oursin | Entries tagged with water

Goodness knows, some real weirdness is revealed in You Be the Judge in Guardian Saturday, but today's produces a theory which is entirely new to me -

You be the judge: should my housemate stop warming her mug and then pouring the water back into the kettle?

But apart from all this hoohah about HYGIENE, I am rather taken with New Health Scare Theory:

Boiling water twice is a no-no for me – there is a change in quality and taste. My life had a certain drabness to it – I now attribute that to consuming poor-quality water for so long without realising.

This could be a whole new thing, couldn't it? Once-boiled water for vitality!

I was going to ask are they living in a log cabin or what in Ohio if the kitchen is so freezingly cold in the mornings they have to warm up the mugs so that they do not immediately chill the coffee but I see the issue is poor insulation.

Maybe they should do something about insulation rather than bicker over 'secondhand water'?

When her son died in utero, a venture capitalist went to extremes to punish her surrogate.

Sometimes one gets the impression that some people don't understand that pregnancy isn't a straightforward and simple process and that if it goes wrong it's not actually a matter of blame:

Although America is the world leader in surrogacy, it’s also the developed nation with the highest maternal mortality rate and one of the highest stillbirth rates, a situation described by many as “a public health crisis.” Compared to natural conception, carrying a genetically unrelated fetus more than triples the risk of severe, potentially deadly conditions, a statistic surrogates are rarely given. IPs do not always have to disclose complete medical information, including histories of certain conditions that may harm their GCs. They don’t have to be honest about how many kids they have, why they are hiring a surrogate, or how many other surrogates they have simultaneously pregnant.

Things happen. VICTORIAN DOCTORS UNDERSTOOD THAT. (See Alfred Swaine Taylor, A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, 1879, on Criminal Abortion).

The whole thing sounds like an entire nightmare (the surrogate was expected to cover pregnancy care via her own health insurance WTF?).

And do we think the intending mother fit to be a parent?

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On people Being The Main Character: she's become a one-woman clean-up crew, sharing her efforts on social media and calling out the Canal and River Trust for what she sees as its failure to properly maintain the area:

In response, the Canal and River Trust said: "Elena might feel alone in tackling London's litter waste, however she is one of hundreds of volunteers who help our charity keep London's canals alive, picking up other people's rubbish and carrying out routine maintenance.
"We're delighted when more people take an interest in looking after their local canal."
However, the trust said it was "more effective" to collect bagged waste "when it's part of the regular organised volunteer events that our charity runs".
"These activities are scheduled alongside weekly clean-ups by our operatives and contractors, which ensures collected waste is removed and recycled or disposed of appropriately," a spokesperson said.
The trust also urged visitors to London's canals to take their litter home with them.

One feels that a little due diligence would have found her a spot on the volunteer rota and a supply of appropriate bags.

The following are all in the area of environmental history: enjoy!

Rebecca Beausaert. Pursuing Play: Women's Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870-1914.

Beausaert’s discussion of the growing popularity of outdoor recreation in the early twentieth century, as opposed to earlier forms of indoor leisure such as book clubs and church gatherings, also highlights the role of women in the rise of environmental activism in towns like Elora. In these communities, grassroots efforts to maintain the local environment and cater to the influx of ecotourism travelers flourished, further illustrating the agency of women in shaping both their social and environmental landscapes.

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Robert Aquinas McNally. Cast Out of Eden: The Untold Story of John Muir, Indigenous Peoples, and the American Wilderness:

McNally’s emphasis on the role of race in Muir’s thinking, and, therefore, on his vision of wilderness preservation, helps readers more clearly see Muir not as wilderness prophet but as a man of his time coming to terms with the consequences of American expansion.

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B. J. Barickman. From Sea-Bathing to Beach-Going: A Social History of the Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Edited by Kendrik Kraay and Bryan McCann:

