Revival

A message from Brigid ....

I have been a blogger since 2005. At the height of my blogging busy-ness, I had "a small stable" of blogs on different topics: social and political commentary; desert spirituality; food; waste and ....

A few years ago I called time and ceased blogging altogether - although there was an occasional post. I had called it quits. I am an aged woman these days with a couple of serious illnesses. I am not allowed to drive. I am no longer active in organisations. I think it fair to say that I am housebound. I am active on Facebook, although I am not there as often as once I was. I have decided to embark on a re-entry into the blogging world ... beginning with The Trad Pad and, possibly, a return to my food blog, Oz Tucker. I have always used a lot of photographs on my blogs ... and I miss not being out and about with my camera.

The Trad Pad has been my blog for the lovely things of life. The controversial or political has seldom intruded. Occasionally, the spiritual has found its way in, but I kept spirituality for the blog, Desert. I don't yet know if I will revive that. I will stick pretty much to food and the lovely things of life. If I have some regularity with those two categories, I feel that I will be doing well. I hope that, with this blog new friendships can be formed and old friendships renewed; new lovelies discovered; new reflections can enter into the meaning of modern life. I would love to hear from you - particularly if you have suggestions for new topics to enter into the conversation. So, it is a new year. Let's see what it has in store, what it can bring to us. And I hope that those who share the spirit of The Trad Pad can spread the message of a world of beauty, the creativity of humanity, and the joys of simplicity and tradition. ~~~ February, 2017

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Food history: Australian Family Recipes 1868 to1950

I love a bit of food history.  Food history is not only quaint and historic recipes.  Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer and Lamingtons: Australian Family Recipes from 1868 to 1950 by Victoria Heywood is a social history of lives gone by.  As of the first of this month, a wonderful contribution to Australian food history has hit the bookstands.  
Click to enlarge

Victoria came across many weird, supposedly edible, things in 17 years travelling the world as a journalist, but none so strange as some of the dishes she encountered back home in Australia when researching Possum Pie, Beetroot Beer and Lamingtons. In a writing career spanning 20-odd years, Victoria has written extensively about food, sex, health and travel for magazines and newspapers both here and abroad, and is the author of numerous other books.  One that would be of interest to Oz Tucker lovers is:

More about this book here

Bring the family down for a FREE sausage sizzle and 
some other tasty treats from original Australian cookbooks 
and hear Victoria Heywood chat about her new book:
  • Where - Westgarth Books, 77 High Street, Northcote
  • When - 12-1 pm, Saturday, October 15, 2011
  • Phone - 9482 7117

Sunday, October 02, 2011

World Matters 2011 Writers - Missing Peace @ Montsalvat - 14, 15, 16 October 2011

Diamond Valley Oxfam, MontsalvatELTHAMbookshop
Present
The 7th Annual
World Matters 2010 Writers - Missing Peace
14, 15, 16 October

Venue: The Barn, MontsalvatHillcrest Avenue , Eltham   
 The Great Hall, Montsalvat

Session 1 - Friday 14 October 7.00-8.30pm
Superb storyteller Elliot Perlman is known for Three Dollars, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, Seven Types of Ambiguity. He discusses his epic new novel The Street Sweeper dealing with memory, love, guilt, heroism, the extremes of racism and unexpected kindness.
Chair: Sally Warhaft, Journalist and Commentator
Session 2 - Saturday 15th October
10.00am: Registration and Morning Tea
10.15am: Welcome: Stephen Lavender, Diamond Valley Oxfam
10. 30am: A Noongar Voice
Miles Franklin, Commonwealth Literature Award and Premier’s Literary Award winning author, Kim Scott, shares his colourful, warm optimistic view of the indigenous heart of our country and the need to honour the languages in which we first learn to speak. Kim will discuss his recent novel, That Deadman Dance, and children’s picture books Noongar Mambara Bakitj and Mamang.
Chair: Morag Fraser
This session is supported by Nillumbik Reconciliation Group
12. 00pm: Lunch Time Launch:
The Boy and the Crocodile
Teaming up with artists from Arte Moris, a not-for-profit art school in Dili, East Timorese children have painted scenes from the Legend of East Timor, a parable about the kindness of strangers narrated in Tetum and English. Proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Familia Hope Orphanage.
 

This session, which includes lunch, will be held in the Great Hall and costs $15.00
Supported by East Timor Women Australia who will run 
a fund raising handicrafts stall at World Matters

Session 3 - Saturday 15 October
1.15pm: Growing Up
Listen to unexpected stories that emerge when cultures clash and the mix of identities that make up a life. Elaine Kennedy’s Waiting for a Wide Horse Sky details the plight of migrant factory workers in South Korea. Tanveer Ahmed’s Exotic Rissole is an irreverent, funny memoir spanning rural Bangladesh through to western Sydney, looking at the complexities of managing tradition with modernity.
Chair: Jane Sullivan, Literary columnist, The Age.

