¹ Isfahani and Crabb played the variations in turn, and Isfahani played his turns alternately on the harpsichord and piano. My thought: Just silly.Where's the bar?

¹ Here (scroll down): https://screenrant.com/gary-larsons-funniest-heaven-hell-far-side-comics/

ETA I've just been looking over the AFCM program for this year (it will start at the end of this month) and it's much more from the trad chamber music repertoire. The Goldberg Variations are there again, but in a much more sensible arrangement for string trio.

>163 haydninvienna:

I take it you are referring to the accordian cartoon. :-)

I quite like a well played accordian.

My hypothesis about the weird/contemporary music being at the front end of a concert was born when I attended a concert in the Whitla Hall in Belfast years ago. It was Holts' Planet Suite. However, that was in the second half. The first half was some random arrangement of notes on various instruments that we had to sit through if we wanted to hear The Planets. The Planets was performed beautifully with a great effect from choir singing in the foyer with the voices wafting up two flights of stairs to the two galleries and drifting in through the main doors into the body of the hall. It was impossible to work out where the voices were coming from. It was very effective.

Did you see how I cleverly avoided your comment "You are of course familiar ". :-)

I will become familiar with it, but not necessarily the variation you described.

>158 haydninvienna: >159 haydninvienna:

Busy days indeed. I hope your knee and back will get better.

I chuckled at your "the musical equivalent of a shark in formaldehyde". Some modern pieces of music are exactly like that :D I am glad that the concert was good despite that.

Re the note pictured in #153: I met the little dog this afternoon. I was coming in as dad and the 2 kids and dog were going out for walkies, so I assured them that the pooch wasn't a problem. I let him sniff me and gave him some scritches, and we're mates now. He really is awfully cute.

>164 pgmcc: from choir singing in the foyer with the voices wafting up two flights of stairs: exactly as Holst wanted it.

>165 Alexandra_book_life: If Peter can do it so can I: I take it you caught who I was referring to with the shark and formaldehyde.

Back's better today and I at least managed to get my washing done.

>166 haydninvienna: I prefer balloon dogs to sharks in formaldehyde :D He he.

(What would be the musical equivalent of a balloon dog?)

>163 haydninvienna: You are of course familiar with J S Bach's Goldberg Variations, which is a set of 30 variations on a theme, for harpsichord or another keyboard instrument. Every year at AFCM they had one night which was devoted to Bach, and this time it was the Goldberg Variations, but not quite as we all know and love.

Can I just say how nice it is that you assume (as part of the natural order) that we are all quite as knowledgeable and refined in our tastes as you? I'm more in the Eliza Doolittle class of culture ("I washed my face and hands befor I come, I did!) but I do learn from what you share.

>168 jillmwo: I forgot to wash my face and hands before I sat down to comment!

This group is great for all of the differing experiences and perspectives, I learn quite a lot here.

>168 jillmwo: Well, of course! Don't we all have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Western high culture ... maybe not.

Anyway the Goldberg Variations were one of Bach's very few commissioned works (possibly the only one). The commission was from Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling, who was ill and often suffered from insomnia, and sought some soothing harpsichord music, to be played by his harpsichordist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, to help him sleep. He paid Bach with "a golden goblet filled with 100 Louis d'or".

Nowadays it's often played on the piano. Here's a piano version, played by András Schiff. And a harpsichord version by Andreas Staier. Make sure you have some time available for either: the Schiff performance is about an hour and a quarter, the Staier an hour and twenty minutes.

Of course that 100 louis d'or sent me down another rabbit hole. Assuming we're talking of the louis d'or of Louis XV, the coin contained 0.2405 troy ounces of gold. Therefore, 100 louis d'or represented 24.05 troy ounces of gold, worth at today's values US$98,590, £74,600 or €86,543.

Just made a discovery that I probably didn't need.

There are 3 universities based in Brisbane. Griffith University, which is only a bus ride away, allows members of the public to join, and borrow from, its library ...

>171 haydninvienna: Jackpot!!!

>171 haydninvienna:
Score!

>171 haydninvienna: More library books! Nice to have more options.

>171 haydninvienna: Fantastic!

>171 haydninvienna: That is a tremendous and wonderful resource! Lucky, lucky you to have access.

I went to visit Mrs H yesterday and met this fellow in the car park:
.

He's a brush turkey (not closely related to the North American turkey). Brush turkeys are megapodes, an order of birds that must still be fairly close to their dinosaur ancestors — they raise their chicks by a dominant male building, essentially, a compost heap and then his harem lay their eggs in it. As the heap decays, it generates heat that keeps the eggs warm until they hatch. The chicks hatch fully feathered and can fly as soon as their feathers are dry.

