live better

deep hood covers all curlers

15 Vintage Household Ads

via The Presurfer
 

glamour

One of the items at the exhibition* was a postcard of this hotel in Phillip Island

I used to think this hotel was the last word in glamour when I was six.




This was a glamourous place too...
 

holiday

Caught up with the SLV exhibition Victorians on Vacation
at Mornington, which was a great place to see it, being on vacation (sic)*
There were two other people in the gallery in the two hours it took me to process all the data. Afterwards, we studied the local dogs running freely in a fenced paddock outside the gallery. Everything becomes fauna en vacance.


* Shame they traded americanism for alliteration.
They coulda gone with eg. oz on oliday
 

beach

Off to the beach for a week.
 

danger

danger

While browsing Bacchus Marsh pics (as you do) I chanced upon an image from childhood that has since disappeared - one of the Danger signs that used to grace intersections in Melbourne. There used to be one along the late 60s valiant trek from the foothills to Preston, though who knows where it was exactly in those 20 scary miles of melways.

But I'm not old enough to remember the clocks
 

tremor

Residents from the CBD to Dromana felt the tremor, with one Elwood local falling off the couch.

Herald Sun (since updated, but posted here)
 

fido friday

ball on nose trick

 

25 facts

25 Facts About Me

13 writing prompts
via Twists and Turns
 

spy style

 
Spy Vibe 1960s SPY STYLE

via things

Update via Spy Vibe
Our Man in Melbourne Permission To Kill
 

view point

I was looking for a teetotal-esque photo to mark the end of Feburary.
(For February was a dry month chez nous. All peach tea cordial in champagne coupe glasses and not missing the alcofizz at all)

And I found my way to the wonderful Alice Manfield Collection at the SLV. Among many gems:

Donkey looking in a window

the Monolith Rock

holding a bird

teapot between them

wearing checkered skirt

a bird perched on her right wrist

Unidentified girl standing at the top of a rock

and for Juke:
View point
 

dog friendly

i regret getting red gravel pebbles - hard to clean and now we have to partition that area off ,too(by the fence it is)
theyre good for security as they crunch underfoot but ive never been able to keep the dogs off it because like most dogs they like to run the perimeter of the property and check things out
ive never worried about where the dogs toilet because there is a lawn area they use but one or two ofthem like to sneak off to the gravel area and its a pain picking up their waste with pebbles attached
i reckon we should have just concreted - easier to clean

- dogz forum: Designing The Dog Friendly Garden
 

slideshow

I ♥ letslookupandsmile's photostream:

Arriving for the 21st dinner dance...


And a couple of weeks ago, again in the midst of heatwave, I was catching up with the photostream, when I saw this:
Party Animals

and this comment that directed me to
the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players
 

groove

In the days of the heatwave that preceded the calamity of bushfires, I remember listening to music in the low-fi cellar, having just read about just hear it at J Walk

Via the comments @ J walk, Grooveshark
Play any song in the world for free

so I've been catching up with some absent friends (CDs being elsewhere)
 

unlike

Clicking the Like link next to something that you enjoy on Facebook is an easy way to let someone know that you like it, without leaving a comment...

Will I be able to unlike (and remove me liking something) after I click on the Like link?

bernie

FX posted about Blossom Dearie.
I played the excellent 9 min clip, and then went looking for some old faves.

I eventually found My Attorney Bernie

see also 'S Wonderful ('S João)
 

disaster

From the safety of the suburbs, I listened to the radio on Saturday as it changed from an extreme-weather story to a firestorm story as the whole state seemed to ignite with over 400 'fire events'. All you do is keep listening to reports from the fire front, a continual stream of emergency messages and tragic stories.

Kinglake local shares story on Victoria fires
Age Photo gallery
the township has "virtually ceased to exist"

Boston Globe: The Big Picture via peacay
 

footer

At 12:12 PM   boynton updated her footer

miss tree

look and learn

When I was a Brownie, when I was a Sprite, * I managed to pass my Tree Badge, which required reciting the roll call of exotics and being able to identify a tree from its leaf in front of a judge, who was the rostered neighbourhood expert in the field. In this case the judge was my father.
I passed by memory skills, with no help from the family green thumb, which I did not inherit.
While I may still know my elms ok, I think I have rested on my Brownie laurels.
Recently I was trying to describe a tree I'd seen to a professional expert in the field and fumbled clumsily for words, non-latin words to boot. In fact it was akin to struggling for language in a foreign land, busted for not doing your homework, for not being sufficiently tree-lingual.
Then days later I was still trying to put a name to the tree with a search directory, one of those uses of technology they once lauded in ads for printers. I was eliminating varieties of banksia and grevillea when I stared out of the window. My eyes rested on a tree and I said "That's it!" - life imitating TV, the tropes of sitcoma.
Anyway, the embarrassing confession is that this tree, for so long anonymous and invisible to me, is a very common species. Naming it has summoned it into existence in sudden profusion. It is everywhere in the urban environment.
It's as if I had said to this expert: have you ever heard of a rose?
Still, a fortnight ago, when it was unknown and exotic, I saw the tree in question forming an avenue of striking colour in a dry landscape. It was a temporarily remarkable first contact.
 

air con

If the United States is going to get serious about the deep cuts in energy consumption that are needed, the whole idea of air-conditioning has to be questioned
Air-conditioning: Our Cross to Bear

While air-conditioning clearly isn't the sole culprit responsible for global warming, its use looks set to increase, not decrease. Experts agree that the best long-term plan is to make sure that new housing takes climate change into account.
Why Air Con is Ruining Our Environment

“In this way, solar cooling has the potential to reduce peak demand on the electricity grid by reducing the amount of electricity that is required to meet those air conditioning demands on the hottest days of the Australian summer,” Dr White says.
Keeping cool using the summer heat

As air-conditioner sales soar and concrete abounds, the role of trees, grass and other plant life in helping reduce carbon emissions is often overlooked
It's time literally to go green

How to Cool Yourself Without Air Conditioning
 

heat waves

In an era without refrigeration, air-conditioning or effective sanitation, and with polite dress being thick, three-piece suits and long skirts, the effects were traumatic. Ice-works worked flat out to try to keep up with demand
1908 heatwave BOM

Stock collapsed and fowls dropped dead in the blistering heat at Sea Lake
1939 Black Friday ABC

...Clerks and typists ate ice-cream at work. Some girls fainted on their way to their offices
Black Friday

Incidents of the hot season