Almost Forgotten
The exhibition Keeping Things Together was organized to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Australian Women:s Art Register collection. This occasion should have been a moment of deep pride and inspiration, but instead, it was the polar opposite. As I walked around the exhibition at the University of Melbourne’s George Paton Gallery, it felt like […]
Strange Estrangement
Estrangement is defined as “a breakdown in a relationship, such as a relationship with a spouse or family member, where there is no longer any communication, or communication has become hostile, and the individuals lead separate lives.” And these breakdowns in family relationships are more common than you might think.“One US study of more than […]
The Ties That Bind
There are the families we are born with, and then there are the artificial family units known as step or blended families. Stepfamilies may eventually form ‘ties that bind’ but the connections will always be different from biological ones. As a stepmother with two stepchildren, it often felt like the past was built from steel […]
A Surprising Reunion
It’s rare for me to meet anyone outside of my immediate family where I share childhood memories or a historic connection. Moving frequently means that these types of social connections vanish. Certainly, social media has altered the landscape and I now occasionally discover past acquaintances (or they locate me) through Instagram or Facebook. But I […]
Down Under Christmas
The Christmas holidays in Australia always seem weather-challenged to anyone who has grown up in the cold of North America. Here in Australia, the summer holiday blends the traditions of European cousins and colder climates but with some significant differences. There are the artificial Christmas trees with tiered branches covered in metallic leaves and artful […]
Pilgrimage
We had traveled from Australia to visit the ancient cathedral town of Canterbury in southeast England that has welcomed thousands of pilgrims since the Middle Ages. We were on a pilgrimage—not a spiritual one but a cinematic one. We were there to pay homage to the film A Canterbury Tale made during World War 2 […]
Dear Sam Wanamaker
Sam, you must be turning in your grave. Twenty-three years of effort by you to honor the Bard and the end result is well-intentioned but mediocre theatre. In sooth, at least it’s being staged in a historically accurate reconstruction of William Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which was your dream. The new Globe Theatre (1997) sits near […]
122 Women
My current research project is to find and document the stories of 122 women who lived and worked in the local Gippsland region in the state of Victoria during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Many of these women’s contributions have been undervalued or forgotten and only have merited a brief mention in books […]
Environmentally Thoughtful Life
The concept of an environmentally conscious household is not a new one—it just used to be called ‘good housekeeping’. Our grandmother washed pieces of used aluminum foil in hot sudsy water and then gently dried, folded and stored it to be reused. She also recycled fabric for quilts, and there was a hand-braided rug on […]
A Modern Day Horror Story
The banking industry should be heartily applauded for their security systems to stop cyber crime which now makes it nearly impossible for genuine account owners to access their money. ———————- In the name of cyber security, my capacity to access and obtain my money in a checking account from a bank in the United States […]