houseboatonstyx

The Case of the Missing Romani American History:

The history of Romani Americans is missing. Although the experiences of other marginalized and immigrant American groups are now well-represented in mainstream historical scholarship, Romani Americans remain absent from American history. This absence has detrimental effects to Romani Americans who are placed outside historical time. It also harms scholars whose work could benefit from the placement of Romani people in the histories they tell.

A ‘new Canterbury Tale’: George Smythe, Frederick Romilly and England’s ‘last political duel’:

In the early hours of 20 May 1852, six weeks before polling in that summer’s general election, two MPs travelled from London to woodland outside Weybridge in a bid to settle a quarrel provoked by the unravelling of electioneering arrangements in the double-member constituency of Canterbury. Frederick Romilly, the borough’s sitting Liberal MP, had issued a challenge to his Canterbury colleague George Smythe, whose political allegiances fluctuated and who had notoriously been embroiled in four previous prospective duels. The pair, accompanied by their seconds, who were also politicians, exchanged shots before departing unscathed. None of the participants faced prosecution but neither Smythe nor Romilly was re-elected.

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Do not foxes have the right to enjoy the facilities of the public library system? London library forced to briefly close after fox 'made itself comfortable' inside - this was a London library, rather than the London Library.

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Two entries in the People B Weird category:

Sylvanian Families' legal battle over TikTok drama:

Sylvanian Families has become embroiled in a legal battle with a TikTok creator who makes comedic videos of the children's toys in dark and debauched storylines. The fluffy creatures, launched in 1985, have become a childhood classic. But the Sylvanian Drama TikTok account sees them acting out adult sketches involving drink, drugs, cheating, violence and even murder.

And

I'm 16 and live entirely like it's the 1940s (I bet he's not eating as though rationing is still in force, what?):

"I liked the clothing, how they dressed, and the style," Lincoln explained. "Just the elegance of how everyone was and acted... with the time of the war, everyone had to come together, everyone had to fight, and everyone had to survive together.
"Most people back then said it was scary, but it was quite fun to live then, and they could go out, help each other and apparently there's not that much stuff today that is similar to what that wartime experience was."
Lincoln said he loved the music of the time, including Henry Hall, Jack Payne and Ambrose & His Orchestra.
The teenager's wardrobe was also entirely made up of clothes from the era, which he said he preferred to modern-day clothes.
He even cycles on a 1939 bike when out and about researching and finding items for his collection.

“They were lost to their passion and their lust” - it's actually Buddhist monks in Thailand, but this is not a scenario unknown in the annals of Christian monasticism in Europe, hmmmmm?

The disappearance of a respected monk from his Buddhist temple in central Bangkok has revealed a sex scandal that has rocked Thailand, with allegations of blackmail, lavish gifts and a string of dismissals raising questions about the money and power enjoyed by the country’s orange-robed clergy. Investigations into the whereabouts of senior monk Phra Thep Wachirapamok unexpectedly led police to a woman who the police suspect conducted intimate relationships with several senior monks, and then blackmailed them to keep the liaisons quiet.

Monks in Thailand receive monthly food allowances of between 2,500-34,200 baht (£57-785), depending on their rank, but temples and monks also receive donations. The latter can prove especially lucrative for monks of higher stature, who might be given tens of thousands of baht, or even more, by wealthy individuals.

But this is just Damn Weird:

A group of seminarians studying at Denver’s St. John Vianney Theological Seminary were taken on the trip in January 2024 by then-vice rector of the seminary, Fr. John Nepil, during which they were woken in the middle of the night and invited individually to swear a “blood oath” in a ceremony involving a dagger and a man in a yeti costume. During the bizarre ceremony, video of which was sent to The Pillar by multiple sources in the archdiocese, seminarians were told to scream as if in pain before returning with a bloodied cloth wrapped around their hand and their mouths taped shut, to a room where others waited for their turn to be brought in.

