Lister Quotes

Monday 29 January 1821 [Halifax] I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs.

Your explanation for anything slightly odd is aliens,' said Lister. 'You lose your keys, it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall, it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog roll in a day, you thought that was aliens.

Lister patted the towel rail against his left palm. 'I'm going out like I came in - screaming and kicking.' 'You can't whack Death on the head.' 'If he comes near me, I'll rip his tits off.

Saturday 12 July 1823 [Halifax] Could not sleep last night. Dozing, hot & disturbed ... a violent longing for a female companion came over me. Never remember feeling it so painfully before ... It was absolute pain to me.

O books! books! I owe you much. Ye are my spirit’s oil without which, its own friction against itself would wear it out.

[I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike anyone I have ever met. I dare to say I am like no one in the whole world.]

If there is chemistry, and the mind and body are working as one, it's nirvana. It's like a well-written symphony or, better yet, perfect... sheet music." "Sheet music?" "Yeah, music between the sheets.

Were I fit for another world, how gladly would I go there.

I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the Earth is sacred; and that women and women’s bodies are an expression of that sacred being.’ – STARHAWK I

Friday 22 June 1821 [Halifax] I owe a good deal to this journal. By unburdening my mind on paper I feel, as it were, in some degree to get rid of it; it seems made over to a friend that hears it patiently, keeps it faithfully, and by never forgetting anything, is always ready to compare the past & present and thus to cheer & edify the future.

If we want to resist the powers that threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom, we must be clear what is at stake,” he said. “Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur, no Lister.” Freedom was a foundation for creativity.

Joseph Lister?" Liam said suddenly, cutting through the silence. "Really? Him?" Chubs stiffened beside me. "That man was a hero. He pioneered research on the origins of infections and sterilization." Liam stared hard at the faux leather cover of just Chubs's skip-tracer ID, carefully choosing his next words. "You couldn't have chosen something cooler? Someone who is maybe not an old dead white guy?" "His work led to the reduction of post operative infections and safer surgical practices," Chubs insisted. "Who would you have picked? Captain America?" "Steve Rogers is a perfectly legit name." Liam pass the ID back to him. " This is all...very Boba Fett of you. I'm not sure what to say, Chubsie.

I am very low. The tears gush as I write but, thank God, I generally feel relief from thus unburdening my mind on paper... Oh, how my heart longs after a companion & how I often wish for an establishment of my own, but I may then be too old to attach anyone & my life shall have passed in that dreary solitude I so ill endure.

What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved.

Just a pot noodle. Oh - and I found a tin of dog food on the tool shelf.' Misery hissed through Lister's gritted teeth. 'Well,' he said finally. 'Pretty obvious what gets eaten last. I can't stand pot noodles.

Am certainly attentive to her but cautiously, without any impropriety that could be laid hold of. Yet my manners are certainly peculiar, not all masculine but rather softly gentleman-like. I know how to please girls.

And remember: a witch, first and foremost, is a woman in her power.

Hey, dick head," he yelled with hands on his hips. "Don't even think of coming back here and telling me you shook anything more than her hand!

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong. —ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Nothing good is ever easy, Annie. Remember that.

If you shake any book by Sade, a cunt will fall out; Sade is a cunt piñata.

The best that can be said about Victorian hospitals is that they were a slight improvement over their Georgian predecessors. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement when one considers that a hospital’s “Chief Bug-Catcher”—whose job it was to rid the mattresses of lice—was paid more than its surgeons.

Hosiah Lister, now dead, rec'd his freedom.

People under time pressure don’t think faster.”    —Tim Lister Think rate is fixed. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you can’t pick up the pace of thinking.

Anything that leads a man to think it a matter of indifference whether he writes or tells a lie is most pernicious,” Lister wrote; “he comes to write lies afterwards with the same indifference.

Burnt… Mr Montagu’s farewell verses that no trace of any man’s admiration may remain. It is not meet for me. I love, & only love, the fairer sex & thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any other love than theirs.

The adoption of Lister’s antiseptic system was the most prominent outward sign of the medical community’s acceptance of a germ theory, and it marked the epochal moment when medicine and science merged.

Marie became Freud's patient in 1925 which further reinforced her belief that she could only be satisfied if she came through penile penetration. Listen carefully and you can hear the lesbians laughing.