The book begins with Rio in the nineteenth century and shows that Cariocas regularly went to bathe in the ocean. The work incorporates an assortment of sources to give a vivid picture of this process. For instance, it was customary for bathers to go before dawn—as early as 3 a.m.—since many in Rio went to bed early in the evening, but also due to colorism within Brazilian society. The dominant white society enjoyed swimming in the ocean but also prized fairer complexions and thus aimed to avoid the sun. Yet, few amenities existed for sea-bathers. The city dumped its sewage and trash into the ocean and provided few lifeguards, which resulted in frequent drownings.
In chapter 2, a personal favorite, Barickman discusses the evolution of sea bathing from a therapeutic practice (thalassotherapy) in the nineteenth century to a leisure activity that provided a space for socialization across gender lines by the 1920s. Locals went to the beach to escape the heat of the summer, rowing emerged as the most popular sport in the region, and, as in other parts of the world such as the United States and the Southern Cone, beach-going became a popular way to make or meet friends. In short, the beach became a public space at all hours of the day, not just before dawn. Moreover, the beach captured the “moral ambiguities” of nineteenth-century norms (51-63). Men and women of all races and classes could be present in public spaces partially nude, to observe others and to be observed, in ways that society did not permit beyond the beach, but this continually frustrated moral reformers.
Chapter 3 centers on the work of Rio’s civic leaders to “civilize” the city in hopes of altering public perception of the city as a “tropical pesthole” (p. 69).

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David Matless. England’s Green: Nature and Culture Since the 1960s:

The range of sources and topics is impressive, but at times the evidence is noted so briefly and the prose proceeds so quickly that breadth is privileged over depth. For example, the deeper connections between England and global ideas of green (as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wildlife Fund), the influence of colonial experience on conservation events of the 1970s, and the tensions between the various governmental nature management organizations would all have benefited from a little more attention. Yet, even if the reader sometimes wishes for a slower pace to get their thoughts in order, Matless offers enough analysis to build the examples up into a clear and insightful picture. The reader is left with a general appreciation of the central environmental debates of the period and good understanding of how they evolved over time. For scholars, it is a multidimensional study that adds something new and long awaited to British environmental and cultural history. For others, it is a fascinating book filled with interesting stories, cultural context, and many moments of nostalgia.

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Michael Lobel. Van Gogh and the End of Nature.:

Lobel makes a systematic case for a new way of seeing Van Gogh’s paintings. Carefully introducing readers to a host of environmental conditions that shaped Van Gogh’s lived experience and appear repeatedly in his paintings—factories, railways, mining operations, gaslight, polluted waterways, arsenic, among others—Lobel compellingly invites us to see Van Gogh as an artist consistently grappling with the changing ecological world around him. Color and composition, as two of Van Gogh’s most heralded painterly qualities, appear now through an entirely different perception influenced by a clear environmental consciousness.

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Ursula Kluwick. Haunting Ecologies: Victorian Conceptions of Water:

The author sets out to consider how Victorians understood water, seen through nineteenth-century fictional and nonfictional writings about the River Thames. In chapter 2 she points out the existence of writing that emphasizes how polluted the Thames was as well as writing that never mentions the pollution, and wonders at their coexistence. The conclusion that the writings don’t relate to any real state of the river is not particularly surprising but points to the author’s overall intent, summarized in the book’s title.

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Alan Rauch. Sloth:

Rauch views these caricatural depictions—including portrayals of sloths as docile and naive creatures, as seen in the animated film Ice Age (2002)—as potentially detrimental to the species’ well-being. Through his analysis, the author critiques how sloths have been appropriated to fulfill human (emotional, cultural, and economic) needs and how this process misrepresents sloths, leading to harmful stereotypes that diminish their intrinsic value and undermine their agency.

Apparently now the English Channel is seething with WHALES? Humpback whales back in Britain, with rise in sightings from Kent to Isles of Scilly:

The humpback whales are migrating from their feeding grounds near Tromsø, Norway, to warmer waters around the Cape Verde islands, where they rest and breed. Traditionally, the whales move around the western side of Britain but some are now swimming down the east coast and through the Strait of Dover – possibly re-establishing ancestral routes that were abandoned when so many humpbacks were slaughtered by 19th- and 20th-century whale-hunters.

I'm not sure this stretch of sea was ever uncrowded by shipping:

There are concerns that humpbacks taking the easterly migration route around Britain must pass through crowded shipping lanes and beside windfarms and new power cable installations that could disorient them or lead to collisions or strandings. “The Dover Strait is a very small area of water, very narrow, and incredibly busy – not only shipping but a lot of industrial fishing,” said Taylor. “There are always concerns about collisions with large shipping vessels. We know so far they seem to be hugging the coast going past Kent and Sussex – we hope they continue to do that and stay out of the busiest shipping lanes.”

In fact I would have thought it used to be a lot busier, coming as I do from a south coast port in those parts which no longer has the one-time fishing fleet and cross-channel ferries. And the days of Masefield's

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

are long gone.

But it certainly is a narrow strait: we could go and stand on the cliff and providing it was a clear day it was possible to see France.

No, really what're the odds?

