The salad? I'm a bit suspicious

Caution: Saturday night ramble ahead.

I received an email the other day -- one of those mass email 'newsletters' that I can hardly recall signing up for, if indeed I did, but can't be bothered to ditch. It's sometimes mildly interesting. Which is not a compliment I'd want thrown at my writing were I the copywriter of said newsletter, but there you go.

Yesterday, I think that copywriter was having a bad day. I can just see him (or her -- it's probably a her) thinking, "How the heck am I going to write something interesting that meets these" - waves piece of paper - "criteria?"

There was probably a meeting, in which people said things like:
- "Our demographic is showing a 3% rise in response to Spanish recipes and a 11% gain in interest-response rates to Vietnamese food", or;
- "The post-holiday season health focus is still showing strong figures (ho ho) this week, but we anticipate a tailing off after Valentine's day."


So, what we get is this:

You can win friends with salad!

Why, thank you for telling me that! Are you sure you live on the same planet as me?

Oh! Wait a minute - what's this I see?

Every recipe you are presenting includes large lumps of meat, bacon, or crackling. Vietnamese beef salad sounds nice (I must be one of those 11%), and so does the pumpkin, feta and bacon. Something healthy? How about a nice salad: Warm salad of pork sausages, potatoes and bacon with mustard vinaigrette? It looks nice. And perhaps you're right - if this is salad, perhaps you can win a friend or two.

- Failing that, the dog will always love you.

Friends, I bring you 'salad':

(click image to see a larger view)

Isn't it just a marvel of copywriting?
Pass the chocolate buttons.

Red spot of hope

May 2004, South Bank Centre, London. James

This has always been one of my favourite photos, partly due to the juxtaposition of the red jacket and balloon, the green weeds and the relentlessly grey environment.

James

Elegant Aussie Venetian Views

James R Jackson, Bridge at Chioggia, Venice 1907. National Gallery of Victoria.

We recently popped into the excellent Castlemaine Art Gallery and noticed a magazine sized catalogue for a 2005 exhibition entitled Venezia Australia - Australian Artists in Venice, 1900 - 2000.

E Phllips Fox, Venetian Boats 1906-7, National Gallery of Victoria.

These two sketches of working sail boats (long gone from Venice) and the complimentary palettes and structure particularly caught my eye.

The core of the exhibition was made up of paintings, sketches and photos from Arthur and Nora Streeton's visits to Venice. Streeton is one of my favourite Australian artists. Not so much for his painting (although I do like some of them very much), but for his draughtsmanship and sketching ability in ink, pencil and paint.

Arthur Streeton, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, with gondolas c.1908. Art Gallery of S Australia.

This lovely, carefully-worked pencil sketch was developed into a bigger painting, where the boats were 'dropped' by adjusting to a higher viewpoint. Ironically, I much prefer the pencil sketch, including the construction lines on the tower.

Not the typical Aussie abroad.

What I hadn't realised was that our Arthur was a bit of a dapper dresser, and as well as obviously being able to find St Mark's Square empty (about as possible today as Venice suddenly becoming shipshape and Bristol fashion) had a moustache that probably received more care than his brushes.

"Having emptied St Mark's Piazza, for my next trick, using only my handkerchief, I will lasso the lion on a stick. Watch closely."

You never know what you are going to discover next. Arthur Streeton's moustache and waistcoat as seen in Venice, found in Castlemaine.

Anyway, the guide has just been packed up and is to be dispatched to father one (bearded) for perusal and onward transmission to father two (unbearded) for interest...

James

We've been out and about...

Doing lots of interesting things!


This little guy is a whippet on a bicycle. He's probably going to a film society soiree, or down to the library to pick up some books that he's got on reserve. He'll stop and have a latte afterwards, whatever the case may be. He rolled up this morning on his bicycle in the sunshine, and by noon he was off to a new home, with two whippets and two slightly singed humans.

Enjoy your new home, Whippet on Wheels!

Please excuse our smoking...

...we are trying to give up.

"Smoke from the 2009 Victorian bushfires spreads over the Tasman Sea and New Zealand. The imagery was acquired by the Aqua satellite, and is at 500m resolution. The image was the MODIS picture of the day on 10 February 2009."

