SCP Sunday Film Fest - tiny dolls in tiny hatboxes

Today we're watching Hanlon:  In Defence of Minnie Dean (which I can't embed, unfortunately). Hanlon was pretty huge in the early 1980s, a homegrown drama based on the legal cases of one Alf Hanlon (played by That Guy from Farmer Ted) who worked in Dunedin and around Otago. However, the reason that I mostly love this is because I am fascinated by baby farming. There is bound to be one written already, but I think a Masters or PhD thesis on the topic of baby farming and women and attitudes and portrayals of women and (deep breath) narratives around baby farming would be fascinating to research, write and read. Tell me about one if you know of it.

Another reason to love this is the fact that they went to the trouble of including in the episode the little baby dolls in hatboxes that were sold as souvenir's at Minnie Dean's execution. Awesomely macabre.

You can read some newspaper articles on Minnie Dean and the Winton murders here, at the Nat Lib's Papers Past, here at NZHistory.net, and about Minnie Dean and the media here at Te Ara.

In which Sarah discusses two things that have disturbed her this week

1. Reports from Baghdad about the recruitment (ie: massive exploitation) of people from psychiatric hospitals as suicide bombers - particularly disturbing was the description of two Downs Syndrome women who were strapped up with remote control bombs, led into the markets and blown up. That's fucking revolting. On so many different levels. I read about this in a newspaper in a cafe and my stomach churned and I felt like crying - another way to exploit people's trust in their caregivers. As tho' the recorded rapes and beatings worldwide weren't enough.
2. And I just read something upstairs in the ATL in a 1969 tourist/history publication, about re-burying Maori dead - moving bones from a burial cave where they had lain, undisturbed and protected by custom and tapu for hundreds of years. Because the author believed that they should have a European-style Christian burial - reburial from a culture and religion completely alien and meaningless. And why? Who knows. Cynically I suspect in order to use the caves as some kind of marketing prospect.

A Day of Pre-Menstrual Rising Anxiety.

With no apparent origin. Just feeling - bitsy - quite frustrated with library/weather/overcommitment of the week ahead. Tired too - not sleeping well, kept lying on my new Roller Derby bruise which is symmetrical to the Great Bruce Ave Haematoma (same place, opposite thigh). Sleepy. Girls on the computers and checking their Bebo pages on either side of me. I have to say how unfair it is that it's possible to access Bebo but not Myspace or Facebook from the library computers in the foyer. It's been bugging me for months. This is an official complaint. I'm wondering if my tiredness is from all the physical exercise I did yesterday - two hours on wheels and then a swim at Lyall Bay.

Library and BORED BORED BORED

I've been reading the Journal of the Auckland-Waikato Historical Society all day, and not only is it not really any use at all, it's also the DULLEST set of local histories I've ever had the misfortune to be obliged to read. Dull, dull, dull. Outside the weather is beautiful, amazing; warm and mild and nary a breath of wind. I felt super young-prof eating my sandwich in Parliament grounds in the sun. Buggering off at half four to go the beach with Bella, I can't wait to get in the water and splash about for a bit. I want to be outside! I don't want to work today! Meh. Grumpy. Only and hour and a half to go... just have to mission through. Seriously tho, I'm wilting from boredom. Last night I had a semi-run in with one of the Dull Ones, accusing my Kranskies of being Mystery Meat. Well, duh! Delicious, tasty, spicy, cheesy Mystery Meat, I think he'll find. I replied that there wasn't anything worse than what was in that bread he insisted on eating. You know, preservatives, additives, cereal. In fact, given the doughy pizza of Monday night with its full complement of additives, preservatives, white flour, flavour enhancer 621 and general air of uncooked-ness, I think it can be gathered that not only were my Kranskies delicious but also comparatively REAL. So, ha! Take my come-back where it hurts, non-present flatmate!

Nat Lib Newspaper Room Narcolepsy

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz It's an amazingly beautiful day and I'm falling asleep in front of a microfilm reader in a library basement.

Five minute blogging break

At the Nat Lib, and the silence and semi warmth is making me feel remarkably sleepy... I've read more local histories today than you could shake your fist at. I feel like shaking my fist at them.

I also feel super flat today - having that feeling as though I am sealed in a glass bell and only just communicating with people on the other side (taps at glass: "Hello? Are you there? It's me, Sarah.") I'm merely lip reading those around me; watching people talking and my mind is flying out the window and away away away away...

Anyhow, now I must return to the crew of HM Sloop "Osprey". They're about to be wrecked at the mouth a Far North harbour and make a trek inland, in the year 1846.

15 minutes later: OMG this is hard to read... the author is a religious fanatic and is more interested in discussing the Apostle Paul's experience in Crete than the wreck of the Osprey. My eyes hurt. I am sleepy.

Secret Hand Shake

I'm freaking Natasha out with my simulated secret handshake - the handshake I hypothesise as giving Brent special privileges at the Nat Lib (ie enabling him to take out library books. Tut). Last night I watched Chris Knox sing to Bill Hammond paintings, but enjoyed the Tracey Moffatt works LOTS more. I'm going back again... could watch "Love" forever. It makes me think stuff... like about women... and men... and emotional and physical abuse... and differing standards thereof... and the co-dependence generally coined 'love'... and the fact that as a rule I rather enjoy all that passion and drama. And about how much I like old movies. The other night I watched Liza Minnelli in New York New York, and discovered that my love and admiration for her and her dysfunction goes beyond her role in Cabaret. Secretly, I kind of want to be her, which is an odd thing to desire. I also secretly kind of want to be Anais Nin (also dysfunctional) and I want to be Peta Mathias *sigh*. I could be some kind of freaky Liza/Anais/Peta combo. I wonder if Peta Mathias ever googles herself. If she did she'd discover my scary stalker love of her. Hm. [I listened to her on the Nat Rad the other day and she was fab - S sent me in her direction when he switched on the radio, keeping in mind my stalker love. Good boy.]

Incunabula and Archivists

Yesterday I had a run in at the National Archives with the smuggest, most pompous shit of a librarian I have ever had the misfortune to meet. Ponytailed Trekkie-style and paunchy, he peered over his glasses while he preceded to complicate my simple photographic order as much as he possibly could... insisted on telling me how much it would cost, despite the fact I told him at least twice that I didn't care, and spent half the time flustering about in the back office and confusing his workmates. So much anger I felt after dealing with this dreadful man that it kicked my Newspaper archives sleepiness firmly in the ass - sleepiness that had lead earlier to a self-diagnosis of embryonic narcolepsy. I'm not so sure about the narcolepsy now, but I am suspecting that my habit of reading medical dictionaries is not necessarily productive... may be encouraging me in hypochondria in fact. Today I saw a lecture about incunabula at the Nat Lib... I was the youngest person there by something like fifty years... one old man with those gloriously huge, spongy and hairy old-man-ears kept craning over his shoulder to examine me and look at me pointedly as if to say What Are You Doing Here? I like bindings and brass clips and vellum and vegetable tanning and illuminated letters and recycled manuscripts in the bindings and nineteenth century acquisition notes and collectors, modern and otherwise, who like nothing more than to talk about their collections as much as possible.

Rocking out on the inside

In the foyer of the Nat Lib. Only hep cats refer to the Nat Lib. Or the Nat Rad. I'm not rocking out to the Nat Rad in the foyer of the Nat Lib. I was listening to Cherry Bomb. Last night my computer became obsessed with randomly generating post-punk. I made dhal. And Kerala coconut and cucumber curry. Yum. I had some left over that I was intending to luncheon upon today. But I forgot it. Which I only realised while half way down Willis Street. Bah.