[T]he idea of this prank came from the man hosting the seminarians and the seminary staff on the ski trip, whom he confirmed was the person in the yeti costume. “This Catholic man is well known in the town and is regularly asked to appear at events in this costume,” Nepil said. “He has done this specific prank many times with family, friends, and other guests who stay at his ski cabin. At no time was there any risk of physical harm, but in hindsight, and even though the host wanted to do this, it should have never happened.”

(Is the yeti actually a fursona, we ask.)

What I read

Finished Long Island Compromise, and okay, didn't quite go where I was expecting but didn't pull a really amazing twist either.

Alison Espach, The Wedding People (2024), which somebody seemed enthusiastic about somewhere on social media while mentioning it was at 99p. Well, I am always there for Women's Midlife Narratives but this struck me as a bit over-confected plotwise and I was not entirely there for that ending.

Latest Literary Review (with, I may as well repeat, My Letter About Rebecca West).

Simon Brett, Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse (The Major Bricket Mysteries #1) - Simon Brett is definitely hit and miss for me and some of his more recent series have been on the 'miss' side, come back Charles Paris or the ladies of Fethering. But this one, if not quite in the Paris class, was at least readable.

On the go

I have got a fair way in to Jonny Sweet, The Kellerby Code (2024) but I'm really bogging down. It's an old old story (didn't R Rendell as B Vine do a version of this) and for someone who cites the lineage Sweet does, his prose is horribly overwrought.

I started Rev Richard Coles, Murder at the Monastery (Canon Clement #3) (2024) but found the first few chapter v clunky somehow.

Finally picked up Selina Hastings, Sybille Bedford: An Appetite for Life (2020), which is on the whole v good. Okay, blooper over whether Sybille could have become a barrister: hello, the date is post Sex Disqualification Removal Act and I suspect Helena Normanton had already been called to the bar. However, the actual practicalities might well have presented difficulties. And wow, weren't her circles seething with lady-loving-ladies? And such emotional complications and partner changes! there's no 'quiet spinster couple keeping chickens/breeding dachshunds' about what was going on. Okay, usually conducted with a fair amount of discretion and probably lack of visibility, though even so.

Helen Garner, This House of Grief (2014), which I actually started a couple of weeks ago at least, and picked up again for train reading today, as the Bedford bio is a large hardback.

Up next

I am very much in anticipation of the arrival of Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward Book 2)

Walkouts, feuds and broken friendships: when book clubs go bad. I don't think I've ever been in a book club of this kind. Many years ago at My Place Of Work there used to be an informal monthly reading group which would discuss some work of relevance to the academic mission of the institution, very broadly defined, and that was quite congenial, and I am currently in an online group read-through and discussion of A Dance to the Music of Time, but both these have rather more focus perhaps? certainly I do not perceive that they have people turning up without having reading the actual books....

Mind you, I am given the ick, and this is I will concede My Garbage, by those Reading Group Suggestions that some books have at the end, or that were flashed up during an online book group discussion of a book in which I was interested.

Going to book groups without Doing The Reading perhaps goes under the heading of Faking It, which has been in the news a lot lately (I assume everybody has heard about The Salt Roads thing): and here are a couple of furthe instances:

(This one is rather beautifully recursive) What if every artwork you’ve ever seen is a fake?:

Many years ago, I met a man in a pub in Bloomsbury who said he worked at the British Museum. He told me that every single item on display in the museum was a replica, and that all the original artefacts were locked away in storage for preservation.
....
Later, Googling, I discovered that none of what the man had told me was true. The artefacts in the British Museum are original, unless otherwise explicitly stated. It was the man who claimed to work there who was a fake.

This one is more complex, and about masquerade and fantasy as much as 'hoax' perhaps: The schoolteacher who spawned a Highland literary hoax

This is not so much about fakery but about areas of doubt: We still do not understand family resemblance which suggests that GENES are by no means the whole story.