Vulvas aren’t dainty. They can eat a penis and push out a baby.

How sweet the thought that there is (still) another & better & happier world than this.

Dr. Lister, who treated the wounded Pres. Garfield, had been so stung by the medical establishment's reaction to his embrace of African-American doctors that he, in response, refused to do part from the status quo enough to considering using antiseptic techniques.

Don't shove away a lifetime of blessing because you fear trials. You'll have them no matter what you do.~ Marianne Lister

There is one thing that I wish for. There is one thing without which my happiness in this world seems impossible. I was not born to live alone. I must have the object with me & in loving & being loved, I could be happy.

She wrapped her arms around him. "If you take away my wealth and my name, I'm nothing more than an ordinary woman in love with an ordinary man, in pursuit of an extraordinary love"~ Marianne Lister

If Lister had nursed any hope that his diligence and reasoned argument concerning his antiseptic system would convert the American audience, he would be sorely disappointed. One attendee accused him of being mentally unhinged and having a “grasshopper in the head.

Hosiah Lister, now dead, rec'd his freedom." Consider, then, the full measure of my sadness, reading this inscription; not merely for Hosiah Lister, but for all of us, consider the dear cost of liberty in a world so hostile, so teeming with enemies and opportunists, that one could not become free without casting aside all casualty, all choice, all will, all identity; finding freedom only in the spacious blankness of unbeing, the wide plains of nonentity, infinite and still.

It’s not the circumstances surrounding how we came in to this world that matters. It’s what we do with our life while alive, and the men we become by the time we leave it.

Remarkably, Bichat was able to describe and name twenty-one membranes in the human body, including connective, muscle, and nerve tissue, before he died accidentally in 1802 after falling down the steps of his own hospital.

But Kellogg was obsessed with ‘diddling’ (1938), and the cornflake was designed to suppress lust and cure serial masturbators. Kellogg and his brother William Kellogg designed bland foods to treat the patients at their sanatorium.

A witch is a wise woman aligned with the Earth, a healer. It’s a word that demands destigmatization at this crucial time in the planet’s history when we desperately need the medicine of the feminine to rise and rebalance humanity and the Earth.’ – SARAH DURHAM WILSON Being

I'm not sure I can explain it. I have all this raw emotion inside for you and sometimes I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm afraid if I let it out it will be too overwhelming for you and for me.

 “If you spend too much time thinking about doing something, you won't ever have enough time to experience it – or feel it.  And feeling is the best part of anything.  That's how we know we're alive.

Lister understood that being in a hospital could be a terrifying experience and followed his own golden rule: “Every patient, even the most degraded, should be treated with the same care and regard as though he were the Prince of Wales himself.

Language is a powerful tool of social control: as sex became repressed, words linking to the body became taboo. After all, how can we enjoy the sexuality of our bodies, shame free, when the very words we use to talk about them, think about them or write about them are considered obscene?

While we are on the subject of cunt monikers, in his study of humorous names, Russell Ash found a whole family of Cunts living in England in the nineteenth century: Fanny Cunt (born 1839), also her son, Richard ‘Dick’ Cunt, and her daughters, Ella Cunt and Violet Cunt.

Give your doubts to me, Lincoln, and I promise to be there for you,” Aaron breathed into Lincoln’s partially opened mouth. “I’ll be your strength, if you let me.

There are not many writers who would mention their divorce lawyer in the acknowledgments, but mine deserves special recognition. Farhana Shazady fought fiercely for my rights. Thank you for teaching me to value myself again.

As Lister’s methods evolved, skeptics characterized these constant modifications as admissions on his part that the original system did not work. They didn’t see these adjustments as part of the natural progression of a scientific process

It is the intellectual part of us that makes a bargain and that has no sex, or ought to have none.

The moral of the story seems to be that Paul’s misogyny is not a response to being treated poorly by real women, but is a result of his own sense of inadequacy.

Life has few guarantees, Annie. But one thing I know for certain, I will never stop loving you as long as I can still draw breathe into my lungs.

