Vale Maggie

Vale, Maggie

I had to visit her home late one afternoon to deliver some prints and after sitting me down at the dining table was asked, ".... glass of wine?"  "Yes", I replied and Maggie went into the kitchen to get  glasses, which arriving full, she again disappeared  to get something else.

I thought the wine glass looked  a little odd.. and picking it up to examine it, found a conical container, ball stem below, uneven base, bubbles within glass of a greenish tinge. Maggie returned with some nibbles and seeing me looking at the glass intently said, "Like it?" 

"Yes .....it's really lovely...."

 "I got six of them just today... they're C18th."

And I nearly dropped it on the table in shock. " Geez...I'll have to be careful..."

"No...", Maggie replied, "....we're only using them for what they were intended ."

And so we sat to look over the prints.

 

Flemington, 70's with Bruce Morrow

There was the (perhaps) apocryphal story of a student in class expressing the wish to have a rest being advised that, "....rest is for the dead".

There was also the time at the Ballet Centre where Gailene Stock, Maggie's successor at "The School" had called me in to photograph some auditioning students to illustrate for them a technical fault: Maggie was sitting there and I popped down into place next to her.  Eventually she leaned over and whispered, "What do you think? " I was a bit ambivilant about the group and said so, "None of them are sweating, are they, " she said "they're not working." 

 

Brunswick St  66-67 and Elphine Allen

Both of our daughters had met Maggie for the first time at a "Dance Creation" Garden party and because we had arrived quite early with food to lay out, had spent some time conversing with her. Driving back home they couldn't stop talking about her. "What an impressive woman..!" exclaimed the elder, and "So easy to talk to" said the younger.....animatedly recounting all what they had both discussed.

 

Jurgen Schneider, Master Class

Shooting rehearsal shots for the Dance Creation web site of the time, Maggie was sitting near and during a break she enquired what we had planned for the next year, on being told we were going to France to visit our eldest who was teaching there and also to investigate Romanesque architecture, she got very excited and said "You must go to Burgundy... there's a particular village and church which is exquisite, you must go there, I'll call you when I remember it's name."

Two weeks later the phone rang, it was Maggie, "I've found the name of the Village .. ..and church, It's Ve'zelay,"

"Which church, the Abbaye, St Madeleine on the hill or the smaller Saint Pe're in the village below?"  ( I had been doing a lot of Google street walks as research)

"You know it..." she squealed in delight, "....how wonderful" and went on to explain that she and her then new husband Derek had 2CV'd through there with artist Donald Friend who did drawings for them as his contribution and that  this place had really impressed.

And it did.

 

Sant Pe're, Vezelay

I asked if I could sculpt her portrait and started with the most restless model I've ever had... got about four hours into it when I really needed 20 and later, finished it from photos. 

It has different aspects on different sides and when I said that it was deliberately Baroque in its perspective and that the gaze was toward the distance Maggie nodded and said quietly "Well, that was the beginning of ballet wasn't it?"

She got it.

Energetic, imaginative, creative, teaching herself about art she said, by visiting galleries and concerts whilst  fending for herself in wartime London and learning her profession at the same time: later knocking back Vodkas with the Russians in Germany.. being part of Macmilllan's first choreographic effort ...and then "The School". A place that was vibrant, innovative and nurturing particularly after it had established itself during the 70's.

Sadness has crept up on me slowly as I recall these anecdotes about this formidable woman.

 I'll miss you and the privilege of  knowing you....

 

Michelle Potter's Bio Launch.

Australia is the less with your passing

Dame Margaret Scott DBE  1922- 2019

Lawrence Winder

(aka shanewombat)

The Ship of Fools or All at Sea on the Foundering Rustbucket, SS Ruling Rabble

G'day Lorikeets,

We've been to and seen a few performances this week, two spirit lifting, the others seen only from afar, wholly dispiriting as you witness how completely bereft of moral and ethical behaviour the Ruling Rabble have become and how any concept of ministerial responsibility is utterly foreign to them and just how parlous our democracy has become.

