Zing Things

Read Aloud: the Hit List

As promised, here is my family’s list of Read Aloud favourites.

To qualify these titles were:

sung out instantly when I asked for nominations
leapt out of the shelves as we craned our necks on a book spine survey to check we hadn’t left anything out
are battered and dog-eared from repeated re-readings
& have contributed to family catch-phrases and coded communications -

having passed those stringent requirements, we honour the following!

Harry Potter J.K. Rowling any/all volumes

Reading aloud let our younger daughter join in the Potter related games and discussions our elder daughter enjoyed as she read them, and allowed us to monitor/soften the impact of some of the darker and scarier episodes.

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark - Jill Tomlinson

We’ve read this one aloud so many times we know it by heart. We love it so much we have the audio tape too, and still it has us smiling.
This story of Plop the young owl with an empty stomach and fear of the dark is written for younger readers, but we all pause to listen. Soothing, funny and wise. A delight all round.

White Boots (or Skating Shoes) Noel Streatfeild
Streatfield is a bit dated now, but this story of a young girl who takes up skating and finds she has the stuff of champions is a perennial and down-the-generations favourite. My own mother loved it and bought a copy for me on a market stall when I was only months old. I loved it too, but have to say the world has moved on so much that although it’s a well-crafted story, I was very surprised when my daughters clamoured for more after the first chapter. I’ve read it out loud cover to cover 3 times now, which I think is my limit.

I ice skate like Mary Poppins, say Beka and Rhianna, but thanks to White Boots they have poise, balance and fun on the ice.

J.K Rowling is a fan, and so is Kathleen in You’ve Got Mail!

Ramona - Beverley Cleary any or all, in any combination

Beka says Ramona the Pest is her favourite, but we love them all. Again, from a ‘simpler’ time; the lack of tv, mobiles and toys ‘r us clutter lets the inventive ingenuity and endearing personalities of Ramona , big sister Beezus and cast of supporting parents, friends and neighbours shine through. Like The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, this story enchants young and old alike. My husband is a particular fan.

The Mennyms – Sylvia Waugh a series of 5 books

Inventive, fun and a little bit different for that 6-9 age group it can be hard to suit.

The Borrowers - Mary Norton

These booked have been turned into a film and BBCTV has made a lovely classic serial of the stories, but they are best of all read aloud.
We never make pancakes without saving the tiny ones made by a splash of batter on the pan for the Borrowers who live in our house.

The Perfect Hamburger - Alexander McCall Smith

Although he hit the headlines with the No1. Ladies Detective Agency, polymath Prof. Smith has been writing for years. This story of a boy, a man and a mixing bowl against big business is heart-warming and funny. (And short!)

His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman

This is definitely for older children ( thoughtful 10 year olds up) and a harder read aloud experience, but not to be missed. The writing is superb, the storyline inventive and memorable, but always plausible. The heroine Lyra is intelligent, tough and feisty, while for the boys, there’s Will –sharp, resourceful, determined.

Be prepared for, but not put off by, some challenging questions on family, life, loyalty, science and religion.

Pullman’s stories of Victorian era woman detective Sally Lockhart are marvellous reads too.

Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen - Garth Nix (a trilogy)

While I have read the whole of the His Dark Materials through back to back, starting the next book hard on the heels of the one we’d just finished, I found I couldn’t do that with Nix’s trilogy. Good, absorbing reads,though, but not for the faint-hearted.

Stravaganza Mary Hoffman http://www.stravaganza.co.uk/

Another parallel world, and like His Dark Materials, very well done. Touching, memorable, atmospheric with strong and good-hearted female and male ‘leads’. There's a website too.

Poetry Party

On Saturday we held our version of a Burns’ Supper – a Poetry Party.

The rules are simple. You come, you eat, and in the company of friends, you recite or read a poem.

Any language, any topic, any poet, any time.

This year our guests represented Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Turkey and Australia and we read and listened to poems in English, German and Turkish from thoughtful through witty to downright hilarious.

For the first time our daughters joined us, and I was particularly impressed by Rhianna’s 13 year old friend who’d come along with her parents and who had not only found a poem, but was eager to read it to us. (Beautifully.)

Beka, the youngest, wanted to do the Mulan ballad we’d found a few weeks ago, but as it is a just a little bit long, performed instead ‘In the Dark, Dark Wood, there was a Dark, Dark House……” followed by T.S. Eliot’s Jellicle Cats, gamely read by the recovering Rhianna.

Although inspired by annual dinners in honour of the Scottish poet Rabbie Burns, a haggis and a tartan tablecloth was our Poetry Party's only concession to the man who penned Auld Lang Syne. Grown up guest Don was, however, handsomely kilted for the occasion, for which I thank him. He had Beka and at least one of the adults present snorting with laughter as he delivered, totally straight-faced after years of story time practice, Roald Dahl’s cautionary tale of Goldie Pinklesweet from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

(Over the years we’ve been giving these parties, Roald Dahl is a consistent Top Tenner. Friends who find the idea of reading a poem terrifying, find Dahl well within their comfort zone and then they're on a roll....)

