Margaret L Ruwoldt
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emelaarghh.bsky.social
Margaret L Ruwoldt
@emelaarghh.bsky.social
430 followers 620 following 1.9K posts
Bibliophibian. Dilettante. Free-range nerd. She/her. Living on unceded Wadawurrung country.
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emelaarghh.bsky.social
Scene from the Doctor Who episode “Flatline.” The TARDIS’s exterior has shrunk, and the Doctor has to squeeze awkwardly through the door. Luckily it remains reliably bigger on the inside.
November 21, 2025 at 11:58 PM
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Aristotle: Politika

(commenting on the Carthaginians, a nation of traders and merchants)
“They think that the rulers should be chosen not only for their merit but also for their wealth, as it is not possible for a poor man to govern well or to have leisure for his duties ... It is a bad thing that the greatest offices of state, the kingship and the generalship, should be for sale. For this law makes wealth more honored than worth, and renders the whole state avaricious; And it is probable that those who purchase their office will learn by degrees to make a profit out of it.”
November 21, 2025 at 12:26 AM
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Mid-century modernism at the Gordon Institute in Geelong, built in the 1950s. The neighboring Lascelles Laboratory building with its classical frills is a little older (1920s).
An off-kilter photo of a three-storey building facade. The glass doors are recessed under a small porch bearing a shield with an eternal flame and the motto “meliores priori.” Above, stretching the full height of the wall, are three parallel sets of tall, narrow windows. The facade is rendered and painted in creamy white on a base of wet-sand brown. The overall effect is streamlined, strong, elegant, ambitious. To the right, a small part of the neighboring building is visible. This one has a basement level and two storeys; it features Romanesque columns with carved capitals, giving a colonnade effect to the upper floors.
November 20, 2025 at 12:26 PM
emelaarghh.bsky.social
Your public library: so much more than books.
View from the mezzanine: a library workstation with computer, sewing machine and overlocker ready for anyone to stroll in and use.
November 20, 2025 at 2:04 AM
emelaarghh.bsky.social
At the library. Signage is cute, but the cafe staff still can’t spell croissant 🤣
Glass display case at the library cafe, topped with a few books and a trailing pot plant. On the side, hand-written with a marker pen: “Coffee… because Adulting is hard!” Gluten-free treats on display in a glass case, with labels on a (somewhat misogynistic) theme: - henchmen cookies: peanut butter and chocolate chip - the boss: black velvet brownie - lady assassin: lemon slice - the mistress: passionfruit, lemon and coconut slice Pastries and breads in a glass display case. Hand-written on the glass: “Plain crissont” with a heart drawn underneath. Last time I visited, the word was spelled “crisonat,” so they’re getting closer…
November 19, 2025 at 11:56 PM
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It’s a small cylindrical vase with a flared top rim. (Teapot included for approx scale.)

Yes, I wondered whether it might be an early Cliff. Quite different from other examples I’ve seen of her work.
Photo of a ceramic vase sitting on a kitchen bench. It’s somewhere around 15-20 cm tall, cylindrical with a flared rim. The glaze makes an abstract marbled pattern in shades of red, blue and gold. View of the vase from above, showing how the marbled glazed reaches several centimetres down the inside surface. Another view from above. Another side-view.
November 18, 2025 at 1:41 PM
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In search of… a good reference for deciphering Wilkinson’s Royal Staffordshire Pottery marks. Any clues…?
Photo of maker’s marks on the bottom of a ceramic vase.
November 18, 2025 at 1:34 AM
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Mildly disappointed at the lack of absolute units.
Screenshot of a 2018 tweet by the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL): an old monochrome photo of a large, densely-fleeced ram in a farmyard, with the caption “look at this absolute unit”. At the time of the screenshot, the post had received 18,000 retweets and 61,000 likes.
November 17, 2025 at 11:17 AM
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The roses do okay indoors, too.
Close-up photo of cut roses in a glass, sitting on the kitchen bench.
November 17, 2025 at 7:22 AM
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Sister’s garden is a bit rainswept, but spring is flourishing nicely.
Two climbing roses: a velvety red with an old-fashioned scent, twining through a rich apricot. Bush rise: molten gold flowers, fading to a dark pink. Rose bush in a pot on the south-facing deck: a vibrant orange-pink, fading to pale yellow. Raised garden bed in front of a dark grey paling fence. Framed in the foreground by climbing roses. In the raised bed, yellow and red kangaroo paws mingle with a red callistemon (bottle brush) bush. Zoom in for the elegantly messy details.
November 17, 2025 at 6:29 AM
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Hitchhikers 👍🏻
November 13, 2025 at 2:19 AM
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It’s nicely done: the edges are also slightly discoloured, giving a subtle effect of water-stained marble.
Close-up of the book in question, showing the fore-edge decoration.
November 11, 2025 at 1:08 AM
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New day, new book.

