Good for the Gardens ....

Today the sky is lightening up a little here in Brisbane, and we are so far not badly affected by floods, so I can take a deep breath and be somewhat philosophical about the recent never ending downpour.
 

In The Shrew's garden, apart from the frogs mentioned in the previous post (yes, the tadpoles are coming on nicely, thanks)  there are quite a few things that love the rain.

Here are some of them:

the self-sown pumpkin vine,

the ginger curcuma roseoana, with its beautiful velvety leaves, (and the dracaena, behind it)

and the red cage fungus, clathrus ruber, otherwise known as the basket stinkhorn. I found out why it has this name when I took its photo .... . you can see more about this weird and wonderful fungus here.

"I think the true gardener, the older he grows, 

should more and more develop 

a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit."  

~Reginald Farrer, In a Yorkshire Garden, 1909

The Gift that Keeps On Giving

THE SMILING DONOR : Green Tree Frog, Litoria caerulea  Pavel German  © Australian Museum

here

Whew, that's Christmas over for another year - apart from the hungry cries of retailers who have forgotten which Dickens book they are supposed to be in. No, sorry,it's not 'Oliver Twist' (please sir I want some more) except that they forgot to say 'please',  but the message of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' that they should be keeping in mind.

If you look here you'll find a poem called December 26 about the things that Santa forgot, on the wonderful American Public Media Writer's Almanac page.

But this year my favourite present was a generous dollop of frog-spawn, kindly left for me on Christmas Eve by a visiting frog.

She must have known that my goldfish recently went to the Great Weedy Pond In The Sky ... already I can see the eggs changing from fullstops into tiny commas ...

...  and 'I think there's something in that for all of us, don't you?'

All I have to say about Christmas 2010

Holy Meerkat Family!

O.K. I was going to post a photo of a woman having hysterics in a shopping mall,
but I couldn't get anyone to come close enough to hold the camera.

So, anticipating next Year's New Year's resolutions, 
I have resolved to let my nice side shine through. 

So here's the sweetest thing you'll get from me until ... oh, quite some time, probably.

See more meerkats and make them your own at    http://www.etsy.com/shop/niftyknits 

Something to say: Glenn Gould

I went recently to see 'Genius Within', a moving and profoundly engaging documentary about this fascinating artist.

Despite perhaps reaching less far than his heart-breaking music, his incisive remarks about art certainly merit revisiting by those of us who like to write, among others.

Here's a sample... in this excellent video by pOlyphOny , whose work can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/p0lyph0ny

Outspoken Australian Woman made a Saint

That's Mary MacKillop, now known as St Mary of the Cross, sculpted by John Elliott in St Stephen's Cathedral, Brisbane.

Not an inappropriate name, given her history and the attempts of perverted and conniving priests to make this courageous and unswerving woman go away - but when did the Catholic Church ever demonstrate any great regard for the work of women or the welfare of children?

Here's what Ynes Sanz wrote about her in  Fanny the Flying Housewife & other stories, 2009.

Two Marys

Mary Helen MacKillop, also known as Saint Mary of the Cross 1842 — 1909

i St Stephen's Cathedral, Brisbane

come away

from the frankincense

and chasubles

in a dim-lit chapel

stone walls chisel-ticked

enclose a stillness

inhale this new scent

calling up old linen

and young women's dreams

behind a rood-screen

of scribbled tree slabs

is a sanctuary

imbued with the spirit

of camphor laurel

one hundred years in growing

a figure looms from a plinth

no-eyes becoming eyes

under your grateful gaze

woman and tree both

wild and problematical

stout beauty at their heart

light a candle for her

and see in its flicker

Mary striding on

ii St Francis' Church Melbourne

For the poet's daughter, artist, 1970 —

Here Friends,

we see the Blesséd Mary,

aloft against a creamy ground,

flowers at her feet,

in the niche where we placed her,

waiting for the day

that she becomes a saint.

You may be surprised

at her meek demeanour

and downcast eyes,

but we like to remember

a compliant heart

may be found even

inside a rebel breast.

We see in her statue

a symbol of Women's

Work in worship.

See the fine detail

made by our master sculptor.

Note the work in the gilded crucifix

woodgrained rosary and

simple prayer book

so skilfully painted as if worn with constant use.

What's that you say?

The statue's painter

was a woman?

No I was not aware,

but come, let me show you,

head-high to your right,

another of the Church's

treasured works of art.

 
© Ynes Sanz 2009

Declaiming: No. 13 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Tempted to give it a try?  Here's a suitable specimen - but it's up to you to find the appropriate wind-swept battlement or tragic riverbank ...

