tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-311073602024-03-13T17:49:23.669+11:00humanities researcherThis old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.comBlogger624125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-42682168134155341282016-07-20T14:36:00.000+10:002016-07-20T14:36:30.931+10:00Starting again
It's the nature of blogs to go from feverish activity to inaction, and Humanities Researcher is no exception.
It's been a very busy year, but I am currently in the first week of six months research leave, so the time feels right to take the odd moment and reflect again on what I do.
The bluestone project is still ticking away in the background, but there are rather too many writerly This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-32506820637729648762015-11-04T22:41:00.001+11:002015-11-04T22:46:52.909+11:00My Year with Bluestone: On the Street Where You Live
Poor old bluestone project has had to take a back seat for a bit, while I taught this semester, and wrote and delivered papers on other projects.
Today I walked home through Carlton, keeping an eye out for initials carved in the long bluestone edges to the pavement. We had walked this area a few weeks ago, but I wasn't feeling so well that day and had no energy to stop and take photos. Today I This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-71350468953467565912015-10-10T14:27:00.002+11:002015-10-10T14:27:59.695+11:00My Year with Bluestone: The Mighty Apollo
My sister sent me this link to a film of Paul Anderson, "The Young Apollo". One of his great feats here is to be holding large chunks of bluestone while another man breaks them with an axe. You can see him flinch and hold his arm that has sustained the blow, but then power on to the next thing: pulling cars with his teeth. But it is a very Melbourne trick.
This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-11614490971733974562015-09-30T11:19:00.002+10:002015-09-30T11:19:46.035+10:00My Year with Bluestone: What Can This Mean?
Walking through Carlton, and Argyle Square. What can it mean? The "foundation" corner stone is lovely bluestone, laid by then Lord Mayor John So, but the rest of the squares are rather nondescript concrete/granite. Did they run out of money? Or did they think commemorative stones should be bluestone?
This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-45616275987050400892015-09-09T23:05:00.000+10:002015-09-09T23:05:57.728+10:00My Year with Bluestone: murder by bluestone
I'm blasting through the first draft of this first chapter. I've set myself a target of 2000 words per week while I get it started, but have a bunch of other activities lined up for the weekend, as well as a meeting at work at 9.00 tomorrow on my one day I'm often able to work at home and get more writing done. So this evening I have put 1000 words into the file, though some are longish quotes This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-16747659939314596132015-09-08T16:18:00.002+10:002015-09-08T16:18:26.146+10:00My Year with Bluestone: My Friends' House
The weekend before I was supposed to go to Sydney to give my TEDx talk, I spent the afternoon at my friends' house two suburbs away. I remember feeling a bit queasy, and the next day I ended up in hospital with a fever and badly dehydrated.
Because of all that drama I had forgotten about these photos I took of the approach to their house. They bought it as a little cottage on a very long and This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-78881302544143258032015-09-07T14:05:00.001+10:002015-09-07T14:05:15.517+10:00My Year with Bluestone: The Collingwood Stockade and writing.
I've just come from giving a short talk to PhD students approaching the confirmation hurdle after about 9 months candidature. I spoke about how important social media was to my writing life. For all that, I am taking a break from Facebook for a month while I establish a writing pattern for this book. I'm setting myself an ambitious target of about 2000 words a week this month. So far so good, This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-40192008487219239102015-09-03T13:39:00.003+10:002015-09-03T13:39:25.250+10:00My Year with Bluestone: breaking out with Winifred Johnson
I'm slowly finding my feet and my way into the writing of this book. My fabulous research assistants Helen and Anne have located a terrific mass of materials, and the evidence is often irresistible: the voices of the past are crowding in thick and fast.
At the moment I'm working through a report to the Legislative Assembly and a series of interviews dating from 1857. There are two accounts of aThis old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-811356483372177552015-08-24T12:42:00.000+10:002015-08-24T12:42:19.103+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Interdisciplinary Anxiety
I was very happy to start writing my book last Thursday. I have drafted the first thousand words of a chapter which will mostly be about prisons. I have lots of ideas and lots of materials. So far so good.
