Sylvia Petter's Blog, page 2
October 16, 2021
Book News!
Book News! Things have been moving in the background with Flo Do Books now having five books available, of which one is only available there. Hint: it´s in German only. And there is a lovely human interest story percolating in the background of the German version of Winds of Change. May I just put in a plug for...
September 1, 2021
Reaching out to a vaccine-hesitant friend as a last-ditch effort to save a friendship and perhaps more
Scan your QR code and go to my blog. Let me know that it´s you with a captcha. Calm down with a cup of tea. Swill some of it in your mouth. Don´t spit. Open your mind. Think of my daughter in Sydney trying so hard to get a vaccine. Vaccinated ones can still get...
August 2, 2021
Vaccination Passports
On 30 December 1968, I was revaccinated in Sydney for smallpox. I needed proof to be able to leave the country, so the deed was entered into a yellow international certificate of vaccination to adhere to international sanitary regulations covering travel across the world. On 21 June 1973 I was revaccinated in Vienna, and on...
July 8, 2021
Now for something lighter – a story from the pre-web days when you had to phone in to get onto the net
Of Cats and Cyberspace Hi! My name’s Toulouse. No, not the town in France – one of the aristocats! We were in the SPA, minding our own business with our Mom, Duchesse, when the woman that fed us – we’d just been dragged away from Mom’s milk a couple of days before, but we still...
June 7, 2021
On reading Rachel Fenton´s Beerstorming with Charlotte Brontë in New York
“A moment in the past´s revealing.” is the last line of this hand-finished chapbook – Lordy would I have loved to hold this book in my hands, inspect the stitches! – and sets the scene for a meandering in New York. New York. Just the titles of the poems, serious work, serious play in the New York...
June 2, 2021
Winds of Change Indeed
Things have been happening in my life that have made me reflect on what I really want to go on doing. My day job will be ending in October with the retirement of my super boss, the internationally respected education expert, Stefan T. Hopmann, with whom I’ll still be working on the Journal of Curriculum...
May 21, 2021
Book Review: True Crime
The Best New True Crime Stories – Well-mannered Crooks, Rogues & Criminals Edited by Mitzi Szereto I received a review copy in exchange for an honest review. I’m not one for gory detail, but I was drawn to this collection since I have a soft spot for well-mannered crooks as my own uncle was of...
April 13, 2021
Lockdown times
I´ve been hesitating with my updates as I wanted things to happen, and the wait has paid off, for happen they did. First, we are in an extended lockdown in Vienna until 2 May. The Health Minister, the only decent member of the current Austrian government, has just resigned. He will be missed. It hasn´t...
January 26, 2021
A thank you to Gangway
Last week in the mail I received my copy of Gangway Kulturmagazin – 100 articles from the Stattegger years, 2014 -2020 Gangway was an important part of my writing life. It was started in 1996 by Gerald Ganglbauer in Sydney, first as a weblog and then as an English/German literary magazine from 1989 to 2013....
December 23, 2020
What a year!
This time last year, we were getting ready to leave for a Sydney Christmas with our daughter and her husband. Christmas was family and seafood, and even a few days on the Central Coast before driving down to Melbourne via the Southern Highlands. Bushfires had already started before we left and I had bought some...