He showed no fear of me and the car, just watched me a bit and kept scratching. I must have been no more than 2 metres or so from him when I took the picture (the red triangle at the bottom is the front edge of the car's bonnet/hood). Apparently they're one of the birds that has adapted well to human beings and their well-mulched gardens, and are now fairly common in the outskirts of Brisbane.

Wow! That is so cool. Never heard of these guys and so thanks for the fascinating info!

>177 haydninvienna: Great photo! He looks as interested in you as you were in him.

>177 haydninvienna: Great picture and thanks for all of the information. It looks a little hostile?

>177 haydninvienna:
That is quite amazing.

>177 haydninvienna: What a cool photo! I've never heard of these birds, thanks a lot for all the information :)

>177 haydninvienna: What an extraordinary bird. I find it interesting that he wasn't terribly worried about the physical distance between the two of you. I think like >180 Karlstar:, I wonder how much he'd be willing to seriously tolerate. Wikipedia indicates that they can really fly. But do they fly more short distances (like the average chicken hopping kind of thing) or are they capable of longer flights?

>177 haydninvienna: That's a great photo, and fascinating information about their habits. Very dino-like indeed!

>178 Bookmarque:  — >184 Sakerfalcon: Thanks all. I sort of knew such birds existed but I'd never seen one before.

>183 jillmwo: They're about the size of a chicken, and are built like one except for the long legs. Given their build and that their habitat is scrubland and forest, I'd guess that their flying is limited to getting up off the ground to escape a predator. Apparently the adult birds defend their nests: Wikipedia notes that goannas often have wounds on their tails inflicted by scrub turkeys.

>177 haydninvienna: Fascinating! What a neat bird.

I haven't been reading enough: Life has tended to get in the way. I'll give a hat-tip to You Don't Have to Have a Dream by the Australian comedian Tim Minchin (good advice; worth the time I spent reading it), and today, Thinking in Pictures by Michael Blastland. I've encountered Blastland before: I read his The Hidden Half : how the world conceals its secrets back in 2021.

Thinking in Pictures was good enough that I'd like to buy a copy. Blastland's general line in is how to think about stuff. He's considered a number of books on "rationality" and critical thinking and taken the idea a step further, into "how do we know what is actually rational?", taking critical thinking beyond just reasoning. Hat-tips to a number of people I respect: Steven Pinker, Montaigne Sarah Bakewell, Gerd Gigerenzer, Daniel Kahnemann.

>187 haydninvienna: Both those books sound interesting.

>187 haydninvienna: What @pgmcc said.

Life's Little Mysteries department (series of 3,755): Mrs H expressed a desire for some books, and her taste is for thrillers such as James Patterson and Kathy Reichs. I spent most of this morning driving around the local charity shops trying to find some. Result: one James Patterson. One! That came from a shop where we've bought quite a few by him in the past. Is someone going around the local charity shops buying up the works of James P? I even asked a woman in that shop who was stocking shelves what had become of them and she suggested that people had bought them all. (I had been wondering if somebody had decided to dump them.)

Reading again. This time it's a re-read: At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell. I first read this back in 2020, and I thought it was great then. It's still great.

I found that copy in an unexpected place (I can't find my own copy at present) — in the Inala public library. Inala is a suburb at the extreme south-west of Brisbane. When I was growing up, Inala was, shall we say, not a great place to live. Now it seems to have come up in the world, although pockets of "old Inala" are still visible. I popped into the library on the way back from visiting Mrs H a week or so ago, and found At the Existentialist Cafe staring at me.

Inala today is interesting in another way: the area seems to be the centre of Brisbane's Vietnamese community. As often happens, Brisbane's immigrant communities tend to sort themselves into areas: where I live is in the Chinese area, and so on. But it never seems to be exclusive: where I live is substantially Chinese, but there's a significant Indian presence as well. No-one seems to be complaining.

And something I found while searching for novels for Mrs H: The Novels of Charles Williams by Thomas Howard. I found this in one of the charity shops. Given that the author is a professor of English in a seminary, I expect quite a bit of theology in this one.

A bit of light amusement with a twist: Love Voltaire Us Apart by Julia Edelmann. Relationship advice as might have been given by philosophers. IIRC I took a BB on this from Sarah Bakewell (see #191), and there's quite a bit of purported Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in there.

>192 haydninvienna: That's quite the amusing title.