Tuesday 22 October 2024

An Event! A Book Release

I am holding an event: my first book release since 2018. It will be on Saturday 30 November at 2:00 pm at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney. The book? The Sailor, the Baron, And The Dressmaker. I would love to see you there.

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Friday 04 October 2024

Story of a goldminer

I presented the story of a goldminer for the Society of Australian Genealogists, by video in August. The goldminer was Thomas Martin, my great great grandfather. He emigrated from Cornwall as a young man, and ended up as the manager of a goldmine at Bethanga in northern Victoria (southeast of Wodonga). I thought his life was an admirable one. The video is now available on Youtube at https://youtu.be/4B0cZgT1giA

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Friday 05 July 2024

An ethics course

I am offering an ethics course through Sydney U3A. It has been a good opportunity to develop further teaching materials on ethics. I am looking forward to the classes, which start this month, and run for ten weeks. (You can sneek a peek on the page called “Courses”.)

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An absorbing story

My new book, The Sailor, the Baron and the Dressmaker, is available. This was initially a short story, but as I dug deeper, it required more and more room, until it became its own book. And instead of being done in one month, it took more than six months. But it is an absorbing story. Another tale in my growing family tree. Read about it on the “Reflecctions on Experience” page. It will be available for purchase (from Lulu.com) after about 10 July.

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The teddy bear at war

You know how it is - once you become aware of something, it keeps turning up. I was at the Banksy exhibition at the Sydney Town Hall. One of his pictures shows a girl in the middle of a scene of war devastation, and she is holding a teddy bear. There was a story in that. It’s on the Glenn-the-Pen blog.

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Talking about “Library Meeets Book Fair”

I gave my first talk about the book Library Meets Book Fair at the Writers and Philosophers Gathering on 15 June. That was my big project for 2023 - attending book fairs and discovering books that were already in my library. And of course, that became a book!

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Wed 03 April 2024

Teddy Bears appear

Over the Easter weekend, Glenn went on an aside. A book had turned up in his library, from a recent book fair: In Praise of Teddy Bears. Being normally of a Serious Disposition, Glenn found this something of an enigma. Nevertheless, it ought to be explored. Initially, he thought he could do so smartly, and promptly wrote a post for his Glenn-the-Pen blog site: Teddy Bears and Book Fairs

It was not enough. Anyone who read this post would want to know the history of teddy bears, so he addressed this unfortunate gap in another post: The Origin and Wisdom of Teddy Bears.

But surely, anyone reading this second post would also want to know why Glenn was interested in the outlandish topic of teddy bears. So finally, he dug deeper and came clean. The third post was, finally, enough: The Teddy Bear Treatise Concludes. I hope you enjoy the three posts.

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Philosophers and writers gathering: Sat 15 June 2024

Glenn is giving an update on his current work, inspired by people in his family’s history, and also by the theme of the decline of the aristocracy in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Danny Gardner will talk with Lindsay Mell about his poetry.

Mark Marusic will discuss his current work-in-progress.

Venue: The York Club, York St, Sydney, 1:00 pm. Full details

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25 March 2024

New family history stories

I am working on stories in family history:

• digging into the reality behind a story my mother told me, about a hotel my great great grandfather built, and a white horse;

• Digging even more deeply into my great great grandparents, Sarah Crosby and Edward Lewis: if they were both convicts, how did they meet?

• Gordon Fink, who married Alice Mackie, was later forced by his father to annull the marriage, then went to Gallipoli and was killed;

• exploring the marriage of Ellen Royall to Siegfried Hottelmann in Sydney in 1939, and how it was revealed that he was a baron in Germany;

• uncovering a bigamist who, in four years, married three woman, one of them in my family, and following what happened to him, and to the women.

Sometime this year, I will have finished all the stories. Here is a taste of one of the stories; GlennthePen blog.

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January 2024

Developments

Life goes on, and there is an even newer book: Library Meets Book Fair. It’s ready now and can be purchased. It fits on my Reflections on Experience page. You can read more about it there.

And I have written a new blog post on my Returning to Centre page. It’s about Edward De Bono, or more specifically, his book, Six Thinking Hats. It occurred to me that nowhere does it address the issue of human values. Are they taken for granted, or simply ignored?

Even when you are dealing with technical issues, at some point the question of the human effects of human actions arises. The people doing the equations in the 1940s for a nuclear bomb came to realise this. I contrast De Bono’s model with my model of five core human values. Enjoy.

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October 2023

In the meantime - new book: Travel with a Pen

I am still exploring options for holding a Wrtier’s Exhibition, but I am still also writing.

I went to Tasmania in August for two weeks, intending just to keep a diary of my experiences. I went to my graduation from a Diploma of Family History at the University of Tasmania. But these days, a diary means a laptop, and it is easy, when in possession of a laptop, to slip from observation and reporting into reflecting on experiences. For me, it evoked the idea of Boswell's London Journal: him recording the daily events of his life in London in 1762. I can’t do a diary on a regular basis, but I can do it on trips.

Apart from my graduation, the main highlight of my trip was going to Oatlands, a town of about six hundred people, to see what I could glean about the time my great great grandmother, Sarah Crosby, spent there in 1850. A fruitless quest? Not at all. She was a convict, originally from Waterford in Ireland. She was Catholic, so she probably went to Mass. Then I discovered that the church was not yet built. In fact, the foundation stone was laid the week after Sarah arrived in Van Diemen’s Land. So, what happened?

