Philobiblon

Imagine that you are told that the whole of London is about to be destroyed. The British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, all of the treasures about to be swept away. You’ve got a magic wand and can save just one room. Which would you choose?

Oddly enough, I think I’d chose Gallery 46A at the V&A – the Cast Court – which contains not one original object, but crams into one room an entire art history of almost two millenniums of Europe in a mad, exotic menagerie. There are tombs, fonts, doors, panels, freestanding statues and crosses, portrait busts, monumental memorials. The originals were in bronze, in stone, in wood, but here they are in plaster – that fragile but infinitely malleable magic dough – carefully copied and coloured, preserving every crack and grain, every indentation left by weary buttocks over the ages; not quite real but not quite fake. READ MORE

I made a resolution many years ago not to make new year’s resolutions, and I’ve kept it pretty successfully, but I decided this was a good point to put off procrastinating and join the Green Party.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, hanging back because I don’t really see myself as the joining sort, and, let’s face it, they do have a very specific image that I don’t quite see myself as fitting – but the need to do something drastic about global warming is just becoming overwhelming.

The Guardian today has a fascinating interview with a palaeoclimatologist, whose speciality is the Jurassic.

“A few years ago people were saying, ‘OK, well, we’ll look back a million years or so, something like that, to see the effects of climate change’,” she explains. “They thought that we’d still be in the kind of world that we currently know. But now we think that for a vision of what the Earth’s going to be like in a couple of hundred years, we may have to go back to a time before the ice, to when it was a greenhouse world. Because if you look at the figures on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it’s rising very, very fast. It’s beyond the levels of CO2 that we classically know from before the last ice age. If it keeps accelerating at this rate then in a matter of just a couple of hundred years we’ll have levels of CO2 that we last saw at the time of the dinosaurs.”

And when I wrote to Camden Council as a leaseholder in one of their blocks – in response to a statement that they were going to let an electricity contract – asking about using green alternatives, I got back the standard letter about it being too expensive but they were still looking at it. So they’re going to let a five-year contract to traditional suppliers.

I look around at all of the flat roof-tops around me, from four storeys to 17 storeys, and wonder how many wind turbines (and solar panels) you could put on top of them that have – according to this site – at least neutral cost implications, and considerable environmental benefits.

There’s a council election next year; I think a few Green councillors would be a very good idea. Might concentrate some minds among the staff.

Having spent the afternoon at the V&A, I can report on the perfect style for a party – perhaps now to see in 2007. It has recently acquired two spectacular pieces of 17th-century wear, now on display in the fashion section:

At the top is a women’s jacket dated 1630-40. The colour is quite subdued – a soft beige (assuming this is original), which allows all of the focus to be on the spectacular silver thread embroidery. There must have been many, many hours of work in that – and really skilled work. No wonder clothing was so expensive.

The men’s doublet is possibly even finer, dated 1650-65 – I’d reckon it must be after 1660; it has a definite Restoration look about it – foppish is hardly the word. The description says it is made of very fine Italian silk, woven with silver gilt thread.

(Apologies for the quality of the photos – the lighting is understandably dim.)

In a country already obsessed by football (mainly) and to a lesser degree other sports, the New Year’s Honours – to every sportsperson the government thought it could get away with – is just what was needed – NOT.

If this, and the Olympics, were going to encourage people to play sport, well it might be defensible – but what is far more likely is that it will encourage people to spend even more time slumped in front of their televisions.

I can look out my kitchen window into a run of windows in flats some 50m away. I’m fascinated by one in which it seems at night (you can’t see through the curtains during the day) the television is always on – and usually on sport. (The screen is so large that even from this distance I can see it quite clearly.)

Miss Williams Wynn is today meeting Sir Stamdford Raffles, and hearing some tall tales of Sumatra – including cannibalism of living bodies, with a side dish of salt and spices. Well I guess one of the rewards for enduring obscure foreign climes is being able to tell weird tales afterwards.

She does also, however, hear quite an accurate account of the “mermaid” (manatee).

Then for light relief she comments on a family of English aristocrats said to have tails like monkeys ….

(More on Raffles.)

In 1400 a French knight, Chevalier Masquer, killed his erstwhile friend Aubrey de Montdidier, and in secret buried his body. But the dead man’s faithful greyhound, called Verbaux, led one of his friends to the grave and scratched the ground to expose the body.

Then, whenever the dog saw Maquer he attacked him, although his temperament was otherwise good.

When the king learnt of these events, he ordered a trial by combat to allow God to decide the situation.

Beside Notre Dame, Maquer was buried up to the waist and armed with a stick and shield (the same arrangements were also used for trials between men and women). The dog was let loose and seized him by the throat. The knight screamed for mercy and promised to confess his crime. The dog, presumably, was dragged off – or else super-intelligently let go – and the knight was later hanged.

No record survives of the dog’s fate, but one hopes he had the best spot by the fire and a nice meal every night.
(From Duel: A True Story of Death and Honour, James Landale, Canongate, Edinburgh, 2005)

There’s a longer version of the story here.

I find it hard to imagine my faithful greyhound doing likewise – as I gather is typical of modern greyhounds he’s definitely on the timid side; still you never know, he might be more of a guard dog than he looks.

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Since I’m on (possibly shaggy) dog stories, a holiday ahhh tale – Keela, a 18-month-old spaniel and police sniffer dog earns more per day than the chief constable who employs her.

Her sense of smell, so keen that she can sniff traces of blood on weapons that have been scrubbed after attacks, has her so much in demand by forces up and down the country that she is hired out at £530 a day, plus expenses.

