I'm very into octopuses. When you run a feminist newsletter, there aren't a tremendous number of opportunities to write about octopuses; when such a story comes along you tend to grasp it with all eight arms. Then scuttle away and guard it greedily in your rocky little ocean lair.
ANYWAY imagine my delight on finding this story about the Kenyan women who are returning their coast's reefs to health, creating a haven for octopuses and lobsters:
Nazo Yaro, who is also part of the marine conservation effort, says educating fishermen to stop indiscriminate fishing, especially in vulnerable areas of the reef, has also helped. “Lobsters and octopuses are back as a result,” she says triumphantly.
Here's some cutting edge octopus research from Chelsea Bennice. For a long time scientists have thought of the octopus as a solitary critter, but recently – I mean really recently, the last few years – researchers have discovered an octopus city off the coast of Australia where they collaborate in building walls and such with things they find in their environment. So Dr Bennice is working on octopus coexistence:
Octopus coexistence is understudied. My research further identifies methods of coexistence which can provide insight to conservation strategies to maintain octopus diversity, an important group in many marine food webs and not to mention in the top ten list of animals people want to see on a dive.
Have you ever seen an octopus on a dive. I would love to see your photographs and hear your stories if yes.
🦑🦑🦑
Finally, you better believe that the female octopus gets the respect she deserves in her relationships:
Male octopuses have a big problem: female octopuses. Each male wants to mate and pass on his genes to a new generation. The trouble is, the female is often larger and hungrier than he is, so there is a constant risk that, instead of mating, the female will strangle him and eat him.
Happy Feminist Friday! I think you are going to love today's newsletter, it's all about women musical innovators and is based on a book I am reading right now, Sounds Like London. Let's get cracking.
We start with jazz dancer Marie Bryant. What's cool about Marie Bryant is that there are many clips of her amazing dancing online. FEEL THE JOY RIGHT HERE:
“I’ve built a dancing style of my own that can best be described as ‘controlled release.’ This consists in finding the natural line in each body and the favorite ways it likes to move about — then controlling these movements.” – Marie Bryant
Up next, do you want to know more about the only woman to have a UK #1 hit with an instrumental track? This newsletter was founded on the basis that the answer to that question is going to be yes; let me introduce Winifred Atwill, multi instrumentalist and also the first black artist to (a) top the UK charts and (b) sell a million records. Here she is playing one of her hits, The Poor People of Paris. You get a free snooker fact with this one, too:
Atwell moved to America in the early '40s to study the piano with Alexander Borovsky and later to London, where she studied at the Royal Academy of Music and became the first female pianist to be awarded the highest grade for musicianship. Supplementing her income while studying, she played ragtime at various London clubs and was spotted at the Casino Theatre by entrepreneur Bernard Delfont, who signed her to a recording contract with Decca Records.
Finally, what about Maya Angelou! I did not know before I read this book that Maya Angelou sang calypso before settling into literary and activist life. What a woman. Enjoy this video of her performing in a film, Calypso Heat Wave:
A former drama and dance student at the California Labor School, Maya Angelou worked as a calypso dancer to support herself and her son. She became a member of the applauded Alvin Ailey Dance Company and along with choreographer Alvin Ailey, she formed a dance group called Al and Rita. At the time, she was known as Rita Johnson. She toured Europe and African in the musical “Porgy and Bess” from 1954 to 1955 and in 1957, was cast in an off-Broadway production of “Calypso Heatwave.” Also that year, she made her feature acting debut in “Calypso Heat Wave” and released her debut album, “Miss Calypso.” Angelou was also spotted singing in New York nightclubs in the late 1950s.
What is up? Hope you're feeling super this Friday morning or afternoon. Wherever you are on the "feeling super" scale, though, I have some lovely things for you to read that will soothe and enliven in equal measure.
This is, I suppose, an old fashioned mixed bag of a Fem Fri, because the theme is, things I enjoy reading and will read again when I want to cheer up. Maybe they will be good for you as well! Let's start with Elif Batuman's long, detailed, hyperliterate article on "programme fiction". Whatever your feelings on literary fiction there is much here to think about and enjoy. Plus it is funny:
There is no arguing with taste, and there are doubtless people in the world who enjoy ‘the virtuosity of Butler’s performance of narrative mobility’. To me, such ‘performances’ are symptomatic of the large-scale replacement of books I would want to read by rich, multifaceted explorations whose ‘amazing audacity’ I’m supposed to admire in order not to be some kind of jerk.
