Category: The Life of Lara

I Love My Dad

Mum and Dad just got back from a month in Vietnam. I am close to my parents, and I missed them dreadfully while they were away. I popped in to see them on saturday arvo, and mum told me of a dream that dad had while they were away. In his dream, dad was expected to come to visit Mark and I, but he didn’t want to come, because he knew that Rhubarb wouldn’t be here to greet him.

Dad isn’t an “animal person”, and neither is mum really, but they both instilled in me a respect for life, and the understanding that ability comes with responsibility. If you can, then you should. And if somebody relies on you utterly, then to betray that responsibility is a dire thing indeed.

As a child, it took me a long time to understand that lesson, but now I think it is the overriding principle of my life.

Many have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You remain responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
— Antoine De Saint-Exupery

McMahon Locked Up

SMH Article

I was in court today, hopefully for the last time. After summarising the evidence against McMahon, which was chilling, and kept out of the papers, he commented that there was no contrition of a guilty plea, just repeated attempts to have the case thrown out on mental health grounds.

Ultimately, the judge made his decision based on two factors – that NSW law offers no protection to people who take drugs then claim that the drugs they took impaired their judgement, and that there was “community outrage”.

So maybe I made a difference. I choose to believe that.

Let’s hope he doesn’t appeal.

Nothing to see here…

I’ve been a bad blogger.

No posts, and no pictures. And almost no news.

Work has been horrid – the stress has obvioulsy affected my immune system, as I’ve been sick for the last few days. Or maybe it’s not getting enough sleep. Remember the gorgeous baby chicks we took in just before Christmas ? The ones that were borrowed for a PETA photo shoot with JD Fortune from INXS? The ones that couldn’t go back to the horrid petting zoo they came from?

Or did I not mention them?

Anyway, we took them and the grown up chook that we called Grace, and it’s been a delight watching them grow up. Until the crowing started.

All three are boy chickens. Roosters. Handsome, big, healthy, boys, with a compulsion to greet the day before it arrives, at the top of their little lungs “I’m alive, and it’s a BEAUTIFUL DAY”. “WAKE UP AND ADMIRE ME, I AM SPECTACULAR”. At 4am. Really. 4am. In Denistone.

Not Good.

So the race was on to find them a home, before the boys ended up in someone’s oven. The call went out, and animal lovers in two states were alerted. I was given a number for a lovely man who lives on 5 acres near Canberra, which has been set up as a sanctuary, and he already has more than his fair share of roosters.

So Mark and I are driving there tomorrow, with a car full of feathered machismo.

I Have a New Love

I’ve just cast on a gauge swatch for a beanie I am knitting for a work colleague who is leaving to move to Tasmania, to work on a house he has bought down there. Toby is a funny guy, with possibly the driest sense of humour I have ever come across, and we have had our clashes in the past, but I really like and respect him, and will miss having him around. Toby loves good craftsmanship, classic design, and things that are handmade.

So I thought it fitting to knit him a beanie to keep his head warm in the cold Tasmanian winter. I chose Naturally “Harmony” 8ply 100% merino, in a charcoal grey. It’s a low twist, with an almost felted feel, and it knits up to be an incredibly soft and wonderful fabric.

I bought this at Champion Textiles in Newtown, for $6.50 a skein. I can feel a Rogue Hoodie coming on. Though I would really prefer the zippered version that Kris did, but this is such a lovely fabric, the fact that the colour is lest than exciting doesn’t bother me.

Oh dear. Have I finally seen the merits of substance over style ?

Lillian Fraser Garden Photography Competition

Mark and I took our cameras to the Lillian Fraser Garden this afternoon to take pictures in the hope that we might end up with an image worth entering in the first photography competition. While I was unemployed, I volunteered at the garden, and it holds a special place in my heart.

Lillian Fraser was a scientist in a time when women were supposed to stay at home. My recollection of her exploits is sketchy, but I believe she became a bigwig at the Dept of Agriculture, and was a keen plant collector, traveling the world to bring back specimens to her garden in Pennant Hills, Sydney. On her death, the garden was bequeathed in perpetuity to the people of Hornsby Shire.

You can see the pictures we took here.

Please take a look, feedback is very welcome. 8 words per month…..

