I finally got a chance last week to read The Merryweathers, the last book in the Three Margarets series (thanks to Elizabeth's prompting -- I'm not sure when I would've gotten around to looking for it again on my own).

This one requires a bit of explanation. The Margaret series is sometimes considered to be the second half of the Hildegarde-Margaret series, because while the Hildegarde and Margaret series are each capable of standing on their own, they each feature the Merryweather family pretty prominently in their later books. In the Hildegarde books, the oldest Merryweather daughter, Bell, becomes Hilda's best friend, and Hilda ends up marrying Mr. Merryweather's younger half-brother Roger. Meanwhile, the rest of the family, especially the oldest boys, twins Gerald and Philip, inject some much-needed lightness into Hilda's too-serious world-view.

Margaret Montfort is even more serious-minded than Hilda, and therefore even more in need of Gerald Merryweather, so it's fitting that he falls in love with her. Peggy, on the other hand, is thoughtless and scattered, so when she goes off to boarding school, sheet meets Gertrude Merryweather, AKA the Snowy Owl, whose ideals are higher than Peggy's and whose personality is more down-to-earth.

What I'm trying to say here is that the Merryweathers have been there primarily to counterbalance the main characters. So I was interested to see what a book centered around them would be like. And really, it's exactly what I ought to have expected: there's a lot of lighthearted fun involving word games and boating, and nothing really happens, unless you count Gerald pushing his cousin Claud Belleville into the lake.

Also, Margaret and Gerald get engaged. So do Bell and Jack Ferrers, one of Hildegarde's other neighbors, which was a much more exciting occurrence, as I've literally been waiting for it for years. And Peggy and Phil seem to be headed in a similar direction, which makes a certain amount of sense, since Laura E. Richards is clearly one of those authors who like to pair off all the available characters.

Really, The Merryweathers reads like what it is: the last chapter of a much longer story. Everyone gets paired off, there's no discernible plot, and every chapter recalls bits of the previous books, which definitely added to my enjoyment. I found The Merryweathers to be kind of ridiculously fun, but I don't think it would do much for readers to weren't already familiar with Hildegarde and the three Margarets.

His pattern work had the strange ability to look both natural and studied at the same time. The work shown here is full of small, delicate flowers in shades of blue and purple, most of which are of common British varieties. Included are various styles and shades of green leaves. The whole design looks as if it is part of a casual natural setting. In fact, the flowers and leaves are part of a very structured formal pattern where nothing is allowed to stray from the structure that Vigers had set out for the wallpaper design that he wished to create.

It would be hard to see this particular design on many interior walls today. However, Vigers must be given the credit for producing a piece of extraordinarily fine draughtsmanship, in an age where this high level and standard of design was not uncommon.

Sorry no posts in awhile. I've been busy and also slogging my way through this book for book group.

With my use of the word slogging, you probably guessed I didn't like it. If so, you're half correct.

It got better after about 110 pages (but since I usually only give a book 100 pages- this would've been over on the other "started, not finished" list if not for having to read it for book group.

The topic is interested and I know little to nothing about the turn of the century or of Evelyn Nesbit. But the author used really big words in really long sentences, so it was not easy reading. Plus Nesbit's life after the trial was given short shrift.

Can't say I'd recommend it - but it should be an intersting discussion tonight.

Chicago's 1900's are out on the West Coast for a short tour to bring their baroque pop sounds to the Pacific Northwest. Over the weekend they were up in Vancouver, BC to play the Malkin Bowl mini-festival in Stanely Park. I was surprised they didn't also play this past weekend's Bumbershoot festival here in Seattle. I suppose blame with the anomalies of booking. I'm sure the band would have rather played a jam packed venue at the Seattle Center instead of a spacious Sunset Tavern on Tuesday night. In any event, they played, and the small group of people at the Sunset were not disappointed.

