It's Always More Complicated

So, Which Trusted Trader who I spoke to on Friday about coming at least to look at the pipes, and to whom I texted address and confirmation, I thought, of day and time - Sunday, 11 am or sometime thereafter - has not turned up, as at 5 pm.

I have phoned and got voicemail, also texted, and sent an email. Assume this is not going to happen.

Getting ready in anticipation for this involved a lot of clearing spaces that plumber might reasonably want to look into under sink area.

In order to be up, awake, and make sure everything was in order this morning I got up well before my usual Sunday wont (after a somewhat uneasy night).

Various things like washing up did not do because he might turn up (finally said stuff it around 4.30 and did this, having said stuff it and made lunch around 3).

And, okay, there is something to be said for having done the getting the general area clear and so on.

But, really, all very infuriating, and one cannot settle to anything when this sort of thing is impending, or not impending, or one has no idea.

Happy, happy-making thing: received the other day, The Essential Rebecca West: Uncollected Prose, which appears to be intended as a taster volume for the delights of Dame R for those daunted by, say, the sheer mass of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. It consists of selected fugitive articles and reviews from her copious journalism, some previously unpublished pieces, plus (I thought rather unnecessarily) a chunk from Survivors in Mexico which was published, or at least a version carefully constructed from her numerous drafts, a few years ago. I rather regret that it doesn't contain any of her earliest work (surely Jane Marcus didn't get it all into The Young Rebecca?) but otherwise it includes work from her career from the 20s to the 70s.

Though how can one dare to aspire to anything approaching her calibre of codfishery?

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help in moving pianos.

***

Also, oh, bless her: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, Nobel laureate, today's ODNB Life of the Day.

In the case of each of the three projects for which she is best known—penicillin, vitamin B12, and insulin—Dorothy pushed the boundaries of what was possible with the techniques available. Her distinction lay not in developing new approaches, but in a remarkable ability to envisage possibilities in three-dimensional structures, grounded in a profound understanding of the underlying chemistry. She kept an open mind, not committing herself to a structure until it was supported by the unequivocal evidence of a successfully completed crystallographic study. She was exceptionally determined, persisting with apparently unpromising projects long after others would have given up in despair.
....
Dorothy herself denied that her gender had ever hindered her progress, but when she encountered instances of discrimination against her own junior female colleagues she resisted them vigorously. For example, she was incensed to discover that female graduate students routinely had their grants reduced on marriage. However, it took a stint on a committee investigating the administration of Birmingham University in 1970 to bring home to her the insecurity of many women workers with families, including those in her own lab. After this she ensured that they had proper contracts with paid maternity leave, rather than simply paying them for the hours they worked.
....
She was a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and vehemently opposed America's intervention in Vietnam and Cambodia. She accepted an invitation to become president of the Medical Aid Committee for Vietnam, and later sat on an international commission into US war crimes in Vietnam.

***

Suspect that underlying some of my reluctance vis-a-vis validating people's sexiness is the fear of coming out with something as crass as the doubtless well-meant validation I received during my late 70s dabblings in the growth movement, which I do not recall in detail but was along the lines of 'If I were straight, I would certainly give you one'. (DID.NOT.WANT) (This returned from the recesses of memory today.)

***

Re projected visit to the Hunterian Museum: I realise that I am unlikely to be able to fit this into my own schedule until very late June, between travelling and then academic stuff with a deadline taking up any spare time I have on my return. But will move forward with this once I see some daylight at the end of the tunnel...

(The icon really needed here would be of a hedgehog knotted into an extremely advanced yoga pose.)

I've been thinking (set off by something I read this morning) about mediums and messages and how, even if you think you're doing something very specific, that's not what people take away.