In 3 different fora over the past couple of days, I have been strutting Mi Xpertise on:

Cartoons relating to birth control, abortion, etc. (I do know of a few, including a very early one featuring Bertrand Russell's father.)

Victorian courtesans (English/French differences, definitions, etc).

In connection with which, this video of Hardy's 'Ruined Maid' poem:

Watch on YouTube

(while she's clearly improved her lifestyle, hasn't really risen to the ranks of courtesans!)

Condoms as STI prevention in UK, was this illegal (no, but advertising was a murky area, is my take on this, and the law was rather vaguely written but actually meant to be about spurious cures).

(Does that there Dr oursin ever shut up???)

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Ponds that were dried up, shaded over or dominated by brambles have been opened up to sunlight and dug out, and are now burgeoning with rare aquatic plants, dragonflies and great-crested newts – also providing food and water for birds and bats. “It’s ideal for farmers,” says Emma Gray. “You get a lot of biodiversity bang for your buck in a marginal area for farming – you’re not taking productive land out but quickly you build up a network for species to hop across a landscape. It’s a no-brainer.”

Defra scraps England deadline to register thousands of miles of rights of way (the Right to Roam was a cause dear to my fubsy interwar progressives' hearts, ho-hum):

A deadline for registering historic rights of way is to be scrapped after a warning that the looming cutoff date could result in the loss of thousands of miles of footpaths. The last government set a deadline of 2031 for all rights of way in England to be added to an official map, after abandoning a previous commitment to scrap the policy. Once recorded as rights of way and added to the definitive map, paths are protected under the law for people to use.... Campaigners, who are trying to protect 40,000 miles of paths which are missing from the official map, hailed the move as a “fantastic step.” Landowners condemned it as the latest attack on farmers.... Some of these paths, which are well-used by walkers, cyclists and equestrians, date back hundreds or even thousands of years, but are not officially recorded or protected.

Plus, Campaigners call for right to roam on edges of private farmland in England and Wales, to avoid traffic.

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Birmingham City University thinktank imagines new approach to urban areas and land use across the region:

Moore is the director of the West Midlands National Park Lab at Birmingham City University, a pioneering project that imagines a future in which the whole region, including Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country, is a type of national park. She accepts that getting an official designation for the park, under current national park laws, is unlikely. It would probably require a change in law – the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 was designed to exclude urban areas to protect nature. And plans for new national parks in the UK can be contentious: in Wales, for example, proposals for a new national park in the north of the country have been met with local outcry. Moore is more interested in using her idea to change the way people think about landscape in urban areas, and in putting the region on the map for a commitment to greenery.

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Chelsea flower show garden to champion Britain’s endangered rainforests:

I’d say, embrace the charm of imperfection in your garden – like a wonky tree – and choose plants that suit your climatic conditions. If it’s damp and dark, why not celebrate a clump of moss? It feels fabulous underfoot. Add features like ponds and focus on native plants to give wildlife a real boost.

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The story of the Gloucester shipwreck was too important to stay submerged. Here’s how academics, museum curators and the discoverers of the Gloucester wreck brought it back to the surface - interesting, but one sees all over that page 'sponsored by Elsevier', so not noted for making knowledge freely accessible ahem ahem.

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A different kind of ecological niche in decline: ‘It’s not just a dancefloor’: the precipitous decline of UK nightclubs. Or maybe it's just finding another space to occupy: daytime events specially laid on by music promoters for the over-30s.

On my walk the last couple of days there has been Work Being Done just along the street. An area has been fenced off with a notice -

'Work being done on pipes, by Thames Water, bringing you world-class tap water'.

Take it away, Tina!

Watch on YouTube

Thames Water issue urgent 'do not drink' warning to hundreds of Surrey homes

Thames Water tested water samples after dozens of residents in south-east London reported sickness and diarrhoea

Thames Water among six water firms sued for up to £1.5bn by billpayers over sewage discharges

Pity I didn't have a spray-can of paint or some chalk or a marker pen.

My husband persuaded me to swing and boy did it not turn out the way he expected (this is a not unfamiliar scenario, i.e. it turns out much better for her and not in the least like his fantasies).

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But which British cities truly shine as the ultimate literary destinations for bookworms to fall in love with? Ummmm, there's an invisible elephant in the room here, isn't there, or maybe it's because I'm a Londoner? You could spend weeks or months visiting London literary sites, mutter mutter.

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The Fen Tigers - the mysterious resistance group who fought to save part of Cambridgeshire. I wonder how far there were actual Fen Tigers as an organised group, at least, going on for 200 years....

