Philobiblon

Dear Frank Dobson,
I write with reference to the free votes I understand are happening early next month on the composition of the House of Lords. I would urge you – as a democratic essential – to vote for a 100% elected chamber (and if that proves impossible the highest possible percentage of elected members), and the support the continuation of the principle of a bicameral chamber.
Yours sincerely,
Natalie Bennett

The background here.

When Rasheeda, now aged 17, was aged two, her father lost a poker game. To settled the debt, he sold her to his poker partner who, now a man of 45, wants to take her, possibly for his son…

Khalid Rajput, a local councillor dealing with the case, said the decision that Rasheeda should be handed over to Haider was taken late last week at a tribal council meeting.
“We know some tribal elders from Baluchistan came for the meeting in which the girl’s family was told to give her as per their customs,” he said.
Irfan Bhutto, a police officer in Hyderabad, said Haider had been summoned. “We will ensure the girl does not have to do anything against her will.”

Probably significantly, Rasheeda lives in a Pakistani city, not a tribal area. How many girls go to this fate without hope of resistance in those areas?

Just because I think that I might not have enough to do (some time in about 2030 perhaps…), I’ve started a website.

Yes, another one, My Paris Your Paris. Visitors to My London Your London might recognise an element or two, although this will be more tourist, less theatre, orientated.

The aim – well to have a place for more stories, possibly to make a little cash, and definitely to have an excuse to visit Paris more often.

I’ve started with possibly my absolutely favourite place in Paris (although there’s plenty of competition – the Place Colette probably comes second, and the Left Bank near Notre Dame third).

It has been made pretty simple (for the UK at least) at Fill That Hole. I haven’t been right through the whole process but it looks fairly painless. Now I’m just trying to remember where was the enormous one that I had to brake savagely to avoid this week…

Hat-tip to Andy D’Agorne.

Last week I finally managed to get back to the Institute for Historical Research, for a seminar on the status of medieval Jewish women, by Dr Simha Goldin from Tel Aviv. It focused on the case of Sarah, a wife in 13th-century Germany who gave birth 12 months after her husband, Isaac, had gone away for work. (Apparently quite common at the time – there were religious rulings saying that the man should not be away more than a year and half, and should prove he had no dispute with his wife before he left. He should also leave enough money for the family’s subsistence, including the education of boys and girls. When returned had to stay for at least six months.)

Dr Goldin said that from the 11th to 14th centuries there were huge changes in the status of women in the Jewish community. Prior to that polygamy had been widely accepted, but by the end of the 11th century in Germany, Northern France and England absolute monogamy was established and wives could not be divorced against their will. Brides got a marriage settlement and agreements about how she would be treated. About only way this status and rights could be lost was by proof of adultery. Much is known about these communities due to responsa – letters seeking advice on matters of Jewish law and everyday life which were circulated to and among spiritual leaders

But back to Sarah; Isaac tried to divorce her and to overrule her marriage contract. The local rabbinical court refused to meet, however, probably because of the gravity of problem – the child would be bastard, she would be divorced without compensation (probably meaning the community would have to support her.

The case was refered to the Maharam of Rotterdam, a highly respected scholar. His response is remarkable its liberality combined with legal nitpicking. He quotes a Talmudic principle that birth can be delayed up to three months, also says that key witnesses all from one family only count as one and says that to prove adultery the husband must have warned her about her conduct, and had two witnesses to catch her in flagrante. Finally rules only if she could give a good reason for denying pregnancy (when she should have been pregnant with a 12-month pregnancy) should she be exonerated. But still full conditions for finding adultery not met, so says husband can divorce her against will but must give her a settlement so she won’t be left destitute.

Then we got to what I found the really interesting question: Why the improvement in the status of Jewish women at this time? Dr Goldin attributed this to tension from outside on community that brought new solidarity and improvements in attitude towards women and children. The more positive approach started after the First Crusade. (After the 14th century conditions for women start to get worse again. )

So I asked why it was that this community had liberalized its approach to women when so many other communities (and there are of course many modern examples) have increasingly policed and repressed their women in similar circumstances. One suggestion was that they were trying to prevent the women converting to Christianity. Indeed Sarah (and the father of her baby was allegedly a gentile), when her father had tried to control her, he reported that she had threatened to convert. She had run away from home several times but had been persuaded to return by her mother.

Lest, however, you should think this some sort of freedom, it should be noted the Responsa says that her father had asked the court earlier for “permission to drown her”!!! because of her uncontrollability. Although at least they said no.