Squawking like a demented Sulphur Crested Cockatoo aloft the crows nest at sunset, The Harpy Cash demanded that Labor apologise for questioning her honesty because she withheld knowledge from the police about the staffers who admitted they criminally leaked the AWU raid to the press. Then incongruously denied that it was in order to get Willy Shortstuff into trouble ("...who's this Shorten bloke..?" she was alleged to have muttered) as she and the Retiring Keenan flapped away from the tender ministrations of Senator Penny Wong who also wanted to discuss the failure of the Unfair Work Commission in cutting penalty rates to hospitality workers which hasn't meant, as they promised, an increase in working hours.

And if ever a Knight was errantly named it was this new Paladin. Born in a shack on Kangaroo Island with shonky partners, with no experience and with Home Affairs Minister, Potato-Head Dutton's sister on staff, the Ruling Rabble have said privately, much like they did to the Barrier Reef Syndicate, "Here ya go, mate... have a measly $423,000,000.00 go and run the concentration camp on Manus.... and don't forget "good practice" .... sack the workers, re-hire them on lower wages and make a bigger profit!"

In what seemed an audition for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival the alleged Attorney General, The Un-xtian Porter when queried by Barrie Cassidy on Insiders that Paladin's accommodation bill for a concentration camp bed was costing at $1600.00 per week sans food, a lot more than a top Sydney hotel, The Unxtian strait facedly replied with something like, "....we try to do the best for our concentration camp inmates.!"  Later, in a Tsunami of appearances inaccurately blaming Labor, he announced that there were loopholes in legislation big enough for a whale to jump through (I know, I know, whales broach...but it's not me speaking) It was the legislation parliament enacted to provide a semblance of kindness to the Manus and Nauru detainees but like Joe McCarthy in the 50's, The Un-xtian declined to offer the evidence.

Then just when you thought the weather couldn't get worse, Double Dipping Joe Hockey sails in from his taxpayer funded double-dip holiday camp in Washington to not offer advice to the godfather of his children and WA Ruling Rabble treasurer and Helloworld travel business owner on how to facilitate a billion dollars in government travel contracts. "Nor Sir, not me, grinned the ever ebullient Joe the Double Dip..... and I didn't advise him to about the Fisherman's Bend redevelopment either, that was probably Matty Thug, The Lobster Guy.... we're all mates here, we (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) share  everything."

Mates-rates also caught his other friend, Horse-Shite Cormann out when he decided to go-to-the-top instead of the sales desk, to the same Helloworld travel boss and book a family holiday flight... which seven months later still wasn't paid until a journo asked... and even then, amid the flurry of salty excuses, $2700.00 for a family of four for return flights to Singapore and unlikely to be "cattle-class" is very cheap. But then, cheaply treating the public suits Cormann: he billed the taxpayer $37,000.00 for an RAAF flight to Adelaide to unsuccessfully woo some Centre Alliance opposition rather than take a very cheap commercial flight for say $1200.

But as Primed Miniature de Jour Scummo says..."Nothing to see here.. "Ooooh, look Boats , boats and more boats, terrorists, rapists, naughty brown people on the horizon, batten down the hatches, man the cannon!"

And then the polls turned ...well they did if you believe The Ugly American's comics. But if you believe them you also probably think "John and Betty" is classic high literature.

It is interesting to note how consistent all the media have become in their word placement, the tenor and projections of what they are saying... it's not actually news, it's propaganda designed to obscure the truth of just how corrupt and incompetent this Ruling Rabble is, was, and shall always be. Amen.

Now the nice stuff ... I commissioned a ring for Mrs Wombat, a replica of one from the C12th-C13th  from jeweller friend Paul (APS Jewellery) and it made us all very happy.

Then later, at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl we all attended a wonderful concert featuring the incredibly talented 11 yo Christian Li playing Saint-Saen's Introduction and Rondo capriccioso, 

Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy with the superb playing of Veriko Tchumburidze  and a really good band, The Melbourne Symphony beautifully conducted by Benjamin Northey......

which makes all the political stuff more evil, more wastefully negative, pointless and culturally debilitating than it has ever been in Australia.

