Ine

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students.

This would be rather startling to the ladies who had studied as home students, at Somerville, Lady Margaret Hall, St Hugh's and St Hilda's, before women were admitted to Oxford degrees which was what actually happened in 1920 -

- and those ladies who were still around were there to collect the degrees they were now entitled to.

I am so hoping that this is a blurb produced either by AI or by some intern at the publishers who has not actually read the book but has gathered that it is about women going to Oxford in 1920?

Because if the book is written in some apprehension that there were No Female Students among the dreaming spires before 1920 I hope the author is visited in her sleep by the shades of all, or at least some of, the women who were, who included some notoriously stroppy and acerbic characters.

This is even more egregious than the historical romance which posited a daughter of an Oxford prof at a date of obligatory celibacy for College fellows, which is a bit niche perhaps, but Women's Struggle for Education is surely well-documented???

(Come on down, Vera Brittain, The Women at Oxford: a fragment of history)

In further Did Not Do The Research, or at least have a Brit-Picker, JD Robb Stolen in Death has significant plot around theft of Important Jewels - from the Tate in London, wtf, surely you meant the V&A....

So, it looks probable that I am coming up to be the next person to suggest A Book for the in-person reading group.

And I recently had a flash of inspiration, why not something by Naomi Mitchison?

Except that when I come to Do The Research, hardly anything is at present actually in print, chiz chiz chiz.

I really don't think I can moot The Corn King and the Spring Queen which is Very Long.

We're doing a memoir for the meeting next week so perhaps not Among You Taking Notes.

Otherwise it's The Blood of the Martyrs, about the early Christians, not perhaps as good as the earlier Classical Antiquity novels, or Travel Light, which is not my own favourite among her fantasy works.

I really fancied blowing their minds with Memoirs of a Spacewoman but although there is a Kindle edition of the Italian translation, if you want to read it in English secondhand copies come pricey.

(INFAMY!!!)

So I have to think of something else.

To switch to an entirely different track, maybe Rosamond Lehmann, Dusty Answer, the archetypal Sad Girl Novel?

Hell, maybe I should go for Cold Comfort Farm.

Last week's loaf dried into a solid brick, so I made a loaf of Doves Farm Organic Heritage Seeded Bread Flour - I know I made this quite recently but I noted then that it was moving past its best before, and saw somewhere that this is more of an issue with seeded than non-seeded flours. Anyway, v nice.

Saturday breakfast rolls: as there is a plethora of apples, brown grated apple with maple syrup, and Strong Brown Flour.

Today's lunch: made something approximating chilli con carne with diced braising steak, Belazu Mixed Beans, a tin of chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, two rather weary green chillies left over from the other week, chilli powder, hot and sweet smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, oregano, sugar, salt and pepper, and that turned out rather well (and potent); served with broccoli florets cooked thus and sweet and sour okra.

A somewhat annoying piece in Guardian Saturday on non-professional sleuths in TV cop dramas is not currently online. While it did give some gesture towards the longer history (Sherlock Holmes etc) I thought it was a bit lacking in any general sense of the field, in particular when it suggested that the rise of gurly crime-solvers (presumably as opposed to Knowing Old Ladies like Miss Marple) was a recent phenomenon.

Not only has this long been A Thing in textual mystery/thrillers, as long ago as 1983 Antonia Fraser's Jemima Shore was investigating on the telly.

I'm probably just being a bit My Particular Niche Favourites over omissions in this essay here: Bored of the Swords: The Rebirth of Sword & Sorcery and the Death of the Weird.

WOT no mention of Tanith Lee???

Not sure if one would count Jane Gaskell as S&S - we consider that if Cija picked up a sword she would probably endanger herself before anyone else.

I am not sure if anyone besides me remembers the Silverglass sequence by JF Rivkin, which was perhaps a fairly late manifestation of the earlier S&S cycle?

okay on today’s episode of “Give Us Thia Day Our Daily Thread,” guys the official response from SSPX to their excommunication is fucking hilarious. absolute whiny baby shit

“you are so mean and unfair, yet we heroically forgive you for it with our saintlike forbearance” girl please

Possibly if you thought the church needed you so badly you should not have spent the last 40 years screaming "You're not my REAL Pope" at the guys who were, in fact, your real Popes

You EXCOMMUNICATE Miette like the heretic? Oh! Oh! Jail for Mother Church! Jail for Ten Thousand Years!