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And also on drainage matters, this is a good detailed piece on historical problems leading to current sewage problems though exacerbated by privatisation of water companies, toothlessness of regulatory bodies and underinvestment.

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Why Dutch maternity care is the envy of the world: and to tie this in with previous and issues of underinvestment in/cutting back of services, letter in today's Guardian: 'when I had my first child by caesarean in 1976, I was supported at home by the midwife and, then, the health visitor'.

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Interview with Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse, who is apparently a Catholic convert - and there is a Catholic church in Bergen, one always supposed the Norwegians the poster-children for grim Nordic Protestantism, no?

His plays are described thus:

Fosse’s plays seem calculated to discomfit such theatregoers, pushing deep into enigmatic meaning and plotlessness (he notes witheringly that his work has been called “post-dramatic”). His characters sometimes have names but are more often called “The One” and “The Other”, or “The Woman”, “The Boy”, “The Older Man”. There is humour but the dominant moods tend towards dread, claustrophobia and sexual jealousy, his characters often struggling to connect.

which strike me, irreverently, as mapping pretty much to the kind of experimental drama, oft emerging from the Nordic regions, satirised by early C20th writers. I.e. Of A Tradition.

I had never even heard of the twaite shad before: The twaite shad was once a common sight in Britain’s waterways.

A member of the herring family, the small silvery fish with a single dorsal fin and a forked tail was once so bountiful it was sold as food locally and abroad.

(At the moment I don't think anything is a common sight in Britain's waterways except the sewage being discharged into them, and coastal waters, by water companies, but this is, I think, meant to be a happy tale of nature healing....):

The project, completed in 2022, has allowed the once abundant fish to return to its natural spawning grounds in the Severn for the first time in more than 180 years. A series of navigational weirs built in the mid-19th century had been preventing access to more than 150 miles of river until UTS built four fish passes – a series of imposing partially submerged concrete monoliths – into the weirs, giving hope to many of the Severn’s beleaguered fish species.

I really do wonder about this, and what happens to the twaite shad when they swim upriver a bit, because a very little googling suggests that The wider Severn is the most sewage-polluted river in the UK. That was last April, but I don't suppose matters have improved that much since then: report from July 40 volunteers from 18 angling clubs are monitoring 30 sites across the Severn catchment and what they find is not pretty.

So I'm not sure this is entirely a feel-good story.

I.e. I have heard not a dicky-bird from the plumber who did not come on Sunday - having given a day's grace for Spring Bank Holiday - in spite of leaving voicemail, texting and emailing about the appointment.

Had a Skype yesterday morning (while I was still in the middle of breakfast) with partner and said unless I did hear by today would pursue further avenues, including asking around friends -

So I asked around on FaceBook, as likely to have a reasonable number of people I know in the general vicinity and immediately got a rec from hano (who I don't think frequents DW these days?).

Today, as there was radio silence from the plumber who did not come to call, I rang the number suggested, who said, actually you want X the Drain Man, so I rang X the Drain Man, who was very agreeable but was out on a job some distance away and while could probably fit me in today would be fairly late on, so we agreed on tomorrow am and there has been an exchange of texts.

In further exciting plumbing-relating news, I managed, possibly more by good luck than good management, to Do Something so that the bathroom sink is now draining in a proper rather than very sluggish fashion.

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In other news, I saw this the other day:Ancient books in northern Italy frozen to salvage them from flood damage. Precious manuscripts placed in industrial-sized freezers at -25C to rid them of excess water, and okay, this may be my privilege as someone who worked at a well-resourced repository showing, but our disaster plan included a standing contract with a place that had massive freezers for flash-freezing precious items if there was either a flood, or a fire setting off the sprinkler system.

The contract was also of service when we acquired material that was infested with mould or insect-life, as freezing nukes mould spores and insect eggs.

(I would of course have been even more chuffed if it had been last week so I could point it up right alongside the dissing on Mad King Ludwig's Vanity Erection)

Review of a book on Town Halls (and it's on a whole blog called Municipal Dreams which I must really delve into!):

Town halls in towns and cities throughout the country are the physical embodiment of local democracy, and urban expressions of local civic pride. They reflect the character and urban pride of the town or city in which they were built, and despite variations in ages and forms, it is their function as symbolic civic and public buildings housing all municipal functions that unites them.

The 'heyday of local government when confident towns and cities assumed significant reforming powers' was

reflected in some of the great showpiece town halls of the day, most strikingly in so-called ‘provincial’ cities which then, far from being left behind, were in the vanguard of the country’s economic and social progress. Classical forms dominated earlier in the nineteenth century; Gothic in the latter part, reflecting its greater flexibility as well as contemporary taste. Sometimes whole civic complexes formed as the city fathers (as they still generally were) built to meet not only the council’s statutory duties but a goal of cultural improvement in the museums and galleries that multiplied.

