Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Christmas Email

© Peter Sackett
Hi Vick,

We're at Locheilan. It's Christmas morning, and there was a spectacular tropical thunder storm last night. We could see it approaching before bed, coming over the hills near Violet Town. There were huge clusters of peach-coloured lightning. By 11pm it had reached us, and the thunder was great. One of the cows in the dairy didn't think so, and mooed in the dark. The lightning totally illuminated the house for a millisecond every half-minute or so.

We had planned to ride our bikes to Numurkah for a church service this morning, but the rain (I hope) and heat have spoiled that. I'd rather hang around here. Alison and I worked in the cheesery (I'm still not sure that's a real word) for a few hours last night, and that was fun. I got to smooth huge cylinders of bleu and then dip them in blood-red wax for the market, and then Alison and I brined big wheels of what would eventually become Camembert.

I brought GI Joe with me this trip-- two of my astronaut figures and a space capsule. When things dry out, I'll take them over to a small quarry nearby and photograph them. It looks like an alien landscape over there; the soil is a red-orange colour.

What are you up to?

Pete

Saturday, December 10, 2011

The Treat

This one is for my brother, Scott. It's an experiment--my first mobile post, made during a trip to Cole's.

Not much to say here, except that I'm glad they're at least fat free.

Friday, December 9, 2011

The Postcard Files: Löbau


Haus Schminke
Alexandra Merten and Kolja Harms, two of my favourite people in the world, sent this card to me recently. It seems while I was in the United States, they were also on the road again, this time to Löbau, a city near Dresden. They'd spent two days staying at the Schminke house, completed in 1933 by architect Hans Scharoun for noodle manufacturer Hans Schminke and his family. Alexandra appears to regard this place as a German counterpart to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth house in Plano, Illinois-- but one that offers a more intimate experience for the visitor. For a modest investment, you can stay a night or two. 

Well, I've never been to Plano, but if I were given the opportunity to visit one house or the other, I'd opt for the flight to Löbau. A big reason for that has to do with the joy of travelling with Alexandra and Kolja, with whom I've had many unconventional adventures, foreign and domestic. They have an extraordinary talent for finding interesting, often vaguely melancholy, places off the beaten path-- which is where the three of us like to be. I learned early in our friendship to trust their instincts, and let them guide me. I just wish I could do it more often.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

The Typographer

On Friday, I visited Melbourne typographer Stephen Banham. Stephen became of interest to me when I agreed last week to research and write an article about signs and "signage" for Design Quarterly, a regular client of mine. His studio, Letterbox, is conveniently close, just a few blocks east of me on Sydney Road, on the first floor of the Hardwick Building, and gave me the chance for a face-to-face interview without having to spend an hour on the tram.
Banham's new book.
Stephen has written several books about typography and, having grown up here, possesses deep institutional knowledge of the signs of Melbourne. A few days earlier, I'd requested a review copy of his new book, Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed Through Typography, and I managed to thumb through just a few pages of it prior to our meeting. It reveals some of the hidden narrative facets of the signs-- the most public medium for typography-- found throughout Melbourne. It's a neat premise, and one that I suspect will keep me from passing this book on to someone else, as I've done with so many other review copies.
For my article, I wanted to get Stephen's take on some of the trends in sign design-- the transition from static to interactive electronic signage, for example, and what's driving it. I had already spoken a couple of days earlier with a representative of Diadem, a large "brand delivery" company that designs and produces signs of various types for some big clients like BMW, ANZ and Tullamarine Airport. My goal with Stephen was to get a more detached perspective, and perhaps some better-informed and less self-conscious quotations.

The Chinese take-away building on Victoria Street.
I suppose I got all of that-- I haven't listened to the recording I made of our conversation. But I was a little distracted by the fact that Stephen and I both live in Brunswick, a neighbourhood rife with typography and signs of all kinds, much of which is left over from the 60s and 70s, and many examples of which I've grown fond of. Here, at last, was an opportunity for me to exchange some favourites with someone who could appreciate what I was talking about.
Immediately, though, I felt like I'd become the character Chris Farley played on Saturday Night Live's recurring sketch "The Chris Farley Show" during which, in his struggle to come up with an insightful question for actor Jeff Daniels, for example, he recalled a moment in one of Daniels' movies and asked, "Do you remember that?" Daniels smiled politely and answered, "Yes." With nowhere to go, Farley's reply was merely, "Um, that was awesome." There was nothing in the way of typography I could help Stephen discover about Brunswick-- not even the Chinese take-away building on Victoria Street...two blocks from his studio. He knew it all, and smiled politely.

