paulkincaid

Do I need to ask, guess the critic, given the headline on this review of the Gwen John exhibition: In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely. JJ, go and take a cold shower!

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I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:

Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama.
They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.

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Knepp: Wilding from the Weald to the waves:

After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.

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This is a different kind of heritage: Heritage Unlocked: Birmingham’s Unique Municipal Bank:

Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults.
Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade.
....
A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.

Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.

I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.

(This may get updated over the course of the day)

After struggling to get Zoom link downloaded and operating etc, managed to get into first session I wanted to attend, Foundling Hospital in early C20th, good grief, practices had not changed much in a century had they? Recipe for trauma in mothers, children, and the foster mothers who actually bonded with the children until they were taken away to be eddicated according to their station in life.

Then switched to a different panel and was IRKED by a lit person talking about the Women's Cooperative Guild Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) which they had only just encountered ahem ahem - was republished by I think Virago? Pandora? in 1970s - and women's history has done quite a bit on the WCG since then so JEEZ I was peeved at her assumption that the working women were not agents but the whole thing was being run by the upper/middle class activists who were most visibly involved. And wanted to query whether working women thought it was very useful to have posh laydeez able to put their cases re maternity, child welfare and so on in corridors of power, rather than deferentially curtseying??? (I should like to go back in time and ask my dear Stella Browne about that.)

Also on wymmynz voices not, or at least hard to trace, in the archives, I fancy this person does not know a) Marie Stopes' volume Mother England (1929), extracts of letters she had from women about motherhood and b) based on 1000s of letters surviving and available to researchers. I could, indeed, point to other resources, fume, mutter.

Update Well, there were some later papers I dropped in on and enjoyed (and was able to offer comment/questions on; but I was obliged to point out certain errors in a description of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (really I think if you are going to cite a work you should check details....) (and I suppose Mitchison's work was just outside the remit of what they were talking about, so I was very self-restrained and failed to go on about Naomi.)

What I read

Finished The Doxies Penalty - I wonder where my copies of the first two in the sequence have got to? should like to revisit.

Kent Haruf, Plainsong (1999) - I think I mentioned when reading another work by Haruf that I had been intrigued by an essay in a collection by Ursula Le Guin about his novels, so I was looking out for these at 'taking a punt' prices. I feel that, um, admire the writing, the subtle subdued effects etc etc etc but not impelled to rush out and acquire everything he ever wrote.

For a massive change of pace, Megan Abbott, El Dorado Drive (2025) which was good if grim noirish about sisters who were brought up in comfort and then the economy crashed, getting caught up in a rather creepy pyramid-type scheme.

Then another change of pace, Julia Quinn, Romancing Mister Bridgerton (Bridgertons, #4) (2004) as it was on Kobo promotion and I felt maybe I should given these a whirl, but not massively taken. Kind of slow.

Then yet another Dick Francis, Decider (1993), pretty good, even if we have yet another dysfunctional privileged family (this one owns, or at least, is in the process of inheriting, a racecourse), at least one of whom is a raging psychopath. The competence-porn in this one involves architecture, in particular restoration of ruined buildings, with a side-trip to erecting a big top and how circuses deal with potential fires etc (plot-relevant).

On the go

Somebody somewhere some while ago was mentioning Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale (1930), which I literally read in my schooldays and never since, and had it mentally on a list to look at again, so downloaded it from The Faded Page and am well stuck in. Love Our Narrator being bitchy about Literary Circles, not so much enthralled by the actual plot.

Up next

Dunno. It's that time of year when I really have no idea what I want to read. Maybe that book about the Bigfoot Community?

Like they would have painted a sinister sixth finger (come on down Mr Cromwell insisting on the warts): Hidden detail found in Anne Boleyn portrait was ‘witchcraft rebuttal’, say historians. Hmmm. Oh yeah? Am cynical.

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Overlooked women artists (maybe I will mosey on down to the Courtauld....): The Courtauld’s riveting, revelatory and deeply researched show of ten lost female painters looks afresh at the golden age of British landscape art:

Some of Mary Smirke’s pictures were ascribed to her brother and Elizabeth Batty’s entire output was assumed to have been her son’s.

Men are poor stuff. Men are terribly poor stuff. Men covertly filming women at night and profiting from footage, BBC finds.

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The Black Beauty in the White House: this is actually about the famous horse book, which was written in a house of that name. In Norfolk.

This is the story of a child from a coastal town in Norfolk, who would go on to influence life around the world and who is just as famous today. Not Horatio Nelson, but rather Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty. She managed to not only influence the lives of people but also horses (and possibly many other animals as well) with the story, published only a few months before her death.

This looks fascinating though I need to read it a lot more closely: Right place, right time: Luck, geography, and politics:

On 12th May 2020, Mass Observation collected c5,000 diaries from people across the UK. Many of these diaries mention luck and many of these luck stories are geography stories. Geographers, though, have not written much about luck. In this article, I review the literature on luck from within and beyond geography to construct a working definition and geographical approach to luck. The working definition describes luck as chance, fortuitous, unexpected events that were beyond the control of those for whom they are now significant. The geographical approach distinguishes four geographical aspects of luck: the geometry of luck; lucky places; right place, right time; and the practical sphere.

This week's bread: Len Deighton's Mixed Wholemeal Loaf from The Sunday Times Book of Real Bread: 4:1:1 wholemeal flour/strong white flour/mix of wheatgerm and medium oatmeal, now that I have supply of these, splosh of sunflower oil, this turned out very nice indeed.

Friday night supper: penne with chopped red pepper fried in a little oil and then chopped pepperoni added, splashed with a little lemon-infused oil before serving.

