Another Agee on Film
James Rufus Agee (1909-1955), was the posthumous winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1958 for his autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family. He is our family’s most distinguished member and comes from the Tennessee side of the family. After reading A Death in the Family, I decided to read his collection of film […]
Contains Tobacco Depictions
Accustomed as I am to the verbal tomfoolery of streaming services labeling, nevertheless, I was astonished to recently see a descriptor for The Bear, an American television series with drama, comedy and cooking set in a restaurant in Chicago (on Disney+). We are alerted that it ‘contains tobacco depictions’. This is a warning to viewers […]
Repatriation Penalty Phase
My reentry to the United States after living overseas for more than three decades was a trial by fire. Everything was familiar but everything had changed. I didn’t understand the professional scene, health care or the property market. Everything was a challenge as I attempted to master a culture that I had once belonged to—I […]
Call to arms
As an expatriate American and an Australian citizen, the experience of Anzac Day in Australia is filtered through my childhood memories of celebrations around the Fourth of July and Memorial Day in the United States. Memorial Day is the American national holiday that honours the men and women who died while in service of the […]
Fashionable myths and other misdemeanours
Certain contemporary fashion designers are exalted as gods. These hemline giants create clothing designs for women (and sometimes men) that are intended to transcend the staid ready to wear, the plaintive Peter Pan collar and other fashion faux pas. Certain designers are best known for collections which celebrate their obsessions. The poster child for this […]
It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.
‘It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.’ is a truism with an edge. It instructs us that the well-connected will always have better professional and social opportunities. But what about the newcomer? For us, the ‘who you know’ can be very limited. This is a serious dilemma as we try to establish ourselves […]
Be seen and not heard
Growing up, our father warned us ‘Children should be seen and not heard.’ It was his parental way of controlling or at least stifling our behaviour. If my sister and I were expected to be seen but never heard—we were being trained to be passive observers without a voice or opinion. This saying has an emphatic […]
The thinking woman’s crumpet
The term ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’ always makes me laugh. I first heard it in London in the 1980s and since then I have used it sparingly but effectively to describe the elusive appeal of certain male actors. These performers exude something more than just sex appeal. Pardon my French but there is a ‘je ne […]
And the runner up is…
As I wrote and revised The Newcomer’s Dictionary, there were a number of excellent words that I did not have the space to include. ‘Nomad’ lost out to ‘Newcomer’; ‘Alien’ was left behind for ‘Abroad’; ‘Immigrant’ was the runner up to ‘Itinerant’; ‘Homesick’ won out over ‘History’ and ‘Transient’ beat out ‘Transfer’. At times, I […]
Learning to speak photography
Generally, families have one main photographic collection to preserve their memories and history. In fact, I have two: a collection of private memories and a collection that documents my activities as a working photographer. The private collection has the standard snapshots: ones of children (whose names we have long forgotten) brightly smiling behind a series of birthday […]