Oooh to be McGonagall's Lovechild

for William Topaz McGonagall

Oooch! To be the lovechild of William McGonagall and Julia A. Moore,

Those idiosyncratic and misunderstood souls who lived in times they would doubtless have referred to as yore:

Yes! The Sweet Singer of Michigan and the bard of the beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay

Whose reputations are regrettably tinged with derision to this very day.

As to scansion, it is true that their grasp could be said to equal that of a wet cat on a slate rooftop

As if, in building a head of poetic steam, they found it too painful to stop.

With no small cost to euphony and a regrettable tendency, most of the time

To abandon cadence for the sake of a half-broken rhyme,

But never let it be said in this fair land that the passion that flowed in their pages

Failed to engorge the imagination and mesmerise the mind, even of hitherto unswayable sages.

And so I proclaim to the world that, on this basis alone,

These two remarkable literary nightingales should be shown

To thrones of glory flanking the enrobed marbly thighs of sacred Euterpe the muse,

While the rest of us, fettered and unworthy, can only shake our heads and kneel at their shoes.

© Ynes Sanz Brisbane 2010

Bats

A suitable subject, you might think, for a mad old bag. This picture shows a Black Flying Fox (pteropus alecto), otherwise known as the fruit bat.

These beautiful animals leave their safe roosts up in tall trees to visit gardens (see previous post) and street trees, where they will feed and squabble. They search for their food of fruit, blossoms and nectar, using sharp eyes and good sense of smell.

                                                            night walk

                                                           fruit bat beats the air

                                                          with drum skin wings

I often see a stream of them trailing high over the suburbs against the dusk sky when I'm out walking with the hound.

You can find out more about the bats of Brisbane and the people who care for them here: at Bat Care Brisbane.

August is a cruel month

I never could easily bring myself to cut back and prune like the garden experts say, and having inherited a garden with some injudicious planting by a previous occupant, those 'nice little hedge plants' are now rearing horrors 6 metres tall with hidden spines and yellow berries that seem to have a purgative effect on flying foxes. 'Sheena's Gold!' Hah!  If I ever get my hands on that Sheena I'll ... but I digress.

The plants I have put in have mostly stayed amenable, (with the exception of an olive tree which I allowed to grow to some 5 metres high, in a moment of inattention brought on by my expectations that it would stay looking like those charming specimens that adorn Greek hillsides - and this in sub-tropical Queensland!)

Fortunately, even at my advanced age, I am capable of learning from my mistakes. I have found that I can more readily hack the poor things about if I don't have to brutally squash all of the trimmings into the garden bag.

So my reward for hard-hearted horticulture?  A lovely display of grevillea prunings!

Flashmobbing: No. 12 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Forget all those people suddenly gathering, unheralded, to walk invisible dogs, manifest like zombies or pay tribute to some unsavoury dead pop star... forget those people in undies on that commuter train somewhere in deepest America, who thankfully disappear as quickly as they came ...  the real Flash Mob originated with wicked women convicts at the 'Female factory' in Tasmania, Australia :-  

'The Flash Mob was a sub-culture of the female convicts, most noticeably in the female factories.  
Bethell referred to the Flash Mob in his writings about the LAUNCESTON FEMALE FACTORY  in The Story of Port Dalrymple.

There was, however, a hard core of those who were irreclaimable.  They were known as the "Flash Mob" and, if rumour spoke true, owing to the negligence of turnkeys they often slipped out of the factory at night to roam the town.  However badly these women behaved, little could be done to punish them.  Arthur had abolished the spiked iron collar, common in Sorell's day, and had substituted a yellow garb and the shearing of the hair.  This punishment, though unpopular, had little effect.

James Bonwick, in his Curious Facts of Old Colonial Days, gives us a Hogarthian word-picture of these women, of the horrors of the sea-voyage and of their moral abandonment.  In the factories, he says, the atmosphere was polluted by the fumes of tobacco-smoke and the walls echoed with the shrieks of passion, peals of foolish laughter and oaths of common converse.  

 

OK all you Mad Old Bags out there (that's MOBs right?) - no need to act as if we're still prisoners, maybe it's time to get out there and galvanise the gals into a bit of whatever takes your fancy ... mass yellow garb wearing?  foolish laughing? Perhaps reclaiming the spiked collar and shearing of the hair might be taking things a leetle bit too far ...better steer clear of the oaths too, we don't want to get arrested. 

Just remember the Shrew says 'if you can't keep it nice, keep it legal .' (These ARE Harmless Hobbies, after all.) 

The wonderful illustration (above) gives you a bit of an idea. It's from the MyWord Tasmania site. Why not go there and purchase your own print and get your official yellow convict garb too!

