Nymph & Nymphaeas

what a thrill to see in Melbourne, 50 paintings by Monet, the guy we all know for his nymphaea (a.k.a water lilies). He began painting in Paris about 1860 and was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1865.  By 1890 he had purchased Le Pressoir  (a cider pressing house and orchard) west of Paris at Giverny where  he spent 20 years creating his garden, and fighting with the local council to get a permit for his pond. He had a rowboat made as a floating studio and spent the rest of his life recording the changing light on the pond, the bridge and the plants. Most of the works now at NGV usually reside in Paris so do try to see them here - think of the expense you will avoid. Since art is money and the money rests on the provenance, I always want to see the back of famous paintings, so here is a Monet and also his palette with the outer curve sawn off, probably when he

got too much paint on the cuff of the suitcoat he seems to have worn for painting.

 

The NGV missed the obvious opportunity unique to them, of covering their own ponds 

with waterlilies. Their giftshop was selling rubbery ones for $20.

After the art, the tart.    Nymphette Chloe

.

 - then with my dear friend and tolerant arty cohort Art Of Pants we had a delicious wine in the  Chloe room at Young and Jacksons, reputedly Melbourne's oldest surviving pub where the painting called 'Chloe' has always been the main attraction.

Painted by a contemporary of Monet, Jules Le Febvre, a medal winner of the 1875 Paris salon, she was purchased in 1880 by a Melbourne surgeon Fitzgerald. Melbourne was shocked when it saw her nudity on loan to the art gallery and she was removed to Dr FitzGeralds house where he hung her so she was visible from the street. Publican Young bought her in 1909. She hangs alone these days, but 'Young' was a big art collector and over 200 paintings, sketches and statues used to be on display throughout the hotel.

Do please click here for the story of how the damn commonwealth bank nearly ruined the corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets (the same way they succeeded in ruining what had been a fine historic intersection in Ballarat); and here is a very very old photo of Y and J's before YandJ bought it.

let him without thin, cast the first stone

Teh interwebz was made for kitteez, and that is one adorable fat cat; the Member for Lyons, not so much.
Until I was about 37, I was skin skin skinny and did not give a moments thought to healthy diet. 27 years on, I am part of the scare statistic released today by the COAG Report saying in Australia ‘seven in every 10 men and more than half of all women are above their healthy body weight. It has warned government that more needs to be done to tackle obesity and recommends that federal, state and territory leaders note 'the lack of progress" toward reaching a 5 per cent boost to the number of Australians at a healthy body weight by 2018’.  That COAG link page is worth a visit. It is a committee which tells the government what they should be doing.

That is four carnivorous Queensland MP’s above. Check the beer guts. 

My 27.99 BMI is technically ‘pre-obese’ and they are all much fatter than me. 

What is discussed with their health-care provider, we can only guess. Mine tells me I have to reduce my weight ( I do loathe that term ‘lose weight’ – how can one lose it when it is so firmly attached? I can hear the robustly-corseted Lady Bracknell intoning now “To lose one kilo is unfortunate, but to lose two is just carelessness”.

Just check the images here – all eleven of these people are Federal MP’s (plus one PM whose backside is much bigger than my 27.99 pre-obese BMI) and they are all clearly over the 30 rating that is medically 'obese'.
To be fair, they all work long hours indoors, when they are not having a beer or sausage-sizzle for a photo op in their electorate, but on the other hand, The House Of Parliament complex

has two tennis courts and a full gymnasium, open all hours and free to these people … 
oops – and so is the cafeteria.

For those of us who do not have free gym and courts, I wonder what hope there is?

and this government is going to tell us to step away from the plate?

Karma Kami Matteoli on

Who would have thought, that even before 2DayFM got into the London inquest for suicide Jacintha Saldanha, that the dramatic arc would be repeated? (rhetorical, answer – nobody).
The entire (well-fed) world came down like a ton of bricks onto Mel Greig and her colleague after they did something they had done without drama more than once before, when they did it to a person who unknown to them of course,  just happened to be chronically depressed.
When the FBI asked for members of the public to come forward if they recognised the men who might be the Boston Marathon terrorists, Kami Mattioli thought one resembled Sunil from her school class of 13 years ago. The sometimes UNsociable Network Of The Usual Suspects gave this an instant virtual explosion almost as harmful as the actual one.