A full, expert analysis of the problem of rape in South Africa – a reminder of the fact so often denied or rejected, that the crime is about power, not sex.

They were also “desperate protests against men’s loss of control” over women. Over the past century, radical changes in South Africa’s economy have profoundly affected gender norms and expectations and altered the balance of power between the sexes. In reaction, violent men were reviving old “scripts of male domination” with deep historical resonance.

The cultural relativist would deny it, but there are some cultures that don’t deserve to survive, due to their damaging, dysfunctional nature. The problem is how to change them with as little damage as possible.

(Via The Rhine River.)

Ten new (to me) female bloggers, ten top posts, on my way to 400. It answers the question: where are all the female bloggers?

To start on an inspirational note for the new year, Kirsten on InHer City provides an account of a Young Women Drumming Empowerment Project. Come to think of it, why is it that drummers in commercial music always seem to be male? (Answering my own question, because, it seems, women are usually only allowed to be singers and dancers.)

Then, turning to another form of invisibility, Green Whale on I Am My Own Country reflects on the obliteration of women that is full purdah.

Being explicitly political, Wendy’s Thoughts turns towards the upcoming Canadian election. Get out and vote is her message, since “just like with pennies, if everyone drops one into a bucket eventually a dollar will be made”.

Rabfish on Brown Rab Girl Fish enjoys cross-cultural discussions with taxi drivers.

Laura on Derivative Work reports on some
surprising figures for the British Medical Journal. Most of its referrals are coming from Google and Google Scholar, rather than medical sites. (There’s also an interesting case of “diagnosis by Google Scholar”.)

Also on the practical side, Melly on All Kinds of Writing offers advice on keeping track of your writing submissions.

Then turning creative, an all-haiku blog, appropriately called The Little Things. Here Kimberly is reflecting on winter, and summer. Very effective – even if poetry isn’t usually your thing.

On Tuckergurl, a rave recommendation for an independent film, Down to the Bone. “What a real, complicated, compelling protagonist. Finally a great woman’s role!”

I was almost going to ban the C word this week on the ground of humanity’s general exhaustion with the whole concept, but I couldn’t resist Divinebee’s account on Accidental Mother. Those in northern climes might be surprised to know that Christmas on the beach is no picnic.

And finally, anyone thinking of having a child might want to read post by Crazy Rockin’ Foxy Mama on ChunkyRhino, about a day of shit – literally. Those who already recognise the experience might want to go over and commiserate.

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You can find the last edition of Femmes Fatales here.

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Nominations (including self-nominations) for Femmes Fatales are also hugely welcome – I’ll probably get to you eventually anyway, but why not hurry along the process?

Was browsing around Craiglist (yes the job section, really, and I can prove it) and stumbled across this job posting, which I thought might be of interest to some British readers, or people they know.

“Women for Women International is seeking an individual to serve as the Office Coordinator in London for a period of one year. The Office Coordinator is the official representative of Women for Women International in the country, overseeing staff, programs, fundraising and administrative activities.

(As they always say on email lists – contact the organisation for more info. I know nothing more, about the job or the organisation than I can read on the web, although it does look interesting, being an individual sponsorship-type set-up, operating in war-zones and former war-zones.)

… the ones that the press dubbed “Mrs Anthrax” and “Dr Germ”. Who were accused of all sorts of Nazi-concentration-camp-style crimes?

They’ve been released without charge by the Americans.

The Blair government, rather than reforming the 50-year-old law on prostitution, has decided to adopt a zero-tolerance approach to street prostitution. (Thus employing, again, one of its favourite phrases.)

This is supposed to be linked to services to help the sex workers off the streets – the government says 95 per cent of those on the streets are drug addicts. In theory, fine and good. Ditto that male clients are supposed to be as much the target as the primarily women workers.

Except, what is easier? To swoop along the street and pick up women leaning against telegraph poles dressed in fishnets and miniskirts, or to pick up men who stop – men often who will have the money for top lawyers, and a neat cover story about being lost and asking for directions. Who do you think is most likely to be nicked, and convicted?

And what will be easier, fining those women (where WILL the money come from?) and locking them up for a few days or weeks, or meeting their complex needs for addiction treatment, counselling, support, accommodation, etc? Will the government really put in the money to make that happen? What WOULD the Daily Mail think?

Reading through a chronology of London history I came to 1506, the headline “Brothels suppressed”. “A royal ordinance this year suppressed the ‘stews’, or brothels, of Southward, but 12 of the 18 were allowed to reopen shortly afterwards.” (From The Annals of London John Richardson)

It seems governments never learn.

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An anniversary worth noting: 30 years since the British Sex Discrimination Act.

That link is to a reasonably positive view, but the Indy has gone for the negative:

Women working part time today earn nearly 38.4 per cent less than men performing equivalent work. In 1975 the figure was 42 per cent. For full-time workers the gap is 17.2 per cent compared to 42 per cent 30 years ago. … each year about 30,000 working women are sacked, made redundant or leave their jobs due to pregnancy discrimination.

I tend to think we should be celebrating; there’s a lot to do, but one hell of a lot has been achieved in three decades.

A link to share with anyone who bought a four-wheel-drive vehicle (SUV) because it made them feel safe:

FOUR-wheel-drive vehicles were involved in all three NSW fatal road accidents in which four people died over the Christmas period.

And yes the dead were all passengers in the vehicles. (Although of course they are also highly dangerous to other road-users.)