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Inscription

When I returned from my workout this afternoon, the mailbox was overflowing. One parcel in particular caught my attention-- a large white envelope sent from the United States. My heart skipped a beat.

Wow.
I tore open the package to reveal what I'd requested only four weeks ago: a glossy, black-and-white photograph of the castaways from Gilligan's Island, inscribed to me by my favourite of the bunch, professor Roy Hinkley (Russell Johnson).

Mr. Johnson lives on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle. Having done some research on the Internet, I'd learned that he would sign photographs, provided his fans provided them, along with a return envelope with the required postage. I found an image on eBay I liked, bought it, and carefully assembled the package, including a brief, heartfelt letter to Mr. Johnson explaining how much I'd enjoyed his work on "Gilligan's Island". Not wanting to sound mawkish, I had three family members read the note to make sure it passed the "puke test"-- all safe there.

By all accounts I've read, Mr. Johnson is a swell guy-- even a war hero and a volunteer for AIDS research fundraising. To me, of course, he's a smart comic actor and a living reminder of some very pleasant childhood memories.

The inscription to me was a bonus; I didn't assume he'd personalise the photo. I'm delighted.


Friday, July 15, 2011

The Note

Last night, when we arrived home after attending a book launch party for a friend of ours, I found this note tucked inside our mailbox.  Let's see what I can make of this...

To the writer: 

First: Gee, pretty poisonous stuff. I suspect you're the creepy drunk who lives upstairs at the bar on the corner-- the blotchy-faced inebriate who once staggered to our front door at 10pm to complain that Harry was barking, even though he was next to us, asleep on the couch. But of course I can't be sure, because you were shrewd enough not to sign your name. Instead, you cleverly attributed it's authoring to the entire neighbourhood. ZING! Point scored! I'm staggering in fuming disbelief. [At whom, confound it, should I direct my outrage at receipt of this impertinent memorandum?!!? ]
Second, let me congratulate you on not misspelling anything. These kinds of alcohol-induced primal screams are usually penned by folks who couldn't parse the letters of their own names if their lives depended on it. You're one up on them. (Of course, you didn't spell your name, either.)

Third, Harry was in the back yard for about three hours unsupervised-- a rare occasion. Occasionally, he'll emit the velvety, languid sort of bark that just lets you know a dog is present; no teeth, no foam, no threat, no urgency at all. Far from it. The only thing that Harry views as urgent is his dinner, and he's smart enough to know that you don't have it. But boy, I hear you; incessant barking can be really annoying-- like the constant, frantic yapping of the terrier from the house across the street. That dog just doesn't quit, does he? In fact, he's barking right now. Day and night, he's yelling his head off. I know the world looks and sounds fuzzy to you, but perhaps you should pop a couple of aspirins, turn your attention to the house 90 degrees to your left and leave your notes in that mailbox. You might get more bang for your buck, and the hangovers will hurt less.

Sincerely,

Get Bent

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Mailbox

In yesterday's post I mentioned my leaky mailbox (see "The Postcard Files: Dessau"), a tinny piece of crap that had allowed rain to saturate the nifty homemade postcard I'd received from friends in Germany. The ink on the card had softened and run a bit, creating an acidic watercolour effect. With most parcels, however, the results are a lot less aesthetically pleasing.

The mailbox from hell.
This mailbox ruins mail.  Actually, it's more like a small compost bin.  Mail goes in, garbage comes out. It does virtually nothing to provide shelter for its contents, with the exception of cockroaches and snails, who think it's a cozy pied-à-terre; open the lid at the wrong time, and it's a horn of plenty.