My husband chose Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’ – his personal credo really, and Claudia hit a similar note with a German poem on singing out to the best of your ability even in the face of darkness.

Hit of the evening for me was Turan’s poem in Turkish; no, I don’t speak a word; but his reading and the sheer well, poetry, communicated powerfully. I let him leave without getting hold of his translation but as soon as I do, I’ll post it.

The evening was convivial and low key. We aren't into the technicalities of writing poems, or any one-up-manship on favourites, but we each paused for a moment to enjoy words and word play; the profound and the troubling, some wit and some wisdom. And prior to the party we spent a couple of enjoyable hours locating old favourites and finding new voices.

Until I track down the diverse poetry my guests chose, to share with you later , I’ll leave you with the one I read, which the BBC says is Britain’s favourite post-war poem. That’s not all I discovered about it while researching for this post. More tomorrow.

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Read Warning online at www.poemhunter.com

Eyes in art Goes Fishing

This striking eye is from a glass bottle in the shape of a Nile tilapia fish. Which will probably be the give away clue that although this eye could be modern, it’s actually ancient, dating from around 1390BCE (Before Common Era). It was found hidden under the floorboards of a house in Egypt and may have been used for cosmetics or prized oils.

The fish the artist chose for this lovely bottle is significant; the tilapia fish hatches and shelters her young in her mouth and so the tilapia was frequently used in amulets as a symbol or renewal and rebirth. I don't know anything about making or blowing glass - so if you do and can add your expertise to our appreciation of this artist's skill, then please comment !

Yesterday’s mention of the beginnings of the British Museum's collections sent me there today and that's where I found this particularly striking eye.
The Museum's site is marvelous; well-organised and with excellent search facilites under the heading Compass. It includes a well-thought out children’s section featuring short slide show ‘tours’ on historical topics ranging from the Trojan Wars and Anglo-Saxon history to thematic approaches such as pattern and time. If you read my post Delighting in Dragons, you’ll remember how Beka was inspired by the book Dragonkeeper. Apparently made for her, there’s a Museum ‘tour’ on dragons featuring art from the Museum collections, drawings by children and stories and myths focusing on dragons. That takes care of our weekend!

As the links to individual pages at the British Museum are very long and don't lend themselves to hyperlinking, here's the link for more convenient virtual gallery going: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass

Read Aloud: thanks for your positive reactions to my Read Aloud post in It Works For Me Wednesday last week.
As this week’s IWFMW was themed, I’ll be posting my family’s top Read Alouds this coming Wednesday. Gives us time to make sure we don’t leave one out!

Kill or Cure. Or poisoning my children part 2.

Possibly as Rhianna is still in bed with sore throat and ears, blocked nose and a headache, my mind is running on remedies today. We’ve seen the doctors, we’re taking the tablets, but the nose and headaches persist, so I tried her with that old-fashioned remedy – a salt-water inhale. We giggled together that I was encouraging her to sniff white powdery substances, but having gamely tried to inhale the heavily salted water, she now thinks this is the second time in a year I have tried to poison her. Her headache is worse and she is barely speaking to me.

I retreated to the shower with a bowl of sugar and a bottle of lemon juice for a bit of body buffing – another old-time household standby for cleaning and softening rough hands and elbows and which I extend top to toe. So I’m scoured and unpopular, but it beats the hair shirt.

As I stood in the shower I didn’t sing, but, & exactly in the manner of old Carpenter’s songs, there are two words repeating themselves ceaselessly in my head this morning: anti-scorbutic and antimony…. anti-scorbutic and antimony….anti… you get the idea.

And they are? Yes, yes, I’m rushing to the dictionary, and can now confidently tell you antimony is a toxic chemical element while scorbutic means to do with scurvy, so an anti-scorbutic is a treatment or regimen to prevent scurvy.

Why are these my apparent mantra for today? I’m reading on the history of science and last night’s chapter dealt with how C17th scientists commonly dosed themselves with noxious substances including antimony and mercury in search of a therapeutic dose. They took acid precipitate of amber, they drank hot steel ‘quenched in wine’ and explored tobacco, opium and anti-scorbutics as potential cures. It could literally be a kill or cure option, and aren’t we glad that the idea of purging the humours has given way in orthodox western medicine to a more symptomatic approach?

Many of these same men of science (women were deliberately excluded) were also avid collectors of animals and plants from the far flung climes the European powers were then “opening up” for trade. The medical men got very excited over Chinese rhubarb and cocoa, and not just because they sold them for a fortune. They were prized for their comforting and of course, in the case of rhubarb, purgative qualities.

The first chocolate marketed in England made the fortune of Sir Hans Sloane – he of Sloane Square, and was sold as an aid to the digestion. Not mixed with honey and pepper as it was taken in Jamaica, but mixed with milk and “Greatly recommended by several eminent Physicians especially those of Sir Hans Sloane’s Acquaintance, For its Lightness on the Stomach, & its great Use in all Consumptive Cases.”