A Great day for the Girrls!

CONGRATULATIONS JULIA GILLARD!  FIRST AUSTRALIAN WOMAN PRIME MINISTER!

The Common Shrew says to all our daughters and grand-daughters ' I told you girls can do anything! '

Meanwhile, the Wiz says 'I just can't put my paw on it, but I really like the look of that woman!'

Badger-fondling: No. 11 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

So?   You had a better suggestion?

'Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations' *

She may not have the sweater, but take it from the Shrew, Ynes Sanz' recitation of 'sixty-nine' comes close!

After all, she was reading *Ferlinghetti in the fifties when you weren't maybe even a twinkle in your bread-stashin' Daddy's eye ...

So get yourself to Riverbend for Poetry on the deck June 22!



You can make a booking here.

Bloomsday 2010

The Common Shrew is proud to celebrate her birthday on Bloomsday.





























Here's a photo of young Molly Bloom, in the shade of an olive tree in the Alameida Gardens,
Gibraltar, rushing home late to a scolding after an assignation under the fig trees.

Here's to embracing life and here's to us all on such a day in the writer's year.

Poetry on the Deck, Riverbend Books Bulimba

Come out and support your local poets!

night after night i have written poetry for you
on your typewriter
and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet
comes out of his hole when it is done
and reads it and sniffs at it
he is jealous of my poetry
he used to make fun of me when we were both human
he was a punk poet himself
and after he reads it he sneers
and then he eats it

-archy the cockroach - Don Marquis,archy and mehitabel

Queensland Poetry Festival is proud to partner with Queensland Writers Centre and Riverbend Books to present the Riverbend Poetry Series, A State of Writing initiative.

Now in its fifth year, the Riverbend Poetry Series has inspired, entertained and delighted audiences again in 2010.

The date for your diary: Tuesday June 22

Queensland Poetry Festival, QLD Writers Centre & Riverbend Books are proud to present the final event in the Riverbend Poetry Series for 2010. Join us on the Riverbend deck as we launch the 2010 QLD Poetry Festival Program with readings from three of this year's programmed artists: award winning poet Ynes Sanz, rhyme-spitting word-dynamo Darkwing Dubs and the soulfully elegant Suzanne Jones.

And as this is the final event for 2010, we are going out with a bang, launching ‘A Million Bright Things' CD which captures some of the best readings and performances from QPF 2009. To launch the CD, members of the QPF Committee and some of the featured local talent will read a selection of poems from the CD. Indeed, this is going to be a gig not to be missed!

Bookings are essential and can be made by contacting Riverbend Books. Ticket price includes sushi and a glass of wine. All events begin at 6.30pm.

Date: Tuesday 22 June

Location: Riverbend Books, 193 Oxford St. Bulimba

Time: Doors open for the event at 6pm for a 6:30pm start

Tickets: $10 available through Riverbend Books and include sushi and complimentary wine. To purchase tickets, call Riverbend Books on (07) 3899 8555 (07) 3899 8555 or book online at www.riverbendbooks.com.au

These events are always hugely popular, so book early to avoid disappointment!

Nigel's Nightie: No. 2 in an occasional series entitled 'Smokin' Jackets'

OK I know there's some prestidigitation involved in this peignoir but the chance of a guest appearance from celebrity like Nigel from Life with Dogs was just too tempting!

The Wiz had been hoping for a green velvet number with a cravat, but a dog can dream (as long as it doesn't involve too much howling and those annoying running movements with the legs !)

Wiza warmer : No.1 in an occasional series entitled 'Smokin' Jackets'.

'You can judge a society by the way it treats its animals' - Gandhi.






















.. and you can sort of judge our society by the way some of its people treat some of their animals.

In this occasional series, you're invited to admire some of the best of them, in all their sartorial splendour ... or was that silliness? Leave a comment if you want to submit a photo of your best-dressed greyhound in an excellent bed-jacket, and the Shrew will put the best on the blog.

NB. No 'fancy dress' (and try to keep the fluff bunnies out of those bedrooms shots, she may be 'Common' but an old girl has her standards!)

May Day 2010: The words of an unknown worker and unionist

WE HAVE FED YOU ALL FOR A THOUSAND YEARS

We have fed you all for a thousand years
And you hail us still unfed
Though there’s never a dollar of all your wealth
But marks the workers dead
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool
But if blood be the price of all your wealth
Good God we have paid in full

There is never a mine blown skyward now
But we’re buried alive for you
There’s never a wreck drifts shoreward now
But we are its ghastly crew
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth
Good God we have paid it in

We have fed you all for a thousand years
For that was our doom, you know
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago
You have taken our lives, and our babies and wives
And we’re told it’s your legal share
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth
Good God we bought it fair.

