Category Archive: LIFE
Adroit Detroit Blox White Sox
Detroit Tigers vs Chicago White Sox, April 8, 2018 @ Chicago Go, Tigers! Having flown into Chicago (my kind of town) that afternoon, and discovered that the Detroit Tigers were up against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park (now charmingly re-badged as ‘Guaranteed Rate Field’), we just had to get out there, sink some Bud suds and hot dogs. Ignoring the local boys chanting “Go Sox!” and “Detroit Sucks,”* we saw the Tiges score early and in freezing conditions, freeze out the Sox to a scoreless card and sweep the triple-header. In chilly conditions, it was a day for pitchers. When…
Continue Reading →Fairy Tale Time in New York
April 2, 2018 – Janelle McCulloch, author of a number of impressive works concerning, inter alia, Paris, Provence and Picnics, married Neil Jenkins in a snow-blanketed Central Park this day. The Varnished Culture, being warned for hearing and attending as witnesses, awoke to inclement April conditions… We had to get from The Carlyle to Central Park West, so before too long, we were trudging through the snow like Napoleon’s troops bugging out of Moscow… Eventually, after some crazy old man gave us perfectly wrong directions, we found a guide (well, someone going our way), met-up with Neil and Janelle et al,…
Continue Reading →Off Their Feed
Glenelg v South Adelaide, Good Friday, 2018 – At Noarlunga Oval, the re-jigged Tigers, under new coach Mark Stone, took on South. We were hoping to be able to adapt the headstone to the unfortunate Hannah Twynnoy, mauled to death in Malmesbury in 1703: “In bloom of life South’s snatched from hence, They had not room To make defence; For Tyger fierce Took life away. Here panthers lie In a bed of clay Until the Resurrection Day.” ———————————– Unfortunately, the Tigers looked inept and listless and were out of the game by halfway through the third quarter. South took the…
Continue Reading →Perhaps They’ll Listen Now
Vincent Van Gogh (30 March 1853 to 29 July 1890) – A “crazy middle-aged Dutchman working away in southern France…”* “In July 1890 Van Gogh put an end to his life – he was thirty-seven like Raphael, and his career as a painter had not lasted more than ten years…”* “…the paintings on which his fame rests were all painted during three years which were interrupted by crises and despair.”* “Van Gogh used the individual brushstrokes not only to break up the colour but also to convey his own excitement.”* “Van Gogh was in such a frenzy of creation that…
Continue Reading →10 Birthdays and A Funeral
'We have to make a birthday tea for 10 and a funeral tea...'
20 March – a big day in cultural history: 43 BC – Ovid “Take your fill of amusement, but cast the veil of modesty over your peccadilloes. Never make a parade of your good fortune, and never give a woman a present that another woman will recognise.” [The Art of Love] “Death is not accustomed to injure genius, and greater fame arrives after we have become ashes…” [Epistle to an Envious Man]. 1828 – Henrik Ibsen “SOLNESS: Human beings haven’t any use for these homes of theirs. Not for being happy in. And I shouldn’t have had use for a…
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