Vale Felicity Margaret Fullagar 1943-2026

My mother-in-law Felicity passed away on 10 March 2026, after a period of increasing ill-health and complications from heart failure. 

She was a generous and talented person, and always nice to me although tough on her kids at times, including Elf. She had definite ideas about how things should be done. Growing up in Melbourne's leafy eastern suburbs, the oldest of five girls, she probably was issuing instructions from an early age. Felicity studied classics at Melbourne Uni and met her husband Bill there; he was top of the class in Greek and she was bottom. They had four children under five; and took them abroad to live in India and South Korea, as Bill was a diplomat. Bill died in 2012.

Felicity’s four children were in regular contact during 2025 and together arranged her move to a supported living centre in Canberra, not too far from home. Felicity's last four months were in palliative care.

Elf flew to Canberra so many times over this period, and did everything she could to keep Felicity feeling positive and empowered in making her own health decisions. Fred lived at home with Felicity for over ten years and put his own career on the back burner to care for her and keep her involved in the activities she loved so much; involving music, church and the classical languages.

We had the funeral on 23rd March at her church, All Saints in Ainslie. The siblings put together a wonderful celebration of her life. And everyone was encouraged to take home something from Felicity's collection of miniature bottles of spirits.

Felicity Margaret Fullagar

25 September 1943 ~ 10 March 2026 

May she rest in peace. 
Let light perpetual shine upon her. 

American Governors and their ridiculous names

It's been a long time since I did a post about American state governors' names. My theory is that governors are drawn from a particular ruling class that favours these unusual names. I haven't tested it, but I would bet that any list of 100 American teachers, police officers or dry cleaners would turn up a far lower % of odd names.

To recap my here are 5 faves at random from previous posts;

Ruby Laffoon, 43rd Governor of Kentucky
Person Colby Cheney, 35th Governor of New Hampshire
Hazen S. Pingree, 25th Governor of Michigan
Alphaeus Felch, 5th Governor of Michigan
Meredith Marmaduke, 8th Governor of Missouri

Some more to consider. 

Enos T. Throop

Cadwallader Colden

John St. John

Albinus Nance

Lorenzo Crounse

Return J. Meigs Jr.

Salmon P. Chase

Dick Celeste

Bourke B. Hickenlooper

Zebulon Vance

Archibald Yell

Xenophon Overton Pindall

Orval Faubus

Dale Bumpers

Button Gwinnett

Wilson Lumpkin

and I have to extend a big welcome to someone with a great name, but who does not match this profile at all, Georgia's governor-elect

Keisha Lance Bottoms

US midterm elections joy in Texas

The results in the US mid term elections have been incredible. I am an interested onlooker, not a political junkie by any means. American politics is weird and compelling in itself, but also does affect everyone on the planet. There is actually an Australian current affairs show called Planet America predicated on this; but I only find myself watching it about once a year; so that's my level.

There are records tumbling and certainties being flipped everywhere you look. Texas is particularly interesting. This is from the New York Times.

From the top down, it shows Republican (red) dominance of all key leadership positions in the state since 1996. On 4 November all of these positions were won by Democrats. The column on the right, RR Comm; stands for Railroad Commissioner – which is actually all about oil and gas production.

Republican governor Greg Abbott recently redistricted Texas; drawing up new (extraordinarily convoluted) boundaries explicity to increase the likelihood of Republicans winning more seats. It is unconstitutional to do this on the basis of race; but OK to do it on voting record. Effectively Democrats were moved from marginal districts into safe blue districts, and Republicans vice-versa. Central Austin is now split between three districts that curl out hundred of miles into rural Texas.

Trillionaire Elon Musk and his businesses moved from California to Texas in 2024, on the basis that it was as strongly Republican as California was Democrat. He dropped at least US$225m trying to shore up Ken Paxton's Senate campaign. Paxton, widely disliked across Texas, was also endorsed by Donald Trump. 

Paxton was soundly beaten by James Talarico. Abbott has been booted from the governor's mansion by Gina Hinojosa; to be Texas's first Hispanic governor. And Bo French, a noted xenophobe and racist; lost in the vote for Railroad Commissioner to Jon Rosenthal. 

All of their shenanigans were futile. All the dreadful certainities about what's unwinnable and inevitable have been challenged and shown to be lazy shortcuts. Life is complicated and America is complicated.

Trump has a mental make-up that I think is impregnable to guilt or embarrassment. So our hopes that he is feeling bad are probably in vain. His successful campaign in 2024 was founded on affordability and ending wars. And his biggest demographic shift was an uplift in support from male Hispanics. 

He immediately started weaponising ICE to brutalise male Hispanics in particular. And started an unnecessary war by bombing Iran; sending oil prices up, torpedoing America's household budgets – breaking two promises at once.

This is very much on Donald.

