“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


.

.

.

.

19 December 2014

SUSTAINABLE KIDS' BIG DAY OUT

Regular readers will know of DRINKSTER's ongoing fascination with the Museum of Economic Botany in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. Curator Tony Kanellos won a new crew of admirers when he gave a full tour to the winners of McLaren Vale's admirable Sustainable Kids competition ... all photos Philip White


Sustainable Kids is an ongoing initiative of Dr Irina Santiago-Brown, designer of the McLaren Vale Sustainable Viticulture program. Local schoolkids were encouraged to keep diaries, recording an observation of some aspect of the natural world outside for 100 consecutive days. The winning books are all remarkable examples of how acutely observative young brains can be if unplugged from the digi ether and pointed in a richer more earthy direction. But once inside these remarkable buildings, which are full of outside, really, the Mums and Dads were just as overwhelmed as the kids ... big kids; little kids ... 


Tony Kanellos, centre, is the author of the award-winning book, Imitation of Life. His beautiful new work, Out of Past, presents an incredible collection of post cards featuring images of the Gardens in the 1800s and early 1900s. The messages on the backs of these inform us that post cards were the SMS messages and e-mails of the day: there's nothing new about fast abbreviated texting - they just did it with nib pens, ink, and stamps!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tried to visit the Museum about two week ago and it was closed when it was supposed to be open and no one had any idea what was going on. Vey disappointing. Bob

DRINKSTER said...

The budget determines, I think, that only Tony and volunteers are ever there in that particular building. Maybe they had to go to the toilet.

Tony said...

Firstly - apologies.
The Museum will be open every day 10am to 4pm from now until Anzac Day.
When we're in between exhibitions it's open Wednesday through Sunday.


Anonymous said...

One postcard from over 100 years ago has a guy from Unley writing to Mr Woodroofe in Norwood ordering 1 dozen bottles of ginger ale for the next day - December 24th! Must assume the order was filled - that's pretty good in any time, using any technology...

DRINKSTER said...

Hey Tony,

thankyou for being so generous with your time. I think you may have changed the direction of a few young lives.