Sloane, also imported quinine bark from Peru, sold as a cure for ‘tertian ague’ or malaria, which modern travellers will be surprised to find, was widespread during C17th English summers. A keen collector of all types of botanical and scientific rarities and curiosities, Sir Hans’ fortune made as merchant and fashionable society physician allowed him to collect on global scale and to acquire the collections of others as they came on the market. That, to cut a long story short, is how the collections of British Museum and the Natural History Museum in London began.

It is almost uncanny then, that although for the last 3 days Rhianna’s normally healthy appetite has deserted her, she moans now and then, “Chocolate, I need chocolate.” Maybe I should ditch the salt water and let Sir Hans be my guide.

The book I’m reading? Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits

Fascinating material, but I’m not sure she makes the best of it. 5 out of 10.

Wordless Wednesday

Rhianna is sick. She's miserable. She's bored. She's reading the screen over my shoulder. We have spent many of the last 48 hours in doctors' waiting rooms when she just wanted to be in bed. I let her choose today's picture. Her aunt's garden, last summer. Colour therapy?

Eyes 2: body parts in art

I really have to do something about that sub-title -'body parts in art'!

Today's part 2 of Eyes is not quite what I had planned, but having come across it, I couldn't not include this amazing collection entitled 'plastic body parts' jewellery featured on Kstyle's excellent design showcase site.

What do you do with all those left-over Barbies once your kids have graduated to Bratz and My Scene? If you're Margaux Lange, you cut them up into little pieces and skewer them into bangles and bracelets, earrings and necklaces, that's what. Eyes, hands, torsos, even the dinky little shoes, feature.
Rhianna and I both cackled gleefully when we saw Barbie (& Ken) treated this way.
The global fascination with Barbie is not once I share, having held out against Barbie until Rhianna reached the ripe old age of 4, at which point I was rebuked by other mothers who took pity on her and bought her Barbies as birthday gifts from their daughters. Of course we ended up with trillions of the things, including a pregnant Barbie-look alike, from Turkey I think, complete with revolving bump and tiny baby inside.
Way back in the '60's, Ihave to admit that my Tressy doll ( I only had one; what is it with these hoardes of Plastics?) was my idea of fun though. Her hair grew when you pushed a button in her back and she came with tiny little hair clips so I could back-comb like crazy then pin it all up. The optimum time for playing with her was when I was around 9-10 years old. It's such a shame that the Barbie brand has been allowed to slide down the age range to take over the play of tots who have the motor skills to take the clothes off but not to put them back on again.
I'm delighted to consign ours to the bin or the boot sale, but am not sufficiently eco-concerned on this one to cut them up to make jewellery. Rhianna might, though. Which I think is a healthy teenage subversion a thoughtful and supportive mum should encourage.
And as we're on the topic of promoting healthy body image and well grounded self-esteem in one's children, do read Planetnomad's award winning post on Beauty; not just in the eye of the beholder anymore.

Eyes: body parts in art

In this second in my informal mini-series called for want of a better title, ‘body parts in art’, I’m focussing on eyes.

I’ll probably do several blogs on this topic as my art books are now frilled with post-it notes book marking thousands of years and a global community of the quizzical, the mendacious, the delighted, the introverted, the desperate, the sublime, the resigned, the dejected, the transported.

In Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1555 painting The Chess Game, the players are Sofonisba’s sisters Lucia and Minerva.

They’re watched with great delight by a third, younger sister, Europa. It’s the expression on this little girl’s face that repeatedly draws me to this painting. She’s facing forwards but looking sideways at Minerva, who’s just about to lose the game and is raising her hand. Perhaps just about to protest against Lucia’s taking of her queen. Young Europa gleefully anticipates a sisterly spat? A lovely little girl’s pudgy face too, with a smile just becoming a laugh – but nothing at all cutesy in this joint portrait.

Off to one side, the girls attract the attention of an older woman. She’s plainly dressed and, given the lavish nature of the girls’ costume, is unlikely then to be their mother, who must outshine them. So a maid or nurse. Her expression is remarkable, her gentle personality conveyed in the tenderness of her gaze.

Sofonisba’s painting of her sisters tells more than of a happy family. Anguissola is billed as one of the greatest female painters of the Renaissance. Let’s make that one of the greatest painters. The Chess Game has a serious point to make. Look, it says, women, girls can be logical, rational, can think ahead, play and enjoy strategic games.

One of six sisters, 5 of whom became painters, Sofonisba worked at the court of Spain’s Phillip II for 13 years. Her first husband was drowned when his ship was attacked by pirates. She married again, but without Phillip’s permission or her father’s permission, countering apparently, that “Marriages are made in heaven and not on Earth.”

View The Chess Game with more of Sofonisba's paintings at the Web Gallery of Art. It’s fabulous online resource. Take a tour.

The Web Gallery address is: www.wga.hu

For other posts in this series see: lips

Just One More Chapter, Mum!

