caulkhead

Now I want somebody to write the actual history (now that Virago has been done, and the history of Silver Moon bookshop, is anyone doing Pandora Press or Sisterwrite on Upper Street?), given that websites can vanish, but this is good to be going on with: The Women’s Press (1977-2003): and to this global online, ongoing ARCHIVE. The Women's Press were perhaps rather more demotic in their selection of materials than Virago and had strong sff and crime lines, I am sure I am not the only one who still has their distinctive black and white striped spines adorning my shelves.

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While as long-time flaneuse of Fitzrovia I am saddened by what appears to be the demise of Pollock's Toy Museum at that historic location, though it seems to still be flourishing in Leadenhall Market, and, of all places, Croydon, Persephone Books are apparently moving in to those premises - having moved out of the metropls to Bath some years ago.

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Gay Print Culture: A History of Gay Magazines in Mexico, Canada, and the United States:

I became interested in the history of gay periodicals in 2015, as an M.A. student at the University of Toronto. My readings and coursework at that time focused mostly on the histories of gender, sexuality, and LGBTQ+ activism, and they sparked my curiosity about the role of print media in the formation of gay identities and communities.

And in Dept, il ne manque que ca, for this week, I was obliged to make a phone-call to my GP practice because there is significant delay on getting a repeat prescription going on. Their site not helpful. Apparently my designated pharmacy has submitted an order which is awaiting approval. It would help if this sort of thing was indicated.

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While in Dept, price of everything, value of nothing: Claude Monet's 'Iris' becomes most expensive artwork sold at auction in France, Sotheby's says

Yes, I am earwormed with Money and copy/pasting Monet to the words.

I observe that a) some of those links are dead and that b) horrors, I did not include the stonking version by the divine Smokey Robinson and the Miracles:

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Dept of, author has form for being cringe-makingly awful: He has clearly done lots of research, but has chosen to put it at the service of creating a Wilde who is fatally less interesting and moving than the original.

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Dept of, What, ONLY ONE: that thing (can't find it online, was in today's Guardian Life and Arts section about The Book That Changed Your Life. Let me sit down and start working on a list....

What I read

Well, mostly it was that book on the Huxleys, which was heavily weighted towards TH ('Darwin's bulldog', though Bashford massively nuances his relationship with Charlie and his ideas) and Julian, with supporting intermittent appearances by other members of the family. It was thematic, and did a lot of chronological back and forthing, and maybe I would have liked a bit more about relationships, including with people outside the kinship group, I was frankly boggling at certain archives which had not been consulted wot wot wot and characters who did not feature. Also I'm not sure the Penguin p/b was the ideal physical reading experience....

Then I took a break by reading Robert B Parker, Painted Ladies (Spenser, #38) (2010)

On the go

And then I moved on to Sarah B Rodriguez, The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation (2020). She touched on this very gruesome and depressing episode towards the end of her earlier work on Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment (2014). While Burt did accept the role of the clitoris in female sexual pleasure, he thought there was a design flaw in the female genitalia and performed surgery on the vulval area (often without the woman's knowledge in the course of other operations) (as well as vaginal tightening procedures). He thought this would promote sexual harmony in marriage (in a very male-dominated model) and in fact it caused massive suffering.

I am having to take breaks - between the accounts of his activities and the women's experiences, the state of the medical profession's inability/reluctance to do anything is cringe-making, though, historian of medicine remarks, the professional omerta of code of silence and cover-up, not exactly unprecedented and unknown.

So I have been going back to Points of Departure.

Up next

Really must get to Dawn's Left Hand. And the latest Literary Review is not going to read itself.

Skulls for sale: Inside Britain’s macabre trade in human remains.

Not actually about this, but bone-related anecdotes from my former working life.

I have recounted the tale of the plague-pit bones received as part of an accession of archives that we finally managed to dispose to a good appropriate home (and nobody came down with plague, I may add, while they were sitting around various offices in the plastic shopping bag in which they were received).

Archives do tend to contain certain bits and bobs of human detritus but this is usually more along the lines of baby's curls lovingly kept after they were finally cut off (though the toenail is still unforgettable).

I was working in some adjacency to a museum which contained remains - which were ethically deaccessioned/transferred at some point.

I am not quite sure - it was in the very early days when things were seriously informal - whether it was just that a certain elderly pathologist had been given space to examine a collection of skulls quite near my office, the effect was definitely Gothick, under some Old Boys' Act.

On the baby-teeth necklace thing mentioned, I can remember a story I read in some book for children - ?on the shelves at my primary school? - in which a brother and sister were trying to collect their teeth as they lost them, they being at the age when second teeth were coming in, in order to make a tasteful piece of jewellery for Mother Dearest. And it was quite devastating when one of them went to the dentist and the dentist just chucked the extracted tooth into the gurgly-fountain-thing WOE. Other times, wot.