Just Wondering

Are you addicted to hand lotion, especially in the winter?

Do you have a humidifier? Do you think it makes a difference?

What could you do without right now?

Harley

Slow Sunday

Another dull relatively mild day and a day that so far i have been mostly reading and listening to Radio 4.

I have finished a few books and currently tidying up some reviews to be posted later today.

Book 83 - Diane Atkinson "The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton"

Diane Atkinson "The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton" (Chicago Review Press) 





Caroline Sheridan (1808 – 1877) was intelligent and beautiful. She was also poor and married a man, George Norton, who lived off his wife’s literary earnings and encouraged her friendships with powerful men to further his shaky career. None was more helpful than the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne who became the love of Caroline’s life. After years of Norton’s physical and emotional abuse, he sued the PM for compensation in his criminal conversation suit of 1836. The suite was rejected by the court and he was mocked by the press and public as a fool but Caroline was still unable to divorce him even after her humiliation. In revenge he took her children away from her citing her conduct. The ironies are surreal.

So began Caroline Norton’s campaign for justice for separated wives and equal access to their children. It was a campaign that meant she stepped out of the drawing-room and into a maelstrom of publicity and parliamentary lobbying and she was brilliant at it. The Infant Custody Act (1839), the Matrimonial Causes (Divorces) Act (1857) and the Married Women’s Property Act (1870) all were influenced by her writings and experience. To vex her Norton would offer access to her children and then withdraw it and even wrote letters to her signed with the name of a murderer. When he was sued for her debts she lambasted him in court: ‘I am ashamed for your client if he does not feel ashamed of himself.... I know Mr Norton can cheat me ... [a] man who calls himself a magistrate, a barrister and a gentleman ... I do not ask for my rights, I have no rights – I have only wrongs.... I did not deserve the scandal of 1836 and I do not deserve the scandal of 1853.’ As Diane Atkinson concludes, every woman who is granted custody of her children or financial support owes a debt of gratitude to her.

Book 84 - Michael Ignatieff "Isiah Berlin :A Life"

Michael Ignatieff "Isiah Berlin :A Life" (Vintage)




Isaiah Berlin was one of the leading liberal thinkers of the 20th century, and one of its fastest talkers. Born in the Latvian port of Riga in 1909, his family survived the Russian Revolution, but its chilly aftermath forced his Anglophile father to resettle them in Surbiton in 1921. Isaiah assimilated quickly, becoming in his mind equal parts Russian, English and Jewish, and subsequently he became the first Jew to be elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He was to spend most of his life studying and lecturing at Oxford, developing his concept of "negative liberty", but although he longed to know one big thing, to be a "hedgehog" in his own famous definition, instead he felt more naturally a "fox", knowing many smaller things. This Reynard instinct, however, made him wonderful company, and he became that rarity: a British public intellectual, who made learning attractive.


Michael Ignatieff has written a book that stands somewhere between a biography and a ghost-written autobiography, relying mostly on Berlin's own recollections gathered from conversations between them over a 10-year period. Berlin had his detractors, including himself ("superficial"), and a more critical evaluation of his contribution to philosophy will be written, but Ignatieff captures the human side of this wise and cosmopolitan man,whose deceptive "lightness of being" concealed a soul that stared at the horrors of his century. --David Vincent.


Isaiah Berlin refused to write an autobiography, but he agreed to talk about himself - and so for 10 years, before's Berlin's death in November 1997, he allowed Michael Ignatieff to interview him about his past, his ideas, his most intimate memories, and his inner conflicts.

Book 85 - Tony Benn "Free Radical"

Tony Been "Free Radical : New Century Essays (Continuum)






I always though of Tony Benn as being a true parliamentarian, democrat but very idealistic. However, having read this series of essays it is a shame that so many others in power do not share his views. They are born based on historical precedence and the question "why do we repeat the same mistakes?" kept coming to mind and wisdom.

This is highly readable and should be read by people of all political persuasions, Mr Benn's scepticism on Europe would appeal to the right. Whilst his love of our true parliamentary process explains his comment on retiring from the House, that he would once again being get involved in "real politics".

He has been a steadfast champion of justice and an honest voice in the British House of Commons. He gave up his peerage and all the privileges that accompanied it to devote his life to speaking the truth and fighting for the weak, the forgotten, the abused and those without a voice. Often this has been a fight that he has had to undertake alone. It is undoubtedly the greatest tragedy not only for Britain but for the world that Tony Benn did not challenge the leadership of the 'Labour'party..  He would have been the greatest British prime minister in history. There would also have been much more justice, decency and fair play in the world. Even though it is perhaps too late for this meek, wise and slightly ageing man to ever become the leader of his country, what he says is still of great value.