It was a fruitful trip. I came across a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day; Clara and the Sun), who said: “I can see the appeal of travel books and journalism and all the rest of it and I hope there will be time to do them all one day. But I just don't think that day is now." But for me, that day has, unexpectedly, just come.

There is more about the book on the BOOKS page. Enjoy.

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May 2023

Hiatus or a Writer’s exhibition?

After the incomplete memoir (see below), I started to think I was in hiatus as a writer. I had “summed up” my life in a sense, and I felt I had reached the end of that. The word “hiatus” occurred to me, and then, in the same week, the word occurred in a movie I watched. That was interesting, because it made me think more deeply about what hiatus could mean.

In the movie, the young man was proposing a hiatus in his relationship with the young woman. She, of course, interpreted this as a clumsy, inept way of ending the relationship, and so, she ended it. A hiatus is a break in continuity which contains the assumption that things will resume after a time, in some fashion, but basically of the same nature. But it likewise embodies the possibility that tthe hiatus will be permanent, for example, a truce that presages the end of a war.

Consequently I have reservations now about using the word hiatus, because I don’t feel that writing and I have drifted apart. But, things may be different next time I approach a book. In the meantime, I have been thinking about all of the books I have written, going back to 1988 when I wrote a history of the Kyogle Shire. This has led to the idea of having a writer’s exhibition of my body of work to date.

There are four different genres of books I have written:

• Reflections on experience (which includes the memoir)

• Family history (and let’s say this extends to local history (Kyogle))

• Ethics and values (and let’s put the book Future into this category too), and

• Poetry.

Yes, I have an idea! I want to hold an exhibition in a gallery, with a space for each category of books, showing the covers of the all the books, and saying a little bit about each book. I am making a series of posters for it all (about sixty of them). I am calling it “Say it, see it: A writer’s exhibition”.

Along with this, I have made a long banner which is a visual timeline for all the books. It starts from 1978, the year I went to Horseshoe Creek, Kyogle, and goes right up to 2023. It will be three metres long. (Still secret; not shown here.)

I have also made a portable bookshelf that can be dismantled and transported, Ikea-style.

Where will it be, and when will it be? I don’t know yet. Do any readers have an idea? Let me know: glenn@glennmartin.com.au

February 2023

New book: An INCOMPLETE MEMOIR

I have been completed a book that is part of my “reflections on experience” stream. It is called Long Time Approaching: An Incomplete Memoir. Saying that it is a memoir allowed me to be broad-ranging in the content. My other “reflections on experience” books dealt with particular episodes in my life, or particular themes. This new book covers a wide range of events and ideas from across most of my life - the things I consider to be significant and interesting.

The book looks at my career, and my retreat from career in the bush, my relationships, my various occupations, and my emergence as a writer of books. And what I think is important in life.

I’ve included a section of photos as well. That gives another perspective on my journey through time.

Will there be a book launch? It’s possible! But you can purchase the book now. See the “Reflections on Experience” page.

March 2022

A BOOK OF FAMILY HISTORY STORIES

Last year, I realised that, after twenty books, I had not yet produced a book of stories*. I also had another thought: I know a lot about many people in my family tree. After another little while, the two ideas gravitated towards each other. Boom! It was exciting.

So, over the last nine months, I have produced a book consisting of over forty stories that come from all across my family tree - mum’s side and dad’s side, starting in recent years and going right back to the early 1800s - five generations. I learned a lot along the way, as one always does when one is enthused and persistent. I have come away thinking that, although none of these people was rich, powerful or famous, in the midst of their varied circumstances, for the most part they lived admirable lives. And where they didn’t, I have some idea why.

The book is now available, as of mid-March, in both paperback and ebook. You can link through from this website to Lulu to make a purchase. See the Family History page.

Forty-plus stories on all aspects of the lives of my family ancestors! Will there be a book launch? Ah, that question! I don’t know yet.

* The Quilt Approach? True, it’s arguable.

June 2021

NEW: Samples from the books.

I have prepared pdf files containing samples from each book (well, most of the books), because you might like to see the table of contents and samples from a book before you buy it. Have a look on the BOOKS pages for links to view or download them. Enjoy.

Everything is new

2 June 2020: Another outcome of the coronavirus restrictions is that I have sat down, re-read and revised all of my paperback books and republished them with Lulu. I have just received copies of The Ten Thousand Things, the last book I have revised, and they look great.

e-books are here

29 May 2020: The coronavirus pandemic came suddenly and, safely ensconced at home, I decided I would produce e-book versions of my books. So, I have been working on this for three months. I have now finished all the ones I wanted to do - 13 in all. Check out the links to the epub versions on the Books pages. You can read them on all the common devices.

Introduction to “A Foundation for Living Ethically”

24 March 2020: I have written an introduction to the ethics book. I wanted to say what its purpose is. The article is on the “Glenn the Pen” blog. See the link in the margin at left…?

I have also produced this introduction as a video, using slides and voice-over. You will see that on the home page of this site, and it’s on Youtube: https://youtu.be/RYTLKPWRWRo

I wrote three books during 2019. The three books are quite different to each other. They are all available on Lulu. This is their current status:

• Volume 3: That Was Then - The Early Poems Project: This was released in June 2019 in paperback format. (There could be an enhancement to come, with images to be added to the front page of the five sections.)

• The Quilt Approach: A Tasmanian Patchwork: This is finished and now available on Lulu as a paperback. The ebook is now also available on Lulu.

• A Foundation for Living Ethically: The draft of this book was circulated to a group of early readers and subsequently it was revised. The book has now been finalised and is available both as a paperback and an ebook.

Stay tuned for updates. Glenn