I have taken my fate into my own hands, believe nothing till I tell it to you myself. I know well enough what all of the world will think, but all the world may be wrong

Vad fruktar jag? Jag är en del utav oändligheten. Jag är en del av alltets stora kraft, en ensam värld inom miljoner världar, en första gradens stjärna lik som slocknar sist. Triumf att leva, triumf att andas, triumf att finnas till! Triumf att känna tiden iskall rinna genom sina ådror och höra nattens tysta flod och stå på berget under solen. Jag går på sol, jag står på sol, jag vet av ingenting annat än sol. Tid - förvandlerska, tid - förstörerska, tid - förtrollerska kommer du med nya ränker, tusen lister för att bjuda mig en tillvaro som ett litet frö, som en ringlad orm, som en klippa i havet? Tid - du mörderska - vik ifrån mig! Solen fyller upp mitt bröst med ljuvlig honung upp till randen och hon säger: en gång slockna alla stjärnor, men de lysa alltid utan skräck.

Studies have shown that most women require at least twenty minutes of sexual activity to climax, and there are myriad factors that can kibosh a lady's snap, crackle, and pop. Age, stress, atmosphere, smells, self-esteem. Frankly, it's a known flight risk.

In the neighboring town of Carlisle, Lister had observed sewage disposers cleanse their waste with a cheap, sweet-smelling liquid containing carbolic acid. Lister began to apply carbolic acid paste to wounds after surgery. (That he was applying a sewage cleanser to his patients appears not to have struck him as even the slightest bit unusual.) In

Erysipelas was one of four major infections that plagued hospitals in the nineteenth century. The other three were hospital gangrene (ulcers that lead to decay of flesh, muscle, and bone), septicemia (blood poisoning), and pyemia (development of pus-filled abscesses).

Woman is by nature a witch, healer, shaman and medicine healer.’ - CHUKCHEE PROVERB

Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. —HERBERT SPENCER

The way of the witch means there are no coincidences.

Witch, we walk in fire, because we ARE the fire.

I’m always alright.

[...] your courage is weak rather than your principal strong

Lister fitou diretamente o rapaz antes de repreendê-lo: 'Como se atreve a me entregar um bisturi que não gostaria que fosse usado no senhor para ser utilizado neste pobre homem?

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.

From the moment he looked through the lens of his father’s microscope to the day he was knighted by Queen Victoria, his life was shaped and influenced by his circumstances and the people around him. Like all of us, he saw his world through the prism of opinions held by those whom he admired most:

دعنا نطلق على الحجة التي تبنى على قول أو عبارة أحد الثقاة، دون أن يكون هناك ما يستند إليه هذا القول سوى وجاهة قائله اسم " الاستشهاد بمجرد قول الثقة" تمييزاً لها عن "الاستشهاد بأقوال الثقة المعقولة". وبمثل ذلك استعملت وجاهة أساتذة الجامعات ورجال العلم في الماضي كثيراً لمقاومة حركات الاكتشافات العلمية في أول عهدها. ومن تلك مثلاً أن صوت جمهرة علماء العالم الثقاة وقف في وجه العالم (هارفي) Harvey حينما اكتشف الدورة الدموية، فكان ذلك سبباً في إرجاء القبول بهذا الاكتشاف جيلاً كاملاً. واكتشف (لستر) Lister استعمال المعقمات المنقذة للحياة في الجراحة فقام الثقاة في ميدان الطب يعارضون هذا الاكتشاف في أول الأمر.

At parting, shook hands with her and she gave me a rose. I said I should keep it for the sake of the place where it grew. She had before said she should be happy to introduce me some time to Lady Eleanor.

The symptoms syphilis engendered worsened over time. In addition to the unsightly skin ulcers that pockmarked the body in the later stages of the disease, many victims endured paralysis, blindness, dementia, and “saddle nose,” a grotesque deformity that occurs when the bridge of the nose caves into the face. (Syphilis was so common that “no nose clubs” sprang up all over London. One newspaper reported that “an eccentric gentleman, having taken a fancy to see a large party of noseless persons, invited every one thus afflicted, whom he met in the streets, to dine on a certain day at a tavern, where he formed them into a brotherhood.” The man, who assumed the alias of Mr. Crampton for these clandestine parties, entertained his noseless friends every month for a year until his death, at which time the group “unhappily dissolved.”)