And then I had a momentary anxiety as I was thinking about structuring the next section/paragraph. It was an anxiety that took me back to my work on the Order of the Garter, when I would This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-27412160505164119602015-08-19T09:31:00.000+10:002015-08-19T09:31:02.402+10:00My Year with Bluestone: a question
Something that has been on my mind a little as I think about bluestone. Is it soft or hard? It's often described as forbidding, gothic, dark and awe-inducing, but I've also read a few things about its attractiveness as a walking and tactile surface because it is soft. Think of all those rounded edges in all those laneways, and our (Melbourney) familiarity with its rippled edges on the This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-70481876717353494222015-08-18T22:14:00.001+10:002015-08-18T22:14:56.817+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Kickstarting this project
So my plan of blogging daily about bluestone kind of slipped away as the year reached an intense peak around May, June and July. Two trips to the UK; many new papers to write on non-bluestone projects; quite a few conferences and events to either convene or attend. And now I am teaching two subjects this semester. Not a *huge* load, but a few lectures in other subjects in the first few weeks.
This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-37657196786780254592015-06-30T23:13:00.000+10:002015-06-30T23:13:01.780+10:00My Year with Bluestone: brief ROOBAIX bookmark
So, I have just two more utterly new conference papers to finish and deliver in the next two weeks. One is on representations of burning cities in medieval poetry; the second on the discourse of hte speaking face in Sidney's poetry. Then when I come home, I will be settling into a routine of teaching and writing the bluestone book, with only one other paper, on the Magna Carta, to write for a This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-51242363681027345412015-06-16T21:33:00.000+10:002015-06-16T21:33:00.960+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Guest Post
I'm delighted to give the floor to Geoff Winkler, who's building a bluestone house in southern Victoria. He has direct experience with the various properties of stone at first hand... This is a very different kind of knowledge/obsession: very practical and intimate knowledge. Click through to the photos of his house.
Thanks to Geoff, and best wishes for his building project.
BLUESTONE AIN’T
This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-5755279385146179152015-06-15T23:42:00.001+10:002015-06-15T23:42:25.003+10:00My Year with Bluestone -- Almost
Well after a month's hiatus, this blog has lost all claim to a respectably or reliably regular daily event. Such interruptions are the nature of scholarly work. I have not been idle over the last month, but working on a bunch of other projects:
finished a short essay on emotion and affect for a collection on early modern studies
finished revisions to an essay on "temporalities" for a CambridgeThis old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-17412914392311375962015-05-18T13:42:00.000+10:002015-05-18T13:42:20.433+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Smoothing Things Out
In which ten thousand bluestone pitchers in Melbourne's city laneways are being dug up, smoothed out, and re-laid so that people don't trip up on them.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/-gh1j6q.html
I can see that the re-laid paths are smoother, but it's easy to think sentimentally about the rough and cobbled original laneways. In contrast, the new lanes look rather bland toThis old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-44720059466110100212015-05-15T18:10:00.000+10:002015-05-15T18:10:02.853+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Friday House Blogging (10) and a Dirty Story
No pictures today: for some reason my phone isn't working, but a sad tale of mud.