Here's Brandi Jensen, writing about an experience I have, not just frequently, but almost every day of my adult life. Enjoy Everything Should Take Twenty Minutes:
I realized this recently when I was once again running late to an event — only one train ride away — because I had assumed it would take me 20 minutes to get there. I was bewildered and then upset that it took 40. There were no facts or previous experiences or reasons behind this assumption, just the bone-deep certainty that it should take 20 minutes, because that it the correct time for everything.
I've also been reading and listening to a lot of poetry recently. Here is a poem that I keep to hand to enjoy reading and thinking about; via the lovely newsletter Pome, here is an extract from Lorna Crozier's This Is a Love Poem without Restraint:
I hope you're well! I started this week with a theme, and then I had a weird if still related idea, and that's my way of saying I hope you enjoy Fem Fri this morning.
The theme is, here are some really great cover versions by women of works by men! Let's start with Kelsey Lu, whose gig I went to on Wednesday and who has a stellar cover version of I'm Not In Love:
Here's a perennial classic; I love this School of Seven Bells cover version of Lil Wayne's How To Love. When I come home from work at the end of the day this is the song I want to listen to the most often:
Finally, here's something I've been enjoying on Twitter recently; Sophie Devlins's fun account @tswifteliot13 which combines beautifully the lyrics of Taylor Swift with the poetry of TS Eliot. If you're wondering how well that works, the answers are (a) extremely and (b) stop wondering now, because I have reconstructed The Love Song of Tay Alfred Prufrock from the tweets of @tswifteliot13 and read it aloud for you to enjoy here:
It's November! Let's remember what's great about November – fireworks obviously if you are British, but also, it's getting cold in the Northern hemisphere and you get to get your big duvet out and snuggle under it. So please enjoy a Fem Fri that is all about quilts and duvets. Get yourself a nice cup of tea and cuddle up.
We start with Ruth Singer's Criminal Quilts Project, which you can see in London this weekend! She has made a series of quilts based on women prisoners in Stafford prison, mainly in the Victorian era. This video has lots about her process and the source, please enjoy the whole thing (it's a bit under five mins). Lots about the lives of working class women, for those of you who enjoyed the Sheilah Graham episode a couple of weeks ago:
"As I stitch, I'm thinking about these women and their lives as people. But also, the act of doing something very slow, I've got the luxury and the privilege that I can do that. But they'd be doing needlework as part of their prison labour, and wouldn't have had the same experience of it."
Here's some huge quilt art news; UC Berkeley Art Museum have received a bequest of 500 Rosie Lee Tompkins quilts. I love this article about her work because every quotation in it, including the one from the artist herself, is an expression of amazement:
[S]he was dismayed when her work was about to be exhibited. After some consideration, she adopted the pseudonym Rosie Lee Tompkins to stay out of the public eye. Once her work was shown, everyone wanted to know who she was. Deeply religious, she felt that she was the instrument of God, who designed her patchworks. “I wonder how I did that!” she once exclaimed in astonishment at her own work. “It was the Lord that helped me.”
Okay, maybe you're reading this now in the warm but you need to go out in the cold soon. Here's an innovative idea; never stop wearing a duvet? No really this is an option. Enjoy this article about turning IKEA bedspreads (and curtains) into period dresses! Also included is how to identify accurate period fabric:
Accurate printed cottons are very difficult to find. Usually the pattern is too dense and the colors are a bit off. There are endless bolts of quilter's cottons at Joanns, repleat with cabbage roses or rainbow-colored Jacobeanesque flowers, none of them quite right. So it is indeed surprising when you run across a shockingly accurate print on a duvet cover or a set of curtains while strolling the showrooms at Ikea. Ikea has a curiously long history of reproducing 18th century Swedish textiles and even furniture.
Here's a good question for you to ask a date or a co-worker you don't know very well; if you could do anything at all for a job, what would it be? Of course for the answer to be interesting, you need to put some walls around the question, I would suggest:
Assume you'll be paid the same money you are now. E.g. if you are an investment banker who dreams of being a master stonemason, you'll be paid investment banker money. If you are a master stonemason who dreams of being an investment banker, you'll be paid master stonemason money.
Assume that what you need to know, you will magically know as soon as you decide. This is not about how long it would take for you to be a good locksmith – it's about finding out what you consider appealing about the career of locksmithing.
My answer is "forensic accountant" because it seems very relaxing to chase numbers around all day and very rewarding to catch bad guys. But for a long time before now, my answer was "archaeologist" because it seemed both relaxing to brush artefacts with little brushes and rewarding to find old things.
All of this, anyway, is an extremely long introduction to today's theme, which is archaeology. Sorry for those of you who thought it was going to be about forensic accountancy. Maybe next week.
Did you know that Agatha Christie used archaeology to get over heartbreak? What a versatile woman. Just getting out there with her little brushes and not even thinking about that dude.
