New neighbour?

A few nights ago at sunset I spotted a strange object on a branch of our neighbours’ tree which overhangs our yard. Then I realised it was a bird.

It was still there next morning. OK, this is not a v good picture but you should be able to make out (as I was after my initial surprise) that it’s a brush turkey. I had not known they roost so high up.

D said he heard it in the neighbouring yard during the day and at sunset I spotted it climbing back up. Since then we’ve seen and heard a bit more of it and it seemed to be settling in. 

A few days later when I saw it deploying its eponymous big foot on the lawn I endeavoured to deter it. There is a much more attractive and bushy garden two doors up that I hope (if male) it will make the focus of any mound-building activity. In the long term resistance is likely to be futile.

Maybe it has moved on since then. It hasn’t returned yet to this particular roosting spot.

Given that I’ve indulged in a certain amount of first-cuckooism on this blog, this seemed an encounter worth recording.

Back from China

more anon…

Only belive

I am with D on the other side of the Great Firewall, in Shanghai. Reports of the GF can be exaggerated. If you are here long term it is not impossible to get around much of it with a VPN. Or so I am told. Meanwhile I find myself greatly inconvenienced by the ongoing feud between Google and the PRC government. It is difficult being the servant of two masters.

Pictured above is the airbnb-type accommodation we are staying at for a few days before sallying deeper into China. Our billet is the lean-to structure tacked on the end of the house, itself now subdivided. In the neighbourhood are many very substantial houses (grander than this), dating from about 1920 to 1948 – testimony to the life of the Shanghailanders and the fortunes made from the century of humiliation which any well-brought-up Chinese person will be quick to remind you of in myriad contexts.

Our landlady, also pictured, lives in part of the house. She has already told D that she is 74, has two children in the USA, and much else besides. We had to tear ourselves away in search of a morning coffee.

It is just over 25 years since I first came to Shanghai, and 10 years since I was last here other than passing through the airport. The changes from the first time are enormous. One difference I have noticed since 2013 is that there are fewer buses. I put that down to the proliferation of metro lines and consequent withdrawal of bus services. Anyway, why get stuck in the traffic on a bus? I nevertheless hope at some stage for old-times’ sake to take the No 20 trolley bus which I first rode from D’s mum’s place to Waitan (or as Imperialist-nostalgists like to say, the Bund [no Wikipedia link available to me just now) in 1998.

The yellow bike in the background is a “share” bike. Shanghai is very flat and well-suited to cycling. The right handlebar twists as if it were a gear, but it operates a bell. The fly in the ointment is that one needs a local weixin/wechat financial connection to obtain one. For this we need to prevail on D’s relatives, which means the ideal hop-on-hop-off mode is not really practical for us.

As elsewhere in the world, cash transactions are now a novelty. The keyboard on my laptop needed replacing. When I produced cash to pay for this yesterday, the shop person said she hadn’t seen cash for a long time.

Title to this post from the legend on the slippers provided for indoor use:

Homophones

The scene: a lecture in the bowels of the now-demolished downtown law school at the University of Sydney, circa 1991.  Subject: most likely, Jurisprudence, though possibly International Law.  The class is being given by a distinguished visitor from somewhere in Europe.  He refers to one Morgenthau. 

The name is unfamiliar and students ask how it is spelt.

“Morgenthau” replies the lecturer, “like the water that falls to the the ground in the morning.”

“Ah!’ come the cries from the class.  “Dew!”

The lecturer is visibly shocked.  It is evident that he thinks the class has called out “Jew!” It is not hard to imagine him thinking: “What, even here?  Amongst young people at the sunny bottom of the world?  What dark monster breeds still?” 

[Background:

In German states in the period roughly 1770-1850, as part of their “emancipation” (in varying degrees) Jews (who themselves used patronymics) were required to assume a German family name.  A popular choice of family name was from a group of names with nature associations, which as a result became known as Jewish surnames. Morgenthau is one such name. Whole story of course a bit more complicated than that. See here for some detail in the context of a discussion of “toponymic” family names, including to me the delightful theory which at this stage I would take with a grain of salt that E T A Hoffmann invented a few surnames for this purpose.]

Spring!

Yesterday I heard the first koel. Today the first channel-billed cuckoo.

Asparagus are no longer from Peru and right now pretty cheap.