For the first time I’m joining in with the Works-for-me-Wednesday carnival hosted on Shannon’s RocksinmyDryer blog.

The carnival features blogging mums sharing their experience on family life; a great global Kaffee Klatsch, on the self-explanatory, ‘It works for me’ theme.

My first suggestion is: Try reading this blog aloud!

Books always have been and are still central to our family life. Of course we’ve spent hours reading to the girls virtually since they were born, but even now they’re getting older (going on 9 and 13), reading aloud is still hugely important joint activity.

I had to call a halt to a readings of a book each, catering for their different reading ages, when I realised that by reading both of them a bedtime chapter I was spending close to two hours a night ‘on stage’, and now we usually have just one book on the go.

Read-Aloud Ground Rules:

Reading ahead by yourself is forbidden. I have resorted to hiding the book if we’ve stopped at a real cliff-hanger.
No reading when one child is not around, without special dispensation and a promise to re-read the chapter/s later.

Choosing something that appeals to everyone can be a challenge. Harry Potter is a great family favourite. Yes, we really have worked our way out loud through all six volumes, some of them twice. I do a mean Prof,. McGonagall, if I say so myself, while my husband has Umbridge’s “ahem” to a T. We are all world-beaters on Harry Potter trivia, but it’s really our youngest who shines at these family quizzes. That’s another plus for sharing the books as a family, since the 4 year age difference could so easily have meant that Beka would be left out. Instead she’s the greatest HP aficionado of all.

When children are small you can usually keep up with what they’re reading and what they’re watching on TV. You get the references, the allusions, even sometimes the jokes. As they get older and their horizons expand, it is much harder to stay on top of what they’re learning about the world.

Reading aloud has allowed me to enjoy some of the great fiction for young people that’s around today and deal with some of the questions any good book must provoke. As Rhianna looks forward to hitting 13, sharing books we read aloud is providing us with a way of discussing challenging and emotional issues - drugs, divorce, sex, HIV, bullying, bitchiness, friendship, terrorism - coolly and objectively as we comment on the behaviour, choices and motives of the characters we love and those we love to hate.

Colin Firth and a prize cabbage in the same blog posting

Regular readers know about my coffee break habits.

I let my fingers do the walking round some online galleries for a ten minute refresher at my desk.

So far, January’s gallery gazing recommendations have taken us to inter-war Germany courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York –attitude, character, expression – it’s all here.

And from the distractions of inflation-wracked inter-war Germany to the privations of the 30’s Depression as experienced in the States. A collection of - unusually, colour - photographs of farming communities couldn’t be more of a contrast to the Met’s offering. Visit The Guardian’s online gallery.

For the last January selection my choice was influenced by the Jane Austen Fest my family – well maybe not my husband – enjoyed over the weekend. We watched all the episodes of the BBC TV version of Pride and Prejudice and followed that up with the film version, provoking lively discussion on the best Darcy, Eliza et al.

Colin Firth is the clear Darcy winner, naturally.

Opinion is divided between the beautiful Keira Knightley and the spirited Jennifer Ehrle for Lizzie, but Miranda Frost wins hands down as Jane.

Alison Steadman’s mother is just too silly to be credible, we think, while the film mother is completely convincing as a women driven to utter distraction by 5 dowry-less daughters.

So two Austen-ish suggestions for Gallery tours:

For anecdotes from the rural life try the largest collection of British Folk Art in Britain, held at Compton Verney in Warwickshire and on display online at www.windowsonwarwickshire.

I like visiting the collection for the immediacy of its stories. Several of the oils on display show comic incidents straight from life.

Pictured here are:

'An Instance Never Known Before': during an attempt to slaughter a horse in July 1811, a butcher came to the farm to kill an old cart horse. The horse got away, and tried to run down the butcher until eventually distracted by a comely mare. There’s graphic chaos amongst a field of 9 bulls when they’re panicked by a pop-up hare, and here’s one dear to the heart of Zing Pictures.

In 1802 a Mr. Williams commissioned this picture of his prize bull and his prize cabbage. He liked the lady and the house and the dog enough to include them in this picture of his life’s treasures. You want your prized possessions to be captured for posterity too? Contact me at Zing Pictures. It’s what I do!

Not much is made of fans in Austen’s writing, but these are certainly from her era. You’ll have to be quick to catch this exhibition, courtesy of the Royal Collection.

Some fans were intended specifically to shield the lady’s face from the heat of the fire. Not so much, apparently, to prevent unsightly heat spots, but to stop the wax in her make up from melting. Now there’s a situation Jane failed to exploit.

There’s a slide show on the language of the fan too. The fan gestures for I hate you and Do you love me? seem confusingly similar. Perhaps discretion is the better part of valour; adjourn to the Queen’s 10 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and take refuge in the unambiguously glorious.

Eco-concern is the new thrifty

Looks like recycling is finally getting sexy. Eco-concern is the new thrifty.

