Listening to:Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye- Leonard Cohen
Hey people,
Just to let you know, the blog will be on a brief hiatus, because we won’t have internet access at the new house for a few weeks (and my computer appears to be slightly on the blink). We moved the bulk of our stuff over yesterday, and it’s cramped but looking homey already!
- Do wolves have accents? I found this cool link on Ask Metafilter to animal sounds in other languages. Bees, ravens and cows are pretty consistent, but I wonder how people settled on their particular national parrot phrases.
- Article from the Guardian about musicians performing in UK prisons:
For two hours, in a place where hope was the rarest commodity, [John Martyn] lifted hearts and humanised souls like nothing I had ever experienced. Watching him perform May You Never - just him and an acoustic guitar, singing just for us, the unwanted, reminded us that we were members of the human race. Any musician who can go into a prison and do that deserves all our gratitude.
Also, Pauline Campbell died in May, and I meant to link to some articles about her (1, 2, 3, 4). Her daughter died in prison in 2003, and she dedicated the rest of her own life to campaigning for prison reform.
- I am trying to figure out Peruvian knitting, because it seems to be the fastest method and I have a lot of projects I want to try. You hold the right needle like a pencil and manoeuvre the yarn with your right middle finger…which is the part I’m finding almost impossible. I have taken to staring intently at Women of a Certain Age who knit in public, trying to figure out the trick.
Listening to:The Last Time I Saw Richard - Joni Mitchell
“Icelanders are the least hung-up people in the world.” That’s kind of a ridiculous blanket statement to make, but this is still a really interesting article about Icelandic attitudes to families and relationships and life, and how that affects the lives of Icelandic women in particular:
The comfort of knowing that, come what may, the future for the children is safe also helps explain why Icelandic women, modern as they are (Iceland elected the world’s first female president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, a single mother, 28 years ago), persist in the ancient habit of bearing children very young. ‘Not unwanted teen pregnancies, you understand,’ said Oddny, ‘but women of 21, 22 who willingly have children, very often while they are still at university.’ At a British university a pregnant student would be an oddity; in Iceland, even at the business-oriented Reykjavik University, it is not only common to see pregnant girls in the student cafeteria, you see them breast-feeding, too. ‘You extend your studies by a year, so what?’ said Oddny. ‘No way do you think when you have a kid at 22, “Oh my God, my life is over!” Definitely not! It is considered stupid here to wait till 38 to have a child. We think it’s healthy to have lots of kids. All babies are welcome.’
All the more so because if you are in a job the state gives you nine months on fully paid child leave, to be split among the mother and the father as they so please. ‘This means that employers know a man they hire is just as likely as a woman to take time off to look after a baby,’ explained Svafa Grönfeldt, currently rector of Reykjavik University, previously a very high-powered executive. ‘Paternity leave is the thing that made the difference for women’s equality in this country.’
(The stuff about Bob Dylan misses the point, and I’m sure she knows that - the legend is the point, and has been from the very beginning of his career, and, besides that, I think enough of his lyrics are brilliant that he’s earned it [but ultimately, you either love him or you don't] - but I wish I hadn’t packed my copy of The Female Eunuch because I wanted to quote the part where she writes that the only non-sexist rock song [at time of writing, obviously] is the Troggs’ Wild Thing. [Germaine Greer is just brilliant enough to rest on her laurels, too.])
- Make these pineapple upside-down cakes. (Oh - I always make them as cupcakes, not as one big cake.) They are always, always amazing, and are incredibly easy (and kitsch!).
- You know all those arguments you have at uni about the appropriateness of offensive materials in public libraries? We get the International Express at work, and it makes my skin crawl. One came through returns yesterday that screamed MUSLIM CLERICS TO TEACH OUR CHILDREN (”Latest barmy plan by Schools Minister Ed Balls”), and Laura Woodhouse at the F Word points to this charming headline. I wish it wasn’t (”weren’t”? I’ve gone back and forth on that one; it looks funny) so popular. (But if it hadn’t been available in my library, I would never have realised how acceptable that shit still is in some sectors of the community. Ha! Freedom of information wins again, even though sometimes people are just gross.) I always return them to the bottom of the pile when shelving (would it be terribly censorious if I hid them all behind the coffee machine?), but then there’s something worse waiting to make its way to the top. Argh. (ETA: I’ve just listened to a Guardian Media podcast about the Express agreeing to pay the parents of Madeleine McCann half a million pounds without contest for completely fabricating something like a hundred stories about them over the past year, so ha.)
- Rad, this is where my vinyl bag came from (except that they don’t seem to do the Stylus version anymore, so I snagged mine from Buy Olympia).
(Speaking of bags, I’ve just seen this one on Etsy and I really like it.)
- Oh, fellow Baby-Sitters Club readers, this blog is amazing. (After the first few books, I always skipped Chapter 2 except for the descriptions of Claudia and Stacey’s outfits. In Year 6, when school uniform wasn’t really required anymore, I based a lot of my fashion choices on that influence [and the fact that it was 1992]. Parrot earrings with sailor dresses, lycra leggings with over-sized jumpers…good times, man.)
- I was extolling the virtues of Whoopi Goldberg recently, and stuff like this is the reason why (please allow for the fact that it is a clip from The View, which, as far as I can tell, is essentially pretty vapid [and I believe Elizabeth Hasselbeck is known for being their token right wing idiot]):
Also, Kimya Dawson loves her [3:25]:
- I have just started knittting this. When, oh, when will I finish something?
One morning, after she was awakened by her bedside alarm, she sat up and, she recalled, “this fluid came down my face, this greenish liquid.” She pressed a square of gauze to her head and went to see her doctor again. M. showed the doctor the fluid on the dressing. The doctor looked closely at the wound. She shined a light on it and in M.’s eyes. Then she walked out of the room and called an ambulance. Only in the Emergency Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, after the doctors started swarming, and one told her she needed surgery now, did M. learn what had happened. She had scratched through her skull during the night—and all the way into her brain.
We’re starting to move this weekend, but will be doing it in bits and pieces because we don’t have much simultaneous time off. I haven’t seen the house since I wandered around it for two minutes at the open inspection, and Mum’s never seen the inside, so I hope it’s okay (I remember it being nice).
Also, question: do you have a prepared answer for when someone asks you what your favourite book is? I guess it’s one of those standard small-talk questions upon finding out that someone is a library person, but I always panic in the face of it and fumble about trying to think of the real answer (I don’t think I have one favourite book, and I don’t think strangers want to hear a shortlist of Important Books That Have Changed My Life). There must be a more efficient way. What do you do? This has come up several times recently.
Oh! Oh! In my defence, my computer has been packed away while the house has been open for inspection. How have you all been?
I have a cold again, which is very annoying.
Yesterday, I saw My Brother is an Only Child, which was fairly enjoyable but not earth-shatteringly brilliant (I think I lost track of what was going on at some point, because some things towards the end puzzled me - or maybe I just agree with David).
Well, hello there! I have just come back from a few days in Melbourne (we saw Kimya Dawson, and she was great). Rad threatened to take me off her Favourites list if I didn’t update soon, so I promise I’ll write something proper in the next day or two!