                                                       "and then hit Reddit"



Now only her 6000 Followers can post comments to her Twitter and she is no doubt bracing herself for the virtual/ethernet lynch mob, after she tried to do the right thing.  Unfortunately, as with 2DayFM and Nurse Saldanha, this involved a chronically depressed person.

He has now been found dead, but was aware before this, that he had been mistakenly suspected, and had emailed various friends to set them straight. I would risk serious money betting that Ms Mattioli has never heard of the 2DayFM phone prank, or of Nurse Saldanha.
The student, Sunil Tripathi was a Brown University philosophy major nearing graduation and ‘was last seen on March 16 on a surveillance camera after leaving his apartment at 1:33 a.m., and his family has been frantically searching for him for a month. There is no evidence tying Tripathi to the bombings.’ ‘6 feet 2 inches tall. Tripathi left his apartment without his wallet and cell phone. ABC News reported that he was "possibly depressed and left home without any of his belongings."’ A Facebook page dedicated to finding Tripathi was taken down by his family late Thursday night after suspicions about his involvement in the Boston bombing were posted on Reddit. The Facebook page was flooded with comments that were quickly deleted before the page was taken down.'

Alexis C Madrigal lays out the sequence of events on The Atlantic magazines website, but this was written pre-suicide and could disappear if the legalities that follow a death require it. Even this (pre-suicide) April 19th Buzzfeed report by Andrew Kaczynski might disappear, and it is good so please read it while you can.
It is ridiculous of me to even dwell on all this when elsewhere there is massive repression, starvation, corruption, and mass deaths of various kinds every day, but nobody would argue with my opinion of those things. There are many suspicious things to discuss with regard to The Saldanha Inquest, and the similarity of this situation required addressing.
Sunil had taken leave with permission from his philosophy course and had gone bush. His emotional state was apparently known to be fragile. If it had not been, he would have returned and probably been propelled with Kami into their 15 minutes of fame and laughed the whole thing off while raising money for the injured victims of the real bombers.
But he was fragile and now he is dead and it is not her fault, just as the death of Jacintha is not the fault of Mel Greig.
The Tripathi parents will probably not have the confluence of a Keith Vaz, MP, and a posh hospital to propel them into legal action and claims, as with Nurse Saldanha, but the tabloid public have been flung fresh sustenance in Ms Mattioli. Poor girl. What happens next will affect any future assistance the FBI might get from The Public.

hair! heir!

I would have said that Johnny Rotten was 'a child of Thatcherism'.
Wrong wrong wrong.
So my education by blogging continues today when dreary tubby old Johnny is in the news of two continents alongside the passing of Margaret Thatcher ex-PM of the UK.
I was there in 1976 for it all, so I should know better than thinking that the initial UK 'Punk' movement of fashion/music/behaviour came out of the society created by Thatcher governing.
In fact, poor Margaret had to preside (after 1979) over the punked society that actually fomented under Harold Wilson the 1974-76 PM.
Why it did is a mystery to me because he was very kind to the battlers (do read his Wikipedia entry - no really). For articulate comment on this week in London, please read That's So Pants (which never is).

black spot Friday

The internet is for nothing if it's not for cats, and this is dear crabby Kitty sleeping as she does so well and often. Her black-spot paw seems cute to me. When I got her, aged about 6 weeks, from the hot grubby but well-intentioned hands of some children in my street who had failed to convince their mother that she needed this new pet found in a paddock*, I took her to work everyday in a box so I could dropper-feed her. Lucky to have such a nice work environment, I now find other workplaces do cat stuff too. Click this link for the Kitten Races Office. * Yes I did find and catch the wild mother cat and when I got them together they spat at each other. wishing you all a safe, holy and chocolatey Easter.