I’m from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Sistine said, “home of the Liberty Bell, and I hate the South because the people in it are ignorant. And I’m not staying here in Lister. My father is coming to get me next week.” She looked around the room defiantly. “Well,” said Mrs. Soames, “thank you very much for introducing yourself, Sistine Bailey. You may take your seat before you put your foot in your mouth any farther.” The

… I was a great pickle, ’scaped my maid & got away among the workpeople. When my mother thought I was safe, I was running out in an evening. Saw curious scenes, bad women, etc …’ (Saturday 13th November 1824. Paris)

It’s being someone who trusts her inner authority, and doesn’t look outside herself for validation and/or approval. It’s being someone who uses her own personal magic to navigate and negotiate the environment she currently finds herself in.

Instead, it’s about being a woman who can recognize, navigate, claim, trust and use her Goddess-given powers of creativity and manifestation, her vision, her intuition and foresight, her rhythms and cyclic nature and her ability to experience FULLY the dark to serve the light. And she does it to heal not only herself, but her family, her community and ultimately, the world. Forget

Lister compreendia que está num hospital podia ser uma experiência apavorante, e seguia um princípio moral próprio: 'Todo paciente, até o mais degradado, deve ser tratado com o mesmo cuidado e a mesma consideração que se dariam ao próprio príncipe de Gales.

Doctors, I find, have a very materialistic outlook. The spiritual seems to be strangely hidden from them. They pin their faith on Science - but what I say is... what is Science - what can it do?" There seemed, to Hercule Poirot, to be no answer to the question other than a meticulous and painstaking description embracing Pasteur, Lister, Humphrey Davy's safety lamp - the convenience of electricity in the home and several hundred other kindred items. But that, naturally, was not the answer Mrs Lionel Cloade wanted.

Yes, I am with someone,” Lincoln mumbled, a nervous smile lifted one side of his lips. “What’s her name?” Lauren pushed. “Aaron,” Lincoln answered. “Is she Erin with an E?” Lauren asked as she busily wrote notes into a pad she held. “No, it’s Aaron with a dick.

In 1884, the American physician William Pancoast injected sperm from his “best-looking” student into an anesthetized woman—without her knowledge—whose husband had been deemed infertile. Nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby. Pancoast eventually told her husband what he had done, but the two men decided to spare the woman the truth. Pancoast’s experiment remained a secret for twenty-five years.

Speaking of the Staveleys (Mrs Staveley, too), said no talent could make up for such bad manners. Bold, boisterous, vulgar, & Mrs Staveley slatternly, strangely singular… Met her walking one day in the town with her hands under her petticoat & she pulled out 2 great muffins.

His most famous (and possibly apocryphal) mishap involved an operation during which he worked so rapidly that he took off three of his assistant’s fingers and, while switching blades, slashed a spectator’s coat. Both the assistant and the patient died later of gangrene, and the unfortunate bystander expired on the spot from fright. It is the only surgery in history said to have had a 300 percent fatality rate.

Como observou com perspicácia um dos assistentes de Lister, 'uma nova e grande des coberta cientifica sempre tende a deixar em sua esteira muitas baixas, entre as reputações dos que foram defensores de um método mais antigo. Para eles, é difícil perdoar o homem que tornou insignificante o seu trabalho

Let us not overlook the further great fact, that not only does science underlie sculpture, painting, music, poetry, but that science is itself poetic.… Those engaged in scientific researches constantly show us that they realize not less vividly, but more vividly, than others, the poetry of their subjects. —HERBERT SPENCER

Somehow I relapse too often into a feeling of imperfect satisfaction with her… she wants tenderness in her manner towards me. She is too commonplace. Her sensibility seems rather weakness of nerve than the strength of affection. She thinks a good deal of her appearance & dress & has not had time to think much of taking care of mine yet. She is subject to a feeling of shame about me, such as at Scarbro’. I fancy she would sometimes rather be without me. She too much makes me feel the necessity of cutting a good figure in society & that, if I was in the background, she would not be the one to help me forward. She is not exactly the woman of all hours for me. She suits me best at night. In bed she is excellent.

Las discusiones médicas […] son accidentes inevitables del progreso científico. Son como tormentas que purifican la atmósfera; debemos resignarnos a ellas.