The craft book section has suddenly got hip, with glossy new volumes vaunting oven gloves reclaimed from your mother’s vintage dresses or conjuring stunning gift wrap using old cinema tickets and a string of dud Christmas tree lights.

Not only does The Times have a self-styled Eco Worrier Blog, but it's ok for her to write in a daily broadsheet about saving energy by making a sausage dog draught excluder from scrap fabric to mop up the 20 per cent of your heating that escapes through doors and windows.

I’m in good company then, to confess to two long held recycling ambitions of the crafty kind. And, I have decided 2007 is the year the hoard of scraps will come out from their dusty plastic bags under the bed, although my plans are a little more exciting than a new-for-old oven glove.

Since I was a teenager, I’ve hankered after a handmade patchwork quilt; not a cool ambition through the 80’s and 90’s, I admit, but nevertheless, once my daughters were born, I started saving all those lovely little dresses as they outgrew them to make what I believe is quaintly termed, a ‘charm quilt’. Full of memories and literally, a part of the fabric of your family life.

Last weekend my soon-to-be-a-teenager, and great crafts-person daughter, Rhianna, asked me for access to this carefully hoarded fabric stash to start on her own quilt.

This is the now-or-never starting gun I need.

The quilt I’ve been promising myself since I was Rhianna's age is now underway. I promise to spare you regular progress reports.

Project number two is slightly less long-in-the-tooth. I once had a Nicole Fahri knitted jacket – that's it in the photo - a prize find in TK Maxx years ago – which was plunged by a well meaning friend into a sink of soapy water. Very hot soapy water. I can report that method of shrinking and felting works extremely well. Matted, shrunken, yes; but I decided to hold onto it -the savvy, hip eco-worrier in me reluctant to part with all that potential.

Last night on one of my favourite design blogs, the never less than inspirational blog K Style.,
I heard, or rather saw, the starting gun for that project; sassycrafter Kim Taylor’s handbags made from cast-off sweaters felted and constructed with style and imagination.

It’s going to be a busy weekend.

The most hardened creature I ever met.

Our investigations into the real woman behind Disney’s cartoon account of the adventures of Chinese heroine, Mulan, reminded me of some of the heroines suggested as role models in the Girl’s World Annual I used to be given each Christmas.

Alongside Violet Szabo and Nurse Edith Cavell was featured a Dr. Barry, who served a long and distinguished career as James Barry, a male doctor in the British army who was discovered on death to have been a woman.

Dr. Barry died in 1865, after a 40 year career that would bring credit to anyone, regardless of gender. Posted across the globe with the British army, Dr. Barry performed what is regarded as the first ever Caesarean Section in Africa in 1826, and is credited with saving countless lives with innovative public health initiatives from South Africa and Mauritius to Jamaica, the Crimea and Canada.

Dr. Barry wasn’t popular though, with an instinct for rubbing authority up the wrong way. He suffered ridicule and scandal in personal life, as well as professional demotion and side-lining. Florence Nightingale certainly didn’t warm to Dr. Barry, nor recognise a kindred spirit when they met for the first time:

“I never had such a blackguard rating in all my life – I who have had more than any woman – than from this Barry sitting on his horse, while I was crossing the Hospital Square with only my cap on in the sun. He kept me standing in the midst ofquite a crowd of soldiers, Commissariat, servants, camp followers, etc., etc., every one of whom behaved like a gentleman during the scolding I received while he behaved like a brute . . . After he was dead, I was told that (he) was a woman . . . I should say that (she) was the most hardened creature I ever met.

At the time of his death, Dr. Barry was certainly regarded as male by all who knew him, although many felt that he exhibited what they described as effeminate traits. His voice as high-pitched as an old lady’s, and some colleagues report being asked to leave the room while Dr. Barry dressed.

Dr. Barry died in 1865 and the story that Dr. Barry was in fact not a man at all, but a woman, and moreover, a woman who had had a child, began with Sophia Bishop, who laid out the corpse. She told Dr. Barry’s own doctor of her discovery, hoping apparently to trade her silence on the matter for financial reward.

But Barry’s doctor, McKinnon, who’d known Barry for many years, seems to have been remarkably incurious, not to mention rather off-hand about the matter.

“I informed her that it was none of my business whether or not Dr Barry was a male or a female, and that I thought that he might be neither, viz. an imperfectly developed man.”

The Manchester Guardian of 21^st August 1865 commented.

He died about a month ago, and upon his death was

discovered to be a woman. The motives that occasioned,

and the time when commenced this singular deception

are both shrouded in mystery. But thus it stands as an

indisputable fact, that a woman was for 40 years an

officer in the British service, and fought one duel and

sought many more, had pursued a legitimate medical

education, and received a regular diploma, and had

acquired almost a celebrity for skill as a surgical operator.

It was a supreme deception. How could it happen?

The notion that Dr. James Barry was indeed a woman gained currency over the decades, perhaps fuelled by the less than fond recollections of those who’d known the doctor, and sadly, obscuring the achievements of a talented and visionary person of whichever gender.