New Hobart city council

We've just had local government elections. Voting is compulsory here and we had about 85% turnout, so it's a mass-participation event.

The last council was majority-progressive and the tactics of the minority became more and more nasty as time went on. The new council is 5-4 majority conservative. The new lord mayor (former journalist Charles Wooley) kicked off by saying he wants to "make Hobart great again" ... and then gave the departing Lord Mayor a serve. Disappointing and just ... inept. I realised; this guy needs an editor. Elf says he will not hack it, and will quit inside a year.

He and the others (Liberal / Nat aligned and in one case, a budding Pauline Hanson) are planning to wind back and erase a lot of progressive changes to the city. I think they will find going back to doing things the way they were done is not going to bring back a thriving downtown.

Someone wrote to the paper celebrating the new council, and said they came back recently after 20 years away and cried at what Hobart has become. I would say to them and anyone else talking the place down, that Hobart is magnificent. It's going fine. People are flocking here from all over the world. We can't stand still, we've got to look after it especially when it is at risk of being loved to death. 

It's got problems... in common with all other cities in Australia and around the globe. You won't fix them by taking out bike lanes.*

*I say this as a person who thinks our bike lanes are half-arsed and as a daily pedestrian finds cyclists quite irritating.

A shift back to blogging

I have been posting pics to Instagram for about 10 or 12 years now. I never write much, I just plonk the pics in; they are said to be worth 1000 words or so anyway.

I just had a moment today when I'd had enough of all of Meta's (Zuckerberg's) bullshit. That's pretty well documented, and I have no fresh take to add to it.

So I've quit posting and my whole ton of posts will come down at the end of the month. I will miss it and undoubtedly lose touch with some people. But in many ways,  it's too easy. And Facebook is too easy.

I will try to resume regular posting here. Sometimes it might be an Instagram-style pic from my local wanders with no caption or context. Feel free to ask if you're interested!

If you have come here from Insta, hello! This blog started 24 years ago and now has a lot less teething and school chat than it used to have. My boys are working in Hong Kong (Marcus) and about to solo travel in Japan (Michael). I won't rename the blog but I need to tweak the subtitle.

I will park the photo archive from Instagram somewhere. It already exists in backups but in two separate bits for some reason. I will look at what to do to make it easily accessible for anyone that wants to. 

I am still on BlueSky (the Twitter replacement) but I have a feeling this sense of freedom from the timeline might be intoxicating; maybe I'll stroll away from that also. 

Like Twitter once was, BlueSky is primarily a place for jokes, snark, snippets of observation and daftness. Once I wrote all that here,  so maybe I will again. 

Burton / O'Loughlin at Bett Gallery until Nov 7

I dropped into the Bett Gallery today to see Jane Burton's show. I was at art school with Jane, and saw her for the first time in at least 20 years, at Alex & Chonny's wedding last year. Bombshell: these photos are not her art!!

Jane's remarkable work is situated on the surreal /darkly erotic continuum like 20thC painter Paul Delvaux but photography... and I did not feel relaxed about taking photos of it. But follow the link above or get in to see it in person, ends Nov 7.

This work was in the room next door,  and is by Nicole O'Laughlin. I've never seen anything like it and it was ingeniously presented. Floating embroidery! Have a better look here or again in person, this show also finishes on Nov 7.

Welcoming two new family members to NSW

This month two members of our extended family have arrived, both in New South Wales. Beatrice of Winterthur, Switzerland, daughter of Chonk and Irma, niece of Elf; has arrived in Wollongong to study at the uni. And Theodore Gregory McTaggart arrived on 6 August, a son to Emma and my nephew Brin and a new brother for Thomas and Evelyn. They are in Taree.

Welcome Bea and Teddy!

Some of my recent Bluesky posts

The expanded World Cup has its pros and cons but a corner of every TAB in the land is decorated with a slew of Arab/Muslim world flags and that's pretty cool. Build your perfect multi then go stand under the flag of Iraq as it all falls apart in the 3.40 at Doomben.

Pride leads to a fall

After my morning run today, I thought I should top up the big water bowl we leave out for the wallabies. It’s up a steep slope from our back gate; and I usually carry a bucket of water up there to do it.

In winter I wear a head torch for my run. I came inside to fill the bucket and took the torch off, meaning to put it back on to find my way back up the hill and down again safely. But… I started thinking about how lovely and shiny my bucket is. It’s shiny silver metal; maybe meant for florist displays or something? I snaffled it when we were having a big clean out at work.

So I was thinking about how proud I was of my shiny new bucket then… damn. It’s dark. No torch.

I stumbled going up the hill but managed to get there, and fill the bowl. Coming downhill through the wattles I was grabbing at branches to steady myself, then a branch snapped and I fell, suffering minor abrasions and major loss of dignity. The bucket went CLANG. 

No-one else heard or saw this classic case of Pride Leading To A Fall: Bucket Category.