If you were to step out of your time machine into the Athenian fifth-century theatre, what you would experience is not what you see at the Barbican Pit in the Gardzienice Centre for Theatre Practices production of Metamorphoses & Elektra. While the scientists are working on the machinery, however, this evening is probably as close as you can get to the sensation – the music, the words, and the confrontation of a wholly foreign world – that a time machine journey would produce.

Gardzienice’s is a theatre aethetic of bodies, and sounds. (Luckily, since few in the audience can have mastered both the ancient Greek and Polish that is mixed in with the occasional English explanation.) The company works with the fragmentary remains of ancient Greek songs (a little of the musical notation survives), then has taken in influences from tours to remote parts of eastern Europe, New Mexico, South Korea and Norway, searching for the elemental in culture and humanity.

This is then reduced and shaped to a carefully rehearsed anarchy, to the point where a group of women in white robes, whirling around the stage to a simple but compulsive rhythm (Sufi mystics by another name), are crying like eerily accurate angry seagulls. Or the Author stands in his cloaks of character masks, defenceless and undefended as they are ripped away. READ MORE

Anyone got a magic cure? After four weeks of apparently being perfectly happy to be left, Champ has suddenly developed severe separation anxiety. Not only is he clawing the door to shreds; he’s whining, and howling, for at least 40 minutes after being left. (I’ve left a tape running a couple of times, so I would know what was going on.)

The radio is left on for him for company; I kept him fairly hungry today and left him with a stuffed Kong (with peanut butter) and a pig’s ear (neither of which were touched); I just don’t know what to do – I can’t just drop everything, although I am going to have to cancel tomorrow morning’s squash game. But equally I can’t inflict that on the neighbours.

I’m going to try to find a dog sitter – someone retired ideally who is always at home, but it is not going to be easy.

Valium ….? (At least for me.)

You might have noticed that since I put up a post with “single woman” in the headline, Google Adverts have been going mad on the dating sites. There’s social conditioning for you …
Apologies.

The highly observant will notice a run of “new” listings on my blogroll under history, and those of photographic memory will know this means the new History Carnival, No XXIV is now up on The Elfin Ethicist.

It is another fine crop, of monumental form, so do go and check it out. There is an explanation of why alternatives to AD/BC dating are not “political correctness gone mad”, “Ma Hoyt” offering a personal take on what history means, and that Chinese “ancient?” map controversy. (Which has been dominating Asia-L for a very, very long time.) And much, much more …

Browsing around the blogs that are new to me, I’ve also learnt what Mucosne habes means. Hint: it is on a Latin list talking about nose-picking. (Which reminds me of the Museum-L list, which has recently been discussing hats for horses (not for riders, but the straw ones seen in tourist photos). But are they really historical?

And this is a suitable point to note that the next History Carnival will be HERE, on February 15. I’ll be particularly biased towards posts about women’s history – I’m planning a whole section celebrating exciting women of history, so even if you’d not define yourself a “history blogger”, I’d invite you to reflect on a woman of the past who inspired you. Tell us about what she did, how she did it, and why you find it inspiring … or something like that!

But all other topics, controversies and debates will be most welcome. Nominations should be sent to natalieben[at]journ[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk. There’s also a submission form here. I’ll take them up to the 14th, but if you come across, or make, a great post, why not send it earlier? (It will make my life easier …)

The pressure to be “feminine” still hits hard on teenage girls in the West, but generally in the East it is far, far worse. I noticed when I lived in Thailand how high women’s voices generally were – and yet listen to old recordings and Western women used to speak at a similar pitch, showing how much this is influenced by social norms rather than any sort of biological effect.

And now it is getting worse: women in China are having voice-alteration surgery in the hope that speaking with a higher pitch will impress male interviewers.

Traditionally, a great deal of store is set by a woman’s voice in China, with the perfect female pitch identified as a high, sweet falsetto. As a result, those with deep voices feel stigmatised.
… In one procedure, tiny titanium plates are inserted between two muscles in the throat, causing the vocal cord to stretch, which raises the pitch. Alternatively, an incision can be made in the vocal cord, or part of it can be burnt away with a laser. The resulting scarring stiffens the cord, again raising the pitch.

And you have to wonder what other damage it is likely to do long term.

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Britain is generally pretty good at protecting its historic heritage, but it seems not the Thornborough Henges in Yorkshire, a huge 5,000-year-old site threatened by gravel quarrying. There’s a petition if you’d like to support it.

When you think of how much more information archaeology can extract today from sites, compared to 50 years ago, imagine how much more will be possible in the future. But not, of course, if sites have been ground up and enclosed in the concrete of a car park.

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Heavily pregnant women are being transported around Britain for long hours in what amounts to a metal broom cupboard, without padding, or seat belts. Something the “pro-life” people really should worry about …

A source within Styal prison in Cheshire said a 27-year-old inmate had spent four hours in a van the day before her baby was due. She expected to be taken to court in Liverpool by taxi and complained when told she would travel in a prison van. She was then offered a thin cushion.
The trip from Styal to Liverpool should have taken less than an hour but lasted two and half hours because the vehicle had to drop off other prisoners. The prisoner was allowed one toilet break. After an hour-long court hearing, she made a 90-minute journey back to Styal.