Also points out 'the buildings’ wider role and functions – in Averby’s words ‘from the practical to the pleasurable’ (not just committee rooms and council chambers).

Further on attractive things for the public good, here is a piece on the restoration of public water fountains

Once there were a thousand or more drinking fountains in London, and many more around the country, built from the 1860s onwards to provide clean piped water for those with access only to dirty public pumps, such as the one in Soho that was proven by John Snow to be the source of a cholera outbreak. Many beautiful and often eccentric drinking fountains were built by private subscription all over the country, but they fell into disrepair, with many demolished after the 1950s.

though the framing is more about their potential for cutting plastic waste in the present era.

And a further built environment link, carried over from International Women's Day, on twentieth-century women architects - and how 'hidden from history' is so often 'you weren't looking, were you?'

Discovered last night, issue with one of the electric sockets in the kitchen.

Partner has spent several hours this afternoon trying to replace it.

Electrician has been called for tomorrow.

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A few assorted weird links:

Anglers despair as trapped seal eats Essex lake’s stocks like it’s ‘in Waitrose’: 'The seal appears to be unaware of the fishing ban, in place since its arrival' no, really? couldn't it read the signs posted? We see that The Authorities are all about getting it out For Its Own Good - 'it cannot exhibit normal ‘seal’ behaviour on its own' - 'rescuing the seal for its own welfare, but not stressing it out' rather than fearing that it may grow to a size that precludes ever leaving.

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This is very creepy: Ex-Colorado funeral home owner gets 20-year sentence for selling body parts (bonetrafficking having been a motif in previous posts).

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I am honestly not sure whether I ever saw and posted this previously - the weird things that go on in literal rather than fictional Oxford: “Never in the Presence of Any Woman”: Male Homoeroticism and Elite Education:

Warren had also proposed a fund for the construction of an underground passage, linking the college’s original site to buildings it had recently acquired across the street. Allen thought this a quixotic and unnecessary bequest, which would be difficult and expensive to build. But Warren insisted that the passage was integral to his vision of classically-oriented college community: if it were necessary for space reasons to house the Praelector in the new buildings, the passage would mean that he and his students could easily reach each other at any time.

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Philip Pullman is, I suppose, more or less of my own Generation - slightly older perhaps:

The book that changed me as a teenager
The Outsider by Colin Wilson, of course, which made me stop wanting to be a pop star and start wanting to be an intellectual instead.

I suspect that I was already at least a nascent intellectual, or just already set in my nitpicky pedantic ways, because when I read The Outsider (possibly already just a touch passe by the time I did c. 1970???) what I noticed were the errors and wild generalisations. Also perhaps the blokeyness of the concept...

Synchronicitously, these have recently passed across my screen: women, fish, and marine biology:

Women are making an increasingly visual presence in the world of aquatics, and the hobby has a long history of female pioneers. So why don’t we hear more about them, asks Ingrid Allan (Groans in historian of women in STEM). This appeared in Practical Fishkeeping, and from internal evidence of reference of Women's History Month, around last March.

Does not, however, mention this intrepid pioneer, who is among other things accredited (even by Victorian men of science) with inventing the acquarium: Jeanne Villepreux-Power - who actually turned up in a Facebook post but not linkable, so I had to google about for something a bit more accessible. But what a story, eh?

Jeanne Villepreux was born on September 24, 1794, in the rural village of Juillac, Corrèze, France. She was the eldest child of a humble shoemaker and a seamstress. Jeanne had a basic education, a very little knowledge more than how to read and write. When Jeanne was 18 years old, she walked all the way to Paris covering a distance of over 400 kilometers (250 miles) to become a dressmaker. In Paris, she became the assistant of a society dressmaker. She found fame when she designed the wedding gown for Princess Caroline, the future Duchesse of Berry.... It was through the commision of this wedding gown that Jeanne met James Power, a rich English nobleman, merchant, and trader. They got married in 1818 in Messina, Sicily, where they lived for more than 20 years. It was soon after her marriage when Jeanne became interested in natural history. She was a self-taught naturalist who traveled around Sicily recording and describing its flora and fauna, collecting specimens of minerals, fossils, butterflies, and shells. She became fascinated with shells in particular. Jeanne studied countless fish and cephalopods including nautilus, cuttlefish, and octopus.

