My plants haven’t shipped yet but I now have fifteen bags of mulch and a wheelbarrow. I guess I am a person who gardens now. More updates as events warrant.
Thank you for the kind comments on Tuesday’s post. Of course, that evening I learned that my “behavioral health” benefit at work doesn’t go through my medical insurance at all, but through the company that runs our EAP. So that was a little bit stressful and it involved phone calls. And I have to say, the people I spoke to on the phone, both at my medical insurance and at the EAP, were all very kind and understanding. And it’s all taken care of now and I am only a tiny bit annoyed that I had to sort this.
On to the links!
- Lessons I Learned From Dolly Parton on a Creative Life We could all learn a lot about life in general from Dolly Parton.
- Researchers Turn Spinach Leaves Into Beating Heart Tissues When I first read this, I had to check that I wasn’t on a fake news site. I wasn’t.
- Patients and Doctors I really enjoyed this thoughtful examination of a number of books about patients and doctors–some written by patients, others by doctors.
- Work Is My Self-Care A much needed interrogation of the framing of self-care as idleness. As the author so rightly points out, idleness has often been a privilege afforded to white women.
- The 1920s Women Who Fought For the Right to Travel Under Their Own Names This reminds me of a grave in one of the cemeteries in my hometown. It’s small and quite plain. There are only two words on it: “His Wife.”
- So Apparently Male Authors Have Been Making Their Wives Do All The Typing In which a man discovers and researches a truth known by women for decades.
- How To Sell Without Selling Out Justice I find the idea that justice happens in our supply chains really interesting and I wish Diels had unpacked it a bit more. This feels very much like the beginning of a much longer piece.
- Olivia Waite on invisible forces: All The Iron Filings Line Up Nice and Neat
- (Half of) No Award goes to Uluru I am quite disappointed that there was not a single tasteless joke about dingoes and babies in this entire thing.
- Becky Chambers on The Case for Optimism. And if you haven’t read her books yet, rectify that as soon as you can: they’re utterly charming and I love them.
- Things I remember from the strike Unions. They’re so important.
- This is a helluva piece of reporting: Donald Trump’s Worst Deal.
Re: women recorded only as “his wife”
I used to do a lot of data-mining of medieval tax records (and other legal records) for personal names for SCA research. Even in tax records where women were mentioned, it was often as “[full name of man], [given name], his wife” or even simply “his wife” with no name at all. I recall one pair of entries from a 14th century English lay subsidy roll that took the practice to absurdity. The first entry was “the husband of [woman’s name]” and the second “his wife”.