The band number seven, crammed themselves onto the small stage which didn't leave very much room for movement, but they seemed to create a lot of heat nonetheless.  They seem to get a lot of comparisons to Fleetwood Mac and guitarist Ed Anderson, brought this up saying the main difference between them and the Mac was that the 1900's do more coke.  The band's alleged romantic entanglements aside, their amped up version of baroque pop does at times sound like Fleetwood Mac, but their sound also brings to mind bands like the Essex Green and Ladybug Transistor.  Playing stuff from both their first ep Plume Delivery and album Cold and Kind and leaving out all of their slower songs, the band kept the energy high and the harmonies tight throughout the set.  They sounded not as polished as their records, but that added to their charm and showed a more rock side of the band. Singers Jeannie O'Toole and Caroline Donovan harmonies were a highlight, but the entire band seemed to play the songs with a comfortable ease and enthusiasm that was infectious.

Cold and Kind came out last year, so the band have recently put out a 7 inch single containing a couple out takes from Cold and Kind as a stop gap between albums.  Neither one of the songs from the new single were played Tuesday night, so here's one 'em.

mp3: The 1900's - Everybody's Got a Collection (buy the single)
[audio http://home.comcast.net/~finestkiss5/chansons/1900s-EverybodysGotACollection.mp3]

Set list: Bring The Good Boys Home | Georgia | When I Say Go | Babies | Painted White | Acutiplantar Dude | The Medium Way | Not Wrong | Two Ways

      Mansfield had her own corner, and as well as reading extensively she wrote there. ‘I have been spending days at the Library reading and writing a novel – entitled The Youth of Rewa – it is very much in embryo just at present’. She read ‘the lives of innumerable artists and poets’, a great deal of poetry such as Browning and Yeats, the writings of dramatists such as Ibsen and Shaw, and of literary critics. Her favourite authors were ‘Morris and Meredith, Ruskin and Shaw, Whitman and Carpenter, D’Annunzio and the Brontёs’along with a range of Russian writers. A surviving library daybook of the time records that she took out Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Shaw’s Plays.

6046 College Avenue

With this image, I'll begin to post stamps that duplicate dates I've already posted here.

This is the only Paul Schnoor mark I've found with a date.

Set in the early 1900th century, the story takes us from London, to the English country side to a ridiculously pretty Venice, complete with gondolas and rainy piazzas. Kate is trapped in an impossible situation, peniless and subject to the questionable mercy of her wealthy relatives she has to basically pimp herself out to any weathly aunt who can help support her. It was not uncommon for unwed poorer relatives to attach themselves to the household of some aunt or other who was willing to take them on, usually in some token situation as companion or governess. Or, perhaps hoping to be married off to some rich friend of the family.

Kate is in love with the working class journalist Merton who does not seem to understand why this lack of money should weigh so heavily on Kate's mind. At one point in the story we are introduced to Kate's opium smoking father (played by Gambon) who expostulated on why his own marriage failed - blaming it on the lack of money, rather than his habit.

Into this mix of interpersonal politics and money comes the young, wealthy and very pretty American girl Millie. She has money. Lots of money. And a short life expectency. Kate quickly befriends the girl, and on learning that Millie has a crush on Merton tries to arrange matters so that Merton and Millie to start a relationship, fully expecting Millie to die and leave all her money to Merton.

It's your basic femme fatale menage a trois. The story based on the novel by the same name by Henry James. Because of the skill and passion with which the actors take on their characters this is one of those movies that deliver what so many costume pieces only promise. Beautiful sets, costume and attention to detail cannot help a movie tha merely goes through the motions losing its main purpose, which has to be to devliver a story. Helena Bonham Carter is briliant as the young lady in desperate straights, walled in on all sides by her family's history and her own fears. Even if her motives can be said to be driven by love, if you are feeling charitable, her actions are all unbelievably cynical. She is a gold digger and a social parasite, but she walks a razor's edge in gaining the viewer's sympathy. Linus Roache, in the role of Merton Dencher, is so obviously under Kate's spell that he is wiling to go along with her plan to some extent.

The beauty of this particular film is that nothing is simple. There are no good guys or bad guys in the usual sense, everyone's motives are explored and shown to have more than one point of origin. It makes it all the more heartbreaking that Kate realises her biggest worry is that Merton will fall in love in earnest and then watch him do just that. Kate overplays her hand, but the punishment is blatantly obvious, even to herself. She sets her plan in motion knowing what she has to risk and still thinking it has to be worth it. Merton lets himself be persuaded, using a little emotional blackmail along the way. Subtly played and well thought out this story is both beautiful and sad and it manages to take it all the way without resorting to simple clichées. The inevitability of fate, and the consequences of your actions - that is what we are left with at the end of the movie. No easy answers are given.

