2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Monday, November 02, 2009

Son of Humanities Researcher Has (Yet) Another Blog

As my family approaches a great festival — my mother's 80th birthday party on Saturday — and as my sister has travelled from London to join the celebrations, we are thinking about generations and families in this household.

Non-Melbourne residents may have heard about our big horse race tomorrow: the highlight of the spring racing carnival that goes on forever (if I see another stupid bit of black tulle perched on the head of some simpering WAG ...), and whose madness has taken over the city so completely that school today, the day before the race-day holiday, was declared "optional" and the main street on which we live is carrying what seems like only Sunday traffic.

Anyway, Joel and I are having a quiet "pyjama day", only showering just before lunch, and talking about what my sisters and I did when we were young, and so forth. What he has been doing is starting a new blog: it's at least the fourth I know about, and perhaps there have been more.

Scroll down for a sight of the piano, and yours truly lounging on the sofa.

4 comments:

meli said...

oh my grandma had her 80th birthday celebration last saturday - she wanted to have it next saturday but the restaurant was booked out... (i couldn't make it of course...) i hope you have a wonderful time!

Kerryn Goldsworthy said...

That is such a wonderful portrait of you that your son has drawn, especially the arm hooked back over the sofa which I recognised at once. I particularly like the detail that you're watching Bones. Was that the ep where the corpse in the boot's entire left cheek fell off?

Please wish your lovely Ma a very happy birthday from me.

This old world is a new world said...

Thanks, you two, for good wishes. Will enact them and pass them on as best I can.

Actually, it was the Bones episode with the Amish boy who secretly plays the piano and has his fingers crushed by the piano lid and who meets his end through a ridiculous murder ex machina, in which I felt my credulity was being strained to the max. Is it normally a good show? I'm not a regular watcher.

Anonymous said...

My son lived on the internet while he was 16, 17, 18 - arguing about politics, science and philosophy on sites such as H2G2. My daughter, on the other hand, used it only for social networking.

Now they are both (a little) older - neither use it very much. Indeed my son has turned his back on the internet and immersed himself entirely in print on the one hand and activism on the other. Quite a few of my students similary shun facebook etc.

It would be fascinating to see some kind of profiling of internet use against age and gender as it beds down as an 'old' technology.