One bizarre measure of the current and recent Victorian bushfires is the fact that the smoke reached our trans-Tasman neighbours, the New Zealanders, as I said before, over 2,000 km (1,200 miles) away.

Photo from here, and the Wiki page is a good summary of the story as it continues to unfold.

One bit of 'good' news is that the current expectation of the death toll will be less than the 300 expected - still much greater than (for instance) the 52 killed in the 2005 London bombings. Obviously only a fool competes in disaster, but it's worth mentioning, I think, as many people overseas don't realise the severity of shock across the Australian nation.

(On a practical, quantifiable level, the Australian Parliament was suspended, currently over 500 people have been injured, one firefighter, from Canberra, killed, nearly 2,000 homes destroyed, countless cattle animals etc. and over seven and a half thousand people rendered homeless. It's on a war scale.)

And as I write, those in Queensland and New South Wales are facing weather and water problems of their own.

However the stunning generosity from within Australia and overseas has shown a big positive. If that's you, thank you.

James

What do you get when...

You mix crafters with plenty of space and a keen desire to do something for the bushfire survivors?

Answers:
- Fabric, food, and fast-action fusing. (Eh? Read on if you're not 'au fait' with fusing.)
- The hum of many sewing machines, whirring along.
- Toys, toys, books and notepads.
- and a gentle buzz of concentration.




Saturday's sewing bee was a great experience. Nikki and her friends threw open the doors at her studio, where craft spilled out into the hall and the bags of goodness were assembled.

About 50 crafters turned up in a marathon day-to-evening sewing session, and assembled 80 bags (of three different styles for different age groups), 23 t-shirts with stuff on them (this is the fusing bit: you cut out a fabric butterfly, for example, iron it to a t-shir, and sew around the edges to hold it secure), 21 hairbands and pretty hair ties, and many, many more projects part-completed and pledged back by the end of the week.


If you haven't already read here about the Rainbow Comfort Packs, they are little bags for the kids whose homes and communities have been devastated by the bushfires. The latest count says 7,000 people are homeless, and so many more are affected, with friends, family, and neighbours gone. Some will return to a house, but nothing else: a garden and landscape of ash. Schooling in strange suburbs, staying with friends. A very strange, unsettling time - whatever age you are.

So the comfort packs are meant to provide a little bit of cheer and something for the youngster to be occupied with while the reality of rebuilding sinks in. Mums and Dads and the rest of the community will have a lot to do - perhaps some colouring books and jigsaws, games and skipping ropes, will give them a breather, too. Notepads, pens and crayons, coloured paper, glue and sparkles - for crafty kids to get creative, and perhaps heal some of the grief that's washing around.

James and I had a super time, and met some lovely, inspiring women. Leah and Bronwyn, Beccasaurus and her daughter Siddie, Karen, Cathy, Kitty - and so many more new faces to meet.

Is that a BLOKE in there?? (My goodness.... didn't I have some Ikea furniture to put together....? OH - and he can design Appliqué motifs??!! Come in, Mr Tacc!!) - Nikki

James was told many times that he was brave to come along. After assembling tables, he discovered a talent for designing and cutting fabric patches to go on t-shirts (watch out Zach, you'll be wearing pirate ships, cowboy hats, cool cats and bombs before you know it!) - thus inspiring some delighted teasing.


- And I fused the fabrics to a seemingly-endless pile of donated t-shirts, passing them on to the zig-zag team for stitching, and the yo-yo fairies for embellishment. (A yo-yo is a little fabric puffed circle).


We were pleased with the day, and the crafting will continue. I'm cooking up a quilt for a craft blogger I know whose everything is gone, and there are little sewing bees popping up all over the city. I'm sure I'll be back out there on Saturday, sewing up a storm.


Don't forget - even if you are reading this from afar, there's lots you can do, starting at Handmade Help. Please go and have a look - bid on a fundraising item on ebay or Etsy, send in a recipe, make an apron.

And if you think this outpouring of help is too much, or futile - then read the open letter from a bushfire survivor. And get crafting.