And on top of that it is absolutely gorgeous.

MULE

The Machine Stops was written in 1909 and Forster's vision is really quite amazing considering most people didn't even own a phone at the time. Forster wrote of a world in which humans rarely leave their personal apartments because all of their needs are provided by "The Machine." Communication is conducted via an Edwardian conception of the web cam, music and literature are provided instantaneously. It's eerie because with the technology available to us today it IS possible to live in almost complete isolation. Except instead of "The Machine" providing our every want and need, we have the internet, AIM, delivery services, etcetera, etcetera. Well written and a fairly quick read. Classic. Included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

No need to purchase: http://brighton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/prajlich/forster.html

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I Love “the Color Purple”. The Book, the film and recently the musical are all powerful portrayals of the struggles of what it meant to be a double minority in a poor, racist, and sexist society. I am most familiar with the movie rendition, and thanks to the magic of TV One (shout out to Cathy Hughes) I got a replay of it this weekend and fell in love with it again.

I really truly love this movie, not just because it’s given me these wonderful quotes:

“You told Harpo to Beat me! All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men, but I ain't never thought I'd have to fight in my own house!”

“You aught to beat Mr____’s head in and think on heaven later!”

“You Sho’ is ugly!”

“I’s Married now!”

“I curse you. Until you do right by me everything you think about is gonna crumble!”, Until you do right by me, everything you even think about gonna fail! “

“Don’t do it Miss Celie he ain’t worth it”

“Harpo, Who dis woman?”

“When I seen you, I knowed de was a God”

“ I love Harpo God knows I do, But I’ll kill him dead for I let him Beat me”

“See Daddy Sinners have soul too”

“I hear she got that nasty women's disease”

“Maybe- God is- Trying! ( To tell you something)”

But I really love this story because of how wonderfully it portrays the double burden of race and gender. This is a time period when a woman was only as good as the man who married her, where men ruled with an iron fist and the world had little concern for a black child in a “house full of men.” Miss Celie’s abuse begins in a her childhood. She is raped, impregnated, has her children stolen and is forced into marriage by the very man who should have been protecting her- her father. This and the rest of the women in this story are faced with insurmountable hurdles but still manage to champion over them all. It truly is the woman’s struggle to find approval.

Celie’s struggles with accepting herself and finding her own value, Sofia’s struggle to be accepted as a strong, thinking, woman in spite of race and sex, and Shug’s struggle to be valued as more than just a sexual being and accepted by her father.
The Shug/Celie Love story is often simplified as a lesbian love affair but it’s much more than than. The sexual relationship is symbolic of transformation. Both of them find what they’re lacking in each other. Celie finds beauty, power and self-fulfillment and Shug finds an identity that is outside of her sexual one. The ability to be caring and loving without someone wanting something other than that love.

But “The Color Purple” is just as much about black men as it is about women. It’s easy to look at it and vilify the men in the story as hateful misogynists. But it’s important to look at some things

!. All of these men are black, in the south, in the early 1900’s. They had no real control over anything in their lives. They worked 4 times harder for only a quarter of the pay, they were feared and hated by the society around them (remember when they were going to help Mrs. Millie and she freaked out about “Being attacked”). So these men controlled the only thing that the larger society didn’t care about and that was black women.

2. Harpo was a good man, it was the burden of the rest of society that challenged him. The call of his father (even Celie) put on him to “control his woman.” And it was Harpo’s need to prove his manhood that ruined his relationship. Harpo and Sofia could have avoided a lot of drama if they’d never listened to the advice of Mr____ in the first place.

3. Mr__________ is a brute and a tyrant, We can all agree on that, but Mr____ spent his whole life never getting “the girl”. In all books, the handsome, well off (or what would be considered well off in that day) man gets the girl of his dreams but that never did happen for him. He was in love with Shug, but Shug was in love with everyone else (including Miss Celie). He even had feelings for Celie’s Sister, but she’d rather go to Africa then to be with him. So he uses Celie as his punching bag as an escape from his own anger and perpetuates the cycle of abuse his father doled out to him

There is so much we can learn from this rich narrative. The thing I took from it is that the women in this story, give each other the respect that the rest of the world didn’t give them. How many best friends do you know that call each other Miss all the time (Miss Sophia, Miss Celie etc.). Other women didn’t call Shug a “ho” the men did. In spite of the conflict and the foolishness

Thanks Alice Walker!

