We spent some time around Albury over the weekend. It was fascinating to see so much water. It was a contrast to the river I experienced while living in Swan Hill a few years ago when it was quite low.
Month: September 2022
Can’t help but hear Orwell while listening to Jones. “All voices are equal, but some voices are more equal than others.”
Tom Breihan (stereogum.com)In an acceptance speech for the Nashville Songwriters Association International award for Songwriter-Artist Of The Decade, Taylor Swift shares her three genres associated with her lyrics.
📅 Albury 22
Prior to COVID, we had a tradition as a family to go on a big holiday each September. We had not really planned to go away this year. However, with the passing of the queen and the additional public holiday we decided to make the most of the situation and go on a driving holiday to Albury.
It is always funny how you assume certain things based on past experiences. When we arrived after driving all day we assumed we would easily be able to get into somewhere to celebrate our anniversary, but we quickly realised that even mid-week a walk-up was not a guarantee. After wandering the streets for a while we stumbled upon the Public House. It is funny how with all the searching online, serendipity still has a place. The place pleased all, with my wife and I sharing a mini cocktail or two, while our children loved colouring in the children’s menus and completing the various activities provided. Oh, and the food was great.
We chose to stay in Albury as it not only provided a range of activities, but a great launching spot for the wider area. One place we were keen to visit was Beechworth. I always find it interesting to visit a place twice. Sometimes the memory does not necessarily match with how it actually is. I have some history with the area, with my wife and I having in Beechworth in 2009, while I also went on school camp there many years ago.
Visiting with our children, we went to Beechworth Honey, where the girls got to taste different types of honey and learn about the process involved in producing them. We then went to the original Beechworth Bakery and had a pie and a bee sting. After that we walked across town to Billson Brewery. Not sure I remember visiting this space in the past. It was a good place to visit with the children as they got to try the various flavours of cordial, while my wife and I were able to try the various gins and liqueurs. It was also nice to buy some bottles of Chilli Punch Cordial, although I now realise that I could have ordered them from Billson online, it just never occurred to me. On our way back to Albury we took a detour and climbed to the top of Mt Pilot. A reminder I should do more bush walks with my children.
For diner we went back to Public House for 2 for 1 pizzas. Funny thing was that we got rained on as the retractable roof was left open.
On Friday, we explored Albury. This included spending time at the children’s garden in the Albury Botanical Garden. We then visited the Murray Art Museum Albury. A couple of highlights were Stephen Bush’s Babar inspired The Lure of Paris #35, Kevin Gilbert’s Colonising Species and the kids space.
Sadly the night ended on a sour note as we were evacuated from our hotel at 3am in the morning. Thankfully it was not raining outside as we wait to be told we could return to our rooms. I guess it could have been worse, we could have been evacuated due to flooding or worse, because we were under attack. Not sure our children saw it.
For our last full day away, we decided to go driving to Corowa / Rutherglen region. It was fascinating to see the Murray in flood. When I lived in Swan Hill for a few years, the river was relatively low, but there were always remnants and markers to remind you that it was and is not always that way.
In our travels, we visited Corowa Distilery (and Chocolate), Campbells Winery, All Saints Winery, Gooramadda Olives, and Earthcare Farm. We visited the area in the past, however having children with us definitely provided a different perspective. It was a good time to do it as it seemed that many were off watching the grand final.
One of the interesting things to come up through the conversations was the experience of living on the state border during the COVID lockdowns. One person explained to us how different teams were cycled through the various border crossings with little to no knowledge of the area. It was eye-opening and really provided a different perspective.
On our way home on Sunday, we detoured via Milawa Cheese and the Ned Kelly show in Glenrowan. It was fascinating to see the investment into Glenrowan, I was expecting it to be dead, but there had clearly been investment in the town and its history. Only a few minutes off the freeway, I think that I would stop there in the future, especially after purchasing the biggest bee sting in my life from the bakery.
We aren’t supposed to talk about these things this week. We aren’t supposed to talk about colonisation, empire, violence about Aboriginal sovereignty, not even about the republic, writes Stan Grant.
Stan Grant reflects on the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the legacy of colonisation for indigenous people around the world.
What a privilege it has been to be the Foundation Principal of St Luke’s! I have appreciated playing a small part in a big team. I will be forever thankful for the staff who trusted me and I leave being in awe of their work.
Congratulations Greg. I have really enjoyed following your journey. Thank you for openly sharing. Good luck with whatever the future has to bring.
📓 On Culture
Doug Belshaw explains that culture is continually remade:
Raymond Williams suggests that culture fluctuates between dominant, residual and emergent:
Julian Stodd suggests the one word to describe ‘culture’ is violence:
At the heart of today’s tip is the fantastic SEQUENCE function.
In a blank Google Sheet, enter this formula into cell A2:
=SEQUENCE(53,7,DATE(2022,1,1),1)
It outputs a year of dates across 7 columns!
Add the days of the week as a header row and you’re set.
Ben Collins shares a means of creating a year calendar:
=SEQUENCE(53,7,DATE(2022,1,1),1)
Cameron Paterson (gettingsmart.com)In a century that is being defined by flexibility in time, we no longer need to be held hostage by sacred school timetables.
If we value deep learning and human connection, then this should be explicitly built into the school schedule.
Cameron Paterson reflects upon the way in which schools are still held hostage by the timetable.
He shares examples of schools that have more fluid arrangements that allow students to engage in deeper learning.
