Monthly Archives: July 2006

Lady of Quality

The King is Dead, Long Live the Queen

July 5, 2006 – 8:17 am

My 19th-century blogger, Frances Williams Wynn, is today reporting on on the death of William IV and the accession of Queen Victoria. She’s displaying her typical bluntness about the king’s sins, but thinks he had a good death:

It is very interesting to compare the appearance of the town now, with that which it wore after the death of George IV.; then few, very few, thought it necessary to assume the mask of grief; now one feeling seems to actuate the nation ; party is forgotten, and all mourn, if not so deeply, quite as unanimously, as they did for Princess Charlotte. After a few days of short unsatisfactory bulletins, a prayer for the King was ordered, and sent with pitiful economy by the two-penny post, so that, though the prayer appeared in every newspaper of Saturday evening, it was received by hardly any of the London clergy in time for morning service on Sunday. In our chapel, prayers were desired for Our Sovereign Lord the King, lying dangerously ill; and these introduced in the Litany just as they would have been for the poorest of his subjects!

I love that line about the two-penny post…

Permalink | Comment (0)
Early modern history Feminism Women's history

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)
Environmental politics Science

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)
Blogging/IT Miscellaneous

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)
Feminism Travel

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)
Cycling On other media

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)

« Previous Page — Next Page »

« Previous Page — Next Page »