Grace Notes for Lent 2

• Griogair I’m in an Introduction to Gaelic course again, and it’s a little treat to find that Gaelic isn’t just traditional songs.  It’s making music in a modern medium, Gaelic Hip Hop.
• A 155- year old mouse trap claims its latest victim – it’s still hungry!
• The 10 best librarians on screen – seven out of ten are women.
• The questions you might be too nervous to ask about Waitangi Day – this is a good summary which covers pretty much what I’ve read elsewhere.  We complain, we think, we grow.
• Lengthen – Lent, from Old English Lencten, the long time, the Great Fast, marks for me in the Hypernotiides the end of summer.  The thistledown is in the air, the leaves begin to fall, sunrise is later, but the days are still warm.  This description, from Bella Caledonia to clean up after a season, is a good one.
• The significance of a diamond-studden bicycle, c 1890 – jewelry for the rational woman.
• ‘Yet no clear fact to be discerned’: the New Zealand response to the 1916 Easter Uprising – A two day conference organised by the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies.  I plan to go.

Melbourne coincidences

One of our volunteers was back in today.  She was gone away for a weekend visit to see family in Melbourne.

It reminded me that a couple of grace notes about Melbourne turned up in my food trough over the last week.

First was the headline Melbourne’s forgotten mansions: Inside stately homes now destroyed.  Both a reminder that architecture, once gone, is forgotten; and these stately homes cast a shadow over lives they once dominated.

And the image Cool in the laneways from the photoblog Melbourne Today.  I started following this blog a couple of years ago from series of articles about virtual cities on the Guardian.  The image was explained to me, when the streets of Melbourne’s central business district are too hot then escape out of the sun into the laneways that radiate off them.  There’s a nice upwards feel to the image.

Cool in the Laneways