Bopping with Babushkas: No.16 in an Occasional Series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'

I Got Life

Heard this today for the first time in ages. Nothing more to say.

Zumba!

I am feeling extremely virtuous having put phase 1 of The Return in  place by going to a 1-hour Zumba class.

I managed to keep up with the class for the entire hour!

The teacher  commented that she saw me smiling so she knew I was having fun .... little did she know that as I wiped the sweat out of my eyes and my sight returned I was able to read the sign in multicoloured letters out the front of the hall.... it said

JESUS!

I couldn't have put it better myself.

This is one of the numbers we do and this is what I look like ....  not (but watch this space!)

The Joy of Words

Sadly,  'sconce' and 'anaglypta' are out the window and 'lay-flat fluming' has now been supplanted in my affections by a new piece of terminology, to whit : wippen flange.

As anyone who has labored hard to write a poem about things musical could tell you, (and quite a few people already knew but never mentioned it to me) this is the name of part of the action of a piano.

It appeals as having some potential as a term of abuse.

Apparently I'm not alone in liking these words. Have a look at these covers from what seems to have been a pretty ephemeral magazine - wippen flange covers -  or maybe it was just a construct in the artist's mind? Who knows?

I'd certainly LIKE to know ...


Here is the wippen flange in its natural habitat. Is it just me, or do they look like cute cartoon legs and feet?

'On the left is a classic example of a spinet piano wippen with plastic flange, back check, 

and jack.  This one should have a whole new wippen, not piece meal.'

(I'm glad we cleared that up - TCS)

You can find this at 'Plastic piano parts crisis', in  The Piano Owner's Survival Guide.  which in itself gives a whole new perspective on the term 'crisis'.
 
Oh, I could go on all day.

Girly Fun : No. 14 in an occasional series entitled 'Harmless Hobbies for Mad Old Bags'.

Bathing belles, including The Shrew's mother, aunts and grandmother, in the 1920s.

Since it is the New Year, The Common Shrew brings you this resolution-worthy 'Harmless Hobby'.

Apparently a traditional value in the Shrew family, having girly fun is in line with such admirable resolves as 'Not Letting Life pass one by', 'Sharing a Smile' and 'Committing Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Beauty'.

So, to carry us all bravely into 2011, 'Girly Fun' it is.

Oh, and as the photo shows, brave boys can join in too.

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

'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.

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 !)

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.

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"