VINDICATION

I have STEPPED IN and MADE AN ORIGAMI that little sister couldn't finish and mum couldn't troubleshoot.

My success here lay, admittedly, 50% in saying 'hold up a minute' and producing a fresh pack of origami paper (sister has a page-a-day calendar; if you use more than one sheet you ruin the sequence). But the other 50% lay in CORRECTLY READING INSTRUCTIONS and in FOLDING THINGS NEATLY, which.

Never my strong points, shall we say.

Les Liens du Lundi

I'm back! Most of these links are about ten days old.

Short pieces, current affairs, hot takes:

• Alexandra Back (The Age), It's dirty political linen: witness K to plead guilty as lawyer Bernard Collaery committed to stand trial. Out of the committal hearing we learned that the charges have to do with providing information to an international investigation about Australia illegally bugging the East Timorese cabinet. (We knew the East Timor part, I think, but not the exact details of who Witness K had made the information available. The case ended up in The Hague, and the East Timorese won.)
  
• Emma Dawson (Guardian AU), Scott Morrion's 'work harder to earn more' nonsense shows how out of touch with workers he is.
  
• ABC news, Koala spotted along Port Macquarie breakwall. This one (via, I think, lilysea ) struck me because at home, it's the *disappearance* of the koalas from the foreshore that's the dire sign of habitat change.
  

Good News:

• Gay Alcorn (Guardian AU) The land where we lived has gone: the life story of a Rohingya refugee. The article itself, which is a profile of Habiburahman, isn't the good news. The good news is that the memoir co-written by Habiburahman and Sophie Ansel, D'abord, ils ont effacé notre nom, has been published in English (First, They Erased Our Name, trans. Andrea Reece, Scribe publications 2019).
  
• Casey Bassel (Japan Today / SoraNews24), Tokyo public school will stop forcing pupils to dye their hair black, official promises. Particularly choice quote: 'While the petitioners are obviously upset by schools which require students to dye their hair black, Komazaki doesn’t place the blame entirely on educators. “Students are encouraged to have black hair to serve as a visible signal that they are willing to adapt to society,” he recognized'. I'm just... gonna quote that to anyone who asks why I didn't love Japan.
  
• ABC News, Scottish archaeologists discover large norse hall that, if not used by Earl Sigund, is certainly the right period and style.
  

Cool stuff:

• TomboyToes are selling masculine dress shoes in smaller sizes.
  

Longer pieces - essay, memoir, natural history, other

• Marsden, Ramia, Peterie and Patulny (The Conversation): These 'job snob' claims don't match the evidence:
  

  Our study, funded by the Australian Research Council, involved policy analysis, surveys and in-depth interviews. We talked to employment service providers and 80 job seekers in regional and urban areas of New South Wales and Queensland.
  We found no evidence job-seekers preferred not to work. In fact, based on the considerable “job search activity” required of them to meet Centrelink’s stringent “mutual obligation” conditions, it was hard not to conclude that, whatever the reasons for their joblessness, lack of willingness to work was not one of them.

  
  
• Courtney Crowder (Des Moines Register), My grandmother desegregated a library in 1970. Now Iowans can't let hate separate one. An excellent story about her grandmother, although when she turns to the contemporary issue (someone burning LGBT+ content from an Iowa library) she betrays that she is... not a librarian or archivist or associated researcher, because she puts her philosophy of libraries thus: "To me, libraries are without sieves." AH LOL NOPE. Libraries are sieving all the time. That's.... a great part of the job.
  
• Kamran Kalid (The Conversation), India revokes Kashmir's autonomy, risking yet another war with Pakistan. I did not understand much about this situation when it broke. I still don't, but I understand a bit more thanks to Kalid.
  
• David Uren (Saturday Paper), Low-paid workers and wage theft.
  
• Shanthi Robertson and Henry Sherrell (The Conversation), Most migrants on bridging visas aren't scammers; they're well within their rights.
  
• Cynthia Gralla (Electric Lit), How women writers are reinventing Freud.
  
• Ellen Rhudy (Electric Lit), The book that fueled my eating disorder.
  
• Louise Grimmer and Gary Mortimer (The Conversation), More than milk and bread: corner store revival can rebuild neighbourhood ties.
  
• Heather Corinna (Scarleteen), Wilderness tips: a survival guide for your sexual adventures. This is just a solid, sweet, not overwhelming set of advice.
  
• Folger Shakespeare Library Shakespeare Unlimited Podcast, Charlotte Cushman: when Romeo was a woman:
  

  SHEIR: You mentioned she was well known for playing Romeo. Didn’t Queen Victoria once say that when Charlotte Cushman played Romeo, the queen couldn’t believe it was a woman playing the part?
  MERRILL: Yes, yes, and Victoria wasn’t alone. Many people who saw Cushman’s Romeo initially found it remarkable that it was a woman. Cushman was tall for the time, she was five foot six. So she was a large woman, she had a strong jaw, she moved around very forcefully onstage. And that was unusual then, too. This was the time when most performances, Shakespearean and otherwise, were done in a declamatory style, where performers would, just like public speakers, would take a pose and they would orate onstage. And Cushman said to an actor friend once that she wasn’t attractive enough to stand there and pose, so she had to move around, and she did. I mean, she fenced as Romeo, and she jumped all around the stage. It was very unusual in terms of a performance style.
  SHEIR: You mentioned something so fascinating about this particular time period. You say, “It was a time when people could largely accept the realism of a female Romeo. But at the same time, they saw women who had professional careers as being," what you call, "unsexed." Can you explain that?