I knew at age five that I didn’t want to get married and have children, and I’ve never seriously questioned that decision. (And I’m now about to turn 40.) I knew then that it was unusual, but reading E. Kay Trimberger’s The New Single Woman I came to understand why many people, Americans in particular, find it not just odd, but extraordinary.

She asks: “Is it possible to be a single woman in one’s fifties with a full life and a lot of joy?” My answer, “well of course; you’re at least as likely to be happy than if you are married or, at least as likely, going through a divorce.” Yet, as Trimberger points out, the general answer is: “Not if you listen to the cultural messages beamed at us…. Only in an intimate couple will we find emotional satisfaction, sexual fulfillment, companionship, security and spiritual meaning.” (I’d added, from everything I’ve read and seen: “particularly in America”. These pressures also exist in Britain and the UK, but being societies generally less keen to enforce conformity, they are not as strong.)

Trimberger, by profession a sociologist (she’s professor emerita of women’s and gender studies at Sonoma State University), over a decade from 1994 followed the progress of a group of 46 middle-class, largely professional women, some white, some African American, some Latina, to explore how their personal and professional lives developed through their thirties, forties and fifties. Her initial finding was that “almost all of the women, even those in their fifties, whether heterosexual, lesbian or bisexual, still hoped to find the ‘right one’.”

In part seeking answers for her own life — she’s a never-married woman who adopted a child on her own at age 40 — Trimberger seeks to identify the steps, emotional and practical, they needed to take to become “happy”. She eventually arrives at six key points that she believes single women need:
1. A home “that nurtures her, whether she lives by herself or with other people”.
2. Work that is satisfying, allows her to be economincally autonomous, and that also provides “a psychological identity but is not her whole life”.
3. Satisfaction with her sexuality, whatever that means.
4. Some connection with the next generation – family relationships, volunteering, proteges or similar.
5. A network of family and friends “that provides companionship and people they can rely on in times of trouble”.
6. A community built around that friendship network.

Yet looking objectively at this list, it is clear that this is not just a list for single women, but for all women, and men. Trimberger says:

“When we embark on adulthood, few of us really know where we will end up. Given that, it is important for single women in their twenties, thirties and forties more consciously to pursue these goals. Whether they hope to couple or not, this is the route to a richer life and one with more options later on. Conversely, to focus primarily on finding a partner while other parts of life are neglected is a recipe for unhappiness.”

That list also addresses one of the biggest fears Trimberger’s subject identify, as a successful African American woman she calls Lanette says, even though she’s already made financial arrangements:

“Whenever I pick up the paper at Christmas-time and see a story about an older woman who has no relatives, who needs a couple of hundred bucks so that her lights don’t get turned off, I say to my mother, ‘That’s my fear. I’ll be eighty-five years old and all my family and friends will have passed on, and because I have not partnered myself, I’ll end up here.”

My reaction to this is that most women will end up this way anyway; even if partnered, and happily partnered, the mortality statistics mean that most women will end up on their own. And while some children might be in a position to take a large role in these circumstances, many will not be able, or will not want, to do so.

But Trimberger is resolutely focused not on comparisons, but on the strategies her subjects attempt to take to deal with this and other concerns. And she has hugely reassuring tales from two of her subjects, both of whom died of breast cancer during the decade. Yet they died not alone, but within large friendship networks, which looked after both their practical and emotional needs. The account of Diane is particularly inspiring:

“She told me that she preferred to rely on friends rather than family members. Although her daughter had moved back in with her, Diane wanted her to have her own life. Diane’s mother was eighty-six, and her sister and cousins lived several hours away. Diane shared her fears more intimately with her friends, for she felt that they could handle her illness more objectively and philosophically. Family members got too upset and made dealing with the cancer more difficult for her.”

Yet, as Trimberger points out, much needs to change in the framework of society to facilitate such networks of care.

Hospitals … often admit only immediate family members (which, in progressive institutions now include domestic partners) to intensive care units and the rooms of those who are seriously ill or dying. … Workplace bereavement policies do not include paid time off to attend the funeral of a friend. Even the most progressive family leave policies provide time off only for the care of family members … Public policies that help build networks of care will improve the life of all adults.”

The fact is that societies are returning to more historically normal levels of childlessness and “singleness”. The New Single Woman points out that in 1950 20 per cent of women aged 40-45 were childless; the 2002 figure of 18 per cent is heading in the same direction. Trimberger quotes a psychological survey which says motherhood is no longer “necessarily central to the development of women’s sense of her adult self”. Yet of course what is needed is to find alternative adult selves, as women in earlier ages did. In the end, Trimberger concludes, in the words of one of her subjects: “The art is in making the choice you can live with.”

This book offers, through practical examples and advice, a framework for doing just that. Trimberger’s case studies from one social class, and one nation, which does limit its scope. (For many women with low-incomes financial constraints ensure daily survival is the most choice that they have.) But there’s still something here for anyone, particularly any woman, who wants to address the question: “How can I have a good life?”