(This account omits the bit, found in the Wikipedia entry where she was delayed on her journey to Paris by being sexually harassed by her escort and lost the job she was aiming for.)

Okay, we keep hearing about all these daft and dangerous things The Young'uns do be a-doing of for their TikTok followings, and clearly there are some young persons involved in this latter phenomenon, but by its nature it does seem to involve those who should be Old Enough To Know Better:

Council steps in after videos on social media turn Nottinghamshire river crossing into viral tourist attraction:

Rufford ford cuts across Rainworth Water, a small river east of Mansfield. When the weather is dry, the river crosses the road as a small trickle that is easily traversed. But after heavy rain it becomes several feet deep and up to 30ft (9 metres) wide, and the crossing resembles a log flume at a theme park. Over-optimistic drivers have a moment of realisation as their cars are turned into a boat. As their engines fill up with water, they are left begging onlookers to tow them out. For years this was a local concern. Then in 2020, a local teenager called Ben Gregory started uploading videos he had filmed to YouTube of cars conking out in the water. Suddenly, a small Nottinghamshire lane was a global tourist attraction with an obsessive fanbase. “People love seeing pain and failure,” said another YouTuber, who insisted on being referred to by his online username midlifecrisis101x.

The thing is, it does not appear to be just people hanging out on the banks of the river hoping to capture a schadenfreudey moment and upload it to YouTube or more recently TikTok.

It does look as though there are people deliberately coming to try to cross the water:

As for the motivation of those crossing the river, he believes there is a deep “bloodlust” on the part of drivers who want to drive a vehicle worth tens of thousands of pounds through a flooded ford.

Which suggests a demographic able to afford those vehicles.

(We should like to see a gender breakdown of those who attempt this crossing...)

Current Music: The Bogglemen, Splish-Splash Boggle Boggle

I'm not sure this is quite the manifestation of Resistentialism, but things seems to be going out of order or being disobliging around here rather a lot of late.

There was the central heating thing the other month, which we had hoped was fixed: lo and behold, since yesterday the heating has been arbitrarily going on and off. Engineer booked for tomorrow, we hope this one turns up and doesn't just disappear into the wherever and have to be rebooked for several days further ahead.

Okay, we now have a new tap, yay? But before that there was that whole flood thing? (though downstairs does report that there is no damage there.)

We now have a smart meter for gas: it turns out that in order for it to actually communicate with energy companies, there needs to be some arrangement with the electricity meter (which is a different supplier, whom I have contacted anent the matter).

The fix on my new glasses - nose pads that came unglued after a few days. I have ordered some to see if it's worth trying to fix this myself before trekking down to the opticians once more.

In less material matters, I am still pursuing a charge made on my credit card for goods which never came, from a company whose onsite contact form gives an error message if you try to contact them that way, and who do not reply if you send an email to the address given on the site. I have contacted what's supposed to be the department to resolve these issues as advised via the bank's website but they are not exactly responsive themselves.

That pertains to one of several things I like which is currently out of stock everywhere on an indefinite basis (other sites said they had no idea when it will be back in stock and refunded). It is not clear with these things whether it is a supply-line problem, they have decided not to make that thing any more (boo chiz), or, as in one case, the company that produces it has got the receivers in, which I assume means it's gone out of business.

I suppose it sort of counts as happier news that a tentative approach I had a year ago that then went completely quiet to Do A Chapter has revived, except it went so quiet I did not think about it or do any preliminary reading at all.

*Resistentalism

Some of this gets a bit into the woowoo, srsly, but I like this, given the excesses of the Ethical Altruism longtermists who are more about saving distant future descendants than doing anything about the here and now:

Powlesland works between two and four days in court each week, taking on housing and employment cases to fund his unpaid environmental activism. Clearly, there is a full life’s work restoring the Roding but if he stayed local, he couldn’t champion bigger environmental causes – he co-founded Lawyers for Nature and is also part of the “right to roam” campaign devised by Guy Shrubsole and Nick Hayes. “I’ve come to see the importance of cycling between the micro and the macro,” says Powlesland. “If I just work in Barking it’s irrelevant because these trees will get drowned by climate change. Litter picking is a perfect example. It’s a tsunami of single-use packaging and it feels like trying to wipe off the overflow from the bath rather than turning off the tap, and for packaging we really need to turn off the tap. On the other hand, the local helps keep your sanity and keep you motivated.”

I cannot - because I am like that - help thinking of a whole load of earlier movements that were happening in Essex, which has actually been a fermenting hotbed of Causes, religious and secular, over the centuries.

