Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

How women’s literary work is lost, and, sometimes, saved

July 4, 2006 – 10:55 pm

Writing a poem was a task that anyone with any claim to education could do in the early modern period pretty well as easily as we write an email, and they could be written, almost, anywhere – the bottom of trenchers (plates) being a particular favourite for ephemeral verses. Women might often embroider them, a form that was hardly more lasting, but this lovely example comes from a manuscript of 1603, in which it was recorded for posterity. Its title tells all:

A gentlewoman yt married a yonge Gent who after forsooke whereuppon she tooke hir needle in which she was excelent and worked upon hir Sampler thus

Come give me needle stitchcloth silke and haire,
That I may sitt and sigh and sow and singe,
For perfect collours to discribe the aire
A subtle persinge changinge constant thinge.

No false stitch will I make my hart is true,
Plaine stitche my sampler is for to complaine
Now men have tongues of hony, harts of rue,
True tongues and harts are one, Men makes them twain.

Give me black silk that sable suites my hart
And yet som white though white words do deceive
No greene at all for youth and I must part,
Purple and blew, fast love and faith to weave.
Mayden no more sleepeless ile go to bedd
Take all away, the work works in my hedd.
(pp. 155-6)

A nice variation on washing your troubles away, and that line “tongues of honey, hearts of rue” (rue being of course a bitter herb) is a beautiful one.

This is from an excellent, extremely broadranging anthology, Early Modern Women Poets: An Anthology (1520-1700), edited by Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson. (I’ve made a note to myself to immediately latch on to anything in which Stevenson is involved. As I’ve noted elsewhere, her Women Latin Poets is brilliant.)

So many of these sorts of anthologies just rehash the usual suspects; it is lovely to see lots of new voices here. (It has just fallen open at “Verces made by Mistress Battina Cromwell, wife to Henry Cromwell ers Sir Oliver Cromwell’s sone”.)

It even has poems in Welsh – and translations…

Permalink | Comments (17)

No such thing as a free lunch

July 4, 2006 – 9:38 pm

I’m immediately suspicious about “miracle cures”, so I’m less than enthused by the idea of sequestering all of that excess greenhouse gas we’re producing underground. “Hey, let’s dump the problem and forget about it” – that was the approached used, to disastrous, expensive, effect, with chemical weapons from World War I, and by far too many industries since then.

So I’m not surprised by a nasty surprise for those testing out the idea of “burying” carbon dioxide:

It’s staying where they put it, but it’s chewing up minerals. The reactions have produced a nasty mix of metals and organic substances in a layer of sandstone 1550 meters down, researchers report this week in Geology. At the same time, the CO2 is dissolving a surprising amount of the mineral that helps keep the gas where it’s put. Nothing is leaking out so far, but the phenomenon will need a closer look before such carbon sequestration can help ameliorate the greenhouse problem, say the researchers.

Permalink | Comment (0)

Having a shared wireless internet link for a block of flats

July 4, 2006 – 6:30 pm

I’m playing with the idea of the possibility of a shared wireless network. I live in a 17-storey block of 70 flats, of concrete construction. I was wondering if it would be possible to set up a shared network, maybe across a few floors, or the whole block.

Anyone have any experience of this, either as a user or in the set-up? I’m interested in technical issues (simply expressed) and the nature of the account – can you just get a normal subscription, or given the bandwidth, do you have to get a special, expensive, one? What sort of admin/security/discipline issues arise?

All feedback gratefully received – I found one reasonably relevant article, but it is a bit on the technical side for me, and a bit old.

Permalink | Comments (5)

Sex v gender – some original thoughts

July 3, 2006 – 10:34 pm

The Women’s Studies Listerv has gone slightly crazy on that old debate of sex as a fixed category versus a social construct. I’ve had that debate probably one too many times (you might guess I’m on the social construct side – although with an added leavening of “there aren’t two distinct categories” anyway – not so you can meaningfully group them.)

But the discussion did point to an interesting podcast, an interview with Deborah Rudacille, author of The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights. And she had some interesting statistics. Biologically speaking, you can look at sex in terms of chromosomes, gonads, genitals, endocrinology (the balance of androgen and estrogen), and gender identity, which she equated with “brain sex”. Group those together and by one or more categories, about 2.2 per cent of live births are “intersex” – unable to be clearly allocated as male or female. As the interviewer rather laboriously calculated, that amounts worldwide to about 120 million people who are neither definitively male or female.

(Two warnings – the volume of the podcast is very loud – about three times as loud as Radio Four, and the interviewer has an irritating voice – but stick with it, it is worth it.)

Permalink | Comment (1)

You’ll also find me on the Guardian’s Comment is Free

July 3, 2006 – 6:44 pm

Just because I don’t spend every minute that I’m awake tapping on the keyboard (quite), I’ve started up a new gig, writing on the Guardian’s Comment is Free. My first piece is on Critical Mass, and is attracting a satisfactory number of comments, if heading in the usual cyclists v. motorists v. pedestrians line. (I also put some pics up here a couple of days ago.)

Permalink | Comment (1)

Car club worked fine

July 2, 2006 – 10:32 pm

Took a vehicle from the car club to which I’ve belonged for some time out for a spin today, the first time I’ve used it, and although I had a few worries before I began about how the technology would work it all seemed fine and absolutely painless.

You use your membership card to unlock the car, put in your pin number, and off you go. Each time you stop and take the key out of the ignition, it asks you if you want to finish the hire – you keep saying no until you want to say yes.

The car is parked a two-minute walk from my house, and seems to be free considerably more often than it is busy – not sure how the economics of that works out, but it is certainly convenient. Why would you want to own a car?

The purpose was a trip to Coldharbour, near Dorking, in the middle of a forest, a long way from the nearest train station, for a cricket game on the most gorgeous ground set into that forest. It was hot (30C-plus) and dry (the grass actually crackled under-foot), so it almost seemed like I was back in Australia.

After rather too long a personal drought I finally got some runs (28), and helped my team to victory with four balls to spare, so it was a good day. (And if my old games mistress Miss Harris would have considered that I scored far too many of the runs behind the wicket – well you can only do what you can do.)

Permalink | Comment (0)

« Previous Page — Next Page »

« Previous Page — Next Page »