Jelly

The past few weeks have been a catalogue of disasters. The death of Rhubarb, SImone’s cat, Scooter, the death knell for AppleCentre Broadway (and probably 2 years worth of my superannuation payments gone with it), and some random lunatic setting fire to Simone’s house – all within three weeks.

So it’s nice to have some happy news in the mix. Adam and Sarah are pregnant. Very early days (about 6 weeks by now), but mother and Jelly (that’s the baby’s official name for now) are doing very well – apart from Sarah feeling very tired and unwell !

George would be very pleased – he’d been pestering me for a great grandchild for years – his sisters had quite a few between them, and he felt a little left out. My parents aren’t too sure if they are ready to be grandparents, but I am ready to be an auntie. Prepare for many bunny booties, bonnets and blankies !

Resurrection

We’ve changed our web hosting, which resulted in the blog going tits up last weekend, and me losing about a weeks worth of posts. Luckily I still had a browser window open on my laptop, and was able to capture the text from the last few posts, and I put them back up last night.

Mark has also started a blog, which means that he has taken a more active interest in blogging technology, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to blog via email, and maybe even from my phone.

I have bought a new laptop. The old one was starting to get very slow, and was below the minimum hardware requirements for running Aperture, which is something that I really want to learn how to use. Photography may never earn me a cent, but if I have to keep working at a not very fulfilling job, then I want to be able to spend my leisure time productively, and get some gratification from creating beautiful things. Beautiful to me, anyway.

My Grandfather, George, was a photographer, and he also taught photography. And he was highly critical. I did photography in high school – and I took one photograph that George thought was OK. One. I didn’t feel encouraged to continue with it, and when my camera was stolen in the late eighties, I never replaced it with a decent camera – disposables were good enough for nearly two decades.

Slowly I have started to get into the habit of photographing the things that I love, and I hope, my photographs are imbued with a little bit of my love for my subjects. I am not technically trained, but I have spent most of my working life around film (cinema) cameras, and watching very talented cinematographers compose and light for cinema. Still photography is a very different art, yet some of the sensibilities do transfer, and I feel that I have absorbed a certain feeling for light, and hopefully also composition.

George loved me exceedingly well, and I him, but he came from a different generation. I never doubted that he thought the sun shone from me, and I know he would have been pained to know that I let his lack of “approval” hold me back. To be honest, I used that as an excuse – it was my own lack of faith in myself that impeded me. If I had made it clear to him that I wanted to be a photographer, I am sure he would have done everything in his power to help me out – he wouldn’t have given me an easy ride, that wasn’t his style, but he would have been behind me at every turn.

In the photo below, of Mark and I walking “down the aisle”, the photographer captured a moment that was very special to me. On the right hand side of the frame, you can see an arm reaching out to me. That was George. He died six months later.

So now I have a kick arse camera, and a lappy that will keep me out of trouble for a few years, and a very supportive family. All I need to do is take some photographs, and learn how to use all my wonderful new toys 🙂

PS. The laptop is a new black macbook, with 2GB RAM, called Rhubarb.

A Wedding !

I heard today that two of my friends are getting married – and though this news isn’t always a wonderful thing to hear, in this case it is. These two are fabulous together, each provides a foil for the other, and together they share a joy that is natural, and wonderful to see.

And they honoured me by asking if I am available to do the ceremony. Of course it’s early days, and they may choose any one of a hundred celebrants, but making the shortlist is very special to me. One of the reasons I decided to train as a celebrant was an understanding that rites of passage are undervalued in our society – weddings have become more of a party than a ritual. From birth, to death, via a commitment ceremony, maybe with a puberty rite along the way, there are milestones in each of our lives that need celebrating, but also require a deeper understanding of what the ceremony means within the framework of our lives.

Another reason I felt the calling was a desire to see more personality in solemnity, and to offer an alternative to the cookie cutter ceremonies we see in the media, in wedding magazines, and brochures. I am told that the weekend papers report this week that the “in” thing for modern brides is marrying in a coloured dress. Funny, the cool people were doing it years ago……

And the third reason? I want Australia to legalise and give full legal recognition to gay marriage. And I believe that day will come, contrary to the backward rhetoric of “our mighty leader”, and when that day comes, I want there to be civil celebrants who are ready to celebrate, not just solemnise same sex marriages in this country. Bring it on :)