O que antes era impossível passou a se realizável. O que antes fora inconcebível podia ser então imaginado. De repente, o futuro da medicina pareceu não ter limites.

O progresso sob a forma da urbanização e da industrialização se dava à custas das vidas humanas, mas o progresso sob a forma de ciência poderia fornecer respostas para problemas crescentes nos hospitais.

O papel do conhecimento e da metodologia científicos na prática médica - que foi central para que a profissão deixasse de ser uma arte sanguinolenta e se transformasse numa disciplina voltada para o futuro - ainda não tinha sido estabelecido

I had to negotiate the world from THAT place: the loss, the pain, and being plunged into the depths of perpetual darkness, thinking I’d never return. More importantly, I didn’t want to return, having felt like I’d been thrown into the flames, submerged underwater AND been buried alive all at the same time. But guess what? I didn’t burn. I didn’t drown. I didn’t suffocate. I DID die though. I died to who and what I no longer was. But with EVERY initiation, I was also reborn a little bit more powerful then the time before.

As Anne grew, so did her ambition to travel. Her dream destinations became further flung and more exotic. It did not satisfy her to leave England for a week or two; throughout her adult life she spent months at a time away from home, including periods of residence in Paris. Having also explored Italy, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, in the summer of 1833 Scandinavia and the Baltics were in Anne’s sights. After months of indecision, she finally ‘determined to go north’ on 17th July that year, resolving to end her journey in Denmark.

In 1884, the American physician William Pancoast injected sperm from his “best-looking” student into an anesthetized woman—without her knowledge—whose husband had been deemed infertile. Nine months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby. Pancoast eventually told her husband what he had done, but the two men decided to spare the woman the truth. Pancoast’s experiment remained a secret for twenty-five years. After his death in 1909, the donor—a man ironically named Dr. Addison Davis Hard—confessed to the underhanded deed in a letter to Medical World.)

Capable, clever and with a natural gift for land and estate management, Anne had been the natural choice to take on the huge task of running Shibden. Not only had she impressed Uncle James with her abilities to deal with the renewal of leases and misbehaving tenants, he also knew that she would never marry and therefore the estate would not be broken up. In their conversations together, Anne had left him under no illusion that her emotional and sexual feelings for other women precluded the possibility of her ever entering into a marriage with a man, in which she stood to lose all that was hers. It was another four decades, on the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act in 1870 (thirty years after Anne’s death), before women would be able to keep hold of and inherit property following marriage. So, remarkable as it may seem to us now, it was Anne Lister’s lesbian sexuality (then with no name or legal recognition), which played a crucial role in helping her to keep control of her wealth at a time when it was thought that it was impossible for a woman to do so. That Uncle James, in 1826, seemed to understand and recognise this is even more extraordinary.

Over 15 years ago we pledged our Sisterhood. And promised we would always be there for each other. Today, we renew that commitment. Diane continued. To accept each other with all our flaws. Give encouragement and hope support each other through the laughter and tears. To listen with an attentive ear and kick each other's butts into gear when needed. And to celebrate the beauty and joy of this bond. Forever. [...] This is not goodbye. Just see you later. Until we meet again. To friendship, sisterhood, and living life with no reservations. The sun was sitting on this chapter of their lives but tomorrow the sun would rise again and bring new life.

Then immediately came Mrs Barlow to go out again. She jumped on the window seat to see if it rained. I locked the door as usual, then lifted her down and placed her on my knee. By & by she said, ‘Is the door fast?’ I, forgetting, got up to see, then took her again on my knee & there she sat till four & threequarters, when Mlle de Sans sent to ask if I could receive. [I] told the maid I was sorry, I could not, I had got so bad a headache. The fact was I was heated & in a state not fit to see anyone. I had kissed & pressed Mrs Barlow on my knee till I had had a complete fit of passion. My knees & thighs shook, my breathing & everything told her what was the matter. She said she did me no good.

