a smile for the new year

This little bookcase without many books has been sitting in this location since I moved upstairs in 2016 when Jeanette moved in downstairs. It had been out on the upstairs landing where it accumulated a variety of things, from old lace from grandmother's stuff to Aunt Dora's velvet-cased opera glasses to cups of pens and pencils to old eyeglass cases to miscellaneous parts for massage equipment. And a couple-three books. I thought (without thinking new year's resolution) that it was time to toss the detritus and take care of the good stuff. I picked up one of the books, plain medium blue hardbound, and opened it. It was the 1931 (4th) edition of Enduring passion: further new contributions to the solution of sex difficulties being the continuation of Married love by Marie Carmichael Stopes.

Mrs Stopes's book Married love comes up twice during Downton Abbey: once when Mrs Hughes's familiarity with Mrs Stopes's Married love is used to squelch Edna's tale of being pregnant (Season 4) and again when Anna helps Mary with birth control when she's off for an adventure with Gillingham (Season 5). I don't remember knowing about Mrs Stopes before Downton Abbey but my dad did have some book on married love that he shared at some point in my youth. I remember the book not looking very sensational and this book I came across today does not look very sensational either.

As I thumbed through Enduring passion, I noticed there was a newspaper clipping that had significantly foxed a couple pages in the "The 'change' in women" chapter (that chapter just precedes the one on "The 'change' in men"). The clipping looked a bit like the New York times and is headlined "'Liberty' heading for San Francisco." A production of Austin Strong's play "which has knocked for several years on Broadway's door" was headed for a production in San Francisco, to be produced by Catherine Sibley and Richard Aldrich and perhaps to star Pierre Fresnay (Lafayette), Olivia de Haviland (Mme Lafayette), and Charles Waldron (Washington). Cannot help but think of Hamilton with those characters.

The clipping is missing any date or context but I googled what I had and found the text in the New York times for January 19, 1939. The headlines in the version online are different perhaps indicating varying editions of the paper. The article is in the Amusements section. There is an "L" near the page number which may indicate the Late edition.

All this made me smile. I just turned over the clipping. Oh. The article on the verso is headlined "Birth control rift ended by merger." This turned the smile into a chuckle. That clipping made perfect sense. Now I wish that there was a sign of whose book this had been. Gram and Aunt Dora's folks had both died by 1939. Both Gram and Aunt Dora were widows in the late 1930s. It is possible that the book has not been in the family house all along. It may take longer to clear off that bookshelf than I imagined.

the books I read in 2021

I was about halfway through The overstory by Richard Powers when 2021 began. David Brooks called 2021 "shapeless" on the PBS NewsHour yesterday and I'll agree. With the pandemic limiting travel, you would think that one would get more books read. Not me, in 2021. But these are the books I read, with some comments. A mix of fiction and nonfiction, as usual.

• Zami: a new spelling of my name, by Audre Lorde (1982). Selected by Eric Cervini for his reading group. I read the book but didn't participate in the discussion group.
• The ministry of utmost happiness, by Arundhati Roy (2017). It took me quite a while to get through this book even though I am intrigued by India.
• The girl of his dreams, by Donna Leon (2008). Folks tell me I should read Donna Leon mysteries since I am so in love with Italy. This one didn't grab me. I have read several Camilleri mysteries set in Sicily and enjoyed them much more. It's not that I don't like Venice but Leon's style is more name-dropping than deeply place-centric.
• A legacy by Sybille Bedford (1956, NYRB Classics 2015)
• I have something to tell you, by Chasten Buttigieg (2020). Pretty enjoyable, a quick read.
• Flights, by Olga Tokarczuk (published in Polish in 2007, U.S. paperback 2018)
• On the red hill: where four lives fell into place, by Mike Parker (2019). Listed in one of the brief reviews in the NYTBR. Older gay couple, younger gay couple, mentoring in life.
• Villa of delirium, by Adrien Goetz (published in French in 2017, paperback in English 2020). Read about this in my indexing and quite enjoyed it. Good sense of the soul of a dwelling.
• Invisible man by Ralph Ellison (1952, still in print). Compelling.
• The yellow house by Sarah M. Broom (2019). Set in New Orleans, always a draw for me.
• The Dutch house by Ann Patchett (2019). Another house book. Not my favorite Patchett but good enough.
• When Brooklyn was queer by Hugh Ryan (2019). Quite a treat.
• Becoming Duchess Goldblatt: a memoir (2020). The premise is intriguing and the story well told.
• Italian journey by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (published in German in 1816, Penguin classics 1982). Journal based on his letters from Italy. I really enjoyed this book, especially when he was traveling, not so much when he was arguing with his editor/publisher.
• Alec by William di Canzio (2021). Inspired by Maurice by E.M. Forster, continues the story focusing on Alec Scudder, the gamekeeper that Maurice falls in love with.
• Gay bar: why we went out by Jeremy Atherton Lin (2021). Enjoyable but more of a memoir than a sociological study. I was expecting the latter.
• The bright lands by John Fram (2020). Gripping story that goes a little crazy at the end.
• Art as therapy by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong (2013). This came highly recommended but I found it annoying. The authors emphasized (the title should have clued me in) how art can specifically work therapeutically. Yes, but their approach was specific in saying that such and such an art work could cure or ease a specific condition. Too explicit for me. It reminded me of iconographers who describe every object in a medieval painting and ignore the aesthetics.
• Lights on--clothes off: confessions of an unabashed exhibitionist by Stuart Schwartz (2021)

And now it's a week from the beginning of 2022. I am reading Some reasons for travelling to Italy by Australian architect Peter Wilson. Another book that came up in my indexing. The cover illustration is a riff on the Tischbein painting of Goethe in the Campagna. The unriffed-upon painting appears on the cover of the Penguin edition of Italian journey that I read earlier in the year. The Wilson book is full of small illustrations, perhaps a reference to the original 1966 edition of Complexity and contradiction in architecture by Robert Venturi. The book is a real joy to hold and read. And it's Italy.

Wikidata communities of practice

At an LD4 Wikidata Affinity Group session this afternoon, Christa Strickler mentioned that Atla (formerly known as the American Theological Library Association) was supporting a new Wikidata Religion & Theology Community of Practice. We art folks have been having sessions of a similar sort for art metadata but have not called it a Community of Practice. I like the term. I googled to see if it was a common name for Wikidata communities of practice. I found the Wikidata page for community of practice. Why be a simple one of those when you can be, as they say in German: praxisbezogene Gemeinschaft von Personen, die informell miteinander verbunden sind und ähnlichen Aufgaben gegenüberstehen

separated at birth: the lady doth not protest

When I saw Lady Rosse, Antony Armstrong-Jones's mother in Season 2 of The Crown, the actress was so familiar but I could not place her. She rides to Westminster Abbey with her son for his wedding to Princess Margaret. As they ride, he excoriates her for not loving him as much as her other son(s).

Checking the credits, I noted the actress's name is Anna Chancellor. Off to IMDb to look at her list of roles. But, of course, she played Lady Anstruther in Downton Abbey. 

Lady Anstruther stops by at Downton Abbey, partly for a tryst with her former employee Jimmy. He is now a footman at Downton Abbey. That is naturally the night that Lady Edith throws the book and her bedroom catches on fire. Lady Anstruther gently tells Lord Grantham that she'll leave before breakfast.

Ladies and abbeys. Both delightfully juicy roles, juicily played by Anna Chancellor.