shimotsuki's story stash

Do I need to ask, guess the critic, given the headline on this review of the Gwen John exhibition: In a superb, mystical retrospective, the painter sheds social trappings – and her clothes – as she uses her enormous intelligence to paint purely. JJ, go and take a cold shower!

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I am not sure that exorcism is quite what is needed in the case, unless he starts doing manifestations in galleries of writhing and speaking in occult tongues and so on: Demand for exorcisms rises as faithful want ‘deliverance from evil’. And in fact it all sounds rather low-key:

Even when an Anglican priest does perform an exorcism, they are nothing like Hollywood horror scenes with “shouting and screaming” and demonic drama.
They are “quiet and calm” affairs where a priest prays with a troubled person, usually after consultation with a psychiatrist and safeguarding experts.

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Knepp: Wilding from the Weald to the waves:

After inheriting the estate from his grandparents in 1983, Charles Burrell soon realised that large-scale farming was impossible on low-lying clay land. So, in 2002 he and his wife, author, and journalist Isabella Tree, embarked on what has become a pioneering rewilding project converting pasture into a patchwork of grasslands, scrub, groves, and towering oaks. Now home to storks, beavers, and nightingales, to name a few, Knepp’s ever-evolving experiment is open for all to enjoy.

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This is a different kind of heritage: Heritage Unlocked: Birmingham’s Unique Municipal Bank:

Birmingham Municipal Bank (1919-1976) was unique as the first and only local authority savings bank in England. Unlike other savings banks (such as the Trustee Savings Banks), customers could borrow money through the House Purchase Department to buy their home. Unlocking the Vaults, has been uncovering the Bank’s history and how it helped shape Birmingham’s story. The Exchange (opposite the Library of Birmingham) was once the head office for the Municipal Bank, and it lies at the heart of this project with many projects and events taking place in the historic Vaults.
Historic black and white photo of the Birmingham Municipal Bank, showcasing its grand architecture with tall columns and detailed facade.
....
A key finding of the project has been the significance of the Municipal Bank, not only as a financial institution but also as a cornerstone of community life, with local branches established on high streets across the city between the 1920s and 1970s.

The rise of ‘low contact’ family relationships - in fact, point is made in there that perhaps what there has been is a rise of is families being all up in one another's business because of Modern Technology and tracking devices, family group chats, the ability to know where family members are and what they are up to at all hours of the night and day.

Because I would not at all describe my own family as 'low contact', we just did not live in one another's pockets and need to be constantly informed and have opinions about each other's lives. Weekly phone-calls - occasional visits- etc etc.

I'm not surprised people feel smothered and overwhelmed when I read some of the shenanigans that families do but then, am introvert to start with.

(This may get updated over the course of the day)

After struggling to get Zoom link downloaded and operating etc, managed to get into first session I wanted to attend, Foundling Hospital in early C20th, good grief, practices had not changed much in a century had they? Recipe for trauma in mothers, children, and the foster mothers who actually bonded with the children until they were taken away to be eddicated according to their station in life.

Then switched to a different panel and was IRKED by a lit person talking about the Women's Cooperative Guild Maternity: Letters from Working Women (1915) which they had only just encountered ahem ahem - was republished by I think Virago? Pandora? in 1970s - and women's history has done quite a bit on the WCG since then so JEEZ I was peeved at her assumption that the working women were not agents but the whole thing was being run by the upper/middle class activists who were most visibly involved. And wanted to query whether working women thought it was very useful to have posh laydeez able to put their cases re maternity, child welfare and so on in corridors of power, rather than deferentially curtseying??? (I should like to go back in time and ask my dear Stella Browne about that.)

Also on wymmynz voices not, or at least hard to trace, in the archives, I fancy this person does not know a) Marie Stopes' volume Mother England (1929), extracts of letters she had from women about motherhood and b) based on 1000s of letters surviving and available to researchers. I could, indeed, point to other resources, fume, mutter.

Update Well, there were some later papers I dropped in on and enjoyed (and was able to offer comment/questions on; but I was obliged to point out certain errors in a description of Joanna Russ's The Female Man (really I think if you are going to cite a work you should check details....) (and I suppose Mitchison's work was just outside the remit of what they were talking about, so I was very self-restrained and failed to go on about Naomi.)