Most of what's deposited in it each day is stuff we don't care about-- weekly sale notices for the grocery store, a promotional flyer for a new Indian restaurant, or the utterly recyclable Moreland Leader community newspaper (which appears whether you want it, or not). The New Yorker, which I do care about, arrives in a plastic bag, which usually sheds water, unless there's a downpour. Half the time, though, the good but unprotected mail gets soaked, and has a zig-zag snail trail or roach poop stuck to it.

Forensic examination would reveal a base layer of paper in there-- a worthless, soggy, moulding stratum of pizza take-away menus-- from as far back as two years ago. No one has scooped it out for fear of what might be living beneath it. When I reach in to pull out a letter, half the time I expect something to pull back.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The Postcard Files: Dessau

I nearly broke my ankle performing this. (Photos by Kolja Harms)
This one has been on the refrigerator for months because I like it so much. I was in Hamburg, Germany in April of 2010, visiting my friends Kolja Harms, Alexandra Merten and Gerald Kappelmann. All three are architects. When I'm in town, it's our habit to make a field trip together to some place of architectural significance. In 2007, it had been Prora, the Nazi holiday resort on the island of Rügen. This time, it was the Bauhaus in Dessau, a Mecca for devotees of Walter Gropius and modern design.

Alexandra had made arrangements for all of us to spend two nights in the dormitory tower, giving us ample time (or so we thought) to explore the campus and surrounding town. On our first morning, after breakfast, Kolja and I circled the main building. A handsome but sinister railing bounds the grass here; it runs low to the ground, nearly invisible, like a series of staples holding the turf in place. It's perfectly engineered to trip and wrench the ankles of careless visitors. So Kolja took pictures while I demonstrated how not to approach the Bauhaus. He sent the series of photos to me months later on this homemade postcard, which got wet in my leaky mailbox before I could retrieve it.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The New Arrival


GI Joe's photo op with Barbie gets silly.
It was a red-letter day for Joe, Greg and Skip. Disappointed about not being able to keep the model I'd borrowed for my story (see "The Desk"), they'd been occupying themselves by being wise guys and making a general mess of my desk; dismantling my stapler, playing "52 pick-up" with my Rolodex, and cutting up my pencils for lumber to build a hutch for the dust bunnies lying around. Well, they cheered up considerably when she appeared.

At first, they were content to watch eagerly from the sidelines as I took a few shots of Barbie in her display box. Then Joe (a little star-struck, I guess) insisted I take a few pictures of him standing next to her. I agreed, but before I could get things set up Joe had pulled off the box lid and crawled inside, wedging himself beside her. And once Joe had his turn, Skip and Greg had to have theirs, too. At that point, it pretty much became a competition to see how many of them could cram themselves into the frame at once. Barbie was the consummate professional, not letting on at all that this was physically uncomfortable, and more than a bit ridiculous. Actually, it was almost eerie how she never once lost her poise. I just assumed she was accustomed to that kind of attention.

Then she explained. She's a reproduction of Barbie in 1964 (as advertised in the upper right-hand corner of the package), which was the very same year GI Joe made his debut. The guys just wanted to reminisce, and she didn't want to spoil it for them. Welcome aboard, Barbie.

Monday, July 4, 2011

The Desk

Damien Wright's model of "Harry's Desk".
Greg places the objet d'art just so.
For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a story exploring the role of sketching in the process of design. The editor was eager for me to include a discussion of the work of at least a couple of Australians, and I decided to collect some remarks from my friend Damien Wright, a craftsman who makes furniture from native Australian wood. Damien draws a lot of working sketches, but he gets more mileage from the scale models he builds. The other night, he dropped off one of those models with a couple of his sketchbooks for me to look over, to see what might be useful in illustrating the article. I took a few shots of the tiny desk using my tabletop cyc. He calls this one "Harry's Desk."
Inspecting the joinery.

I refused to caption this one.
I took a short break for lunch, and by the time I came back, Joe and Greg had discovered the desk and decided they wanted to keep it for their office. It's a little small, but they complained they don't have anything to write on at the moment, and they thought their Hovitos idol (a trophy from a mission to Peru) looked good on it. I explained they could borrow it for a few days, but that Damien is getting it back. Thus ensued some further inspection and horsing around, until I'd had enough and put the model away.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Crocktails

Apropos of nothing, I'll take a moment to share my thoughts on the state of mixology in Australia. More specifically, the martini. Before I moved to Melbourne I enjoyed many of them, alone and with friends. Now that I'm here, it doesn't happen anymore. Why? Here's why.