May we soon be rid of these irrelevant but costly pricks.

Hoo-roo, Kookaburra's

Shane. 

Shattering the Myth.

G'day Possums,

I've been a bit tardy posting over the past few weeks, I've been concreting around the burrow... no, not turning it into a bunker, although given the rhetoric spouting from the Ruling Rabble as electoral desperation seems to be kicking in, and their complete lack of ethics becomes more obvious with every pronouncement and action, that perhaps is not such a bad idea.

Hayne handed down his three volume report on how corrupt our banks and financial systems are, and refused with a brusque, "No!" when journo's asked him  to shake a then, very embarrassed Fictions Frydenberg's hand for a phot-op. Perhaps he had already heard that $500,000,000.00 had already been Stock Exchange wagered on the findings which had been seen by only a few of Prime Miniature de Jour, Scummo's  senior crew. Which, in itself, is not surprising as Scummo colluded with the banks, specifically NAB's now disgraced CEO Ken Henry to write the terms of reference in the hope that it would nobble the process.

Oh, and around $22,000,000.00 profit was made on the wager.

Ex IPA and Freedom-Man, Timmy The Twat Wilson ( Ruling Rabble  member for Goldstein) is presently careening around the country at taxpayers expense signing up idiots to support the ruling rabble under the guise of a Parliamentary Committee investigating Labor's proposed policy of not handing money to already wealthy or well-off people for no reason.  Note: this is a proposed Labor policy and Timmy Twat with his ethical best on show is having taxpayers fund what is essentially a Ruling Rabble propaganda performance piece. 

The farce kicked off in NSW with a heckler yelling "Scam, Sham..." and being booed and jostled as he was pushed out of the meeting and cheers erupted as he fell (?) over with The Twat, spittle flecked and screaming "Order, order, this is a formal enquiry of the House of Representatives......" as he portentously puffed himself up at the sheer pleasure of the IPA trained social chaos he was creating.

Cinderella had her ball.

Later a woman who suggested that franking dividends be allocated to schools and hospitals and not to people who had not paid tax anyway, was jeered and booed as well. Which shows what a myth Australian Egalitarianism is now and how wrong the railings by past conservatives were that the creation of a welfare-state will lead the poor to a welfare dependence mentality when in fact, it's the opposite! The middle-class and wealthy are the ones welfare dependent with taxpayers monies they do not deserve.

The only clear thing about this Twatty farce is seeing evidence of just how societally ugly we have become in the last 20 years and to ponder ..... is Timmy really a Labor mole by screwing-over his own side's strategy of attack with these counterproductive schoolboy antics or just in fact, a twat?

Speaking of Twats, Chwissie The Whyning Ponce, Pyne  had a shambles of an interview on "Insiders" today. Bouncing all over the topics presented to him by Barry Cassidy's questions, The Whyne, with his best "I'm Tough" voice plugged in, obfuscated, dissimulated and lied and gave a conservative panel little to comment on except the inadequacy of what passes for Ruling Rabble Policy these days.

Perhaps he should've let his natural prancing falsetto free rein as I'm sure he might have made more sense had he not have to concentrate being unnaturally basso profundo.

All three panel members, Andrew Probyn (ABC), Annika Smethurst (The Scum), and Phillip Coorey (AFR) all looked subdued with whatever was discussed which not only indicated what a mess this country's in but also just how constrained they are as journalists by totally right wing owners to effect anything like fair journalistic criticism.

Labor is to be damned... with faint praise...but they can't bring themselves to comment on what more than half the country can see....that this mongrel Ruling Rabble have excoriated education, gutted health, blasted refugees and suppressed wages and obliterated car manufacturing, not mention the "excellence" of a failed NBN, failure of energy and the lack of a climate policy and the decimation of the ABC.  With no real media opposition and a practised ability to rort every-which-way, their only skill, this country is being raped.

They, as a government are not fit for purpose.

Hoo-roo Petals, tell me what a "lucky country" we are now,

Shane.