A few assorted things on history and heritage
The V&A thing is even worse than originally reported: V&A to say goodbye to departments by material-woodwork, metalwork etc-and 20% of its curators: major and problematic upheavals with 'radical restructuring' and merging of departments, breaking with tradition: The “mother” of decorative art museums all over the world, the V&A was founded in 1852 and originally called the Museum of Manufactures because it aimed to provide manufacturers and craftspeople with examples of good design for them to emulate, which is why its collections have traditionally been divided up by materials (woodwork, metalwork etc) for ease of consultation.
***
However, the Venerable Mother Cornelia Connelly will not be restructured and some of her remains conveyed to Philadelphia: The bones of a 19th-century nun will remain undisturbed after plans to move relics to the US to boost her chances of becoming a saint were abandoned by the religious order she founded. Hundreds of people had formally objected to the exhumation proposal, and almost 1,500 people signed an online petition against moving bones of the Venerable Mother Cornelia Connelly from a Grade I listed chapel in Sussex to a cathedral in Philadelphia.
....
“Cornelia asked to be buried in Mayfield and there should be no doubt that we will continue to value her presence, rely on her intercession and honour her wishes insofar as we are able and permitted.” The Cornelian Association of former pupils described the proposal as “macabre”. The proposal did not “take into account the potential for reputational harm to the school, and the grief and fury of generations of past pupils who love this chapel, know all about the woman who created it and whose lives have been enhanced and validated by the wisdom of her teaching,” it said. It added: “The gathering of relics, even of saints (which, officially, Cornelia is not) is virtually obsolete, and seldom practised in the modern church. Most people now regard it as a distasteful medieval custom.”
(Trying to resist the line about not rather being in Philadelphia...)
Of course, as in the case of Newman, is there an intact body or remains anyway?
***
The French government is appealing for corporate help to acquire the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade’s notorious The 120 Days of Sodom, valued at €4.5m (£3.9m), for the National Library of France.
***
A different kind of violation: horror over the mangling of a traditional recipe into something that well, that is, perhaps, no longer actually spaghetti carbonara: 'Stop this madness': NYT angers Italians with 'smoky tomato carbonara' recipe. Doing to pasta what Jamie Oliver has done to rice dishes in several culinary traditions.
***
Threat to the traditional nesting spot of the Tyne kittiwakes: Geordie shore: the river Tyne's 'soft, gentle' kittiwakes fly into trouble. The kittiwake is on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list as a vulnerable species and the UK’s kittiwake population has fallen by 60% since 1986. But in North Shields, they’re bucking the trend - an anomaly that’s a source of amazement and pride to Turner, who thinks that other gulls might be following the group back to North Shields when they return from their winter out at sea. “We’re attracting new birds on the Tyne - maybe they tagged on to the groups because they looked more promising,” he says.
***
On Wimmin’s Land: Five decades ago the heartland of lesbian separatism could be found in the canyons and meadows of Southern Oregon. What does it mean to commit to a radical plan for living? What, now, can be learned from the tribulations of these women building a new society by hand in the American wilderness? Much has changed in the last 50 years. Uncloseted lesbians are not the anomaly they once were, and elements of the land-dykes’ environmentalism - so unconventional in the 1970s - are now accepted truths. Queer identity remains indelibly associated with cities, to the degree that rural exceptions are easily sidelined. Gender-exclusive alliances, once so liberatory, now seem less so. The separatist legacy is sullied by some separatists’ antipathy towards trans women.
And yet. Contemporary American culture clamors, again, for reinvention. Conceiving alternatives requires precisely the qualities the Southern Oregon land-dykes exhibited in abundance: audacity, courage, enthusiasm for hard work, and a conviction that the future remains unformed. What would it mean now to collectively commit, as these women did, to a plan for living that departs so radically from the received order?
Some of which sounds so very 70s, and reminds me - they would be horrified I daresay - of the gay male Brixton squats, which similarly did the everything in common including sexual partners (and underwear): Proximity also magnified sexual conflict. Straight sex, the thinking went, was a misogynist fantasy, but so were monogamy and traditional notions of beauty. Attempting to rethink and remake eroticism, women on the lands cultivated simultaneous relationships, and randomized their hookups. Cabbage Lane started a monthly Singles Week, during which the names of lovers-to-be were drawn out of a hat. Residents at WomanShare used Tarot to decide who would sleep in what bed on a given night, while others maintained ménages à trois. Communal masturbation was not uncommon, and loud lovemaking declared one’s right to pleasure.
This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3203233.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.