Birthday Blog (a bit late)

'Tis the birthday season: Jo and I are now past, but Jess is still to come.

Celebrations are generally modest when you are 6#, but I must say that I had a very pleasant couple of days. Most of the 13th was spent in the bush with one of my PhD students. It was wet and pretty miserable, but a good preparation for what Jeannie had described as a surprise tea, and something that she hadn't tried before. After a soak in the bath all was revealed (hmm, should I rephrase that?), the meal, I mean. Paella, wow!

Paella at Casa Richardson

Huge Australian prawns and succulent Tasmanian mussels, all that saffron and the other herbs: yum! Washed down by a Marlborough (NZ) sauvignon blanc and followed by a lemon souffle sort of thing. Very nice.

And there was a little pile of presents: books, chocolates and tickets to the theatre that came via Texas (kinda).

Birthday presents.
Thanks, guys!

The tickets were for "I Am My Own Wife", a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Doug Wright, about Charlotte van Marlsdorf (born Lothar Berfelde) who lived through WWII and the communist regime in East Germany, accumulating a museum and running a secret cabaret in her basement during the communist years. The whole thing was played by one man, Robert Jarman, a very talented actor and director who is a one of Tasmania's living treasures. In two hours, he played no less that 35 characters, changing from one to another with amazing ease, and only a single costume change. The whole thing was both amusing and moving. The play was in The Backspace Theatre, which seats 50-70 people in the Theatre Royal building, so it was a very intimate performance, brilliantly enhanced by real rain on the roof at a stage in the story where Charlotte was explaining that she met another character only because of a rain storm! It made me wonder why we don't go to the theatre more often.

Robert Jarman as Charlotte van Marlsdorf.

Two and a Half Days in Margate

Margate Christian Church
Spiritual Journeys exhibition 2009

A few years ago some folk from church started this community festival, in a gentle parody of Ten Days on the Island, the State-wide festival. It has largely been take over by others now, but the church still puts on an art exhibition on the theme of "Spiritual Journeys".

There are some wonderfully talented folk about and the pictures below will give a little impression of the show.

Father and Son
Seth Isham, calico and foam.
Certainly the most striking work!

Tree of Life
Elizabeth Smith, Mixed media.
The picture doesn't do it justice. It's three-dimensional and the timber background catches the colour of the dry Midland paddocks so well.

My Protector and Shield, Ps 91
Merran Diekfoss, Huon Pine and granite.
A small beauty from Merran this time. Carved from one piece of pine.

Resurrection
Rachael Bremner, mosaic.
My favourite, I think. Done in glass shards, but somehow catches the velvety texture of poppy petals.

The Prodigal Son
Rebecca Brogan, pen and ink.
For once the reflections in the glass add to the photo!

Put Me Together Again II
Merinda Young, fused glass.
Another of Merida's wonderful plates.

Just a pity that, at least this morning (Saturday), so few people came. But we were competing with the school fair, so perhaps more tomorrow.