Journalism on “our ABC.”

I’m entering grumpy old man mode. This could be part of a series.

Today the ABC runs a story under the teaser headline:

Uber, Coles and union strike deals for delivery drivers. Is the gig economy ‘going straight’?

The headline to story itself (as you will see if you click) is a bit more detailed:

Gig economy shifts as Uber takes on supermarket delivery, government pushes for minimum employment standards

But in the opening paragraph there is a reversion to the jaunty tone of the the teaser:

The gig economy — demonised for starvation wages, disempowered workers and eroding workplace rights — might be growing up. 

Then again, it might not be. Joellen Riley [as was, but now] Munton is a bit more sanguine about that.

But I’m still fascinated by the framing. Another obvious way of asking the original question is: “Is the ‘straight’ economy going gig?” And a supplementary: “Why are we letting it?”

From my piano

It is time to have my piano tuned. I’m waiting to hear back from the tuner.

Meanwhile, I’m putting away the sheet music which was piled on top of it and on the music desk. This is what was there:

1. Schubert, Wanderer Fantasie
2. Brahms Fantasien Op 116
3. Gershwin preludes
4. Shostavovich preludes op 34
5. Brahms Schumann-Variationen Op 9
6. Bach, assorted incl Italian Concerto, French overture and Goldberg Variations
7. Mendelssohn, Songs without words
8. Liszt, Twenty Piano Transcriptions
9. Liszt Years of Pilgrimage 2nd year

Notes on each, respectively:

1. Liszt edition from Con library with fingerings provided by him.  I love the bit where the first movement dissolves into the song but the figuration afterwards in the slow movement is a slog so far beyond me.  Any attempt by me at the last movement will never get me past bangy desperation.  I find I can pleasurably hop and skip along in the Scherzo even if at quite an objectively sedate pace.
2. Played 3 and 6 as a teenager and others later.  Not sure why I got the music out. Possibly to check a detail in No 3 which subject to inaccuracies creeping in I find I can still play through “by heart.”
3. Most recently fashioned a “Happy Birthday” variation emerging from Prelude No 3 (the e flat minor one) on the occasion of D’s birthday.
4. Bought in1988 after hearing Lazar Berman play a selection or possibly the whole set.  Learnt some then (1,2,10,14-17, 24) with P (now my Australia-ensemble-going companion).  This year learnt No 5.
5. The Brahms/Schumann variations have featured previously in this blog (1) (2). Last year I committed them to memory (though this is already fading in a way which Brahms Op 116 No 3 has not after many more years) and was glad to be able to play them through twice during exequies for R, husband of E, my former high school music teacher.  The set still constitutes my primary pianistic obsession.  The generally acknowledged favourite variation is No 14.  Jx, D’s 20-year-old grand nephew, who has been staying with us since the beginning of March, asked what it was when I had been playing it and looked it up on his device.  (Other piece so requested by him was Voi che sapete after a little Alberti doodling on my part segued into an approximation.) I also find No 4 (pictured above: the Allegro capriccioso at the bottom is for the next variation – see and hear here at 4:03) particularly poignant/wistful – both the tune and its accompaniment which manages to have a strumming feel whilst, for me, conjuring up the world of the cimbalon – which is contrary to reason in that the cimbalon, like the piano, is played with hammers, so any “strumming” must be entirely metaphorical.
6. In lockdown I learnt quite a few of the variations. They are engrossing. Sustained playing of them becomes an immersion in G major, notwithstanding the G minor and E minor spells. I am far from the only person to have thought of tackling these during the recent great disruption – a bit like packing “War and Peace” when embarking on a long sea voyage. I have been following a youtube project by one “Dudadius,” a self-described “reasonably competent pianist.” Right now he is up to No 24, though the pace has been slackening.  Inspired by his latest instalments I had the music out again with a view to tackling the remaining unlearnt variations as an antidote to or at least sorbet between the rather glutinous romantic works I have lately been playing and a shift of the dial from the Brahms/Schumann F# minor.
7. Loved these as a child/teenager but other than the ones imprinted on me by learning them at an impressionable age now find them emotionally unrewarding.  Not for the reasons claimed by Wagner, but (I suspect) because Mendelssohn’s aesthetic was formed in Berlin and did not really receive the influence of Beethoven.  (Schumann, on the other hand…).
8. Great Art Nouveau NY edition.  I like to think of this as the Central European [transplanted] Songbook.  Includes 5 Schubert songs and a number of other total obscurities.  Most recently assayed: Schumann Fruhlingsnacht and Wagner Spinnerlied (from Flying Dutchman).  Rigoletto paraphrase quite beyond me but fun to pick through the easier bits.
9. This is the easiest volume of the Years of Pilgrimage, the perelinage is to Italy.  I have never got into Il Penseroso and will never be able to play After a Lecture on Dante though it is fun occasionally to tackle certain passages.  I have been playing the Petrarch sonnets possibly too much lately.  The last section of Sonnet 104 (No 6) can be turned into a variation on Happy Birthday.  D’s favourite from this volume is No 3, the Canzonetta of Salvator Rosa.  We have long sung it when on jaunty expeditions.  If D is within earshot I only have to play the little A major flourish in the introduction pictured below (assume bass clef and A major key signature) to provoke him into launching into the verse.  One day we have to get him the words.

