What I Learnt Today

Seen visiting Lismore Base Hospital today 

What I Learnt On 25th June in other years

25th June 2011 DIY Magazine Rack

Lismore is to FitzJones and the Feztones as Hamburg is to the Beatles.

We have obtained rare archival video and audio footage of the acclaimed jazz ensemble ‘FJ and the FT’. The venue is the main stage at the Lismore Lantern Parade, the year is 2015 – a few years before the boys shot to international stardom. We have chronicled this winter solstice celebration in a 2012 post on this blog..

“Take Five” is the highest selling jazz composition of all time. It was composed by Paul Desmond, and performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet on their 1959 album Time Out. (Paul Desmond played Sax and Dabe Brubeck played piano). It is composed in the rarely used quintuple (5/4) time – hence the name.

What I Learnt On 21st June in other years

21st June 2011 GadgetCorner: Evil Alarm Clocks

These are the House Rules at the Arts Factory Lodge and Brewery, Byron Bay.

What I Learnt On 19th June in other years

19th June 2011 WebWatch: Seatguru

It is said that those who are now leaving school will have six different careers and at least fifteen different jobs over the course of their working life.

But some fortunate people have one undeniable calling that will capture them forever.

Roger Woodward is Australia’s most famous concert pianist, and has devoted his life to music for almost six decades.

He was interviewed by Michael Cathcart on  ‘Books and Arts Daily‘ this week. In this short extract he describes the very visceral way he (and his cat) first discovered his vocation.

What I Learnt On 18th June in other years

18th June 2011 HowTo: Smokey the Bear Learns to Start a Fire

 Seen at Elizabeth’s  very hip bookshop, Newtown.

What I Learnt On 17th June in other years

17th June 2012 Benjamin Franklin’s Schedule

17th June 2011 Great Playgrounds we have been injured in

 On this day,  June 16th, in 1904,  Leopold Bloom rose at 8am in his Dublin home. He walked to the butcher to buy a pork kidney, cooked it, and took it to his wife Molly for breakfast (yuck).

I’m not sure what happens to Leopold for the rest of June 16th as I must admit to not having read much further into the novel Ulysses, despite numerous attempts. It must be a good read though – the book was banned for obscenity for years.

James Joyce said that rather than writing a novel for a million readers, he preferred to write novels that one person would read a million times. I wonder what he would think of one reader who started his novel a million times.

 Joyce once prophetically said that he had “put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant”.

Fortunately, many people are much more literate than I, and many devotees of James Joyce now celebrate June 16th as Bloom’s Day each year, and reenact the path trod by Leopold.

The novel Ulysses was banned in America before it was even a book. But Sylvia Beach, proprietor of the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company, published it in 1922. The book remained banned in our enlightened Australia until 1953!

We have met Shakespeare and Company before in this blog.

What do you think is the most sold but least read book of all time?

 Jordan Ellenberg has formulated an algorithm to answer this question.

He’s called it the Hawking Index, after everybody’s favourite unread book, A Brief History of Time.

What’s your vote?

What I Learnt On 16th June in other years

16th June 2011 There I Fixed It: Duct Tape and WD40, all you need

Today marks the 800th Anniversary of the Magna Carta – the deal struck between King John and his Barons on June 15th 1215. Citizens would never again be subjected to the arbitrary rule of a tyrannical monarch but instead be ruled and governed upon foundations of accepted legal process.

Before ‘Horrible History’, the ultimate reference for all things related to British history has been, of course, ‘1066 and all that – a memorable history of England comprising all the parts you can remember, including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates’ (WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman, 1930)

This is the definitive ‘1066’ entry on the Magna Carta.

What I Learnt On 15th June in other years

15th June 2011 Comic Creator via Wilt Junior