Personal anecdote time: in my youth, there was one minister at the local church famed for his vivid sermons, especially the ones for children, for which he would often bring props. And I can quite clearly remember him bringing in a glass jar with a bean he'd sprouted, and holding it up to the edification of the congregation, but blow me if I can recall what the sermon was actually about. Also, heard a paper at a conference some years ago about which all I can remember is that it involved, at some point, a married woman in late C19th New South Wales purchasing a kangaroo, on her own account with her own money (which, I think, she had raised through the more traditionally feminine means of selling embroidery), in order to train it to box and make money on setting up matches for it. I think there were issues of marriage, property rights, and the court system, but all I remember is that unfortunate 'roo.

So perhaps I shouldn't be so irked when I see things that I have put out there with the hope of debunking prevalent historimyths cited in such a way as to lead the casual glancer to suppose that they're all about whatever it is that I'm actually trying to problematise. (As in, 'What part of "apocryphal" is not clear to you?')

Perhaps mentioning these things at all simply keeps the circulation of the canards in question going? Certainly there are books I have refused to review on the grounds that their arguments did not deserve either a rational response or further exposure. (There is one well-known and influential work whose citations, it was noted by a media researcher keen to make a programme based on it, didn't actually support the argument, which did not surprise me very much, because the whole thing seemed to be about a very selective viewpoint, massive over-interpretation of the sources, and universalisation of something that might have been occasionally practised.)

This might be because unravelling something does not, perhaps, provide any equally vivid and compelling counter-narrative of a soundbitey nature. (As in, the response to the perennial invocation of the mythical Dr Cundum, is not, alas and alack, to provide the story of who did invent it, really-truly, but a Rather More Complicated account.)

On reflection, my reaction to the 'what's wrong with public libraries' question boiled down to the same reaction I've had to similar phenomena in other spheres. It's not so much that I'm saying 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' or that outreach per se or extension of services is a bad thing, but that what I perceive is a failure to engage with a core user constituency already using whatever the service is, or to examine existing strengths and build on those. Instead there's a whoring after some presumed group 'out there' rather than the fuddy-duddy regulars who are already in situ, and a neglect of this existing user base, even unto the implementation of policies that are to their detriment.

And that is why, my darlings, this Tonstant Weader (who at one point belonged to 4 public libraries and visited each of them once a week) seldom steps inside either of the local libraries that she has reader's tickets for.

Even jetlagged as I am, my palaeography skillz totally ROOOL: had reader today who wanted help in deciphering various bits of C19th scientist's correspondence, and in all but one instance (which took a bit longer) I got the words Just Like That, to reader's enormous admiration.

***

What is that phenomenon whereby people think that praising one thing means comparing it to something else, to the detriment of the latter? You don't have to diss the constitutional suffragists as establishment-loving wimps just to talk up the militants, or smear the militants as hysterical attention-seeking drama queens just because Millicent Garrett Fawcett is your heroine. While A and B can both be good writers in their different ways, it's not necessary to sneer at one just because you're focussing on the other. It doesn't make anyone less of a good writer if other writers are good too.

***

Maliciously good behaviour: being very calm and reasonable and I-daresay-there-were-wrongs-on-both-sides when obliged to mention split with former BF to mutual friends, acquaintance and colleagues, when they ask what's with former BF these days. In the hopes that one will come across as reasonable and wronged and former BF as complete psycho bitch.

***

The astonishing tendency of discussions to get derailed, or possibly a better metaphor is the points switched so that they go chugging merrily along the wrong line. Observed not only on email lists, where someone answering the question that wasn't asked leads to long vibrant interchange, while the actual question goes mournfully unanswered, but in seminar groups and conference panels where in spite of the face to face contact and what one would think would be a better chance of bringing the thing back to the point, discussion gets hijacked into obsessing around some quite tangential point.

***

Some links:
Angela McRobbie, Popular culture promises young women fame and financial and sexual freedom, but there are very strict conditions
Giles Fraser (a vicar), US evangelists are twisting the Bible to say that beating the young is a Christian doctrine
Species that are making a comeback after having been written off as extinct
Date rape bad as attack by stranger, judges told
Private Lives: next week's question: this is sad in so many ways.