Good morning,

Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas on the pocket squares for women issue. Overall I’m going to describe the feedback as “overwhelmingly positive”, and to celebrate please enjoy these excellent pictures of Anne Scott-James in a suit.

Here’s Amy Meckler, a poet I’ve been enjoying a lot lately:

Semiotics for My Father

What grief to learn

what I call stars

are suns on other planets,

that their names depend

wholly on proximity.

Like the woman I call mother

my father calls your mother.

Your meaning me.

Me being that great distance.

http://www.amymeckler.com/#!amy-the-poet/c20tn

And here’s Ursula Franklin, who:

• Is the reason we know with greater certainty the age of things found in archaeological digs
• Had two children in a era with no mat leave and, for want of a better phrase, leaned in like you wouldn’t believe
• Is incredible

The arrangement of the parts to make a whole, and how the properties of the whole are not just the sum of the parts, but profoundly affected by the respective positioning of the parts to form the whole. That was a sort of [interest] that has stayed with me and [transferred] very easily into the political and the social things. So it’s all the back and forth of life—it’s always been navigating around a standing structure and changing them so as to change their properties.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/amazing-structure-a-conversation-with-ursula-franklin/284349/?single_page=true

This week a friend (and subscriber! hi) sent me this article about name changes on marriage. It reminded me of a conversation with a colleague about naming traditions where her father was born, in the Congo. It’s more normal than not for a large group of siblings to all have different surnames, because surnames are a thing that is chosen – they’ll speak about the conditions under which a child was born, the day a child was born, or something else to do with that time. These names are often chosen by an aunt or an uncle rather than the parents, because whilst families don’t share the same name, the definition of who is and is not close family is a lot wider. Of course there are a lot of naming traditions in the world, but this one is particularly interesting to think with because right from the start it places all your names as a part of what you are – a lot of family are involved, but it’s the decision on the name and not the name itself that is shared.

I'm way off my "minimal commentary" brief here. Have a lovely day,

Alex.