What can we learn from this dynamic film/book/play??

What movie, book or play speaks to you???

Introduction

The outbreak of cholera in Barletta is an example of the relationship between infectious disease and social unrest. What was particularly interesting in this case is the leaderlessness of the movement despite the strong hold the socialist movement had at that time of the Apulian workers. Barletta had already been severely stroke in the previous epidemics (1836, 1854, 1865, 1866, 1867, 1886) (68). By 1910, it was a typical Apulian agricultural center, a big one as well (43,000 inhabitants) and an economically more diverse one than its counterparts. Fisheries were present and oil and wine were cultivated along grain. There was no latifundia, but a number of medium owners and about 20% of the population were small owners (69).
Background

Barletta suffered from chaotic urban growth as its population had doubled in 50 years overwhelming the few services that existed. Housing was poor and shared with animals (71). The limestone the city was built on let the sewers interfere with the wells providing drinking water. The population drunk a mix of water and faecal matter. Human excrement was also sold as fertilizer and the carts used to carry it also brought food into town (72). As a result, diarrheal illnesses, TB, pneumonia killed Barletta in great numbers. Malaria and small pox were also present. Trachoma affected about 15% of the population. The many microbial circuits present in town due to the lack of hygiene made of Barletta the perfect pray for cholera (73).

The population was structural poor, underemployed, ill and malnourished. But drought and crop disease between 1908 and 1910 made the situation even worse. In 1910, the wine, almonds and olive productions hardly reached 10% of the previous year. By August of that year, the workers took the streets asking for bread. The quality of medical care (or the lack thereof) was another urban pathology (74). As a result the outbreak of cholera went unnoticed for a while. Cholera had been expected thanks to the progresses of epidemiology since it had started its journey in Bengal in 1899 and reached Russia in 1904 (75). Thanks to sufficient planning, the North of Italy was perfectly equipped to detect and contain a cholera outbreak (76). But in Barletta (and the South in general, admittedly not truly part of the modern Italian state) nothing was undertaken. The mayor was elected by a couple of thousands of landowner and had no incentive to care about the impoverished population (77). The hospital was incapable of treating the ill and seen rightly as a house of death for the destitute (78).

The doctors were similarly underfunded, poorly formed and dreaded by the inhabitants. No microscope was available to them in town (79). Apulia was also a gaping hole in the peninsula's anti-chlorella defense due to budgetary cuts. Finally, the bacillus moved to Italy carried by the months-long worth of filth of the fishermen apparels when they returned to Barletta in June, July and August (80). The first dead was a fisherman who died June 18 , but was not recognized as a victim of chlorela. The three physicians in charge of the poor did not remark the pattern of contagion. By August 11, the deputy prefect remarked the sheer volume of unrelated death in the city. By the 16, the army's doctors were in town and confirmed the diagnostic.

The disease physical and social

The disturbance to the communication (including trans-Atlantic emigration) and economic life cholera involved came at the worst moment as the country was on the brink of recession (81). Ultimately, the epidemic would turn to be the main cause of the fall of Luzzatti cabinet in 1911. Face with this clear danger, Luzzatti put in charge of containing the contagion the state's two most dependable administrations: the army and the police. Coercion more than medicine was to contain the epidemics (82). But the declaration of the state of emergency created immediately chaos and panic.

The wealthiest left town instantly, only the 20,000 poorest remained in town... with tens of doctors and 300 carabinieri to guard them. Some important tasks were quickly undertaken: provision of sterile water by railway, disinfection of the streets… But the most basic rules of hygiene (boiling water, washing) were still out of reach for the poor. All cholera victims were to be brought to an improvised pest-house (p.83). Their relatives were to be interned for quarantine. Their belongings were burned. The reaction of the authorities destroyed instantly the most-needed mutual trust between the public and the authorities, in a fashion reminiscent of the autocratic regimes rather than the liberal ones. This approach had been recognized as flawed as early as 1831 by the English authorities and never tried afterward (84).

