The memory of smoke

The memory of smoke

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Finally, it makes more sense.

Why a half-crippled woman was considered a catch to prospective rural husbands is a point of dispute among experts. One theory is that foot-binding among commoners was motivated by dreams of marrying up. But Melissa Brown, an assistant professor of anthropology at Stanford University, says her surveys of bound-foot women found that only a small proportion married someone of a higher class. About half married into the same class and some ended up in a poorer household. She's among the scholars who contend that -- strange as it sounds -- rural foot-binding was driven by economics. It forced girls and women to work at home, spinning yarn, processing tea and shucking oysters.

"How do you get a naturally healthy 6-year-old to sit for hours? You break her feet," Prof. Brown says. For Chinese mothers seeking fertile, hard-working girls for their sons to marry, bound feet meant obedience and restraint.

"Footbinding did not spread because (of) men's erotic interest," Stanford anthropologist Hill Gates wrote in a 2007 paper. The books and art held up as examples of foot fetishism, these scholars say, would have been for the literate minority, and so are a poor gauge of mass beliefs.

The economic logic for binding started to unravel when machine-made cotton yarn became widely available in the early 20th century, coinciding with a bust in tea prices. At the same time, abolitionist movements began in prosperous coastal regions, initially led by foreign missionaries. At public rallies, women were urged to burn their foot-binding cloths. Activists composed "letting-feet-out" songs.


Wall Street Journal

Of course it was economics. Corsets were no doubt about the same thing.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Who ya gonna trust ?

Three times in the past week and a half, I have heard our manager moan that she "doesn't trust (her) judgement anymore!" After having to fire one idiot after years of us telling her, and the core tech - still in probation period that the other core folks told her not to hire in the first place. I wonder if she can hear everyone thinking "well, we never did trust your judgement."

She sure can pick 'em, thieves, manipulators, sloths and morons - but as long as they are 'cute.'

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

FDLMP

Three and a half weeks. So much for hope. Hope sucks.

Get hope out of the box, and scour it.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Maybe, maybe not.

Weird thing is, I really do feel sorry for her. Not that I would change anything, but I can see she needs real help, and refuses it. Everyone else expressing their anger now, and I'm at the analysis phase - not longer reacting emotionally.

Am I beginning to get the compassion idea?

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Yup, just enough rope.

Heard the rest of the story. Chattering demon just went off the same rails, lost her shit at everyone for being asked to do her job, including the manager who fired her. Excuses abounding, everyone else's fault, no one cared about poor her.

It's been wonderfully quiet this week.

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Enough rope

My chattering demon disappeared. Got fired. So hard to trust that she would get herself in trouble, needed no help from me, but I got to that point.

Sure enough, she is no longer working there, and I am relieved.