needle-felting is like creative writing

My sister is working on a needle-felted landscape based on a photo of a riverside path along the Yarra. Tree ferns line one side of the winding track.

She laid down fibres with her needle-felting machine but put it aside because she didn’t know what to do next. Then she decided on some hand-stitching and embroidery to give it more depth and make it look more like the concept she had in her mind when she began.



It’s been weeks now and the project sits on a bookshelf where she can look at it from across the room and assess how it resembles the original photo. She keeps adding layers. She sews over it and dulls it down. When a spot doesn’t look right she removes it by sewing over it again. She needs to highlight the brightness of the sun on the tree fern leaves. She needs to bring the sunny spots into sharper contrast to the shadows on the winding path.

It’s like writing.

I've been watching a series of videos of Robert Olen Butler, the Pulitzer-winning author, as he writes a short story in real-time. Thirty-four hours of watching his creative process. Seventeen two-hour sessions.

His method makes me think of my sister's needle-felted project, because he writes about three hundred words each night; and then reads them over next evening, and adds to them, and changes them, and re-arranges them, and perfects them, before moving on.

It's amazing and inspirational to watch.

serial commas and grammar girl

In researching the use of serial commas I've just come across Grammar Girl's site. I like it so much that I'm going to add the widget to my side bar. So here's hoping I've conquered the technology to achieve that.

caring about dying languages

I attended an interesting book launch last Wednesday in the Alcaston Gallery, in Fitzroy. In the midst of beautiful artwork produced by indigenous women on Mornington island in Queensland, Professor Kate Burridge from Monash University introduced a new book, Dying Words,
by Nicholas Evans. The setting was chosen because much of Evans' work has dealt with indigenous languages of Australia.

Dying Words deals with a subject I am passionate about – the study and preservation of the many languages of humanity.

Professor Burridge said, amongst other things:
• The book is timely, due to the crisis in loss of languages. Of the six thousand extant languages, half will probably die in this century.
• It has much to say to experts in the field of linguistics.
• It is readable and enjoyable and is accessible to the general public.

Google book Search has a so-called 'preview' of the book, so it should be possible to read parts of it and decide whether you want to buy it. I bought it, because I'm interested in the way languages shape our view of the world. It seems a tragedy every time a language dies - that is, when the last speaker of the language dies. I remember, many years ago, meeting a young woman who said her language, Romansh, was nearly gone.

However, I read on a Swiss site that the language is still in use today.

Though Rumantsch has been an official language in canton Grisons for centuries, it has not been officially recognized as a national language of Switzerland until 1938. The sudden recognition was motivated by Switzerland's will to resist the ideology of incorporation of all ethnic Germans and Italians into Hitler's German Reich or Mussolini's fascist Italy. So the exotic fourth national language was very welcome to demonstrate that Switzerland is different from its neighbours ...

Until towards the end of the 20th century, there was no such thing as a standard Rumantsch language. If at all, people wrote in one of the five local dialects - which made it definitely unrealistic that anybody would translate anything into Romansh for a few readers (considering that a total of only 60,000 people are speaking one of the five Rumansch dialects). When it became clear that Rumantsch risks to become extinct the Lia Rumantscha [league for the preservation of the Rumantsch language] defined a common standard language called Rumantsch Grischun in 1982.

It seems a huge task to try to prevent small language groups being overwhelmed by larger ones, but all humanity loses out when a unique way of visualising the world is lost. I'm looking forward to reading Nicholas Evans' book, to see what he says about this distressing situation.

I've been perendinating too long

I haven't posted to this blog for more than seven weeks. I've been perendinating

What a great new word - perendinate. I think it has the power to set my life in order. Whenever I don't want to do something, I won't put it off for one day - procrastinate - I'll leave it till the day after. With a bit of luck, the thing won't need doing by then and I can forget it altogether.

I received this useful verb in my daily mail from A Word A Day.

And while I was checking my spelling of it, I also found this interesting word site.

biomes and a brave new world of weeds

I learned a new word today - biome.

Your Dictionary.com defines biome as ‘any of several major life zones of interrelated plants and animals determined by the climate, as deciduous forest or desert’.

Our favorite walking spot, Darebin Parklands in Melbourne, is suffering terribly in the drought that has gripped southern Australia, and huge areas of the previously lush grassland are barren cracked expanses of dirt. But the weeds are surviving - for instance, resilient little fennel plants. (If you click on this picture to enlarge it, you will see a little patch of green in the bottom right corner.)







Our local paper, Heidelberg and Diamond Valley Weekly, had an article this week that gave me a fresh perspective on weeds. It seems that the Sydney Botanic Gardens Trust has recently issued a report suggesting that climate change may result in a world dominated by the plants we call weeds.

Wondering why they should say this, I checked out a few sites on the Net and found the reason is that most plants are very specific in their requirements for surival, so as biomes change, plants will die out. But the ones that are not so choosy will live on.

Maybe we should get used to a world of fennel. After all, it’s quite tasty cooked up with a fresh piece of fish.

My Etymology places the first use of the word biome in the twentieth century, with Merriam Webster specifying 1916, though I haven’t been able to discover the actual source of this first usage.

dog metaphors

I enjoyed reading The Pet Museum’s post about a collection of dog metaphors at metaphordogs.org.

In our household, our dog’s favorite soft toy, a dog, is known as Drover. It’s our play on the well-known expression ‘the drover’s dog.’ Ours is ‘the dog’s Drover’. Okay, it’s a bit weak, but we’re easily amused.

Henry’s Lawson’s famous poem, Ballad of the Drover, is the origin of the expression but it was made famous by Bill Hayden when he was replaced as leader of the ALP on the day Malcolm Fraser called a double dissolution election. Hayden remarked that even a ‘drover’s dog’ could lead the ALP to a win.

It's been hot lately. Very hot. So I finally had the nerve to go out in public with a parasol. Mine is like an umbrella except the patterned side of the fabric is on the underside and the outside is coated in reflective material. Incidentally, it provides useful protection for a camellia plant if the temperature reaches 111°F - which it did in Melbourne last week.












Lately I have seen people using umbrellas as a protection from the sun. And it seems to me they should be effective sunshades if the name is anything to go by. After all, the word umbrella comes from the Latin umbra, shade.

But to me an umbrella isn't primarily a shade-provider, it's a protection from rain. So I've been wondering why we don't have the same type of word the Germans do - Regenschirm. My possibly not-too-accurate translation is rain- screen. The idea of screening someone from something is echoed in the word Sonnenschirm for parasol. (I reckon that's probably sun -screen.) And then we come to Fallschirm for parachute - fall-screen? Hmm...that seems useful - something to make sure you glide down and don't fall down.

Seeking some information about the word umbrella, I visited Podictionary, where the author, Charles Hodgson, says:

The word came from Italy where it is not notoriously rainy; but rather is more notorious for being sunny. So it makes sense that the Italian meaning of the word ombrella meant “shade.”

The podictionary article is very interesting and you can listen as well as read it.