In Baretta, even previous outbreaks of Cholera had not triggered such violation of civil liberties. The cordon around the town was unprecedented in recent Italian history. This shock strategy was actually not used anywhere else and was only acceptable punctually in this part of the backward Apulia (85). As a result, the poor had no incentive to cooperate with the authorities and did everything to elude them. The sick were kept at home or abandoned in the streets, their belongings were smuggled out of their houses, etc. Protest and even violence against the authorities were common.

The city was divided in 6 military districts patrolled by soldiers and "vigilante" (bounty-hunting expurgatory paid piece-work rate). On top of that spies were in charge to provide information (86). Squads patrolled the streets and broke the doors behind which they heard moaning from August 18 to September 2. Tension and 'social hysteria' had become rampant.

Cholera for all the reason previously listed solely touched the working class (87). As a scourge of God, the epidemic was sometimes seen as a divine vengeance for the workers' socialism. Worst: cholera was shameful associated with filth unlike the somewhat serene and aristocratic TB (88). Cholera is a 'bestial degradation' sudden and traumatic (89). The disease totally caused massive blood (and other bodily fluids) losses, transformed a person's physical appearance and was associated with excruciating pain (90). Often the first symptom was a seizure causing apparently healthy people to drop in the streets. Cholera mainly killed adults creating tens of orphans. Finally, the victims of cholera, once dead, went on shaking, as a result rumours of premature burial were common (p.90). Understandably panic and terror were widespread.
Riot!

The military police also prevented the relative to attend to the funeral as the dead were thrown in a mass grave (a measure the population resented particularly as funeral had a enormous social importance in Beretta) (91). To make matters worse, the pest-house was a brutal place of which the patient had little chances to come out alive (92). Military nurses were untrained and the latest medical advances that could alleviate pain and even save lives were totally ignored (93). Rumours of cholera being actually a poisoning of the population by the doctors started to spread. The authorities worsen the hysteria by explaining (in Italian not dialect and often in written pamphlets to an illiterate population) that cholera was a poison (p.94). Finally, the government to avoid being blamed used the Gypsies as scapegoats (95). Romas were rounded up and put in camps. But such was the distrust for the authorities, that the Barattese did not believe this explanation (96).

September 2, as the police tried to enforce a new order on the market, a riot started. Soon a crowd several thousands strong gathered in front of the mayor house. They were violently dispersed (97). During the whole day and part of the night the riot went on, three were lynched by the crowd.

As the town was a stronghold of anti-clericalism, it is normal that the anguish of the epidemics did not create a catholic revival as it did in other places (98). On the other hand, the highly unionised grape-pickers had a long tradition of organised actions including strikes. But the fact that most of the labourers were already unemployed and that three years of crisis had decreased the powers of the leftist organisations prevented that option. Moreover, the middle-class socialist leadership always supported the authorities actions in the crisis (99).

Conclusion

The riot showed the government that its sharp shock strategy actually created a danger greater yet than cholera: social unrest. Moreover by September, it was clear that the sanitary cordon strategy was illusionary as several Apulian towns were by that time hit by the disease. The day after the riot, the 'sanitary dictatorship' was canceled. The government had learn a lesson, when Naples was hit later that month, it had a much more liberal approach. In Baretta, food was distributed and major works started some of them improving considerably the hygienic situation (100).

But the long-term result of this sudden influx of capital, also intended to solve the Southern Question by prompting regional development, was to worsen the neo-colonial status of the South and to feed clientele politics (101). Similarly, the sanitary policy of the Giolittian period (delegating health issues to local authorities) had merely enshrined hygienic dualism between North and poor and ill-administrated South (102). The state's deficiencies in the Mezziogiornio made the reproduction of the strategies designed in the rest of Western Europe impossible. The hopless of the resident medical staff and the insufficiencies of its material enabled the epidemics to spread (103).

Finally the state had designed its intervention as a military campaign that favoured a strategy based on coercion in an environment perceived from Rome as little more than a colony. "Because of the atmosphere of emergency it generated and the social tensions it created, cholera posed the nature of the Southern Question in its starkiest terms. It revealed the depth of the abyss that separated the Mezzogiornio from the rest of Itlay and it exposed the violent potential of the liberal state towards the dangerous classes of the South" (103).