When mystery writer Agatha Christie wrote, “We found the woman in the well! They brought her in on a piece of sacking, a great mass of mud,” she was not describing the murder victim in her latest bestseller. […] The woman in question was not a person at all, but an artifact retrieved as part of an archaeological dig. Christie was describing the ivory mask, now nicknamed the Mona Lisa of Nimrud, which was discovered in 1952 during the excavations that were being carried out in the ancient Assyrian capital of Calah in modern-day Iraq—known now by the name of Nimrud.
Of course you don't need to go very far to enjoy the thrill of close interaction with the past. Or at least you don't if you are based in London. Enjoy this interview with Lara Maiklem, mudlark, on the things the Thames washes up:
Much of the foreshore in central London is covered with building rubble: over 2,000 years of destruction and rebuilding, from Boudicca to the blitz. Ancient fragments of Roman heating systems lie among the Tudor bricks and medieval floor tiles – sometimes a tile turns up showing the paw print of a long-forgotten dog or cat.
And some archaeological finds teach us amazing things about the women of the past. Do you want to read about a Viking warrior woman? I really hope so because that is what I have right here:
Viking lore had long hinted that not all warriors were men. One early tenth-century Irish text tells of Inghen Ruaidh (“Red Girl”), a female warrior who led a Viking fleet to Ireland. And Zori notes that numerous Viking sagas, such as the 13th-century Saga of the Volsungs, tell of “shield-maidens” fighting alongside male warriors.
Isn't it a joy when you start a book that you think is going to be "fine" or "interesting" or even "required reading" and it turns out to be utterly charming? Because that is the experience I had this week with Sheilah Graham's autobiography. I started reading the book because it's required F. Scott Fitzgerald reading – she was his mistress for the last four years of his life – but also I was delighted by her and her times and her funny personality.
Today's Fem Friday showcases some of my favourite extracts from her autobiography, which is called Beloved Infidel, don't let that put you off. It is out of print (I will be writing to Persephone Books today to get this wrong righted ✍️✍️✍️) but you can easily find a copy on Abebooks. Onwards into the life of Sheilah Graham!
Life in an East End orphanage:
Bright lights, big city:
A bright future in toothbrush sales:
"I pondered this for a little while" is a nice clause to read at this point in the paragraph.
Plus ça change on the London stage:
(she comes out of this one just fine!)
Learning to make small talk with Lady Diana Cooper:
"this a funny piece of cheese, isn't it"
Lord Beaverbrook writes an article on her behalf:
Do let me know about a significant time when you encountered a man and thought, "This is Napoleon". I am excited to hear your stories.
Constructive feedback for F. Scott Fitzgerald:
I have not even told you guys half of it, for example, her story of wetting herself in a millionaire's car. It's all mostly played for laughs, including her friendship with the Mitfords and her presentation at Court. Absolute belter.
Happy Friday! How is it going? Great I hope. I have a very abstract theme for today's Fem Fri, which is the idea of attention.
This came to me when I was watching Leave No Trace, which is a tremendous Debra Granik film about a father and daughter, because one thing I really loved about it was how much attention the camera paid to its surroundings. Andrea Arnold, another great film director and woman, does that as well, and I really enjoy in both cases this idea of someone making a film like they live their lives, constantly aware of the flickering at the margins. Here is an interview with Debra Granik where she talks about that:
You see the characters, and you try to conjure the environment. All those descriptions play out and I thought “gosh this is a really textured and rich environment, very dramatic.” There are these dark firs that are so tall, with moss, heavy rain. And a family that lived undetected next to a big city. I was filled with a sense of wonder about how that could be filmed, but I also got the sense that it would be very textured and beautiful.
The British director seems to harbor a great fondness for the invertebrate set, cutting away to a close-up of a moth here, a creepy-crawly there. Arnold’s films are marked by involvement with the natural world, but bugs are her favorite, and they show up between and during scenes to evoke moods and characters’ feelings.
Both Fishtank and Leave No Trace are great movies to watch tonight if you are planning on staying in.
You also see the idea of attention in this article about the Italian women of library music. If you don't know what library music is, it's basically stock music for hipsters, it came out on vinyl in the 1970s and production companies bought it. Then they started giving it to charity shops and people started collecting it. Allow me to introduce Maria-Teresa Luciani, innovator, and the sounds of her city:
Her truly outstanding (and equally scarce) Sounds Of The City album […] stands up as a rare example of her tape-manipulation music and loop-based song structures, using natural melodies and rhythms in what can only be described as sonic architecture. Utilising theoretical methods (which would later be considered “industrial music”) by taking a portable Uher tape recorder into urban environments, Luciani’s sensitive approach to sound would render an unlikely set of spacious, melodic compositions and dream-like, mechanical, hallucinogenic soundscapes – quite unlike anything outside the realms of Delia Derbyshire and Basil Kirchin’s self-initiated projects – while retaining a strong Italian personality due to the album’s domestic source material.
