Philobiblon

… and particularly to Jim on The Daily Maybe, who has been rightly named by Iain Dale as the year’s top Green blogger.

In my opinion there’s a fine selection there - the Green blogosphere has come a long way in the past couple of years (and no, I’m not just saying that because I come in at No 7 - although thanks Iain).

But you’ve still got time to register your opinions, for Jim is running a people’s choice award. You’ve got until September 1 to vote.

(And finally, in the just deserts category - I’m not laughing, really, about the fact that a group of American climate change-deniers has had to postpone their meeting due to a tropical storm. No - storms aren’t caused by climate change, but their frequency is increased…)

What I love about the Carnival of Feminists, as it roams around the blogosphere, is that each host brings their own distinctive touch to the collection, as well as introducing me to feminist bloggers I haven’t encountered before.

On both scores, the Carnival of Feminists No 63 now up on The Mind of Genevieve. I defy you to read it and not smile - whether it is the Badger possessed by Rightful Feminist Rage, or the Vera the Angry Tiger for Choice who takes your fancy.

It is also a carnival that roams the world, from New Zealand to Lebanon, from the Rocky Mountains to Afghanistan.

But don’t waste time over here - go over there and check it out!

An interesting collection of articles around the sex work debate in an online magazine new to me: On the Issues: The Progressive Women’s Magazine.

And a reminder that most exploitation isn’t sexual: Sri Lanka is cutting back the number of maids it is sending to the Gulf due to exploitation and abuse.

There’s a new remainder bookshop in Camden (everything £2, including many decent history books) - such a dangerous thing. And how I came to spend the afternoon reading a rather curious text: History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe, by Rodney Bolt.

It’s what might be termed an imaginary history - heavily researched in part, with a lively account of later 16th-century London — then leaping off from a restaged version of Marlowe’s murder (a handy body-double is roped in) and following the not-really-dead playwright around the cities and courts of Europe, while he pens in his spare time the plays that Shakespeare will take credit for in London. (It ends with him sailing off to the New World, with a ship sinking along the way that becomes The Tempest.)

Now I’m unfashionably convinced that Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare — being a dedicatee of Ockham — but it does make for a fun read, although if you are going to go for alternative “authors” for Shakespeare I much prefer Robin P. Williams’ Sweet Swan of Avon, which has Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, holding the pen.

But Bolt does write in a lively style, and has a real ear for an anecdote. I didn’t now that our term euphemism comes from the title of a prose romance, Euphues, by John Lyly, a Marlowe contemporary, which boasts “a peculiar, heightened style”.

Such fastidiousness wasn’t for the stage of the time, however. Bolt notes that “furious fenestraclasm” was a favourite mode of dramatic criticism: “In 1583 Trinity paid ‘for lv foot of newe glasse in the hall after the playes’, and subsequent to that took the precaution of ‘taking downe and setting up the glass wyndowes’ for the duration, while St John’s paid for ‘nettes to hange before the windowes of ye Halle”. (p. 39)

And Bolt is clear on the multiculturalism of this heaving, shifting Europe, in which, he says, strolling English players, crossing borders and language, were a major part: “The English comedians’ spontenaiety and vividness so enthused audiences that it revolutionised northern European theatre, turning what had previously been stuff, formal receitation into drama. … In Frankfurt, according to the 16th-century traveller Fynes Moryson, both men and woman ‘flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and Action, rather than heare them, speaking English which they understood not’, and at Elsinore in 1585, the citizens flocked so ‘wonderfully’ to a performance in the town hall courtyard that they broke down a wall.” (p. 76)

In a definitive study, the American Psychological Association has reported that: “The best scientific evidence published indicates that among adult women who have an unplanned pregnancy, the relative risk of mental health problems is no greater if they have a single elective first-trimester abortion or deliver that pregnancy.”

Of course you’d like to think that this will stop anti-abortion groups quoting false “statistics”, and causing unnecessary stress and worry - but somehow I doubt it.

(And yes this only refers to one abortion - the association says the evidence is simply unclear on more.)