Juggling: No. 10 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Juggling is Good For You.

Don't just take my word for it, though - have a look here.
Now that brain training by on-line problem solving has been trashed, it's apparently back to the asbestos mitts for those of us who want to keep the synapses supple ... but I think those bad grey socks should definitely go.

STOP PRESS: BRISBANE POET SHORTLISTED FOR ABR POETRY PRIZE

Announced in the April 2010 edition of the Australian Book Review, this year's five
shortlisted poets' names and entries can be found on the ABR website.

The winner will be announced in the May edition.

ABR Shortlisted Brisbane Poet Ynes Sanz.

Poppies in the Gardens

Click to see details of this special event in the symbolic Freedom Wall pavilion at

Brisbane's Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

A bit of a Song and Dance

If you're in Brisbane, you might consider the invitation on this flyer ....


A few clicks on the image will let you see the fine print ... and the splendid dancer.

Thespianism: No. 9 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Some of us were in Alice in Wonderland before Johnny Depp was born.....

Seen here, the Chislehurst Road Infants' School, Orpington, Kent, England
performance, c. 1954.

CAST LIST:
Gail Foster - Alice
Marian Wiseman - The March Hare
Leslie Adams - The Dormouse
and David Something-or-other that I have forgotten (the teachers only shouted his first name) as The Mad Hatter

No green screen for us, it was one night only and if you froze you were finished.

Don't make 'em like that any more.

Sainthood, Statues and the 'Patience' of a Saint

Mary MacKillop has been announced as Australia's first saint by the Vatican.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation Broadcast: 19/02/2010
Reporter: Ticky Fullerton

Transcript
TICKY FULLERTON, PRESENTER: The Vatican announced a short while ago that Mary McKillop will become Australia's first saint. Pope Benedict revealed tonight that she will be canonised at a ceremony in October in Rome.Mary McKillop founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1866. She is revered by Catholics for setting up schools in remote country areas and working with children, female prisoners and prostitutes.

PAUL COLLINS, HISTORIAN & CATHOLIC COMMENTATOR: I have described her as a great Australian sheila. Now, that's perhaps a rather crude phrase, but nevertheless, I think it sums up the type of person that she is: a practical person, a person who saw a real social need, who saw the children in the bush particularly needed education and culture and she organised a group of sisters to be able to meet that need.

TICKY FULLERTON: She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995. Last year the Vatican accepted that blessed Mary had performed a miracle involving the healing of a person suffering from cancer. Mary McKillop had a controversial life and at one stage was excommunicated from the Church for allegedly disobeying authorities. However, she continued to spend her life caring for the poor.

The Common Shrew says that's as may be. You can read what a poet of her acquaintance had to say on the subject on the occasion of her canonisation at the post for 11 August 2010.

The Poetry of the Winter Olympics

No I don't just mean the poetry, I mean the poetry. Up there at the opening ceremony! Acclaimed by that huge crowd and seen the world over, Canadian poet Shane L. Koyczan, the nicest guy anyone could wish to meet, a man who can reduce even the most hard-boiled old bag to tears with a line, as I know from personal experience, having mc'd his gig at a Queensland Poetry Festival!

Poetry - on the world stage !!

and you can hear that poem - right here


and here, from his website, at http://www.houseofparlance.com/koyczan/index.html is another small example of the reason why

6:59 AM

I’ve been told

that people in the army
do more by 7:00 am
than I do
in an entire day

but if I wake
at 6:59 am
and turn to you
to trace the outline of your lips
with mine
I will have done enough
and killed no one
in the process.

- Shane Koyczan, Visiting Hours

and there was kd lang, too singing Leonard Cohen, and suddenly I thought, yeah, all right, I DO belong in this world!

... and so I say to the vast majority who perplex and perturb my life day after day, in the immortal words of Shane L. Koyczan:

"stop it
write me a poem to make me happy"

Well, hit me with a hot ukulele!

I did warn you that an attack of ukuleles was imminent!

The Euphonious Ukulele : No. 8 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Well thank goodness the end-of-year kerfuffle and dust has settled.

It's time to get down to the serious pursuit of idleness again.
Not mere half-assed insouciant idleness, but idleness enhanced
by a rich tapestry of hobbies, that is.

And so for your delectation I bring you the ukulele, an instrument
named for 'a jumping flea'.

You have not heard the last of this, dear reader.

Meanwhile, to get you used to the idea, you may like to
contemplate this 1916 postcard, sourced from http://www.janesoceania.com