#Sustainablity shopping? Shabby #Vintage Junk Extravaganza 3-4 June 2011 #recycling

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This is the second year that the Shabby Vintage Junk Extravaganza has been held. The leadership for this event is provided by the indefatigable Tamara.  Many of the favourites from last year will be there again this year along with some new participants.  

Please let me declare my interest.  My daughter, Herself, was one of last year's participants and will be there again this year. She has masses of stuff to offer.  See one of her collages below.  And there is the most charming old-fashioned rocking horse.  

To find out more about last year's wonderful Extravaganza, please go to one of my other blogs, The Trad Pad.  

Please note: this year there are Early Bird Tickets.  This gets you in for a special one hour of shopping prior to the main opening time.  It is the Early Bird who truly catches the worm, so if you pay for that premium ticket you will get the premium pick.  I do know though that the stall-holders have so much stuff that stalls won't be emptied by 1pm.  

World Poetry Day - Dorothy Porter and Andrea Goldsmith #poets #writers#

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 Picture from here

To-day is UN World Poetry Day.

Let us take time to remember Dorothy Porter - arguably Australia's greatest female (or need we mention gender) poet in recent times.  Go here for a discussion about Porter's love poetry by her partner, Andrea Goldsmith.  

Andrea Goldsmith

Picture from here

  

The Monkey's Mask (A Mask Noir Title) 

 

Love Poems 

  

Reunion 

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY CENTENARY 2011 #iwd

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Wishing women across the globe

PEACE, JUSTICE, AND WELL-BEING

on the occasion of

the centenary of

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 2011

 Picture of Emmeline Pankhurst Badge with Suffragette colours from here.

World Book Day : John le Carre : the Bodleian Libraries : Dr Zhivago #worldbookday #bodleian #lecarre

To-day is World Book Day.  Find out all about it here.  

What is fascinating this year - if you are a John le Carre fan and a fan of his most famous character, George Smiley - is that he has presented his literary archive to the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford in England. The intention is that the Bodleian will become the permanent home of the archive.

You can see images of some of the manuscript for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy here.

You can see images of some of the manuscript for The Russia House here.

I recall the movie of The Russia House quite fondly.  You see, I have been in love with Boris Pasternak since I read Dr Zhivago at the age of seventeen.  I have always kept a copy of the book on my shelves – and, in fact, have two at the moment.  You see, I don’t want to be without Dr Zhivago’s poems which are at the back of the novel.

I am not much of a traveller in foreign climes and have never visited Russia.  I always promised myself, that if ever I did visit Russia, I would visit Pasternak’s grave at Peredelkino.  In The Russia House is a scene in which Sean Connery’s character, Barley Blair, spends a Sunday at a lunch with the literary lights of Moscow at Peredelkino.  After lunch, he visits Pasternak’s grave.

So, in a sense, courtesy of John le Carre and Australian director Fred Schepisi (whose family used to own a pub at the old gold mining town of Ravenswood near Charters Towers in North Queensland), I feel like I have been to the grave.  I have paid my homage.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

The Collected George Smiley Radio Dramas: 

Eight BBC Full-Cast Productions Starring Simon Russell Beale (BBC Radio 4 Dramatisations)

3 Titles By John Le Carre: 

"The Russia House," "A Perfect Spy," "The Honourable School Boy"

Doctor Zhivago

The Poems of Doctor Zhivago

Art Blart and Anselm Kiefer and The Norns

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Urd Werdande Skuld (The Norns)  1983

Oil, shellac, emulsion and fibre on canvas
support: 4205 x 2805 x 60 mm
painting

ARTIST ROOMS Acquired jointly with the National Galleries of Scotland through The d'Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

AR00036

Between 1980 and 1983, Kiefer made paintings that revisited images of Hitler’s monumental architecture. Using old photographs and architectural plans, Kiefer transformed symbols of Nazi authority into derelict building-sites. In this work, the vaulted structure contains the unseen presence of the Norns, the three figures of fate in Germanic mythology, named Past, Present and Future. Their names are scratched into the ceiling, while below a glowing fire points to salvation and regeneration. Drawing on the artist’s fascination with Norse folklore and Wagnerian motifs, the work reflects his attempts to reconcile his country’s recent history through the myths of Germanic legend.

 (From the online caption April 2009)

Description from here 

I subscribe to a blog entitled Art Blart. That is where this image of The Norns has come from - and there are other images there, too, by the same painted. The artist is Anselm Kiefer.  I find his work striking and meditative.  More images of his work can be found here, and here.

  

Anselm Kiefer: Heaven And Earth 

 

Anselm Kiefer 

 

Anselm Kiefer/Paul Celan: Myth, Mourning and Memory 

 

Anselm Kiefer: Maria Walks amid the Thorn 

 

Anselm Kiefer: Sculpture & Painting