And on London waterways, Woe Woe unto the chartered Thames, we feel Mad William would have had a word or two.

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This gave me to think about people finding ecological niches in places that weren't actually set up and designed for that (like the kestrels nesting on urban buildings): The Only Good Thing Left About Facebook. Some people believe that the company’s scandals are reason enough to quit the platform. Others have found one compelling reason to stay. I daresay there are some really, really toxic FB Groups out there: but it also enables these 'pockets of democratic self-governance within a largely antidemocratic space' and mutual support.

Perhaps I found this particularly resonant because last week was the final one in the series of Gayle Rubin's'Fall 2022 Roy A. Rappaport Lectures: "The Valley of the Kings: Leathermen in San Francisco, 1960-2000"' which I was attending online - the final one made it very clear how a particular confluence of factors in the urban history/geography of San Francisco enabled the emergence and thriving of leather culture in particular areas during a particular time, and these factors also made for its decline.

I think of all sorts of particular times and places when certain kinds of interaction were made possible.

Return of that perennial favourite, the five questions meme. I had these from ursula. If you would like questions from me, ask away in comments.

1. How do you feel about winter darkness?
I don't think I'm terribly affected by winter darkness - I think the early months of the year when it's getting lighter are for unrelated reasons my tending to be bad time of year. However, I do remember that time when I was invited to a conference in Umea in the far but not quite Arctic north of Sweden in December one year, when there were a very few hours of gloomy daylight (which we mostly missed anyway in a subterranean lecture hall), and coming back to London and going 'Whee! it's 2.30 pm and still bright daylight! Hello Clouds! Hello Sky!'

2. Share an interesting memory from your forties?
Wow. I was thinking this over and boy, my forties were hectic with a lot of research and conference related travel. Funnily enough, I'm remembering boat-trips in different places - Town Lake in Austin - the small boat Bayou Tour in New Orleans - Akaroa Harbour with the Hector's Dolphins in New Zealand -

3. How was the house you grew up in heated?
Coal-fires. And occasional paraffin heaters.

4. Tell us about one of the first books you bought with your own money?
I honestly can't remember - because a lot of the books would probably have been bought with book tokens that I'd been given or won for things - and while my memories originally went to the large WH Smith in the town, we also did a lot of book-shopping in the secondhand shop, so there might have been something there. My own money that I'd earned rather than pocket money - could it have been that selection of the poems of Donne? (which I'm not sure I have anymore.)

5. If you could spend a month anywhere in the world (all expenses paid and transit magically arranged), where would you go?
Apart from the places where I'd really like to make another research trip - and the places that at present aren't exactly safe to go - I'm not sure one could spend an entire month in a wombat sanctuary but I think maybe Australia again - oh yes, and I'd love to ride the Ghan.

Bathroom sink flooded.

Okay, this could have been worse I suppose. I went down to the bathroom for a call of nature around 4 am and discovered that the sink was full right up with water and had been spilling over onto the floor.

This was due to the confluence of 3 things: the ongoing issue that there is a persistent dribbling around the base of the tap dripping into the sink; the soap sliding off the surround and closing up the plughole; and, we discovered, the overflow having become clogged up over time.

So there was that, involving a plumber in the future to deal with this problem Partner had tried and failed to fix with the tap, declogging the overflow, and writing an email to person who is not at present actually living in flat below to say we don't think any will have got through but to let us know if.

Then for the second day running no paper delivered - this is getting really irksome when they don't respond to emails either about missing deliveries or problems with their bill.

Also - minor aaargh, the dynaband I use for exercises snapped, fortunately not at any point that would cause particular injury. Fortunately I had a spare.

The waterways of the UK are awash with sewage and I daresay there are faint earthquakey rumblings in the vicinity of Wimbledon, where Sir Joseph Bazalgette is buried.

And today was spotted in the wild somebody hymning the praises of wood-burning stoves in the Telegraph.

Hai, let's go back to the Great Smog and the London Pertickler!

Quite apart from the environmental impact of burning wood - cough choke - there's the environmental impact of where the wood to burn comes from....

I suppose at least it's not a fossil fuel?

Goodness knows what was going on in the minds of the protestors throwing soup at Sunflowers (behind glass, fortunately). At least when Mary Richardson slashed the Rokeby Venus there was an obvious symbolism to the protest. We feel that Vincent would have been on their side?

Somebody did mention somewhere that funding art exhibitions is a favoured form of culture-washing by oil companies. But this was hardly explicit?

Apparently there were also cavils about Wasting Food?

