Welcome to this column, the headquarters of the Magpie Appreciation Society (our immediate goal, to extend the franchise to these smart and ideological birds to enable them to vote in the 2016 Assembly elections).
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Here at the society, we never miss an opportunity to display new and novel pictures of our city's favourite native creature. In Brenda Runnegar's painting Janine, we see a magpie perched on the shoulder of the Nordic-looking Janine.
If Janine looks doll-like that's because Runnegar uses members of her doll collection in her art work. She has a forthcoming exhibition, Capture, at the Belconnen Arts Centre.
She advises that "Capture comprises a series of paintings and digital composite works on rag paper, based on and inspired by my vintage doll collection".
"Dolls, for me, are not children's toys, but provide a canvas for the exploration of new concepts and ideas. My aim with the works is to challenge the notion of the doll by creating figures based on people in both everyday situations and unexpected settings. Dolls can, at times, be faintly disturbing, even sinister, but can also express hope, joy, sadness and, above all, humour."
Capture is at the Belconnen Arts Centre from April 15 to May 10.
From that forthcoming cultural event to the major cultural occasion of last week.
The Llewellyn Hall was packed to the rafters for last week's two Canberra Symphony Orchestra performances. We know that it was literally packed to the rafters for Wednesday's concert because our cheap seats were up in those rafters. We felt like a pair of bats in a belfry.
The major work of the concerts was the Fifth Symphony of Jean Sibelius. Maestro Nicholas Milton told us that it was 45 years since a Canberra orchestra had wrestled with this masterpiece.
The hundreds of you who were there last week for that symphony were probably left buzzing by it but, of course, creative Scandinavians are stereotyped as a melancholy lot. Exposure to one vivacious(ish) symphony by one Finn will not have dented that stereotype. So here, while we have Sibelius on our minds, is an excerpt from a British newspaper obituary for Oxford philosophy don and wicked wit John Simopoulos, who has just died.
"Simopoulos did not always see eye to eye with his Oxford college's founding master, the historian Alan Bullock – as became apparent in 1993 when the college buildings, designed by the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, were listed Grade I by Peter Brooke, the heritage secretary, and Simopoulos dismissed this decision as a 'nonsense'. Neither he nor other college fellows had been consulted about the design, he protested: 'Alan and his pals junketed off to Denmark for weeks and came back with this miserable Dane. Jacobsen was gloomy as hell, a symphony by Sibelius brought more or less to life . . .' "
Simopoulos was a highly quotable man. Some readers may like to store up, to use against the charlatan of your choice, (a politician perhaps, or astrologer, or homoeopathy practitioner) another gem from the same obituary.
"He was heard to remark of an acquaintance of whose chosen profession he disapproved: 'In a profession which has no standards, he somehow contrives to fall below them.' "
But enough of charlatans and on to true idealists, represented in this case by ARF, the animal rescuing and fostering folk (much applauded in this column) and by Shen Morincome (see our photo).
The Telopea Park School student has been given as a project the task of creating a science experiment aimed at benefiting society. He contacted ARF (the organisation rescues dogs facing euthanasia; training and socialising them and finding them ideal, doting foster homes) to ask permission to use ARF in his experiment.
"My idea," he explains, "is to find out what colour people are more attracted to when asked to donate money in to a collection box. This could be useful for not-for-profit organisations to know which colour people are most attracted to when asked to make a donation.
"To conduct this experiment I am using four ARF donation boxes of different distinct colours. I will put the boxes next to each other on one table in three different public places e.g. a mall or shopping centre (my three trials). I will be sitting next to the boxes (with a recognisable ARF T-shirt) and will approach people asking them to help the ARF cause and make a donation, putting it into the box of their choice.
"All the money that I raise will go to ARF. I want to do this experiment because I am really interested in sociology and marketing, I also want to give back to my local community and I really like the aims and goals of ARF."
He began his experiment last Saturday at that famous haunt of the well-to-do, The Lawns, Manuka. No skinflints there, so ARF and its four-legged clients surely prospered. When his three-part experiment is complete, we will bring you his findings.
And just to make today's column a kind of sandwich between two magpie items, we refer you to the new work of deeply fictitious fiction just composed by yarnsmith Sean Costello for his Capital Yarns blog.
Costello invites Canberrans to suggest three items to him from which he will compose a Canberran story. His latest yarn, The Canberra Easter Marathon, comes after "Lydia" requested something based on three items (one of them Paddle Pop sticks) that evoked memories of chocolate and childhood.
The Canberra Easter Marathon opens with Walter Burley Bilby being awoken by Marion the Magpie who then flies him to:
