1448 pages of Alfred C Kinsey

One of my favourites in our ever-expanding DVD collection is the movie, Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson as Kinsey. Not surprisingly, it's the story of Alfred C. Kinsey, the sex researcher of the 1940s and 1950s who most notably wrote the volumes Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953). One night after enjoying another viewing of the movie it suddenly occurred to me that the movie was probably based on a biography of Kinsey and that 'of course, there would have to be a biography or two written about him'. Durrrh. (I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed sometimes). So I Googled and sure enough I was soon entering my credit card details into an online purchase order for a Blue Mountains bookshop for my very own Kinsey biography. Now, while I was waiting for it to arrive, I was in Newcastle to see Phantom, and being the book whore that I am I spent some time rummaging through various Newcastle second-hand book shops. And, I found a Kinsey biography - the one on the right, all 935 pages of it - for $10.  I was assuming that this was the same book that I had just bought online but I thought at $10 I could afford it even if I was to receive it in the post again.  But lo and behold when my package from the Blue Mountains bookshop arrived if it wasn't a different biography, the one on the left, which was only 513 pages long. Phew!
I began with the biggie and managed to finish it in about three weeks. I then moved straight on to the other because I was interested in how each of the authors approached the subject and whether or not their interpretations varied much. The biography on the left, written by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy is often quite scathing of the one on the right, written by James H Jones. Jones argues that Kinsey was driven by various demons which pursued him relentlessly throughout his life. These demons were what Jones regards as his essential homosexuality, his inability to really accept this aspect of his self and his penchant for sado-masochism. Jones also tended to side with a number of Kinsey's detractors about some of the aspects of his studies, particularly the way he constructed his sample of something like 15 000 case histories. Jones also argues that at least some of Kinsey's interests were less scientifically motivated and more motivated by Kinsey's own desires, such as the filming of sex acts in the attic of his house, ostensibly to collect data, just as Masters and Johnson did a decade or so later. (SBS is currently showing a series based on the lives and work of M and J, somewhat unimaginatively titled, 'Masters of Sex').
Gathorne-Hardy argues that these demons are more in the imagination of Jones than real, and that rather than being homosexual, Kinsey's sexuality was fluid and for much of his life beyond his 40s he was bisexual. (Kinsey was married happily to his wife 'Mac' who provided him with amazing and loyal support). Gathorne-Hardy also demonstrates that Kinsey had an interest in SM (indeed it was probably Kinsey who coined the term) but did not see this aspect of him compelling him so much as did Jones.
Anyway, I really enjoyed immersing myself in the life of Kinsey, as recounted through these two biographies.
I recently 'liked' the Kinsey Institute's Facebook page and I hope to visit it sometime at the University of Illinois.
I once wrote something about Kinsey in a draft of my book 'Gay Tourism' though I'm not sure it ever made it to the final version. I can remember my co-author at that time, my friend, Loykie, asking me why I had written 'The zoologist, Alfred C Kinsey'...I had been following the way by which many social scientists had referred to Kinsey, trying to locate him as a zoologist (who really shouldn't have been doing social research). And of course his PhD is in zoology and the first 20 years of his career was studying gall wasps, and he did treat the sexual behaviour of humans as a form of zoology. BUT, he was much more than this and was a humane, empathic person who was indeed a social reformer, who actively campaigned to change archaic laws which saw people imprisoned for pre-marital sex or oral sex, believe it or not.
I will continue to enjoy learning as much as I can about Kinsey and his institute.

A Miscellany of Beasts

 A pair of magpies have shared Maryville with us since we moved in five years ago and each year they nest and generally produce one youngster which we hear calling pretty much for much of the day begging to have its mouth filled with tasty morsels. The parents are doing it tough this year because it's so dry and there doesn't seem to be much in the way of insect tucker around. So they often hang around the back verandah hoping to get lucky. The youngster was on the lawn on front of the house yesterday (the photo is of one of the parents) and we were a tad concerned it wouldn't be able to fly back up into the nest, but it seems to have accomplished this.

 Two of my Tasmanian Blotched Blue Tongues enjoying the overcast conditions yesterday. I got these in February from a breeder in Brisbane and they were about 8-10cms long. They have a distinctive and quite attractive reddish-orange tinge to their heads.

 This spider's web caught my eye the other morning as the light from the sun picked up the geometric lines of the web. Astonishing really, isn't it.

 OK, so this isn't actually a beast. Or the construction of a mini-beast. Now I'm going to call this a Brazilian Cherry but I'm not sure that's correct. Anyway, it's covered in fruit at the moment and I helped myself to half a dozen of these this afternoon. The fruit is a bit tart but I like it.

 We've been visited by a couple of pairs of king parrots over the past few weeks. OK, so this, as are most of my pictures these days, was taken on my iPhone, so I wasn't able to zoom in on it, but you can see it dangling off the frangipani. The kingies seem to be attracted particularly by the seedpods of the zigzag wattles which are hanging off the wattle trees. They are such lovely parrots.