Saturday breakfast rolls: brown grated apple, strong brown flour, Rayner's barley malt extract: perhaps a little on the stodgy side.

Today's lunch: pheasant breasts flattened a little and rubbed with juniper berries, coriander seed, 5-pepper blend and salt crushed together and left for a couple of hours, panfried in butter and olive oil, deglazed with madeira; intended to serve with kasha but kasha from new supplier did not respond well to cooking by absorption method; sweetstem cauliflower (partly purple) roasted in pumpkin seed oil with cumin seeds and splashed with lime and lemongrass balsamic vinegar, 'baby' (monster baby) leeks halved and healthy-grilled in olive oil, with an olive oil, white wine, and grainy mustard dressing.

I keep seeing the name 'Ratner' in connection with the Fantastic Flopping Vanity Movie - he's the director? - and apparently he is not the same Ratner who crashed the value of a chain of jewellers in the early 1990s:

Ratner made a speech addressing a conference of the Institute of Directors at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 April 1991. During the speech, he commented:

We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, "How can you sell this for such a low price?", I say, "because it's total crap."

He compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was "cheaper than a prawn sandwich from Marks and Spencer's, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings". Ratner made a guest appearance on TV chat show Wogan the day after his speech, where he apologised and explained his joking remark that some of his company's products were "total crap". Ratner's comments have become textbook examples of why CEOs should choose their words carefully. In the furore that ensued, customers stayed away from Ratner shops.
After the speech, the value of the Ratner Group plummeted by around £500 million, which very nearly resulted in the group's collapse.

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In happier business, there's a charming piece here by Jackie French (author of Diary of a Wombat about her real-life relationship with wombats, in particular the one who was the inspiration for the book.

A factoid exploded:

I hear her snort each time someone declares that wombat droppings are square. (They can be – but only when their food is dry. When it’s lush grass, they’re long and green.)

I, being a historian of reproduction and birth control, not to mention Ye Loathsome Diseases Consequent Upon Immoralitee, was more than a little irked by this article in The Guardian yesterday bigging up the French tradition of being 'family-friendly', mentioning

[T]he many ways the French state already supports families: heavily subsidised creches and childminders, free school for everyone from the age of three and structured holiday clubs that remove many of the headaches working parents face in many other countries.

And, not mentioned, is part of a very long tradition of French pro-natalism which included the criminalising of birth control and abortion for decades and the persecution of the French neo-Malthusian movement.

I will note that we prudish hypocritical Brits managed to get a birth control movement off the ground and a significant number of clinics running in the first half of the twentieth century; not to mention a successful strategy for the control of STIs which involved a network of free confidential government-funded clinics when Les Francaises were still leaning heavily on the regulation of sex workers (even after massive improvements in the detection and treatment of syph and clap). Which must have had some negative impact on population fertility....

Ooolala?

I also discovered today - goodness knows we get regular reports of various manifestations of the sexual entitlement of the French bloke - France moves to abolish concept of marital duty to have sex:

For campaigners, the notion that wives have a "duty" to agree to sex with their husbands is one that persists in parts of society and needs to be confronted.
....
Since November last year the legal definition of rape in France has also been expanded to include the notion of non-consent.
Previously, rape was defined as a sexual act carried out with "violence, constraint, threat or surprise". Now it is any act where there is no "informed, specific, anterior and revocable" consent. Silence or an absence of reaction do not imply consent, the law says.

But hey, after A WEEK I have a new passport! - their website says may take up to three weeks, so I am very impressed with this. Also have the old one back (sent separately). The photo of course strongly resembles a headshot from a C19th volume of an institution for the criminally insane at which the head doc had taken to photography and theories of physiognomy, but don't they always?

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In the world of spammyity-spam-spam:

Really, I am quite tempted to 'deliver an oral talk' (? as opposed to doing a presentation in the form of interpretative dance?) at the 13th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (ICGO-2026 Asia) as it's in Kyoto: 'adorned with early autumn foliage, offering a serene backdrop for academic exchanges, you’ll have the chance to experience traditional tea ceremonies, stroll through ancient bamboo groves, and engage with a city that values both heritage and scientific progress'.

But am not at all tempted (more DESTROY THIS WITH FIRE & EXTREME PREJUDICE) by this solicitation:

Imagine if, instead of being buried in PDFs, your work could answer questions directly, 24/7. Not just to students, but to anyone curious, anywhere in the world.
When corporate companies, grant providers, grad students, journalists ask AI about your field, they get up to date info and not outdated summaries.
Today, your Google Scholar profile just sits there. No one can ask it questions. No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search.
AI is becoming the new search engine for expertise. And academics are invisible.
We built something to fix this. Your own .cv domain. LLM optimized. SEO optimized. Analytics. Branded URLs. Digital Chat Twin.

Ask ME the questions, please. Because, and I quote, 'No one can discover the depth of your work through AI search'. Many a true word.

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And, in fact, this week has been quite the flurry of that Dr oursin being relevant - apart from query on scholarly listserv which was well in my wheelhouse but had me going 'would be helpful to indicate what reading - apart from google search - you had done before asking for suggestions' -

Request to referee a paper on topic on which I am somewhat reluctantly considered a Nexpert, for journal in an area in which I am not.

Query from researcher about sources for a possible project of theirs.

Invitation to go and talk about the History of 'Engines of Love' (as the condoms found in William Empson's college rooms were described) in connection with an exhibition in the summer.

Have also had agreeable email exchanges with Elderly Antiquarian Bookseller friend.

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On the downside, printer is acting up, doing both being fussy about toner cartridge AND thinking there's a paper jam in Tray 1. Sigh.