Session 4 - Saturday 15 October
2.30pm: Futility of war
‘The war’, wrote one of its fiercest opponents and 19th century diarist Charles Gerville, ‘was founded in delusion and error.’ Chief political correspondent for SBS, Karen Middleton, An Unwinnable War, philosopher-historian Ian Bickerton, An Illusion of Victory, academics Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, Witnesses to War, present their views and research on the mythmaking, propaganda and the tensions between political and military decision .
3.45pm: Afternoon TeaSession 5  - Saturday 15 October
4. 00pm: Family Disturbances
Novelists Tony Birch, Blood, and Francesca Rendle-Short, Bite Your Tongue, discuss the worlds without sanctuary where characters find the strength of innocence amidst violence and genuine evil. Presented within a world of obsession and trauma the writers ask whether any of us is immune to the forces of destruction.
Chair: Morag Fraser
 Session 6  - Saturday 15 October
5.15pm: Poetry for Humanity
This perennial and highly popular session at all World Matters presented by Adelaide based Friendly Street Poets Elaine Barker, Ros Schulz and Serbian born Jelena Dinic. These empathetic poets couple their concerns for humanity with great poetic skill and strong personal voices in their profoundly moving, sometimes dark, writing that quietly and at a deep level open up their subjects for reflection and contemplation.
Participating chair: Elaine Barker

6.15pm:Twilight refreshments
Session 7  - Saturday 15 October
6.30-7.30pm: Singing History
John Lander, former Australian Ambassador to Iran and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO, sings songs
that are personal musical reflections in situations of conflict and disaster including the Song of the Children of Chernobyl which world premiered in Minsk. John will be accompanied by one of Australia’s finest pianists
Matthew Field.

Session 8  - Sunday 16 October
6.15pm: Morning tea and Registrations
10.15am: Welcome
Stephen Lavender, Oxfam and Helen Coleman, Mayor, Shire of Nillumbik
10.30am: The Voice of Reason
Professor Ian Lowe, The Big Fix, Living in the Hothouse, pre-eminent scientist, environmentalist, cultural commentator and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, thinks we have a chance, but we have to act now. Ian’s new book is an environmental and community call to arms – through logic rather than fear-mongering.
Chair:Morag Fraser
Supported by the Victorian Climate Action Calendar

Session 9  - Sunday 16 October
11.45am: Missing Peace-Spotlight on Sri Lanka
“We all have to take positions when the temple bells ring.”
A child soldier with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Niromi De Soyza, Tamil Tigress, activist Jeremy Liyanage and photographer Michael Baranovic share their insights and the compelling need for freedom amidst oppression.
Chair: David Feith , Teacher,Globalisation, Monash University

1.00pm:Lunch $15.00
Session 10  - Sunday 16 October
1.45pm: Singing For All He’s Worth
Essayists Raimond Gaita, Arnold Zable and Morag Fraser pay warm and thoughtful homage to an extraordinary life and a late-blooming creativity that was as heroic as it was humble. Melbourne citizen Jacob Rosenberg, liberated from the Lodz ghetto lived to become a unique poet and writer of novels and memoir.
Session 11  - Sunday 16 October
3.00pm: Our World in Poetry
A good poem is one that the world can’t forget or is delighted to rediscover. Australian Poetry from 1788, is a landmark anthology of Australian poetry with over 1000 poems from 170 Australian poets, including translations of Aboriginal song poems, as well as short critical biographies. This afternoon we hear poets Geoffrey Lehmann, Ian McBryde, Emma Lew and Craig Sherborne.

4.00pm: Afternoon Tea
Session 12  - Sunday 16 October
4.15pm: Digging up a Past
Whereas it was once assumed that Australia was settled by humans only in the past few thousand or even hundred years, research dramatically proclaimed that in fact Aborigines had been living here before the human race inhabited the Americas. Among the individuals who proved that Australia did have an ancient history, Emeritus Professor John Mulvaney, AO, CMG has been the most persistent and successful. Digging up a Past is a lucid engaging story of Australian history coming of age.

Session 13  - Sunday 16 October
5.20pm: Banning Islamic Books

In 2005, a few days after al-Qaeda terrorists killed many people in the London tube, newspapers in Sydney began a campaign against what they said were terrorist books on sale in a bookshop in Lakemba. Shortly afterwards Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, attempted to get eight books banned by the Film and Literature Classification board. Richard Pennell, Pam Pryde and Emmett Stinson discuss the dire consequences of knee jerk reactions and laws that attempt to muffle dissonant voices.

6.00pm:Twilight refreshments
6.15-7.15pm: Raga Dolls Cost: $15.00
“ it’s good to be reminded of a mythical world of honour,beauty, optimism and even a little wit.”
The Raga Dolls Quartet, co-founded in 2000 by composer and violinist David Osborne and piano
accordionist George Butrumlis, has long championed such a world. Come and listen to their vibrant original new Australian music and retrospective reflections on an age where domestic music-making and small scale ensembles abounded.

Festival Pass: 
$60 includes 13 sessions, morning and
afternoon tea and twilight refreshments
 
Daily Pass: 
15th, 16th October: $30.00
Each Session: $7 unless otherwise stated
 
Students: 
$40 Festival Pass; $5.00 per session.
Lunch $15
Prepaid, early bookings are essential:
ELTHAMbookshop@bigpond.com
970 Main Road, Eltham 9439 8700

PLEASE NOTE:
Meera of the Eltham Bookshop has written to me saying: 
Please let fans of your site know 
that if anyone quotes your blog the cost for each session will be $5.00.
With regards,
Meera
Miss Eagle says:
Don't stand upon the order of thy booking
but get thee to thy booking now.
This program is tremendous.
If you don't believe me,
then you haven't delved into the links I've provided! 


elthambookshop@bigpond.com
970 Main Road Eltham
9439 8700

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