Acerebel’s blog

Just got back from a week in Tasmania with my sister and her family. It was delightful!

I live about an hour-and-a-half flight away from her, her partner and my two nephews (and the lovely girlfriend of the elder boy), and I really don't get to see them often enough, given that short journey.

I'm always made so welcome. I spend most of my time alone, so to see people's faces light up when they see me arrive at the airport is very gratifying and good for my well-being in ways that no drug high could ever match.

We don't do much when we're together. Theirs is a busy household, with everyone in it occupied with careers, study, lessons of various kinds, computer games, the dog (Monty) and just normal life. It's just what I want though - to slot into the daily activity: a bit of brekkie, conversation, walks with the dog (not as much this time, 'cause it was so blustery with the equinoxal winds blowing hard in Hobart), a trip to the museum/art gallery (which my brother-in-law always ensures I get each trip), a bit of shopping, cooking together, movies in the evening.

A great break from my usual life, and I hope that I've made it clear to them all how precious is the hospitality and affection they show me.

Long silence, finally broken! I've been preparing for months now to participate in SALA, the South Australian Living Artists Festival 2008; now it's begun and my art's out there, on show and ... for sale!

I can sit back and breathe a clear lungful for a bit.

My work is being exhibited at Snooze Mile End, Homemakers Centre, Mile End, South Australia; and at the Extra Newsagency, King William Road, Hyde Park, South Australia.

These venues might sound to be a bit odd, but one of the real attractions of SALA is that it brings art out of the gallery and into the community. There are hundreds of venues where art of all kinds - painting, prints, digital works, multimedia, sculpture, craft, photography and more - are being exhibited to people in the locations many of us visit each day: the local business spaces.

I also have a self-published book for sale, called Elsewhere, through the wonders of Blurb, featuring 70+ images of mine. The book stands alone as a coffee-table art book, but also is a catalogue from which people can order prints. Check out the first 15 pages of it as a Blurb bookshop preview.

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Well, I guess we could get hold of his rifle now. Charlton Heston. 

Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob

Lee Siegel

ABC Radio in Australia had an interview with Lee Spiegel, author of Against the Machine: being human in in the age of the electronic mob.

I haven't read the book (yet), but the interview is very interesting.

I've (so far) found the Internet to be a very pleasant place. I've been treated kindly and with respect, bar one bad exchange. I wonder if I'm an exception or not, or is my experience related to where I hang out, my middle-agedness, my interest in things other than popularity, celebrity, shock, sexual interaction and so on?

Read the article and let me know what you think and how your experience of being a Netizen compares (but only, of course, if you want to!).

What's the one thing you're most neurotic about?

My mental health.

Show us who you would want as a guest if you were a talk show host.

I'm sure this isn't an original choice, and I should probably be choosing someone of much greater gravitas, but ... I've always wanted to meet Dorothy Parker. I reckon she'd be a real hoot - full of acerbic quick-wittedness and spicy anecdote.

"For her epitaph she suggested, 'Excuse my dust'."

If we're talking about people who are still alive, I think Aaron Sorkin, the writer of so much (if not all) of The West Wing series, would make a fascinating guest. Love or hate the series, you have to admire the coherence of the artistic vision behind it. I normally steer clear of 'Hollywooditis', but Mr Sorkin seems more about craft than celebrity.

PS I couldn't figure out how to put their images in this post and, besides, it felt like stealing to take the images off the Net. There are photos of them behind the links of their names, though.

I subscribe to an ezine from Cagle Cartoons. Today's featured topic is China and Tibet.

I think it's worth a look; editorial cartoonists mostly from the US, but not entirely, give their take on the subject.

What's the most valuable thing you've ever had stolen?

Time.

An intriguing site that should while away quite a few hours, especially if you right-click and open in new window to see each and every entry! One hundred young photographers posted images they'd taken of those they love - a slice-of-life, slice-of-viewpoint look into the worlds of others.

The Quotable Woman: The First 5,000 Years

I'm not quite sure why numbered things interest me. I surely do love a good list, though! And I'm a fan of collections of other people's thoughts.

I bought myself a book recently, second-hand, called The Quotable Woman: The First 5000 Years, by Elaine T Partnow. It was so intriguing that I bought two more - one for a girlfriend and one for one of my sisters. The book contains the words of women (mostly European, mostly white, mostly non-colonised) from Salome to the very recent past - the 1990s. It's been fascinating dipping into it to discover what kinds of activities, thoughts, obsessions, politics and domestic matters concerned the distaff side throughout the centuries.

One thing I did note was a change over the years from the 1800s to today, from women being concerned primarily with things outside themselves (slavery, the poverty of others, the dread of war, the state of marriage as a social institution (the economics and power issues), education and professional life) to their increasing concentration on things within themselves (feelings, mental health, self-assertion, self-esteem and so on). I'm not entirely sure why this swing has taken place over a 200-year-period; perhaps because in the developed world, with high literacy, relative economic stability and prosperity for many, and more personal freedom entrenched in law ... perhaps these things really have given us the chance to be more self-examinatory. I wonder if the women in the undeveloped and developing worlds are still talking about the matters our forebears were speaking and writing about 200 years ago?

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure

Larry Smith

Another book that's taken my fancy, and which I've just ordered, is called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure, from the Smith web site. People were invited to contribute their memoirs, written in only six words. There are some beauties: Catholic school backfired. Sin is in! from Nikki Beland; Extremely responsible; secretly longed for spontaneity from Sabra Jennings; Almost a victim of my family from Chuck Sangster; and pages more. Check it out if the thoughts of others interest you, particularly when they are pithy rather than turgid.

PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives

Frank Warren

About three or four years ago, I bought a book called Postsecret, which has drawn me back in a macabre and almost voyeuristic way ever since, causing me to dip into it periodically at unpredictable intervals. The author, Frank Warren, printed and distributed 3,000 postcards on which people were invited to write a secret that they'd never told anyone else, and mail it back anonymously to him. What Mr Warren received in return no doubt featured some unpublished dross, but it also brought some remarkably poignant pieces, all of them presented without context:

• I'm 25 and I've never been kissed. It's not that I don't want to ... just that no one else does.
• He was never that into me but I let him fake it for over a year.
• Every time I approach an overpass, I think how easy it would be  to simply turn the wheel ever so slightly to the left and find peace, at long last ...
• If I had a million dollars, I would give it all away for one more day with her like it was in the beginning.
• I don't care about recycling, but I pretend I do.
• I think my actor roommate is ugly and untalented.
• I have made six postcards, all with secrets that I was afraid to tell the one person I tell everything to, my boyfriend. This morning, I planned to mail them, but instead I left them on the pillow next to his head while he was sleeping. Ten minutes ago he arrived at my office and asked me to marry him. I said 'yes'.

Fascinating stuff, I think.