w14: sunday review
things i intended to do and did:
- took Priscilla to the vet for her vaccines;
- kept the pea and cucumber seed trays watered & warm;
- deleted the two listings I had on Kindle Direct Publishing;
- pasted the stories from those docs into draft posts, to hit publish later;
- deleted my Amazon Associates account (imagine me an influencer);
- listed the books i bought (leased?) in Audible so I can replace them elsewhere;
- watched the stock market lines wiggle. they're so fun.
things i intended to do and did not:
- pull nails out of the fence boards;
- figure out where that hazel shrub is going and plant it;
- scrub that back corner;
- assemble the freestanding sink;
- keep my phone in greyscale all week.
things i enjoyed:
- more sunlight. it's been completely clear blue skies. a pleasant breeze. open windows, fluttering voiles, bees bumping into the mesh. you know the kind of thing.
- letting Priscilla look out of the bus window on the way to the vet, talking to her quietly about sheep and how they are friends and if she ever meets one she is not to make that sound. the waiting room at the vet, where we met bertie (not letting the cone slow him down) and beau (a fine tenor with great projection and a very effective wag).
- refreshing a very busy comment thread about the stock market and related issues, without posting anything at all. there are enough non-experts involved, I'm not going to add noise.
- someone on that thread pointed out that the stock tickers had been removed from certain tv channels that normally show them as part of their decor, and that over the weekend regular people would find out & there'd be at least one bank run on Monday.
- I mentioned this to my in-laws, and they said 'ooh, that's not good, I saw a film where that happened.' I said 'Yes, Mary Poppins.' They said 'Pardon?' Is that not a normal cultural reference point for bank runs.
- watching the neighbour's cat hunting butterflies in the long grass.
- finding out that any person or business that plans to import a particular product into the US may request a binding ruling from [Customs and Border Protection] w.r.t. tariff classification, and thinking it would be fun if everyone outside the US immediately requests a ruling on the classification of sending one egg to the Capitol.
- finished reading The Making Of The English Working Class, got some perspective on what 'broke' is and what 'illiterate' is and spent some time staring at the birds in the sky and trying to imagine what it would be like to have absolutely no idea what is outside one's village. well, with luck, i'll find out.
If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only definition.
In eighteenth-century Britain riotous actions assumed two different forms: that of more or less spontaneous popular direct action; and that of the deliberate use of the crowd as an instrument of pressure, by persons ‘above’ or apart from the crowd. The first form has not received the attention which it merits. It rested upon more articulate popular sanctions and was validated by more sophisticated traditions than the word ‘riot’ suggests. The most common example is the bread or food riot, repeated cases of which can be found in almost every town and county until the 1840s.1 This was rarely a mere uproar which culminated in the breaking open of barns or the looting of shops. It was legitimized by the assumptions of an older moral economy, which taught the immorality of any unfair method of forcing up the price of provisions by profiteering upon the necessities of the people.
intents for week 15:
- plant the hazel shrub;
- pull nails out of boards;
- keep phone in greyscale all week;
- read six library books;
- turn phone off??? leave phone in other room???