I love how badly this metaphor got away from them.

What exactly do you need an egg for so bad that would nevertheless result in you *returning the egg later*??

I just think in my heart of hearts that Christofascists don’t ever expect to face consequences because it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should

I've been thinking about how I've been feeling about this, and my friend and I feel slightly guilty about being *so happy about this*. And I wonder if part of it is that we (particularly as brown women) are always asked to bend & build bridges to people who think of us as less than human 1/

Pope : with mercy and love and deep regret, i must call this a schismatic act

Half of bluesky with their shirts off and earrings out ready to brawl outside applebees : GET THEIR ASSES WOOOOO

We're so starving for consequences we're reading Vatican press releases

It's not that I am suddenly embracing Roman Catholic doctrine wholesale, it's that I am suddenly embracing the amount of spite Bob from Chicago is bringing to the function, as it were.

Honestly, that is a large animal with sharp teeth and it might consider your wee babby a snack rather than pictorial content: 1,000kg seal’s antics feed ‘double-edged sword’ of fame. I mean, I love a cute pinniped as much as anyone, but this one looks as though it might squash a person if it rolled on them....

***

I thought this was adorable, and my mind immediately went to The Borrowers (are these still current figures in children's reading?) as potential cleaning staff: Focusing on the little things in life in the Thorne Miniature Rooms (always part of of my visit to the Art Institute).

***

We will concede that Certain Elements have made perhaps too much of The Brits Abolished Slavery (rather than that, er, it was there to be abolished in the first place, ahem), but this still sound like an amazing resource The Slave Trade, c. 1830–1893: British Foreign Office Confidential Print:

After decades of abolitionist campaigning, the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807 ended Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic trade in enslaved people. It also marked the beginning of a new chapter of international anti-slavery diplomacy in the nineteenth century. This included the formation of a Royal Navy squadron to police the West African coast and intercept ships of other nations still engaged in the slave trade. There was also a concerted diplomatic endeavour to push other states and rulers—in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas—towards abolition.

***

Found in the archives - during the process of cataloguing by a volunteer, we note, and points for no invocation of dust in the story - Rare copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives .

And would actually quite like to see something that had been Never Before In History.

What with A Schism - though not yet an Anti-Pope?

Gonorrhoea making a comeback: that sneaky little microbe has been evolving drug resistance since the days of sulphonamide, sigh.

Though, actually, I am not sure that this is Going Back To Days of Yore, because the profession of midwife is an ancient one, and actually involved training, and at the very least, women giving birth were surrounded by other women who had been there and done that and lived to tell the tale, and this woowooyness is beyond batshit and into murderously ignorant: A US champion of ‘freebirthing’ always claimed there had been no maternal deaths linked to the movement.

I have had my issues with male gurus of 'natural childbirth' like Grantly Dick Read, but they were at least about informing women about what was going with their bodies and what the stages of labour were and giving them strategies to breathe through the pain (or effort, as he constructed it) rather than just going “birth is as safe as life gets. And if we leave it alone, it unfolds beautifully, [the] majority of the time.” Historical demography tells a different story, really.

Though the statement did not define what constitutes formal adherence to the schism for laypeople, it explicitly upheld a 1996 note from the then-Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which said formal adherence to the schism was comprised of two elements: consciously choosing adherence to the society over obedience to the pope, and "exclusive participation in Lefebvrian 'ecclesial' acts, without taking part in the acts of the Catholic Church," referencing the group's founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

synecdochic

No more His Holiness Nice Pope indeed. Benedict and Francis tried the carrot. Leo is bringing the Chicago baseball bat of loving fraternal correction to the problem now.

also in case you have missed the excellent memes about this in the replies:

yes, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith did in fact used to be called the Inquisition

you may be familiar with their earlier work

For the occasion, the SSPX even sold commemorative items, including an exclusive 75 Swiss franc box of wine — about $92.50 — called “Cuvée des Sacres,” featuring pinot noir, syrah, petit arvine, and fendant, with each bottle decorated with the image of one of the consecrated bishops.