#CafeLife
A cup of coffee, half-drunk. A petite lemon tart. A battered notebook, and a paperback copy of “Fall of civilisations: stories of greatness and decline” by Paul Cooper. Outside the cafe window, the outdoor furniture is stacked against the inclement weather. On the horizon (not visible in the photo) dark clouds approach rapidly. Photo by me.
November 10, 2025 at 11:23 PM
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Southern view…

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...
Gustave Flaubert portrait by Pierre François Eugène Giraud, circa 1856.
November 7, 2025 at 10:53 PM
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Feed me like one of your French girls
Photo of an ornately decorated cake fork with a shiny golden finish.
November 7, 2025 at 1:22 AM
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Collecting a smol herd of Moose from Tom the framer: one print, one numbered print, and an original drawing. Tom, himself an artist, in awe of @mooseallain.bsky.social’s range of talent, as am I 🫠 If you’ve ever hankered to own a piece of art, Moose’s online shop offers affordable delight 😍
At the framer’s workshop. In the background Tom checks something on his computer. Spread across the counter in the foreground are three framed pictures: a delicate line drawing, a blue and black print, and a colourful garden scene. Photo by me.
November 7, 2025 at 1:07 AM
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Perspective.
View from inside the Beaux Arts-style Geelong Art Gallery. Inside, a classical white stone statue of a seated woman. Outside, a colonnaded porch overlooks the neatly manicured English-style park. On the porch, below the window, lies a sleeping bag and a few personal items: a homeless person slept here last night. Photo by me.
November 2, 2025 at 4:31 AM
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I mean…
Books on display in the Geelong Art Gallery shop. Frontmost is “Brutalist Plants” with a cover photo of a 1970s-style concrete building festooned with assorted ferns, epiphytes, climbers and other verdant green plants.
November 1, 2025 at 11:44 PM
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Sunday morning at the library.

#Wadawurrung Country

#CafeLife
A coffee cup atop an outdoor table. In the backyard, a blurry view across the lawns, garden beds and trees of Johnston Park in Djilong (Geelong), on Wadawurrung Country.
November 1, 2025 at 11:08 PM
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Cartoon by Sandra Boynton showing four celebratory animals: hippo, birdie, two ewes.
October 30, 2025 at 6:12 AM
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New day, new book. It’s actually a re-read: finished about two-thirds last year and enjoyed it very much, but Life™️ intervened… Starting it again today, and looking forward to encountering all the good bits again.

#CafeLife
Outdoor table at the neighbourhood cafe. A cup of coffee, a petite lemon tart, my commonplace notebook, and a paperback copy of “Hands of time: a watchmaker’s history of time” by Rebecca Struthers. Photo by me.
October 27, 2025 at 11:01 PM
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From my current reading, “How to art” by Kate Bryan.
“Nearly all artists have to face on a semi-regular basis a kind of existential crisis, which might express itself as Why am I doing this?, 'What do I hope is going to happen?, 'What is the point of this?, Where am I going?, 'Is anybody going to care?' As much as we might wish for a simple solution that explained all those anxieties away, the fact is that these questions are a form of searching, and artists are fundamentally explorers and seekers of meaning. Perhaps the thing that separates those of us viewing art and making it for fun and the ones reading this who call themselves artists, is that the latter have stepped into a different realm and given themselves over to something that they cannot ever fully understand, explain, master or be entirely at peace with. To dedicate yourself to being an artist is to reckon with the unknown. As Georgia O'Keeffe said so encouragingly, ‘Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant - there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.’”
October 26, 2025 at 11:40 PM
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Background music.
Photo by Adrian Borda.
Inside a violin. It’s as if you are tiny, maybe 1–2 cm tall, and standing inside the body of instrument. You’re surrounded by wood, a golden brown room. Bright light shafts down through the S-shaped holes overhead; you can see a slight arch in the roof. The walls — the sides of the violin — curve and flow into shadows. The floor is roughly textured, showing stains, inlays and wood grain. Photo by Adrian Borda.
October 26, 2025 at 9:57 PM
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Commiserations to that one warehouse elf whose decade-long book retrieval quest has concluded. Rest well, weary mate, your dedication is recognised.
Snippet of an email received today from Amazon announcing that a book I requested in 2015 is not available and they are cancelling the order.
October 25, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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A rolling stone kind of job: removing moss from the library’s roof.
A sunny morning in Geelong, and the regional library’s main building glass wall of reflects blue sky and fluffy white clouds. Above, a worker in safety gear stands on the pink domed roof, dislodging chunks of moss with a pressure hose. Close-up of the moss-removal dude and his safety harness.
October 24, 2025 at 12:11 AM