G'day!
Wine is good here. Beer, too. Cocktails are shitty.

As far as I can tell, Melbourne bartenders don't know ass from elbow. And it doesn't help that most folks (especially the under-40 crowd) seem to like their martinis "dirty," with olive juice tipped into the mix. In my view, "dirty" is hipster branding for a crappy drink. It may sound cool to swill something dirty (as in edgy, sinister and outlawed), but if there's enough olive juice for you to taste, it means the bartender didn't care enough about getting a tip to rinse the nosh before putting it into the glass. But no matter how ardently you plead for a dry martini, they'll spill liberal amounts of vermouth (sweet as often as dry) into the ice and gin. Then they'll make a big show of shaking the damn thing, pour it into a room-temperature glass, and smugly garnish it with an olive (beware-- pit intact) glistening not with brine, but oil. I once was served a martini that was warm to the touch and without a trace of ice, the cocktail glass having come directly from the sanitizer.

If, by some miracle, you manage to get your hands on a martini that's at least drinkable, you're still going to be charged 18 or 19 bucks for the privilege. ["Pardon me, waiter? Go to hell."]

I miss my former neighbourhood bar-- the lounge at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in Seattle-- where I can go swimming in ice-cold razor blade soup for 4 dollars at happy hour. So unless I'm visiting my family in the U.S., the only time I drink martinis is at home, when I invest in a bottle of Gordon's (which isn't often) or score a bottle of the good stuff from the duty-free shop at Tullamarine Airport.

Cheers.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

New Mallet / New High Score

After a two-week hiatus due to Easter and holiday closures, I played trugo this afternoon with the gang at the Brunswick Trugo Club. My first round was shockingly bad. I scored 13 out of a possible 24 points, leading me to reconsider my choice of mallet. I pulled two more from the rack to see how they performed; one was very short and heavy, the other long and heavy with a slightly crooked handle. But both had a striking face at least a centimetre wider than the mallet I'd been using. The long-handled one improved my game immediately, and I finished the afternoon with a game against Helen in which I scored 20 points. Helen scored a new personal best of 21.
Bad hit: Champ the Trugo Dog pursues an errant ring.


Champ the Trugo Dog was supervising play again today, but his enthusiasm flagged a little bit early, perhaps because his owner, Gerry, wasn't feeling well himself. He'd managed to pull a rib muscle this past weekend and figures he'll be out of action for the next few days. 

Friday, May 6, 2011

Five Bucks

I found a $5 bill on the bike path yesterday. Sweet.

I looked around to see who might have dropped it. The only folks in sight were two shuffling mom types pushing a pram in the opposite direction, and they were almost a block away. But I was in the mood for a good deed, so I turned around and pedalled back the way I'd come. By the time I got to the intersection, they'd vanished. I'd never have believed their flabby keesters could give me the slip, but they did. The money's all mine.

Weekend at Metung

The power plant at Yallourn North.


Alison, Bronwyn and I drove to Metung to spend Easter weekend and ANZAC Day with their grandfather, John Sedgley. Metung is a tiny place built on an appendix-shaped peninsula in East Gippsland. John lives there alone, on a wooded hillside overlooking the waterfront, in a house called Rosebank.

Bron catches 187 winks.
We'd been warned that there would be some roadworks to avoid as we approached Moe from the west, so we made a looping, inland detour through a town called Yallourn North. We discovered a power plant nearby with three cooling towers that I liked the look of, so we pulled over to stretch our legs and let the dogs pee. As usual, Bron had passed out in the back seat, so we woke her up and made her walk around a bit, too.

I'd recently dusted off my Nikon 8008s camera and started shooting the 35mm film I'd stockpiled and brought with me to Australia. I thought the earth toned towers looked great and vaguely sinister surrounded by the green, bucolic hills of Victoria. From their appearance, I guessed they were designed in the 1960s; smooth and muscular earthenware vessels cushioned by a narrow ring of crisscrossing basket weave threads at their base. We piled back into the car, and two hours later we pulled up to Rosebank just in time for dinner, which had already been prepared.

