Month: July 2018

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Photo Graphics Gallery

I’ve been taking snap shots now for over half a life time. My efforts began with a small Olympus point and Shoot in 1981; then I graduated to a Pentax Super-a. Remember the joy of handing in your film and getting the packet back only to find half your efforts were blurry or over-exposed ? Then came that wonder, the beginning of the digital age! These days I use Sony Alpha cameras and do my own “developing” on the Desktop with a huge range of tool options – Adobe products, Capture-one,  Apple professional products and so on. I’ve found that my knowledge of computing combined with a reasonable eye and a few of the “Missing Manuals” has made me into a bit of a Digital Artist . See the results of my labours at

photographics.sionit.com.au

P.S. nearly all the images on this site are also by me ! What fun !

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Stranger than fiction

One goes through life imagining that the phrase is a tired, hackneyed truism; and then the extraordinary occurs: an object lesson …

Hi Judy,

I won’t make Jane’s reading tonight, but if I could catch you up on  the Thursday that would be just great. Is 4 pm okay? I know you’ll be classing on the 25th, but I think I’ll wait for the next one before that to launch back or ease  into harness again as it were … I presume from what I’ve seen, a fortnight after that?

While I’m here, a stranger-than-fiction story  for today.  Some time back a cousin of mine was getting into my ear that I should try my hand at the terrible blogging. As it happens, I have a fairly basic web site already for our business. The host organisation for that,  Adobe, has just announced it is shutting down its service – a royal pain, but not illogical as Adobe mainly provides software for photo graphics, film editing and general publication design – the web hosting was really just an added extra; and these days, the market is pretty saturated with such offerings.

Anyway, I have to redo my sites and find a new host. As part of the fun, I thought I might as well try my hand at the blogging as well.

So, this afternoon I was idly trying to come up with a Blog title and somehow arrived at the phrase “Parnassus on Wheels”. The idea seemed to shoot  up from a memory of an old illustration in a “Pick of Punch” that I inherited from my Dad —  it was a circa 19th century cartoon of a huge pantechnicon or tumbril cart about to charge down from the top of a hill.  The cart was loaded with a vast, heaving, fighting mass of figures — politicians, farmers, tinkers, tailors, artists, writers, ladies of ill-repute, soldiers and so forth …

I set the basics up and then went googling for some useful photos or general information on Parnassus.  Imagine my surprise, wonder and laughter, when I came across this Wiki link:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parnassus_on_Wheels

Something else to hunt up on ABE Books and read … especially as the main character’s name is … well, me … 

Hope 26th will suit you Judy. Very much looking forward to seeing you …

Love

A.

P.S.  I have just found the text in Gutenberg online  … 

“I wonder if there isn’t a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or darning socks. I’ve done a good deal of reading when I could, and I don’t want to “admit impediments” to the love of books, but I’ve also seen lots of good, practical folk spoiled by too much fine print. Reading sonnets always gives me hiccups, too.

I never expected to be an author! But I do think there are some amusing things about the story of Andrew and myself and how books broke up our placid life. When John Gutenberg, whose real name (so the Professor says) was John Gooseflesh, borrowed that money to set up his printing press he launched a lot of troubles on the world.

Andrew and I were wonderfully happy on the farm until he became an author. If I could have foreseen all the bother his writings were to cause us, I would certainly have burnt the first manuscript in the kitchen stove.”

Excerpt From: Christopher Morley’s  Parnassus on Wheels

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Dormivegilia

 

For what might have been a month, after passing through the gates of Horn with their intricate filigrees of beasts and battles, they camped at the foot of the mountain. There in what they thought was a true heart-wood glade, they pitched their tents and tethered their tired horses.

With charcoal from the fire and sticks of finely pressed colour that they had carried with them, they covered every part of their shelters in what they could remember of the language of their intentions. And yet, despite those careful efforts, each night outside the circle of the fire that which was unknown still moved among the trees, seemingly intent on testing, then breaching the camp’s boundaries.

In the repetition of those dark hours, their ability to rest also became elusive. Instead, there were drifting fragments and patterns that plagued the corners of their unfocused eyes: then often, having reached an almost feverish point of exhaustion, each would suffer sudden agonising spasms in the muscles of their legs or at their throats; and all, apparently, without clear reason.

Time itself did not move there properly either. If they could have caught its passing in some tangible form, it would have been as a sketch of a bird with damaged wings that rising up from the page, would slowly drag itself across the clearing, finally to hide somewhere deep among the discoloured bracken and detritus of the forest floor.

Dormevegilia
(ital.) (n.) the space that stretches between sleeping and waking