Jim studied her without saying a word. He had a friend who said that arguing with conspiracy theorists was like playing chess with a pigeon, in that it knocks the pieces over, shits all over the board, and still struts around as though it was victorious. He groaned at the idea of his career going down the pan because of a conspiracy theory. — The Smoking Gunners, short story

There are those who sail through a ‘visit from Auntie Flo’, enduring little more than a twinge in the abdomen. And then there are people like me, who firmly believe their uterus is re-enacting the Battle of the Somme. Allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s fucking ugly. Your body bloats, your tits hurt and you sweat uncontrollably. Your crevices start to feel like a swamp and your head is pounding all the time. You feel like you have a cold – shivering, aching, nauseous – and have the hair-trigger emotions of someone who has not slept for days. But we’re not done yet. The intense cramping across your lower abdomen feels like the worst diarrhoea you’ve ever had – in fact, you’ll also get diarrhoea, to help with the crying fits. As your internal organs contract and tear themselves to blooded bits so you can lay an egg, blasts of searing pain rip through you. You bleed so much that all ‘intimate feminine hygiene products’ fail you – it’s like trying to control a lava flow with an oven mitt. You worry people can smell your period. You are terrified to sit on anything or stand up for a week in case you’ve bled through. And as you’re sitting, a crying, sweaty, wobbly, spotty, smelly mess, some bastard asks ‘Time of the month, love?’ And then you have to eat his head.

Retrospect of Medicine & Pharmacy lists the following ‘fluids to be used for vaginal douching’ to prevent conception: alum, acetate of lead, chloride, boracic acid, carbolic acid, iodine, mercury, zinc and Lysol disinfectant. Lysol brand disinfectant was introduced in 1889 to control a severe cholera epidemic in Germany. But its antiseptic qualities were soon put to other uses, and by the 1920s Lysol was being aggressively marketed as a vaginal douching agent. Birth control was a highly controversial issue in the 1920s and certainly not something to be openly advertised. By focusing on the issue of ‘feminine hygiene’ within marriage in their advertising campaign, Lysol could raise the subject of sex and intimacy without ever having to use the word ‘sex’. Soon, a product that was used to scrub out bins, drains and toilets was being used to clean vulvas as well.

Tom Demarco, a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild team of consultants ... and his colleague Timothy Lister devised a study called the Coding War Games. The purpose of the games was to identify the characteristics of the best and worst computer programmers; more than six hundred developers from ninety-two different companies participated. Each designed, coded, and tested a program, working in his normal office space during business hours. Each participant was also assigned a partner from the same company. The partners worked separately, however, without any communication, a feature of the games that turned out to be critical. When the results came in, they revealed an enormous performance gap. The best outperformed the worst by a 10:1 ratio. The top programmers were also about 2.5 times better than the median. When DeMarco and Lister tried to figure out what accounted for this astonishing range, the factors that you'd think would matter — such as years of experience, salary, even the time spent completing the work — had little correlation to outcome. Programmers with 10 years' experience did no better than those with two years. The half who performed above the median earned less than 10 percent more than the half below — even though they were almost twice as good. The programmers who turned in "zero-defect" work took slightly less, not more, time to complete the exercise than those who made mistakes. It was a mystery with one intriguing clue: programmers from the same companies performed at more or less the same level, even though they hadn't worked together. That's because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said that their workspace was acceptably private, compared to only 19 percent of the worst performers; 76 percent of the worst performers but only 38 percent of the top performers said that people often interrupted them needlessly.

Thursday 8 February [Halifax] Came upstairs at 11 a.m. Spent my time from then till 3, writing to M— very affectionately, more so than I remember to have done for long… Wrote the following crypt, ‘I can live upon hope, forget that we grow older, & love you as warmly as ever. Yes, Mary, you cannot doubt the love of one who has waited for you so long & patiently. You can give me all of happiness I care for &, prest to the heart which I believe my own, caressed & treasured there, I will indeed be constant & never, from that moment, feel a wish or thought for any other than my wife. You shall have every smile & every breath of tenderness. “One shall our union & our interests be” & every wish that love inspires & every kiss & every dear feeling of delight shall only make me more securely & entirely yours.’ Then, after hoping to see her in York next winter & at Steph’s2 before the end of the summer, I further wrote in crypt as follows, ‘I do not like to be too long estranged from you sometimes, for, Mary, there is a nameless tie in that soft intercourse which blends us into one & makes me feel that you are mine. There is no feeling like it. There is no pledge which gives such sweet possession.’ Monday 12 February [Halifax] Letter… from Anne Belcombe (Petergate, York)… nothing but news & concluded, ‘from your ever sincere, affectionate, Anne Belcombe.’ The seal, Cupid in a boat guided by a star. ‘Si je te perds, je suis perdu.’3 Such letters as these will keep up much love on my part. I shall not think much about her but get out of the scrape as well as I can, sorry & remorseful to have been in it at all. Heaven forgive me, & may M— never know it.