" A fine vessel she is...a very fine vessel."
The very next day John took us sailing on his boat, Shadowfax. After a perilous descent to the dock down a steep, treefall-strewn hillside (which John, at 94, negotiated with alarming swiftness), we motored the entire way out to Duck Arm on a calm, windless tide, past a string of slim islands that form the meniscus between mainland Australia and the capricious, open waters of Bass Strait. When we arrived, John climbed off the boat and ambled over to the members of a sailing club from Melbourne that had pulled up down the beach. I ran into the scrub to pee and take pictures of GI Joe on the dock admiring Shadowfax.
When John returned, we had coffee and sandwiches, and sailed home with assistance of a steady breeze that had come up. I had my hand on the tiller nearly the whole way back. I love sailing, and it was quite a thrill to feel the tug of the water and the eager lunge of the boat when the sails were trim.

We attended Easter service the next morning at the little Anglican church in town, and sat in the front row so we could see John as he did a short reading for the congregation. Later, we went to Michael and Helen's house (Alison's uncle and aunt) for lunch/dinner, then ended the day with the four of us-- John, Alison, Bron and me-- pretending to stay awake through an episode of "Midsomer Murders".

John Sedgley (white hair, centre) at the afternoon memorial service.
ANZAC Day started early, with a dawn service at the town square on Monday. ANZAC is an acronym standing for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and the day of remembrance is akin to Memorial Day in the United States. Melbourne conducts a good large-scale service, but I think ANZAC Day is best enjoyed in country towns like Metung where the observance is simpler and more intimate, and the ground isn't littered with trash when people leave. About 100 people turned up, yawning and cradling cups of coffee from the local bakery, which had opened early. One man led the brief service from the base of the flagpole, around which both homemade and store-bought wreaths of roses and carnations had begun to collect.

As if on cue, when the service was over a single kookaburra called from a nearby gum, and the crowd dispersed.




Thursday, April 28, 2011

Orange Juice for Sale

A couple of weeks ago, I went into the city to drop off some film I'd exposed of the Coppin Masonic Lodge. As I walked home from the tram stop I noticed two girls, both about ten years old, who were hawking orange juice to passers-by.

"Would you like to buy some lemona--, I mean orange juice?," one of the girls asked as I approached.  "It's only 20 cents."

Orange juice sales is less than brisk in Brunswick West.
"No, thank you," I replied. "It looks good, though, and good luck with the project."

She dropped her head, dejected. As I moved on I could barely hear her mutter "Why not?" Three steps later, and I asked myself the same question. Sure, I'd lied about it "looking good." There was no ice to keep the juice chilled. There was too little of it in the bowl to make it look appealing. Their sign was too small and hard to read. But I gave them points for continuing a suburban tradition. I spun around and said, "I changed my mind; I'll have a cup."

From the look of the till, I was their only customer, so I tossed a 50-cent piece into the basket. In return, I got half a paper cup-full of syrupy-looking yellow-orange liquid.

"It's pretty tart," they warned.

One sip and a forced smile was all I could manage.

Friday, April 8, 2011

The Postcard Files: Aussie Tourism and Portarlington



This one is a reproduction of a tourism poster, but I still think it's cool. It's a much better image for Australia than Paul Hogan or any of the frantic, bogan dreck Steve Irwin was responsible for.




Ahh, an honest, straightforward postcard made in the good old days before town councils became convinced that if they didn't pay a consultant to come up with a logo and tagline, they wouldn't be taken seriously by anyone. Good for you, Portarlington!




This is the only other postcard available for Portarlington, and I can see why. If this is the best they had for card #2, clearly they were way too short of material for #3. I'm not sure what's going on here. Is this mass transit for old people? If this was a stop on the bus tour, then judging from the fact that the three old ladies on the left are staring at their shoes, it's time to leave. Or maybe they've just finished the train ride and are trying to figure out what happened to the person who was sitting in the chair.