Another interesting quote in the piece: “Approximately half of women in the United States will face an unintended pregnancy during their lifetime, and about half of those who unintentionally become pregnant resolve the pregnancy through abortion,” the report says.

In the Australian state of Victoria, meanwhile, reports suggest there’ll be a considerable advance next week, with the introduction of a bill to give women the legal right to choose abortion.

“It is believed the bill will ensure that a woman’s consent provides lawful authority for an abortion up to 24 weeks’ gestation. After that, terminations would be unlawful unless doctors deemed continuing the pregnancy would pose a risk of harm to the woman.
Health Minister Daniel Andrews, who will introduce the bill, is expected to argue that it is designed to bring the law into line with community expectations and clinical practice.”

Sometimes you can feel good about being a member of the human race: in Dallas (of all places) there’s a big row going on over the best place for a psychologically traumatised elephant to live. That this much care and attention is being given to another sentient species is a fine example of humanity.

Local protesters, world-renowned elephant experts and national animal rights groups are crusading to have her sent to a 2,700-acre sanctuary in Tennessee where 17 other traumatized elephants are kept in seclusion.
“Jenny is a special-needs elephant,” said Margaret Morin, a Dallas nurse who leads Concerned Citizens for Jenny. “She’s unique; she’s afflicted with crippling depression. The elephant sanctuary is the right choice.”

And then of course other events make you despair - here in Britain, a mother of eight (including a disabled three-year-old and a baby) has been jailed for stealing her neighbours’ credit cards and using them to buy groceries. This is obviously a woman who isn’t coping with her life, so let’s lock her up (and put all of her children into care). That’s such a great solution to the situation; it will really sort it out.

Jim on The Daily (Maybe) has the unofficial hustings.

Caroline is interviewed by the >Independent, and by Total Politics.

Politics.co.uk has interviewed Caroline and Ashley Gunstock.

(Yes I did type that carefully).

She’s called Japanese knotweed and there’s one of her across the whole of Europe.

It all comes from one unsolicited sample sent to Kew gardens in 1850. A powerful example of unintended consequences.

I’ve been excavating my living room floor and I know that I’ve got to April, since I found the paperwork from the Fem08 conference*, which reminded me that I wanted blog about a report on homework in the UK from the Newsletter of Homeworkers Worldwide, Jan 2008, which reports the result of a survey from 2007. Most of the workers surveyed were paid piece rates, and they averaged £4.41 per hour - well below the minimum wage. “Some were paid as little as £1 an hour.”

Nearly half (48%) were not receiving any employment rights at all. The report says “the law in this area is unclear and inadequate” - and calls for reforms.

What are they doing? Sewing is the most common (23%), then packing and print finishing (22%), followed by delivery and distribution (10%).

The report doesn’t comment on gender, but I very much suspect that this is an overwhelmingly female group, making this very much a women’s issue.

*I try very hard not to pick up paper and new books — I’m trying to go almost entirely electronic — but somehow the cellulose still accumulates faster than I can manage to control it.

Thameside yesterday - I was taken by this interesting art form - commercial but entirely temporary:

There’s something primeval about producing art that will be wiped out by the next tide - or the next carwash.

Quoted in the programme of Her Naked Skin, the “suffragette play” now at the National Theatre:
Sir,
Everyone seems to agree upon the necessity of putting a stop to Suffragist outrages; but no one seems certain how to do so. There are two, and only two, ways in which this can be done. Both will be effectual.
1. Kill every woman in the United Kingdom.
2. Give women the vote.
Yours truly, Bertha Brewster

It’s a flawed play, but an absolutely gripping one: I’ve a review over on My London Your London.

Now up on Rage Against the Man-chine (great name!) is the Carnival of Feminists No 62. And a superb collection it is too - no sign at all of the summer silly season. I was particularly taken by the post of reflections on feminism from Mecca, and Fannie’s take on sport as acceptable soap opera for men.

But don’t waste time over here - go over there and check it out!