Modern scholarship has looked again at the story, and the summary I’ve given here is by A.K. Kubba, Specialist Registrar in General Surgery, Professional Unit of Surgery at the University of Nottingham and M. Young, Senior Librarian with the University of Glasgow Library. In their very readable paper, they conclude that Dr. James Barry was in fact a hermaphrodite, defining the term as “an individual where both ovarian and testicular tissue is present. Male genitalia, feminine breasts, testicular feminisation syndrome, absence of body hair and considerable variations between individuals exist among hermaphrodites.”

I went back to the story of Dr. Barry expecting to read a quite different account; one of a woman’s fight against all the odds for professional success and satisfaction at any personal cost. The revised story wouldn’t make it into the Girls World Annual, but what a remarkable and painful life.

With thanks to the authors of A.K. Kubba and M. Young

THE LIFE, WORK AND GENDER OF DR JAMES BARRY MD.

www.rcpe.ac.uk/publications/articles/vol31_no4/R_The_Life.pdf

Delighting in Dragons

Last week I flippantly linked January, season of coughs and colds, and my children, in the same paragraph right here on this blog. That very same night my younger daughter went down with a cold, missed 3 days of school and is still fighting an annoying cough. As a work-from-home Mum, I’m fortunate to be able to be with my children when they’re ill. I know I should banish them to bed and make staying home as boring as I can for them, and I do ban TV at least until after lunch, but I enjoy these serendipitous, rare one-to-one times when we read together and sometimes manage an art project.

As we did while she was off school last week. My daughter, who’s chosen the blog name Beka, is a voracious reader, but we often have a book that we read together – mostly me, out loud, doing all the voices.

Our current out-loud book is Carole Wilkinson’s Dragonkeeper. The first in a series set in ancient China, it’s the story of a young slave girl and a world-weary dragon. As we’re only on Chapter 9 I can’t tell you much more than that, but such is the power of an imaginative story, well-told and backed up by solid research, that the spin-offs are a joy to behold.

Excited by this book, my daughter has so far:

travelled to The Great Wall of China via Google Earth.

looked up the Han Dynasty in the encyclopaedia

compared different ways of depicting dragons

made and decorated a Chinese style fan –with a picture of a dragon of course.

OK so she’s a paragon. Of course not. I just want to share her enthusiasm, my delight in the online technology I would have loved as a kid, and lead in to the next stage, because by now she’s definitely earned some TV. Still on the Chinese theme, she re-ran Mulan and soon we started wondering about the ‘real’ Mulan, which was, of course, a prompt for a quick Googling session.

Disney tells the story of Mulan as a daughter who serves in the emperor’s army in her aged father’s stead. Accompanied by the obligatory comic companions, Mulan disguises herself as a youth, has many misadventures, but can usually turn disaster to triumph against the invading Hun. She single-handedly saves the Emperor and to top it all, snares a good prospect for a husband, as a good Chinese daughter should.

Google brought us to the anonymous Ode Of Mulan, dating from 500CE and told in a Ming dynasty anthology, The Legend of the Very Sad Ape, according to which Disney hasn’t taken too many liberties with the basic story. The real Mulan served for a decade in the emperor’s army, successfully hiding her identity all the while, and did indeed come to the attention of the emperor. We both enjoyed the contrast of 1,500 year old poem with the sugar and anachronistic comedy of the cartoon version. It’s long for a blog, but here it is, courtesy of http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2805.html---------

Jie Jie, and more Jie Jie
Weaving, Mulan facing the front door.
Heard not the sound of shuttles,
Heard only her own sighs.
"Who you are missing?
Who you are recalling?"
"No one in my heart.
No one in my mind.
Last night I saw the army enlistment bulletin.
The emperor called for an army for a coming war.
Twelve scrolls of bulletins,
My father's name listed on every scroll.
Father has no grown up son;
Mulan has no elder brother.
I want to buy a saddle and horse,
And Join the army in the place of my father."

Bought a spirited horse from a market in the east,
Bought a saddle from a market in the west;
Bought a bridle from a market in the south;
Bought a long whip from a market in the north.
Said good-bye to Father and Mother at dawn,
Arrived on the shore of the Yellow River in the evening.
Heard not the calls from Father and Mother;
Heard only the crushing sound of water in the Yellow River.
Left the Yellow River at dawn for the north,
Camped atop the Black Mountain in the evening.
Heard not the calls from Father and Mother,
Heard only the crying sound of the nomad horses on Yan Mountain.

Travelled ten thousand li for the war.
Crossed the passes and mountains as swiftly as flying.
Sound of army watchman's knocker brought with cold winds.
Chilly moonlight reflected on iron armor.
Generals died in a hundred battles,
Great fighters returned in triumph after ten years.

Summoned to see the emperor,
The emperor sat in a splendid Hall.
Promotions granted in twelve ranks,
Gifts bestowed a thousand and more.
Emperor asked what else was desired,
Mulan not interested in a minister's post.
"Would like to have a swift horse
To take me to my hometown".