How I spent most of yesterday:

(Well actually I was behind the camera pretty well all day, rather than holding the banner.)

As usually there’s a huge disparity in the estimated numbers – the police 10,000 is definitely an underestimate, but the organisers were probably a bit on the optimistic side.

A big demo anyway – and while most of the writing about it is as “anti-war”, there was a very strong, perhaps dominant, anti-Trident message – certain that the was strongest line for the Green Party.

The new Carnivalesque, a feast of early modern history, is now up on The Long Eighteenth.

Do check it out, but just in case you don’t I can’t resist pointing specifically to one of its items, that on Mary Mark Ockerbloom’s Live Journal. It is about Phillis Wheatley, the first African American, the first slave, and the third woman in the United States to publish a book of poems.

Over on My London Your London I’ve a review of a fascinating production reworking the medieval ship of fools metaphor for the modern age. Yet Andrew Bovell’s Ship of Fools also keeps one foot in the medieval world – in Basel of 1492 to be precise.

Having a mad day yesterday, and with an allocation of approximately 30 seconds for lunch, I did as I’ve done many times before and grabbed a Snickers bar (on the ground that since it contains peanuts, it contains a marginally larger amount of nutrition than a Mars bar).

But on reading the ingredient list, I’ve made a resolution, not to do this again.

Ingredients: sugar, peanuts, glucose syrup, vegetable fat, skimmed milk powder….

It says elsewhere 24% of 27% is peanuts. So add the sugar and glucose syrup, it must be something over 60% sugars (adding glucose and “sugar”), some 20% vegetable fat.

Yes there is some “chocolate” in there somewhere – cocoa butter and cocoa milk are listed after the skim milk powder.

So I bought some bars in the health store and am going to try to always carry one; of course this takes a special effort, since Snickers bars are everywhere, and health food stores aren’t.

An absolutely fascinating discovery – chimps using purpose-made spears for hunting – and it is mostly the females that do it.

The researchers say spear use in Fongoli is performed almost exclusively by females and youngsters. In spite of the fact that the researchers were concentrating on male behaviour during their study, they saw only one attempt at spear-making by an adult male out of a total of 22 episodes.
“[This] strengthens the case that in all likelihood the origins of technology [in humans] were with females,” says McGrew.
…Pruetz says females and youngsters are forced to innovate to get protein for their diets… “The females and maybe the young males too are basically having to solve problems in a creative way because of competition with adult males,” she says. “That may be by technology, and not by brute strength or force.”

This is a population, in Senegal, that is only just starting to be studied, and is displaying lots of cultural traits not seen in chimps who live in more comfortable circumstances. They also use caves as dwelling places, and have “swimming pools”.

A remarkably sensible and well-though-out piece about the end of privacy – the children growing up on MySpace, YouTube et al.

The one thing missing from this piece is an exploration of the historical and cross-cultural dimensions. Privacy is a very Western concept, and it might come to be a concept thought of as an oddity, one exhibited in a few states of a few centuries.

No, I’m not very comfortable with that concept, but then I’m a child of the 20th-century West (and an only child at that!)

To an LSE Environmental Initiatives Network seminar last night on China. I had meant to get there for a talk on Dongtan, the “zero-carbon” new city that is going to be the size of Bristol and will have the first phase of 30,0000 people living there within little more than three years.

But events being events, I didn’t make that half, but the second half, about the absolutely fascinating China Dialogue website, presented by its editor, Isabel Hilton.

She presented a bit of a dampener on the Dongtan enthusiasm, pointing out that China is continuing to build other cities at phenomenal speed, and not on the Dongtan model.

She said that Dongtan was typical of the top-down environmental model now being applied in China. If you spoke to the senior leadership and read the 11th Five-Year Plan you’d feel good about China’s moves on sustainable development. That plan represented a substantial change in direction from the 10th, which although it set a few environmental targets, all of these were missed and there were no consequences.

The 11th Plan by contrast represents a rebalancing of growth model – the terminology is of working “towards a harmonius society” At the official level that’s fine, and also encouraging is the view on the street. The general view is clearly that the environment needs to be cleaned up.

Where the problem lies is in the middle levels of officialdom. Ms Hilton spoke about Anwei province, which has a huge coal industry that has caused enormous environmental damage about which there is great local concern. But the businessmen who run the companies that run the mines aren’t worried, because of course they don’t live in Anwei province, and the environmental damage doesn’t affect them.

“The ‘development first environment second’ Jiang Zemin model is still held very widely across the country.” For most Chinese, pollution is the price you have to pay for prosperity. Memories of hunger and deprivation are still strong.
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