Beyond Selidor

At last, my cold seems to be receding (fought off, as far as I can tell, by a combination of hot lemon/honey/ginger, and congee), and I no longer feel as if I'm drowning in my own lungs. That was a particularly nasty one, and I'm glad to see the back of it.

For those of you who enjoy nature writing, there's going to be a (free) Zoom event this Saturday with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, and David Haskell. The event will be recorded and shared later, so if you can't make it at the advertised time, you should still be able to access it later. This is the event description:

In August 2021, Orion Magazine released Old Growth, an anthology of essays and poems about the lives of trees. It's a dynamic cross section of Orion's long history of engagement with arboreal culture, featuring work by Ursula K Le Guin, Terese Marie Mailhot, Michelle Nijhuis, Michael Pollan, and Arthur Sze, and printed as gently as we could manage -- using 100% recycled paper, processed without chlorine, and free of plastic.

To celebrate the release of the book, Robin Wall Kimmerer (who contributes the foreword) will hold a public discussion with Robert Macfarlane and David Haskell. These authors bring a unique perspective on the legacy of trees in deep time, which they explore in their recent books Braiding Sweetgrass, Underland, and The Song of Trees,respectively. Together, they will discuss the idea of the personhood of trees, root communities, and the ways in which humans might foster the growth of our canopy. Moderating the event is Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-author of Journey of the Universe.

You can register here.

For large parts of this past plague year(-and-a-half), my fandom has basically been the cookery empire of Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi, so of course I was delighted to watch a panel discussion with Tamimi, Tara Wigley (the co-author of his Falastin cookbook), and representatives of the Zaytoun food import company, talking about Palestinian cooking. It's viewable on Youtube, and inevitably made me hungry.



The Vengaboys (yes, you read that right) have just released a new single, and the video clip is the most lurid, kitsch, 90s-nostalgic, self-referential thing I've ever seen. I am delighted.



(In a sentence that is possibly the most late-90s Australian thing ever: I once won a free Vengaboys CD at the launch event of a new under-18s nightclub; the launch event was sponsored by Impulse deodorant and hosted by several cast members of Home and Away. And yes, fourteen-year-old Ronni attended said launch event wearing a) bell-bottomed leggings that had a miniskirt attached b) a baby blue singlet top with a glittery rhinestone butterfly on it c) my hair basically in this style d) bright blue platform sneakers and e) body glitter. I can still remember all these details because the entire event seemed like the most serious business ever at the time.)