Too many bushfire tales. Too few.

Last night's sunset over Melbourne. Not moisture - smoke. JDK.

There are too many stories coming out of the bushfire disaster. But for every miraculous escape there are those that had no escape. Then there's those that can't tell stories because they are too much. It's a reminder that the real world and nature doesn't provide a package warning, like those who think we can organise our world into safe compartments.

One friend (safe) writes how their granddaughter shouldn't have seen or heard the things she did while fighting to defend her house (successfully) with her father - and on the journey into town afterwards with the burnt cars and dead in them.

(The death toll has been halted at 181 for four days now, with no press comment or official update. The official estimates are still in the order of 2-300. Less than a week ago, we thought 20 was too high.)

Maybe the countryside should have a warning on it. Do people need to qualify to live there? It's clear that if you knock down the trees to clear what you decide is a reasonable firebreak, you can end up paying A$100,000 in costs and court fines - but you get your house - the only one in a 2km area. The Sheahans have a doubly bitter victory.

It's clear that we didn't do enough to stop people dying in unimaginably horrible ways - what should have been done different by who - remains open, but lots of people paid the biggest price.

Just one article among many. The Age.

On the hill, it's too soon to talk, drink or cry

Chris Johnston. February 14, 2009

Irish Maggie has lots of parties. Her pig survived the horrific fire that destroyed most of the town a week ago by digging a hole and getting in it.

...

The Kinglake CFA firefighters, 12 of whom lost their homes, saw horrible things — some of the most horrible things imaginable involving people and fire. The latest count is 39 dead up here, about 1000 homeless. A street called Pine Ridge lost 21 people. You hear stories. They tell you things but ask you not to repeat them — things about children, about the state half-alive people were in when they stumbled into view through the fire and about what happened next.

...

We already know things happened too fast in Kinglake. The wind changed and the fire gathered force up steep hills. Not bushfire but firestorm. No vegetation left, no leaves, no rustling. Dead silence.

...

But there are some facts of physics that might illustrate what really happened. Things melted. A Kinglake West potter returned to find the moulds she puts in her kiln had been destroyed through heat that was too intense. At Kinglake, part of the trailer of Glenn Dawson's truck, made of aluminium, dissolved. It's just silver rivulets on the ground now. The melting point for aluminium is 660 degrees. Glass headlights on his ute melted too — that happens about 1400 degrees.

He got the three youngest of his four kids out early in the day and saved his bluestone house, even though his fire pump melted. At one stage he edged open a sliding door to chuck water onto flames and the whole door blew off. Embers rushed in and the ridge capping on his roof exploded.

Ask him if he's lucky and he just laughs, because around his place people hid in wombat holes to survive.

...

What about the coolroom story? No one's told that one yet. Dennis Exton has a market garden. At one point 12 people sheltered in his coolroom — nothing more than a big fridge in his shed. Two had two broken ankles because they had been in a car crash in the dark, crawled into a burning paddock, then got helped up to the Extons. He had his kids, aged six and 13 months, in there too, plus their mother, while he fought the fire.

In the coolroom, no one spoke. Mr Exton was running around outside sucking air out of empty plastic bottles to keep breathing within explosions and that jet-aircraft noise everyone talks about. Inside, silence. An hour they were in there — kids, strangers, the injured.

This was going into last Sunday, the damage done. No ambulances, no police, no fire vehicles except the local ones, no way up or down the hill, no helicopters or rescue aircraft. Corpses in cars beside the road. Unimaginable horrors yet to be found. No birds in the sky.

...As the sun came up, Mr Exton heard a clanking sound coming up the road. It was a DSE fire truck, the first one he'd seen. It had no rubber on its tyres, but on it went, through the carnage.

...

Quite a few up the hill have raised Australian flags. Maybe on a piece of steel or a bit of fence or the chimney, something useless now that is all that remains of their previous life. None are at half-mast, not one. Despite everything.

What do you give people who've lost everything? It's their call.

While they decide, we can offer our hope. We need to learn from the their losses, and we can offer help. Today we got to do something worthwhile, as I'm sure Bev will describe. That made it a better day.

James