In the course of an extended investigation into the nature of inflammation, and the healthy and morbid conditions of the blood in relation to it, I arrived several years ago at the conclusion that the essential cause of suppuration in wounds is decomposition brought about by the influence of the atmosphere upon blood or serum retained within them, and, in the case of contused wounds, upon portions of tissue destroyed by the violence of the injury. To prevent the occurrence of suppuration with all its attendant risks was an object manifestly desirable, but till lately apparently unattainable, since it seemed hopeless to attempt to exclude the oxygen which was universally regarded as the agent by which putrefaction was effected. But when it had been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic properties of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles.

New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It's Oscar time again, which means two things: (1) I've got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We're too liberal; we're out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products--movies---that people all over the world still want to buy. Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska. What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sony Bono? Fred Thompson? And let'snot forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That's right, Dick Cheney. I'm not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they're almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derrick with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be "Two Die in Car Bombing." The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liebral stars that the right is always demonizing--Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy--they're just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren't begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do...nothing. We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: The people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys. So please don't hat eon us. And please don't ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we're just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.

In 1946, Walt Disney released the educational film The Story of Menstruation, which was shown to high school students across the United States. The film includes the first documented use of the word ‘vagina’ on screen and was an attempt to educate young women about their bodies. The narrator, Gloria Blondell, tries to debunk a number of menstrual myths, such as not bathing or exercising while menstruating, and explains the role of neurobiology, hormones and reproductive organs in menstruation. The film also advises young women to ‘stop feeling sorry for yourself’, to ‘keep smiling’ and ‘keep looking smart

The game had only two rules. The first was that every statement had to have at least two words in which the first letters were switched. “You’re not my little sister,” Shawn said. “You’re my sittle lister.” He pronounced the words lazily, blunting the t’s to d’s so that it sounded like “siddle lister.” The second rule was that every word that sounded like a number, or like it had a number in it, had to be changed so that the number was one higher. The word “to” for example, because it sounds like the number “two,” would become “three.” “Siddle Lister,” Shawn might say, “we should pay a-eleven-tion. There’s a checkpoint ahead and I can’t a-five-d a ticket. Time three put on your seatbelt.” When we tired of this, we’d turn on the CB and listen to the lonely banter of truckers stretched out across the interstate. “Look out for a green four-wheeler,” a gruff voice said, when we were somewhere between Sacramento and Portland. “Been picnicking in my blind spot for a half hour.” A four-wheeler, Shawn explained, is what big rigs call cars and pickups. Another voice came over the CB to complain about a red Ferrari that was weaving through traffic at 120 miles per hour. “Bastard damned near hit a little blue Chevy,” the deep voice bellowed through the static. “Shit, there’s kids in that Chevy. Anybody up ahead wanna cool this hothead down?” The voice gave its location. Shawn checked the mile marker. We were ahead. “I’m a white Pete pulling a fridge,” he said. There was silence while everybody checked their mirrors for a Peterbilt with a reefer. Then a third voice, gruffer than the first, answered: “I’m the blue KW hauling a dry box.” “I see you,” Shawn said, and for my benefit pointed to a navy-colored Kenworth a few cars ahead. When the Ferrari appeared, multiplied in our many mirrors, Shawn shifted into high gear, revving the engine and pulling beside the Kenworth so that the two fifty-foot trailers were running side by side, blocking both lanes. The Ferrari honked, weaved back and forth, braked, honked again. “How long should we keep him back there?” the husky voice said, with a deep laugh. “Until he calms down,” Shawn answered. Five miles later, they let him pass. The trip lasted about a week, then we told Tony to find us a load to Idaho. “Well, Siddle Lister,” Shawn said when we pulled into the junkyard, “back three work.” — THE WORM CREEK OPERA HOUSE announced a new play: Carousel. Shawn drove me to the audition, then surprised me by auditioning himself. Charles was also there, talking to a girl named