I am reminded of a piece from a few years ago from Michael Bond Clegg:
As I have said before, what intrigues me is how the technology helps and/or hinders any sort of change to timetables. I feel that the flip side of flexibility is accountability. For some the answer is things like RFID chips or AI driven facial recognition. I wonder what is done in some of the settings that are mentioned in this piece? I imagine that open spaces like those discussed by people like Steve Collis remove some of that stress. Like removing the weeping willows from cluttered waterways, I imagine that it is important that we place some other alternative in place for fear of erosion.
I would say that floppy disks have a future, but it won’t see a revival like Vinyl. People like the idea of the record player and it will be around for a long time as a very niche or cool kind of thing. Floppy disks are going to be a little bit more like buggy whips or typewriters. They’re going to be a collectible marvel of their time. Imagine how hard it would be to manufacture a new typewriter today. There are a number of American authors who talk about the fact that they can only write on a typewriter. It’s something very important to them that is tied into their artistic genius. I think that floppy disks are going to be a little bit like that.
In an extract from Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium, Niek Hilkmann and Thomas Walskaar interview Tom Persky about the dying art of maintaining floppy disks. Persky discusses how he came to be in the busy and where he gets his stock from. He also explains how there are still various industries that are dependent upon the technology, such as medical equipment, that was developed 20+ years ago.
Administrator (insidestory.org.au)There is no shortage of things that could be added to this list. The revolution’s questionable taken-for-granteds (“equality of opportunity,” “choice,” schooling’s economic contribution) badly need re-examining. So does the habit of looking for silver bullets in other countries rather than trying to understand how Australia’s system has developed and what it can and can’t become. So also the endless talk about what makes a good teacher or a good school to the exclusion of what makes a good system.
But the point is not in a to-do list. The point is that the revolution has failed and so has its way of thinking. The first step towards unbeaching the whale is to start thinking outside that suffocating box.
Dean Ashenden reflects on the failure of Gonski and the education revolution. He suggests that the biggest ‘success’ was the way of talking about education which focuses on outcomes:
As a model, the notion of outcomes comes from health services. Ashenden posits that this is problematic as those doing the ‘working’ are in fact the students, not the teachers.
As much as I agree with what Ashenden is saying, my fear is that we are all always already ‘inside the box’? I also worry about the metaphor of the ‘beached whale’ as some whales cannot be unbeached and are blown up, or simply left to decay, providing food for opportunistic seagulls and sharks.
What if Facebook – and the other tech giants – were simply less important to your life? What if you had lots of choices about how you and the people you care about could communicate with each other?
In a video and paper, Cory Doctorow unpacks how an interoperable Facebook might work. He does this by unpacking four scenarios:
– Notifying contacts that you are leaving Facebook
– Blocking content from particular federated servers
– Blocking objectionable material from Facebook that it allows, but your network does not
– Posting material that Facebook prohibits
What excites me about the world that Doctorow imagines in this paper is the control and nuance over such things as feeds. Personally, I would be just grateful to be able to follow updates from sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin via a feed, rather than having to log in.
I feel that Making It! is one of those albums whose whole is greater than its part. I remember hearing always be you a few months ago. I enjoyed it, but to hear it within the breadth of the album gave it different perspective.
I was intrigued that even with its liberal spray of sugar, Cerro is adamant it is not hyperpop. However, it is clearly inspired by the genre. Maybe what Montaigne is not is simple and straight-forward. That I found interesting is that although the album is not very long, its frenetic nature means that there is so much to dig into.
Montaigne has provided the stories behind the tracks.
Place between Charli XCX and Architecture in Helsinki.
These diverse stories don’t just help us better understand ourselves, though. They also help us understand and empathize with people of different backgrounds.
“It is a huge loss for people to not be able to find themselves in books, particularly if they’re a person of color, if they’re queer, if they’re women or trans,” Kendi says. “And it’s a huge loss for people who are not trans and people who are not queer and who are not people of color. It’s a loss because they’re not able to learn about others.”
The Chemical Brothers bring more gear on stage than most of us have in our studios. Matt Cox is the man who has to make sure it all works come showtime!
David Greeves speaks with Matt Cox about the live setup of the Chemical Brothers. With all the different synthesisers, samplers, effects, midi clock and computers, he says the heart of it all is the mixing desk.
What I find most interesting are the people behind the scenes who make it all possible. Although Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons make it all happen, this would not be possible without the work of those programming the machines and maintaining everything.
This leaves me in even more awe of James Murphy doing both roles in the early days of LCD Soundsystem. I wonder if this was the same with The Chemical Brothers in their early days? It also leaves me thinking about artists like Autechre and how technology has made things ‘more doable‘.
Planning Tool that corresponds to the Diversity Wheel.
There have been times along the way when I lost the writing habit, second guessed myself, wondered if I had anything left to say… and then got back on track albeit less and less frequently.
Thank you for sharing your journey Edna. Good luck with your future endeavours.
What I’ve been up to this week.
Doug, I was reading your Weeknote and was confused with all your Thought Shrapnel posts. I thought, I have not seen them show up in my RSS feed. I then checked the feed and noticed that the last post seems to be June. Not sure if it is just me or if the feed has broken?
Simply click ‘Next’ and continue to be amazed. Select your favorite country. Play a slideshow in fullscreen. Use as a screensaver. Best way to kill your time.
John, there is something beautiful about serendipity. Whether it be surfacing random albums on Spotify or looking out somebody’s window. Random Street View is another source of such joy.