sollers

Today was the day of the conference at which I had been invited, at rather short notice, to give a keynote.

Not only did I have to get up EARLY especially for a Saturday, I had a rotten night because the lower back decided to kick off and even when it had calmed down a bit it took ages to get back to sleep.

And then as I was doing my final preparations I discovered the battery in one of my hearing aids was flat, which was a bit irksome, because I had been expecting all week for it to do the warning bonging, like the other one did, and had to replace that.

So anyway, I got out, and found that the place I was aiming at was not quite so far distant from the Underground station as had been indicated, and also, even though I was late, so was the start.

Rather few actual in-person attendees - I'm not sure how many there were on the Zoom.

Crisis! there was supposed to be a delivery of sandwiches at lunchtime which Did Not Arrive so we all went out to forage (these later turned up some hours later, what is the point).

So, I think my paper went over okay, and there were some questions, even if some of them got rather off-topic onto more general questions about archives.

Some of the papers were moderately interesting, some of them were a bit hard to hear, and I picked up at least one useful reference (possibly) for one of my own projects.

Met one old academic acquaintance from way back, and a couple of interesting Younger Scholars.

Had already decided that I was not up for going on to meal in restaurant, so came home to flop.

And I wonder whether small or even large earthquakes have been noticed in the vicinity of Fishkill.

‘Who Am I Without Birth Control?’:

Ms. Hamrick, who was 26 at the time, felt normal. No unusual weight gain, no mood swings. But a couple of questions had wormed their way into her mind and lodged themselves there: Who am I without birth control? Will I feel some sort of difference coming off it? Ms. Hamrick had started taking birth control pills a decade earlier, when she was 15. Now, as she browsed her social media feeds, she kept stumbling on videos of women saying how much better they felt when they stopped taking the pills, content she wasn’t seeking out. The posts typically went like this: a glowing blonde in a workout top — the picture of health! — saying that she had stopped taking birth control pills and immediately felt more clarity of mind. Like an emotional fog had lifted, like she was a brand-new, much happier person. Ms. Hamrick’s doctor was clear with her. If she wasn’t experiencing any side effects, there was no reason to stop taking birth control. Ms. Hamrick wasn’t so sure. The more videos about the pill she watched, the more skeptical she became, and the more she felt drawn toward experimenting. She was, after all, in a moment of change. She had moved, on a whim, from Indiana to Texas. Soon after settling near Houston she met a guy and they started dating, then looking at engagement rings.
Just over a year since Ms. Hamrick decided to stop taking the pills, she has figured out who she is without birth control: She is a mother. Her baby is four months old.

Okay, my own history with the Pill was not wonderful, but I do wonder if the doc I saw at the Migraine Clinic was just a bit too invested in biochemical explanations (in particular, I discovered later that she got very into The Awful Effects of the Pill over a range of factors) rather than, um, things going on more generally in my life. Because going off the Pill may have brought about some temporary alleviation (don't honestly remember) but not much, really.

Anyway, it is probably a bit of an exaggeration to say, this is like going off the TB drugs to experience the full Consumptive Experience (and I have no doubt that there are people around in thrall to the Myth, and it is a myth, of Syphilitic Geeenyus: Sid is falling about larfing liek drayne). But honestly. 'Pure' 'Natural' I spit on that.

On 'pure', I like this on the 'pure bloodlines' mythos Alot: Claims of pure bloodlines? Ancestral homelands? DNA science says no.

And on The Miracles of Modern Science: Huntington’s disease treated successfully for first time in UK gene therapy trial:

The disease, caused by a single gene defect, steadily kills brain cells leading to dementia, paralysis and ultimately death. Those who have a parent with Huntington’s have a 50% chance of developing the disease, which until now has been incurable.
The gene therapy slowed the progress of the disease by 75% in patients after three years.

[H]omegrown remedies from locally gathered plants – defined here as ‘local herbalism’ – were still being used to address both simple and complex healthcare needs.

These days, I will often find myself puzzling over, what was that person's name? connected with some Thing in the past. I was actually struggling to recall the name of the very weird woman who was the landlady of the bedsit I inhabited near Mornington Crescent in the very early 70s, with whom there came about Major Draaaama (it eventually popped into my mind, as these things do, a couple of days later when I was thinking about something else: see also, finding that book one is looking for in the process of looking for something entirely different.)

I am not sure if this is AGE or the fallibility of human memory, and is it actually AGE and the wearing out of the little grey cells, or just having That Much More stored in them, so that they resemble one of those storerooms in museums where no-one has catalogued anything for centuries and curators have gone in and nicked stuff to sell on eBay -

- I think this metaphor is going a bit too far, somehow.

And yet one can recall quite readily, in fact one might even say intrusively, an obscure pop song by a not particularly renowned group.

That is, after reading that Reacher novel, The Hard Way, the other week, I found myself being earwormed by The Hard Way, a single put out by The Nashville Teens (who were from Surrey) in 1966 which got to all of 45 in the charts. It's not on iTunes even or in any of the compilation CDs, it's obscure. And yet I remembered it and who it was by.

Maybe it was being repetitively played on one of the pirate stations of my youth?

Though probably African frogs do not say that (the chorus from Aristophanes' The Frogs).

Anyway, this was of considerable interest to me having had to do with archives relating to these here amphibians (in which they were described as 'toads'):

Escapee pregnancy test frogs colonised Wales for 50 years

and also read the ms of a work by A Friend on the history of pregnancy testing in which they played a significant role.

They replaced the rabbit test ('did the rabbit die' - the rabbit had to die, actually, in order to examine its ovaries) as this was a non-lethal test and kept producing yet more frogs.

And there was quite an issue of what to do with the little blighters once chemical testing became the norm - as I recall attempts to dispose of them as pets.

Also

The frog is genetically surprisingly similar to humans, which means that scientists can model human disease in this amphibian and replace the use of higher sentient species.