Sadly ,since his departing, we seem to few people like him to fill the void. Perhaps Corbyn can step up to the mark.


Arguably Tony Benn should have been the first President of a British Republic.

Sunday Music Selection - Avant Garde

Okay,from radical politics to radical music , a la avant garde.

Edgard Varese - Arcana

Orchestre Philharmonique de L'O.R.T.F. directed by Marius Constant. Above the first page of the score stands a quotation from the 16th Century scientist, humanist, and alchemist Paracelsus: "A star exists higher than all the rest. It is the star of the Apocalypse. The second is the star of the Ascendant, the third the star of the Elements, of which there are four. But there is yet another star, Imagination, which gives birth to a new star and a new heaven". Varese said, "this phrase is a dedication to Paracelsus, not a homage to him". At the same time, he wrote, "Imagination gives its form to dreams", and said his true thought was found in this work, and it should be considered as "absolute music, not program music".

( Read more ... )

( More avant garde here. )

Expand your horizons. Enjoy.

Book 86 - Emma-Jane Kirby "The Optician of Lampedusa"

Emma-Jane Kirby "The Optician of Lampedusa" (Allen Lane)





Sometimes, we absolutely do need to be harrowed, reminded that the nightly, often dehumanising stories which seek to divide migrants into the worthy – fleeing immediate war torn zones (Syria, Iraq) and the ‘unworthy’ – ‘economic migrants’ are heinous divisions. Particularly as those ‘economic’ migrants are often undertaking desperate, dangerous journeys to cross the seas on over-crowded, unseaworthy craft, literally risking their lives, in impossible conditions, paying over the odds to cynical people traffickers.

We need to remind ourselves that taking these journeys from parts of the world, where politics, climate change, famine, present or prior conflicts and the like, are not doing this from some kind of idle choice. Every single denizen of the world would want a better life for themselves. I would not risk my life on such a journey because I am lucky enough to have been born in a time and place where my own life choices are not between savage rocks and very hard places. There is always food on my table, and I live my life without danger – through no virtue of my own, merely through a lucky accident of birth. Many are not so fortunate

I wanted to read this account to remind myself of who the people are who make these journeys, and why, and that those papers who whip up the dreadful ‘unworthy economic migrants’ populism stories are knowingly callous and fostering fear, hate and callousness.

So.this is an important book. Lampedusa is one of the small Mediterranean islands which, because of proximity to places such as Eritrea, are being left to shoulder impossible burdens which other farther away, First World countries are not really engaging with.

‘The optician of Lampedusa’ is the real story of a group of friends who made a difference to 47 people they dragged, dying, from the sea. Another small craft some time previously had ignored the dead and dying and sped away, leaving them to their fate.

My challenge with this book though, is that reporter Kirkby chooses to tell this AS a story. And this actually has the effect of diminished. The effect, curiously,sanitises and romanticises and misses landing the punches which would have happened had she written this as reportage, directly quoting what that group of ordinary people who did NOT pass by on the other side, said, did and thought. It did not need to be ‘made literature of’ I think the literature approach, in this instance, does a kind of disservice to the events.

I compared this with a far more powerful, also harrowing book I read many years ago about Chernobyl, again, by a reporter, Svetlana Alexievich’s Chernobyl Prayer. Alexievich chose to let the contributors tell their own stories. That kind of immediacy does not allow the reader any kind of get-out, or luxury of thinking any of it may be ‘spin’ Turning events into ‘faction’ Is more likely to mean the book is read as ‘real’ only by the already converted, but that those who want to believe that ‘economic migrants’ have some kind of real choice, will find it easier to dismiss as story.

More DVD Watching

Two more movies i have watched on DVD over this weekend are The Time Traveller's Wife and Amelie - both quirky and very different movies that i totally recommend.

The Time Traveller's Wife is based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, a romantic story about Clare, a beautiful art student, and Henry, an adventuresome librarian, who have known each other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-three and Henry thirty-one. The trouble is ,he being a time traveller who has no control over when he travels and to where,tries to build a romantic relationship with Clare Abshire (McAdams), who would become his wife. Well,if you have not seen the film i will not divulge further but it is great and i think you will love it.



Amelie is very French and very quirky. I just love this film , despite it being verbally dense,it has its own inner logic and is a kind of surreal rhythm to it ,and that is all i will say. If you have not seen this i implore you to watch it.



Here is a trailer for it -

Good Night