They are replacing the gas pipes in our street and I came out today to find most of the strip of garden between pavement and gutter all dug up and piled on the pavement and front driveway. I'd call it a "nature strip" but it's a bit narrow and isn't planted with grass, but little shrubs we have put in and mulched This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-87516868681127285352015-05-14T21:55:00.001+10:002015-05-14T21:55:02.738+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Mortality Following Me Around
As I parked my bike outside the oncologist's today (routine check: eight and a half years out: all good), I noticed the fabulous high bluestone wall opposite. This is swanky and beautiful East Melbourne and I have a vague recollection of going to dinner in a big house there once years ago when a friend of a friend was staying in what I *think* was a bishop's residence??? Too vague, sorry. This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-57221984769511757932015-05-13T22:49:00.002+10:002015-05-13T22:49:48.834+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Water Levels
It's becoming a familiar feature of this project that I'm now seeing familiar things differently: like observing the way bluestones are laid in streets and buildings. Today's post is about my beloved Merri Creek, the tributary of the Yarra River that practically runs past my front door. There are a number of bluestone features along this Creek, and in the first days of this blog in January, I This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-68065264708557503562015-05-12T21:30:00.003+10:002015-05-12T21:30:59.099+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Second Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
We regularly drive past this chapel on the way to the airport or the Coburg aquarium. Today I drove past again and on the day I notice its distinctive disposition of stones I don't have my trusty phone with me.
This is the Second Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on the corner of Bell St and Sydney Rd, just a block or so south of Pentridge Prison. Designed by Thomas Crouch (who with Ralph Wilson This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-88606562019720966662015-05-11T09:24:00.002+10:002015-05-11T09:24:45.677+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Teeny Tiny House
The smallest possible house, sitting on bluestone foundations, and with paved bluestone back yard. You are going to transform this teeny tiny house in Carlton and make it liveable and modern, but you can't do it without essential, foundational bluestone.
http://news.domain.com.au/domain/real-estate-news/making-a-tiny-carlton-house-habitable-20150501-13hy1p.html?utm_source=Facebook&This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-36544523982698220802015-05-06T22:40:00.000+10:002015-05-06T22:40:06.995+10:00My Year with Bluestone: St Patrick's Cathedral
I expect I will come back to re-visit St Patrick's Cathedral later in the year, but for now: a kind of place-holder, for what its website says "is regarded internationally as the finest ecclesiastical building in Australia and a pre-eminent example of the Gothic Revival style. The austere facade gives little hint of the glorious interior with its ethereal golden light of mesmerising beauty."
This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-3027008920349701812015-05-05T09:58:00.001+10:002015-05-05T09:58:30.946+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Random Stones in a tricky week
I'm still struggling a bit getting my post-trip routines going. In fact, to strike a more personal note, I'm struggling with a number of anxieties at the moment. Hey ho. That's the nature of work and life, and you mostly just have to press on... Worse things happen at sea, etc. etc.
Yesterday I recorded a video interview about this bluestone project for our Centre. I'll notify when it's posted.This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-85076556516001824152015-05-04T23:14:00.000+10:002015-05-04T23:14:23.821+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Returning home
After two weeks in the UK, and then a week back in Melbourne, battling jetlag and a few other trials, I return to the blog, wondering how I ever managed to blog daily about bluestone for so long, and wondering if I'll be able to pick it up again.
I gave a paper (actually, it had a formal title: "The Brook Lecture in Middle English") from some of my work on a completely different project, on This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-20758601405148339412015-04-10T17:35:00.000+10:002015-04-10T17:35:26.359+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Friday House Blogging (9)
Another short post today (I'm leaving tomorrow; have not finished paper, etc. etc.). A year ago my parents moved to Melbourne. It's taken them a good year to feel settled, I think. But we've just had the delight of being able to walk up to visit them for afternoon tea towards the end of a working-at-home day. My mother had made a cake; we chatted; and then came back to our desks. I'm so glad This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31107360.post-491910202964440102015-04-09T12:46:00.002+10:002015-04-09T12:46:43.914+10:00My Year with Bluestone: Gothic, not Bluestone Ormond
I was chatting about my bluestone project last night with a friend visiting from Adelaide. "Ormond College is bluestone, isn't it?" she said.
Alas, no, Ormond College (shown here in a rather lovely, but rather old photograph) is a sandstone building. It was designed by Joseph Reed, and built between 1878 and 1881.
So why did she think it was bluestone? We thought it was something about the This old world is a new worldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11567163294720510335noreply@blogger.com0