Finally, moving from media to history, I love this project that shows what you learn when you pay true attention to a beach:
"I can see people's lives, people's homes amongst this rubble," said Ms Marsh, who is compiling a research project for her degree, at the University of Durham, based on her searches at the beach.
How are you doing, is everything alright? I hope so, I've had a decent week but also looking forward quite a lot to the weekend. If you're in a similar sort of place, I hope you'll enjoy today's Fem Fri getting you five minutes closer to Friday evening.
When I am out and about, maybe on holiday or maybe in a cultural institution, I take photos of plaques and things to remind me of cool women I see commemorated. Sometimes these women get a bit of a Fem Fri devoted to them, and some are really cool but I can't find a theme, so today is a bit of a clearinghouse for photos I've taken and not used yet.
Let's start with Elizabeth Montagu, bluestocking. I look this photo in York, if you want to go there and look at it it's quite near the cathedral:
Elizabeth became one of the three leading literary or bluestocking hostesses, together with Elizabeth Vesey and Frances Boscawen. She started by inviting people to literary breakfasts and by 1760, she was hosting large evening assemblies where intellectual conversation and not cards was the central attraction. According to Fanny Burney, the chairs were arranged in a semi-circle in order to facilitate discussion.
Staying with women of strong political views, here's a photo I took in the Royal Albert Hall. I can't find anything about this online but very much enjoy the story of protest via weird untraceable noises:
Finally, from London Zoo, meet Joan Proctor. She was tragically short-lived but achieved a tremendous amount; calming extremely dangerous and strong Komodo Dragons,designing bits of the zoo, capturing a brown bear. She has two species of reptile named after her. If you are ever in charge of naming a new reptile, allow me to commend Joan Proctor to you:
As the first female Curator of Reptiles at London Zoo, Joan Procter attained considerable celebrity status in a short time. At her home in St. Mark's Square, near the Zoo, she kept a pet chimpanzee, called Johnnie. She kept several live reptiles in her drawing room, including dangerous snakes (in glass enclosures). The image of an unusually interesting young woman responsible for exotic and dangerous animals was promoted in the popular press on both Britain and the United States. Joan Procter published widely in scientific books and journals.
How are you doing? How was your week? However you answer that question I hope you are looking forward to spending some time together right now. Firstly, many thanks to everyone who was kind about my cool project and/or signal boosted it on the internet. Today is not about projects or modernist literature though! It's about seabirds.
This year, the best thing I saw at the proms was a part of Prom 71 – Stevie Wishart's piece The Last Dance?, a tribute to the hooded grebe of Argentina. Part of her piece was a sample of the incredible weird sound of this endangered seabird. The audience did not expect to hear samples (also the hooded grebe sounds incredibly weird) so there was a minor stir of people shifting in their seats and looking sideways at one another to check what was going on. My first thought was, why have one of the orchestra left their phone on sound, that's so embarrassing for them that their very odd ringtone is being amplified.
Unfortunately the piece itself is not online, but here's footage anyway of Stevie Wishart talking about the incredibly weird sound of the hurdy-gurdy:
Now we come to a favourite Fem Fri topic – mythology, and specifically the myth of Sedna the North Atlantic sea goddess. Sedna was a normal girl who staunchly refused marriage from a series of men in her village, but allowed herself to be whisked away by a mysterious masked man who promised her a better life. Unfortunately he was a fulmar in disguise and the life he could give her was not better! The rest of the story is pretty gruesome, you can read it at the below link and also enjoy this lovely rendering of Sedna by Ningeokuluk Teevee, Inuit artist.
Back to women who definitely existed, how about Esther Cullen! She is the reason we know what kittiwake behaviours mean, having spent hours and hours observing them in the 1950s. She was at the forefront of a new science of animal behaviour:
In the 1920s, the behaviour of fish, birds and mammals, including humans, was still regarded as fluid and fleeting. An aggressive thrust, an intimidating stance on a territorial boundary or a seductive pose in a mating ceremony was seen but briefly, and a moment later had evanesced into a new behavioural pattern. By observing animals with infinite patience for sustained periods, behavioural biologists such as the British scientist Esther Cullen eventually established that this was a delusion.
"I pondered this for a little while" is a nice clause to read at this point in the paragraph.
(she comes out of this one just fine!)
"this a funny piece of cheese, isn't it"
Do let me know about a significant time when you encountered a man and thought, "This is Napoleon". I am excited to hear your stories.