To which I saw one response that selling the painting would feed I forget how many millions -

Except there is that thing of selling treasures that are in some form of public ownership to raise money, and the likelihood that they will end up in some private vault? (e.g. library some years ago that had a spare First Folio and a financial crisis.)

The University of Birmingham has formally apologised for conversion therapy practiced at the institution, which continued until the 1980s:

The research was prompted by a conversion therapy survivor, speaking out under the pseudonym “Chris”, who demanded an apology from the University of Birmingham in 2020 after undergoing shock therapy to “treat” his sexual orientation.

At least this history is being uncovered: and this was actually encouraging: 20th Century Queer History in the Archives and the Curriculum:

as we began the process of reforming our coursework, I sensed an opportunity to explore a different story of the 20th century with our students. This story would revolve around social history and foreground the experiences of groups who are ordinarily underrepresented in GCSE and A-Level courses: women, the Black British community and LGBTQ+ people.... As part of the coursework, students are required to analyse a set of primary sources. The process of looking for material they could use led me to the Hall-Carpenter archive, which is currently held by the LSE and contains key documents relevant to the movement for LGBTQ+ rights.

***

I am a bit peeved that Mary Somerville's picture is all over this yet she is not named: but I perceive that the lecture is available on YouTube (having actually taken place on the day of the massive Tube strike): “A sex so little made to brave the thorns of science”: The historical representation of women in mathematics:

From medieval times to the modern day, female mathematicians, real and fictional, have been represented in a variety of ways, both in pictures and in words. These depictions allow us to learn about the women portrayed and about the attitudes towards them prevailing at the time.

(We note that Mrs Somerville does not go in for the plunging decolletage manifested in the portraits of Emile du Chatelet and Ada Lovelace...)

***

Having seen that annoying, very, very annoying hoohah about that quote about the working class child and Oxbridge, and being both annoyed about the damping of aspirations AND about the fetishisation of Oxbridge: yay Birkbeck: In 1823 in London, in a room above the Crown and Anchor Tavern, a physician named George Birkbeck founded the London Mechanics Institute, an institution dedicated to the education of working people:

Eventually rebranded Birkbeck College and incorporated into the University of London, it became an intellectual refuge for multiple generations of nontraditional students from wildly diverse backgrounds, from Ramsey McDonald to Sidney Webb, from Tracey Emin to Marcus Garvey. All were drawn by the college’s commitment to meeting their passion for learning by providing what was called “useful knowledge”.

I'd like to add that it's an absolute powerhouse within my own field.

***

I discover that Lonesome George the Galapagos tortoise died some while ago, but anyway, this lady tortoise appears to be of yet another and different species supposed extinct? the first Chelonoidis phantasticus to be seen since a male specimen was discovered by the explorer Rollo Beck during an expedition in 1906.

***

What was it about C17th monarchs thinking they knew it all about the sea and ships? Wreck of Royal Navy warship sunk in 1682 identified off Norfolk coast:

[T]he ship was carrying James Stuart, who survived the wreckage and went on to become King James II of England and Ireland and King James VII of Scotland. He had argued with the pilot about navigating the dangerous area and delayed abandoning ship until the last minute, needlessly costing the lives of many who, because of protocol, could not abandon the ship before royalty.

The Vasa is in sympathy.

***

If you have $2.5m you're not using for other purposes, An original copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio, often referred to as the most important book in English literature, will be auctioned next month in New York, and that's the estimated likely price it'll knock down for.

***

O Peter Bradshaw, nevairrr evairr change: 'The film’s sense of the uncanny has metastasised in my imagination, and I respond more urgently now to its sinister aura.... some way into the running time you might yourself being awoken from its reverie of formless anxiety by a sudden, horrifying stab of violence' (I'll be over here, watching Bringing Up Baby).

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It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog

Entries tagged with water

Yet another thing to worry about???

This is a terrifying story

I seem to have a massive batch of reviews of interest hanging about

I suppose if they can make it up the Thames?

Right up my street x 3

Chartered Streets, Clouded Hills, and freedom to walk on England's Mountains Green

Probably had a similar notice on the Broad Street Pump

Various things

You learn something new every day

I think that counts as being ghosted

Rather appositely appearing this week in my time-line

This has been a bit of a day

Possibly some sort of pun here about fishwives?

Not just the young, apparently

Resistentialist* uprising?

I sort of rather liked these things

Questions, questions

This week is fired, srsly

I'm waiting for arsenic wallpaper as the new must-have in interior decoration

Mixed bag