Scapegoat

Today, at the funeral of George Pell, Tony Abbott is reported as saying that Pell was “made a scapegoat for the church itself.”

Maybe, but I reckon Pell did a bit of scapegoating himself (unless you consider that he was not responsible for the actions of others answerable to him) in the treatment of long time director of music at St Mary’s Cathedral, David Russell.

At the library 2

I am in Canberra just now. The library is closed for a public holiday as per the above screen shot. If you click through on the “Learn more” link you will eventually find out what holiday it is.

Clutter

I was in a tight spot, on my hands and knees in my friend X’s bedroom, when I saw the bookmark.

“I [heart] books,” it read.

I laughed.

I was there because X, who is some years older than I, had lost their glasses.  They must have slipped somewhere behind or beneath X’s bed.  I had offered to go round and retrieve them.

At the point when I spotted the bookmark, I was vacuuming around and under the bed prior to peering beneath and behind it with the assistance of a handy bicycle headlight which I use as a compact torch.

I spotted the glasses but after I had vacuumed under the bed the pile of the carpet obscured my view.  The glasses were lying flat at an angle which resisted my attempts to coax them out with the aid of a “grabber” stick.  The obvious solution was to move the bed away from the wall.

Which brings us back to the books.  X must have thousands of them, far exceeding any available shelf space. 

I had already had to move some away to get a good angle to look under and behind the bed.  The bed was effectively wedged in by books and I would have to remove these to move the bed.

The problem was, where to put them?  Attempts to shift them to the top of teetering columns of books just led to further bookslides.  Eventually I gave up and piled them on the bed.

The glasses were retrieved, the bed moved back.  But where to put the books on the bed?

I suggested to X that we might make available some cubic space by disposing of various stacks of magazines and other printed matter.  Somewhat to my surprise, X embraced this proposal, and was soon on a roll.  I filled up a whole yellow-topped wheelie recycling bin (it started off empty), almost entirely with material from the bedroom (the other stuff came from the bathroom).  I could only just wheel the bin back to its proper place.  Glossy paper is very heavy.

Stable spots were found for the books heaped on the bed, though without much regard to any system other than their size and shape. The volume of matter disposed of exceeded that of the relocated books so the net result was also an improvement in access, as well as the removal of a not insignificant amount of dust and fluff.

I left exhausted, but also more than a bit self-satisfied with a good deed well done.  The situation reminded me of the mystery first encountered in my childhood, probably when I was aged about ten or eleven.  Our family lived in and out of the house of another family a few doors away and they in and out of ours.  The mystery was that I could quite enjoy helping my friend tidy up her bedroom when we were sent there together by her mother and charged with the task, even though my own room at home languished in a far worse state and I would definitely not have welcomed a similar command from my mother.

Meanwhile, while he still sallies forth for other items, D’s forays to salvage a free replacement TV have come to an end. None of the four TVs he sourced was adequate, for one reason or another.  D bought a factory second which may or may not prove satisfactory.  We now have five surplus large flat-screen TVs, or maybe four and a half if (as I would prefer) our original TV could be repaired (I prefer its picture to the new one, which feels more like an enormous computer monitor than a TV).

I also have more books than shelf-space, and plenty of other superfluous stuff.

Mote: beam.