Thursday, April 7, 2011

Brunswick Trugo Club

For months I'd wondered about the Brunswick Trugo Club. I'd seen signs pointing the way, but never bothered to discover where they led. Given the large immigrant population in my neigbourhood, I thought it might have been the name of a private association of ethnic Italians.
Headed for the trugo club? Not this way, you're not.

Nope. Trugo is a sport invented by Melbourne rail workers in 1924. Last week, I called Gerald Strachan, the president of the Brunswick Trugo Club, to ask if I could come by to see the place and learn about the game.

"You're absolutely welcome to," he said. "The season ends soon, but we meet on Tuesdays at 11AM, and we also have a hit on Sunday afternoons."

The clubhouse and grounds are are at the back of a small public park nearby, tucked into a verdant corner and enclosed by a high chain link fence. I arrived thirty minutes early, but Gerald and some of his clubmates (about eight people well into their retirement years) were already setting up. The game is relatively simple. Players hit a dense rubber disk with a heavy, double-ended wooden mallet, the striking surfaces of which are cushioned with swatches of rubber from either recycled crepe shoe soles or thongs (flip flops). The disk has a hole in the middle, and is about the size and density of a hockey puck. It's an industrial product, once used on train couplers as a cushioning device. The object of the game is to hit the disk hard and accurately enough to have it roll between two posts at the end of a 90-foot green.
A trugo match at the Brunswick club in 2008.

Gerald demonstrated the correct stance and swing-- back to target with feet planted on either side of the disk for a vigorous backwards swing through the legs. Then he handed me a mallet and, before I realised it, I was playing a game against another club member. My first hit rolled dead centre.

"That always happens with beginners on the first few strokes," Gerald remarked. "Then it all goes to hell."

So true. Whereas my first four disks rolled smoothly and briskly between the yellow posts, the next four, then eight, wobbled crazily off course and veered out of bounds. An ill-timed soak at my end of the court from a malfunctioning sprinkler didn't help my accuracy, either. My fouls were retrieved eagerly by Champ, Gerald's 7-year-old Jack Russell terrier. Champ is a trugo fanatic and a daredevil. He routinely positions himself at midfield, in the direct path of the hard rubber puck (which, should it skip high at the receiving end, could knock your teeth out) prepared to pluck it off the green if it's a bad shot.

"He only takes them if you muck up the hit," Gerald explained. Champ was having a ball.

Things improved dramatically at halftime, when my opponent and I switched ends. Now I had the dry end of the court and he had the wet one. Suddenly, my game got better and nearly every one of my hits scored a point.

I have no idea what the final score was, but everyone was having a good time and no one seemed to care. I went inside the clubhouse to make myself a cup of coffee, then returned to the courtside bench where the others sat in the sun, smoking heavily and barking friendly gibes at another pair finishing their match. ["That was a shocker, Lois! You're miserable!"]

Trugo is a threatened species. Only six clubs exist, and it's a game played almost exclusively by pensioners. Public awareness is a serious problem; very few Melburnians know of the game, so recruits are scarce. When a club member dies, there is usually no one to take their place. The Footscray Trugo Club, which had been Melbourne's oldest, closed in 2009 for lack of players. The smoking probably doesn't help, either.

I don't want to see trugo disappear, so I'll do my part. I've got my eye on the start of the competitive season in August.

Monday, April 4, 2011

The Postcard Files: Shepparton

I like to get postcards in the mail, but not many folks send them these days. Text messages and mobile phone snapshots are instant but spiritless, and a postcard, no matter how dorky, carries a faint whiff of the place from which they were posted. For the last few months, I've begun buying them to send to members of my family in the United States, and to good friends in Germany and Belgium. At the start, I bought only postcards that "looked nice" but that got boring fast. So now I gravitate to the ugly ducklings, which is more fun and makes the task easier. Here are a few I found this weekend while I was in Shepparton and Wunghnu, in the farm country of northern Victoria.

I found these first two at the news agency in downtown Shepparton. "Shep", as it's called by most people, has a few interesting elements but, for the most part, it's kind of a dump. Outlet stores and fast food joints are the connective tissue holding the town together. The sales clerk seemed a bit puzzled as to why I'd want to send a postcard from this place, but my American accent probably explained enough. These are the most expensive postcards I've ever bought, at AU$2 each. Ouch.