Father and Mother heard of the return of the Daughter,
Came all the way out of city to greet the Daughter, leaning on each other.
Elder sister heard of arrival of young Sister,
Took care of her make-up and dress, facing the door.
Young Brother heard of coming of elder Sister,
Whet the knife and went for a pig and a sheep—a feast for Sister.
Opened the door to the east chamber,
Sat on the bed in the west chamber.
Took off the army gown,
Put on the old dress.
Combed cloud-like hair, facing the window,
Rubbed cosmetic powder on forehead, facing the mirror.
Went out to visit her army comrades,
Comrades all surprised and perplexed.
For twelve years together in the army and fought
knew not Mulan was a girl.

He-hare walks with hops and skips
She-hare sees with muddled and fuddled eyes
If two hares run side by side
How can you tell which is the she and which is the he?

Thanks to 47th Carnival of History, hosted by Progressive Historians, this February, for thei comment on this post.

I do NOT believe in dragons.

Sen. BIDEN: Well, maybe you should! Kaye at Zing Things has a delightful post up called Delighting in Dragons, discussing both dragons in folklore and the historical narrative that Disney's Mulan was based on. It's an excellent and informative read.

Luscious Lips are hot at Zing Pictures

Continuing our look at lips in art, here are some of mine.

I love this snippet found this morning when googling on lipstick, but think it can’t actually be true – or at the very least the date has to be out by a couple of hundred years.

A 1999 edition of the Chemical & Engineering News, published by the American Chemical Society claims that, in 1770, the British Parliament passed a law condemning lipstick, stating that "women found guilty of seducing men into matrimony by a cosmetic means could be tried for witchcraft."

I'll try to find out more. You'll read it here first.

Luscious Lips.

Yesterday I blogged about the near-miss poisoning of my children with the nutritious sea kale that turned out to be poisonous sea poppy.

Today I’m dishing up lips. Lists of lips. My top 3 lips in art. Other body parts will probably follow, so you may want to bookmark me now!

What prompted this swerve from the vegetable? I was going to do great things with carrots today. They started out purple, my daughter told me last night. Well, the blogosphere is a marvellous and accomodating place - actually it would be if I could access my favourites in a zippier timeframe than Technorati or Firefox or the gods responsible seem to give at the moment. My 10 minutes of blog-catch-up time went like this today: 3 minutes reading Scribbit on Motherhood in Alaska. A one minute wait to be told “huh?” by Technorati, telling me a blog I’d read yesterday and favourited doesn’t actually exist. And the other 7 minutes waiting for pages to load.

Ok first vegetables, then indigestion, so working backwards we’ll we get there eventually - lips.

In first place, and these stopped me in my tracks and prompted me to research this initial “best of” survey, is Portrait of a Lady by Rogier van der Weyden, the leading lip artist in the mid-C15th Netherlands as far as I’m concerned. Pursed, plump, perfect.

Albrecht Durer was a fabulous artist, and will definitely feature in other body parts in art blogs; hair, moustaches, and great hats, for starters. Today, I nominate his lips from the famous series of self-portraits completed in his late 20’s.

To finish today’s list, Russian Expressionist painter, Marianne von Werefkin. She’s described in my guide to Great Women Masters of Art, variously as ‘muse’ and as ‘a sort of priestess’. I, for one, want to know more. She painted on cardboard and didn’t date many of her works. This wonderful red-lipped Self-Portrait is from around 1908-1910.

Add your contenders in comments.

Blossoming and Burgeoning

Why on earth am I going to post on vegetables?

Because my children plan to inscribe their mother’s headstone with my mantra “Eat your greenery” and I’m reading Jane Grigson’s English Food, that’s why.

In last night’s chapter on vegetables Jane got in impressive cultural references to Shakespeare, W.S Gilbert and the metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell, who wrote of his ‘vegetable love’ to his coy mistress at a time when vegetable meant the whole burgeoning and blossoming natural world and not a shrivelled grey green knob nestling in a plastic bag at the bottom of the freezer.

Only two vegetables are actually native to Britain, sea kale and samphire, both found on sea shore shingle and cliffs, and both of which most people now would find harder to recognise than kohlrabi and celeriac.

We usually holiday on the Suffolk coast, and on one of our walks along the beach last summer I suggested picking and trying to cook some of the seakale, which looked to me pretty abundant on the shore just above the tide’s reach. Dismay turned to triumph when my girls learnt from their dog-walking companions that sea kale is a protected species so no nipping along the beach instead of to the Co-op. Oh, and by the way, it isn’t sea kale anyway, it’s sea poppy. So there, Mum. Can we have fish fingers and peas?

But the coast still isn’t clear; I’ve discovered sea poppy is good for coughs, so here we are in January, flu and colds everywhere. Maybe I'm on to something.

Pictured: sea poppy. Nasty. Poisonous roots. Don't feed to children.

Cabaret time

Today's break from peering at my own art work on the computer screen, to peer at other peoples’, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which has just opened an exhibition featuring German art between the wars. Some great faces, poses and clothes plus one of my favourites, Otto Dix.