As are these guys, of course. A small flock of about a dozen yellow tailed black cockatoos flew into Maryville this weekend and when I was doing a walk around the boundary fence of our paddock on the other side of McGuinness Road, I was able to walk up to a big wattle tree in which four of the birds were perched. My attention was drawn by this little guy (a bub) who cried for food for all the time I was watching them. The youngsters are very noisy when they are hungry and incessantly squark/whinge for food. Mum or dad was too busy ripping open a branch looking for grubs to pay this little fella any attention. You can see the golden flowers of the silky oak behind it. The valley is very colourful at the moment with silky oaks, jacarandas and Illawarra flame trees all in flower.

The boys get a treat

 We had this big round bale of wheat delivered from the friendly people at the Kyogle rural store last Wednesday and we rolled it down into the boys' paddock on Thursday afternoon after work. It was rather heavy but rolled down pretty well, though it was a little reluctant to roll where we wanted it to go.

 It didn't take long before the boys came over to investigate and they found it to their liking, which was a relief. As I posted last week, the boys' paddock is pretty much bare of grass now so we've been hand feeding them with bales of lucerne and rye grass for the past month or so. The boys have lost weight and are no longer at their rotund best.

 Baxter particularly liked it and would use his head to loosen up the wheat so he could have a good go at it.

 Here he is covered in wheat stalks. He's a loveable rogue.

By today (Sunday) the boys had demolished the lovely symmetrical shape of the bale so that it now resembles a hay stack. They've eaten a fair bit of it but hopefully there's still a  few days left. I'm hopefully going to move them into our other paddock on the other side of McGuinness Road this weekend. Our neighbour, Bill, has been grazing his cattle in that paddock for the past couple of years but I've had to close the gate on his beasts so that our two can get access to some grass. Hopefully there will be a bit of growth in that paddock after we had 16mm of rain a few days ago.

A lucky unlucky python

 I was very surprised when I did my morning inspection of the Lizard Palace to find this poor young carpet python caught up in the bird netting that I have dangling down in front of the Palace to keep kookaburras and other predatory birds out. Somehow the python had managed to crawl in through the mesh and entangled itself quite badly. There was no way it could have got itself free and it took me about ten minutes to cut it free. It was very placid the whole time and only struck at me once.

And here it is free and unharmed and crawling through the base of some tree fern fronds in the garden near the Chookery. This bird netting us often used up here to 'screen out' snakes from under houses. In fact it had been used at our place by previous owners. The poor snakes get entangled in it like this poor fellow and then either die a slow death or wait until someone comes along to kill them with a shovel. I think I might have to rethink how I keep birds out of the Lizard Palace. It was the smallest carpet python we have seen at Larnook and it's great to know that they are breeding close by.

The green green grass of?

 We haven't had decent rain for almost a month and the lack of rain coupled with hot days often with drying winds has meant that the boys' paddock - who we have now had for three years - well the boys, not the paddock, we've had the paddock for five - has become bare of grass. Once we get some decent rains it will green up nicely and the boys will be able to graze contentedly, but until that time, we have to hand feed them with lucern rye grass and, when it arrives in the next couple of days, a big round bale of wheat grass.  Hopefully the boys will enjoy this new addition to their diet.

Ladies who Lunch at Larnook #4

And what better way to kick off this annual event than with a champagne cocktail! Now as the astute readers of this blog would know, Ladies who Lunch at Larnook is normally held in May, but we had to postpone this year's event because Steve was up to his eyeballs in Phantomry. But yesterday more than made up for the delay. There were 12 ladies in total this year, each bringing a scrumptious plate of goodies with them.

 Steve had, as usual, created the perfect table setting as well as

 his now famous banoffee pie, which is as delicious as it is appealing on the eye.

 So a shot of the loooong table surrounded by ladies, laughter and jollyness.

This year we even had some entertainment courtesy of Janice (on the left) and Jacqui as they do their impromptu interpretive dance to a Kylie number.

Long Weekend Pleasures

So I'm starting at the end of our long weekend, so bear with me. Our friend, Liam, who lives on Karragarra Island, west of North Strabroke Island, off the coast just south of Brisbane, visited with us this weekend. I picked him up from Varsity Lakes station on Friday afternoon. Spa, bubbles and dinner and a dvd Friday night put us in a good mood for the weekend. Kyogle market on Saturday morning, then dinner at our friend Glen's house, with his partner, Vaughan, and our friends, John and Julie. Scrummy bbq and very delish nut torte (made by Vaughan) and a mulberry pie (made by Glen). Sunday saw us at Lismore car boot market in the morning, a quick dash to my office to pick up an old trunk that can't fit in my new office, and then home to relax. Toasted sangas and another movie but no spa this time because it was such a hot day. Then this morning we had a nice easy morning before taking Liam back up to Varsity Lakes station. We stopped at Uki and had a lovely lunch at The Rainforest Cafe, on Mt Warning Road, just up from one of our favourite spots, Mavis' Kitchen. It was a lovely way to finish off a lovely weekend.