Category Archives: Uncategorized

Erasmus Darwin’s Gardens

by futurilla

A new local history book Erasmus Darwin’s Gardens: Medicine, Agriculture and the Sciences in the Eighteenth Century…

The is the first full study of Erasmus Darwin’s gardening, horticulture and agriculture.

It shows him in historical context re: gardening and horticulture, looks at his two gardens in and near Lichfield, and at various related activities and currents-of-thought then ongoing around plants and medicine. Plants being at that time still a vital part of the healing arts for a practising doctor. Fascinating. Published last summer, though I’ve only just heard about it. A book for me to get around to eventually, and hopefully by that time there will be affordable secondhand copies knocking about.

To be paired with the new English Gardening Eccentrics, from Yale.

The Gallant Edith Bratt

by futurilla

The latest Journal of Inklings Studies is now online. In public full-text is a bumper crop of Tolkien related book reviews. Books such as: The Gallant Edith Bratt: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Inspiration, and The Nature of Middle-earth. Who knew she was supposedly an heiress? Although apparently only in land, had via her mother’s shrewd investments, which provided Edith with a rental income.

The Burslem Bulletin

by futurilla

In his latest Sentinel column, historian Fred Hughes reveals the existence of a long-running illustrated publication titled the Burslem Bulletin…

Doulton’s contribution to Burslem’s prosperity was palpable. And the relationship between town and factory was richly featured in its house magazine, Burslem Bulletin. First published in 1947 as an irregular publicity journal, it quickly grew into an illustrated monthly newsletter promoting the activities and social life Doulton employees, most of whom were Burslem residents arriving here straight from school and remaining until old age retirement eased them out. […] I have a full set of these monthly publications telling the story of Burslem more comprehensively than any established social history book I have in my library. The whole is an archive of information that shows how well the workplace and social life blended together to make an organic community.

Sounds like a job for a crowd-funder on IndieGoGo or suchlike, to get this scanned and onto Archive.org. Otherwise there may be a risk that things like this will go into the Keele local archives and never be catalogued for decades let alone scanned and made public. For instance, look at the fate of the Proceedings of the North Staffordshire Field Club and similar local journals.

The blocking wave

by futurilla

It seems I’m not the only one to be abruptly blocked on Facebook. Birmingham Live (The Birmingham Post & Mail) reports Facebook deletes ELO rock legend Bev Bevan’s account…

He is the fourth person to have contacted BirminghamLive after accounts have been blocked, including Tamworth show-home furniture businesswoman, Gemma Pountney, grieving Birmingham mum, Alison Cope, and cafe owner Sarah Exall.

Coverage in America also complains of abrupt blocking of accounts of those deemed ‘too popular’. It’s very probably just some stupid mis-management decision cascading down the system, although Putin must be happy that management dunderheads and their drones are effectively doing his work for him.

Well sod ’em, I’m gone now. There were only four Groups of interest there, other than mine, and three of them were only sporadic and weren’t all that useful. Indeed one Group, run as a front for the local Socialist Workers Party (or whatever they call themselves now) was only visited for a chuckle.

Now that Elon Musk is set on buying Twitter and restoring free-speech, I might even get an account over there at last… when he takes over there. For re-posting blog-posts only.