There's a long link but it should be painless if you run them together:

http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?

OccurrenceId={AA365F9E-5F3E-441C-AD87-171A3A9D7AA4}

If you liked the movie Cabaret, then I think you’ll like this.

Virtual Star-gazing

Going to galleries has always been one of my great spare time pleasures and online I like to do the same –virtual gallery gazing – where you can take your coffee in with you. Don’t know why I hadn’t found this particular gallery before but tonight, while my daughters were watching a movie we’d all seen (shall we say, several, times) before, I sidled up to the computer in the corner and instead got hooked into The Guardian’s online picture slideshows.

While the dvd swirled across its Bollywood fantasy (Bride and Prejudice, for the record and 3 0ut of 5) I visited an exhibition of photographs taken throughout the States during the Depression, then surveyed a collection of pictures found in people’s attics, including Rockwells and Pollocks. (Mental note to explore my own glory holes. Might find something I can get a few pounds for on e-Bay- just like everyone else is trying to do). Next up a selection of really very good UK graffiti, collected in response to John Reid’s move to crack down on street art, followed by a photo-survey of Madonna’s career from schoolgirl to eye of the storm. Elvis and The Beatles are there too.

Now hot-foot to you. & oh, dear reader, she married him.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/gallery/front

Hot new reads for the beach.

Sri Lanka uses child fighters.
‘ Air attacks kill 16 civilians’ claim Tigers.
Sri Lanka minister in blast.
Familiar headlines we ignore daily on the ongoing and escalating fighting in Sri Lanka.

Would these alternatives encourage you to read on?
2006 Man Booker Prize winner, Kiran Desai absconds to tropical paradise with travel writer William Dalrymple.
Writers flock to Sri Lankan World Heritage Site to celebrate life and love.

And if you did, you’d discover that Sri Lanka is more than a series of doleful statistics. As Mark Twain said, “it is beautiful!” and yes, it is “most sumptuously tropical.”

I know this first hand, as I lived on the outskirts of Colombo with my family for the year 2002- 2003. Today my Colombo-based friend Sue sent me an e-mail about her plans for next week – big surprise, attending a literary festival based in the southern town of Galle.
Just two years ago Galle was hit horribly hard by the Tsunami, but even as reconstruction continues and the civil war escalates, Sri Lankans are trying to make life there worth living. Starting on 10th January, Kiran Desai, Mark Tully, Madhur Jaffrey, Victoria Glendinning and my favourite, William Dalrymple, join with many other writers internationally known as well as local, to put Sri Lanka on the map for all the right reasons.

Sri Lanka’s not all bad news.

The Mess and I

I have this obsession about coffee tables. I wonder if you share it, because no one in my family seems to.

You see, I like to be able to put the tray with coffee pot, cups, perhaps even a plate of biscuits, down directly onto the coffee table without detouring via a precarious perch on the sofa or even down as far as the floor first, while with the non-tray holding hand I clear off the newspapers, the books, the half- finished craft projects, the tree decorations that have fallen off, the homeless dvds, the …well, you get the idea.

Coffee tables are for coffee cups, say I. And I had a little tantrum to that effect on Christmas Eve as I brought a tray of coffee, complete with mince pies and had to fight to land them safely in the living room. My family, even including visiting Grandpa, who should hardly have been included in my tirade, jumped smartly to it and lo! the coffee table was bare.

I was a little shame-faced though about stamping my foot over such a minor irritation, and next time I was online I felt a New York Times article called “Saying Yes to Mess” was calling out to me. It made me laugh out loud and I even showed it to Grandpa so we could chuckle together about January 2007 being Get Organized Month (in America.) and about the $5.9 billion, yes, billion dollars, the US spent on ‘home-organising’ products in 2005. Coffee table incident aside, I will not be joining in. For at heart, I go along with some of the people quoted in the NY Times article, to whit:

Life is too short and there are more urgent things to worry about. As Rabbi Irwin Kula says “Order can be profane and life-diminishing.” My daughters would agree with that, and so would the Rabbi’s own daughter. He tells how he and his wife were freaking out about the state of their 15 year old’s room. “Suddenly, I see in all the piles the dress she wore to her first dance and an earring she wore to her bar mitzvah. She’s so trusting her journal is wide open on the floor and there are photo-booth pictures of here friends strewn everywhere. ‘I said, Omigod, her cup overflows!’ And we started to laugh.”

I also liked the quotes from a self-styled (and one hopes tongue-in-cheek) ‘mess analyst’, that mess “has resonance; it can vibrate beyond its confines and connect to the larger world. It was the overall scumminess of Alexander Fleming’s laboratory that led to his discovery of penicillin….Mess tells a story, whereas, neat – well, neat is a closed book.”

My daughters still quake as I approach the coffee table, and race to clear the clutter off it, but with my new improved approach I shall now watch the narrative of the rich variety of my family’s hobbies and personalities resonate before me and plonk my coffee cup elsewhere.