News from Nowhere 7

Sometimes it only takes one line for a particular article or poem to stick in my memory. These are a few of them, and a few such lines, which I’ve read lately.

: : “The small birds converge, converge/With their gifts to a difficult borning”: The Manor Garden by Sylvia Plath.

: : “the present can be tyrannical unless our consciousness of it extends a long way into the past”: Why study humanities by Raimond Gaita.

: : “it’s obvious von Trier is shoving his own dated, reactionary views inside a modern female body and hoping we’ll find it subversive”: Of Human Bondage by Sarah Nicole Prickett.

: : “A theme of the report is that female gang members slip through the net because the police concentrate on males”: Exposed: the exploitation of girls in UK gangs by Toby Helm.

: : “When we assume that boys won’t read books with girls on the cover, and then institutionalize that assumption by leaving the ‘girlie’ books out of award nominations (as well as school wide reads, story times, etc.), we insult them”: Boys Will Be Boys, and Girls Will Be Accommodating by Laurel Snyder.

: : “We need to make sure we are surrounded by accurate case studies of the ordinary miseries of daily life”: The Philosophers’ Guide to Calm, Part 1. Via Jessica Stanley.

: : “My Kindle and my book piles are full of new women writers: I’m ready for their innovation, empathy, bravery and intensity”: What I’m Reading by Jessica Stanley.

: : “For all our need for intimacy, we ultimately face the world alone and cannot enter another person’s life or mind without effort and difficulty”: Shyness cannot be ‘cured’ by Joe Moran.