Lesser Shepparton didn't warrant their own postcard.






This one is just weird. Had I not read the caption, I might have guessed this was, in fact, Lesser Shepparton. But it appears to be a museum diorama. I have no idea who Bangerang is. I assume it's the fellow (?) on the right touching a wooden pole to a rock, and that this is what constituted housekeeping in days of yore. I'll have to look for it the next time I'm in Shep.



This is Wunghnu's only postcard. It depicts an instructive graffito scrawled on the north side of the water tower, across the street from the town store where I bought it.


Sunday, April 3, 2011

Coppin Masonic Lodge, Part I

Yesterday morning I joined my lodge brother, Nick, for a perusal of the Freemason hall on Weston Street, in Melbourne's Brunswick neighbourhood, not far from where I live. A couple of weeks ago, Nick mentioned to me that the building would soon be sold, and likely demolished. I'd ridden my bicycle past this edifice (called Coppin Masonic Lodge) several times, and admired its facade-- a dignified two-storey structure of red brick appointed conservatively with decorative ionic columns-- settled cheek-by-jowl in rows of single-family residences. It alarmed me to learn it's days were numbered.

Google Maps image of Coppin Masonic Lodge (Brunswick, Victoria, AU)
Nick explained there was only one remaining Freemason group (a "lodge" in Masonic parlance)  that still used the building, and that their last meeting would be in late April. After that, the place would be vacated permanently. A large, multifamily development is clearing ground immediately adjacent to the hall, and, given there is little financial incentive for the building to be coddled by the developer, the Freemasons expect it to be razed. The members of the remaining lodge (called Weston Street United) will meet thereafter at the hall on Davies Street, about three kilometres northeast. With regard to Coppin Lodge, however, it was Nick's job to decide what artefacts, among possible hundreds, would be saved and moved with them. Everything that remained would be thrown out or left for a wrecking crew.

Nick and I arrived together at 10:00 AM, meeting three other people inside (two Freemasons from Weston United, and the wife of one of them) who were on hand to answer questions, and take notes of what Nick planned to rescue. I had come equipped with two cameras, three rolls of colour film and a digital voice recorder and, while I managed to take a few photographs of the interior, it soon became clear that it was more important to capture as much of the conversation among the group as I could. I could take pictures later, but the anecdotal and nostalgic chatter interested me, and would not be repeated. For the next ninety minutes I followed the group from room to room, asking the occasional question, but mostly listening and making mental notes of what, after Nick had identified items to be saved, still lay in peril. Among them: a large, wrought-iron gate inlaid with the symbol of Freemasonry-- the compass and square-- that secured the stairwell to the upstairs meeting room; a chronological arrangement of colourful, hand-painted banners, each emblazoned with the name and insignia of various Freemason subgroups and the year in which they convened, and, among my favourites, two largish portraits of Queen Elizabeth II from the early 1950s. One of these portraits still hangs, as is custom, from the wall in the dining room and receives a toast from the lodge members during their dinner functions. The other was covered with a thin layer of dust and propped unceremoniously atop a row of cabinets in the ladies' wardrobe.

By 11:30, Nick had made the rounds and was ready to leave. "Nick, I have to come back," I said. "This was really interesting. I want to take more pictures, and there just wan't enough time to do that this morning." He seemed pleased to hear this, and said he'd help make the necessary arrangements to get me back inside.

Friday, April 1, 2011

I have a cold. Shit.

I've just posted my first blog entry, and now I'm lying here trying to fall asleep with a damn stuffy nose. I came down with a cold yesterday, but until now the symptoms haven't been particularly bothersome. I even burned 1000 calories at the gym this afternoon. Well, they're bothering me now. Headache, coffee-can voice, grumpy. Tomorrow, it'll be less coffee and more water. Quit staring at me.

Finally

Finally I've enlisted some help from Joe and now have a template I like. I plan to get my website up-and-happening in the coming months, but in the meantime, this site serves the purpose. Stay tuned for more exciting events.