Roses are blooming in Xanadu and far too beautiful not to share. The Tea Rose shown here is the last of this batch; the huge number of blooms faded quickly but there are many buds about to burst out.
Tea
The original “Tea-scented Chinas” (Rosa x odorata) were Oriental cultivars thought to represent hybrids of R. chinensis with R. gigantea, a large Asian climbing rose with pale-yellow blossoms. Immediately upon their introduction in the early 1800s breeders went to work with them, especially in France, crossing them first with Chinas and then with Bourbons and Noisettes. The Teas are repeat-flowering roses, named for their fragrance being reminiscent of Chinese black tea (although this is not always the case). The colour range includes pastel shades of white, pink and (a novelty at the time) yellow to apricot. The individual flowers of many cultivars are semi-pendent and nodding, due to weak flower stalks. In a “typical” Tea, pointed buds produce high-centred blooms which unfurl in a spiral fashion, and the petals tend to roll back at the edges, producing a petal with a pointed tip: the Teas are thus the originators of today’s “classic” florists’ rose form. According to rose historian Brent Dickerson, the Tea classification owes as much to marketing as to botany; 19th-century nurserymen would label their Asian-based cultivars as “Teas” if they possessed the desirable Tea flower form, and “Chinas” if they did not. Like the Chinas, the Teas are not hardy in colder climates. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose#Tea
And two more clusters of frog’s eggs in the back pond.
Vinyl Records
I bought my first record when I was about 15: Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto 1 –- no idea who the soloist was. I didn’t have a record player so borrowed one from a friend of my Mother. I then bought a Philips portable record player and continued to buy LPs.
While living in Canberra I bought real hi-fi (?) equipment –- Yamaha integrated amplifier, Rogers speakers and a Denon turntable. Abels in Manuka specialized in great recordings so I continued to buy classical and jazz. When I moved to Sydney I upgraded the playback equipment and also added cassette tapes –- I recorded the vinyl to tape and rarely bought pre-recorded tapes.
When CDs became common, there were many bargain LPs so I bought clearance-sale records wherever I could. But, there comes the time when changing an LP on a record player is tedious, particularly if it’s a three-record opera. CDs crept into the collection. Then came further digitization in iTunes, which caused me to think: ‘Why have 3,000 LPs and 200 CDs when it can all be stored on a small computer and the playback easily controlled.’
Using Amadeus Pro, a Linn Sondek LP12 and a variety of amplifiers, I digitized the collection and it sounds fine on playback. Two thousand LPs have moved on and I have someone willing to buy the CDs. This gives us a lot of space in the house. I sold the Linn and but then replaced it with Thorens as I am still buying occasional LPs from various second-hand sources.
One of the best of these was the 2MBS-FM Record and Book Bazaar where I found the complete Beethoven String Quartets played by the Fine Arts Quartet ($1 each LP) and in excellent condition. Prices have since shot up to $5. Other places worth checking are various Vinnies and in Marrickville, The Bower: Traders of the Lost Artefact (http://www.bower.org.au/ ).
All second-hand LPs were washed using The Disc Doctor’s Miracle Record Cleaner and then played twice on an old turntable (with a new stylus) to clean out the groove. As I write this I can see all of my music and am listening to Beethoven-Grosse Fugue Op 133-Britten Quartet 1989. I can’t get involved in the vinyl-CD-iTunes squabbling that occupies the various hi-fi web sites. If uploaded music at 128kb sounds OK, then that’s what I will listen to and usually like. This is is a bit like the ‘what camera did you use’ question when someone admires the photo; what does it matter?
More on Social Media
Duncan Fine, “Hot air expended by the critics of Balloon Boy”, SMH, 23 October, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/hot-air-expended-by-the-critics-of-balloon-boy-20091022-hbci.html
Worth a read and only partly quoted here:
FOR something so widespread, so popular and such a part of our lives, popular culture has precious few friends. There’s a deep suspicion that, as a culture, we are wallowing self-indulgently in a superficial world filled with texting, email, iPhone applications and Daryl Somers.
That scepticism became outright loathing this week. It took off, literally, as a giant home-made helium balloon lifted from its moorings in Colorado with, it was thought at the time, six-year-old Falcon Heene on board.
Falcon turned up safe and sound, hiding at home. And it wasn’t until the family appeared on CNN basking in their instant celebrity status that Falcon gave the game away, stating that “You guys said we did it for the show”.
The hoax was dreamed up by the parents so the family might leverage their instantly-acquired fame to star in their own reality TV show.
Like a modern Icarus, Falcon flew way too close to the sun and fell to earth. But the heat he felt was actually coming from the corrosive lights of all the TV camera crews.
The story has for many people underlined the fact our modern media culture is a Gin Alley, catering to our basest instincts, fuelling a mass addiction to sex and violence, and blinding us to the big political and social picture (My italics).
I particularly like this last paragraph –- very punchy and a great metaphor harking back to Hogarth but perhaps a little too carried away when we look at the etching itself.
Today’s Newspaper-Useful Information
Chris Merritt, “Burnside continues ‘word watching”, The Australian-Legal Affairs, 23 October, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,26247370-17044,00.html
Burnside is one of my heroes so that this comment is biased.
The latest edition of Word Watching contains nine new chapters which, like the other 47, had their origins in articles for Bar News.
“I am not a language purist. When you get interested in it you see how it changes and continues to change.
“Anyone who thinks the language is now perfect and anyone who makes a mistake is a barbarian, just does not know what the history of language is like.
“As long as a person’s meaning comes through clearly, I don’t have much of a problem if they make mistakes of grammar, vocabulary and the rest of it,” he said.
His perspective on human rights comes through clearly in the chapter on doublespeak, written in 2003, which focuses strongly on the Howard government’s treatment of asylum-seekers.
He describes doublespeak as the use of language “to smuggle uncomfortable ideas into comfortable minds”.
“The Nazi regime mastered it; the Howard government has been an enthusiastic apprentice.” (my italics)
Word Watching, Field Notes From an Amateur Philologist is published by Scribe. I must hint at this as a desirable Christmas present.
–
