Ray Schaufeld's blog

Horrible news again. I often feel that terrorists hold lefty-liberals like myself in even worse contempt than the hard right. When we say 'have what religion or non-belief you like and we don't care who owns the land provided we all have food and water and have whatever views you like provide you stick to words only' I am sure we are seen as being human toilet paper because they don't understand us. My thoughts are with the relatives of the 10...

'The Girl in the Book', that's the title of an English Studies Course that a young relative of mine has recently completed at uni. In The Girl, the book by Meridel le Sueur that I recently blogged, the girl, the central character of the book is given no name. In Another Time, Another Place the time is World War Two and the young married woman in the tiny farming community someplace in the north of Scotland is simply 'the young woman'. The young...

Meridel attempted to get The Girl published in 1939, six years after the end of Prohibition in the USA. The Girl is a girl from a Midwestern farm which is falling to bits who gets a job in St Paul, Minnesota serving booze and Booya in a speakeasy. The Booya is legal and sounds yum, it is 'an elegant stew of chicken and veal and beef and every kind of vegetable and you cook it all night and day very, very slow and it gets to smelling even out on...

'The records of the Divorce Court, the annals of the asylums, the dates of the tombstones in the churchyard, all tell us of the severe strain put upon the system of the woman during the change of life.' 1874 JM Fothergill, the Maintenance of Health It's true! But it's not the whole truth and neither is it helpful to the woman of fifty-two whose husband has left her for another woman or a man now that the children are ready for independence and...

Yesterday was the Old Git's 91st. So a trip to Maison Schaufeld in North London was a have-to. Not easy, I always have to bypass two relatives that I have known for a very long time. The Old Girl always says 'poor Avram he's so depressed he doesn't want any visitors' and then there is my younger Blister who always makes everything into a competition against me. Last year I had taken time off work to see him, and she had booked him on to a trip...

'Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit three in one'. (lines from an old hymn that floated into my head when I re-read the book.) Zen and the Art is a book with a lot to it. It's a travellers' tale of a father and his young son motorbiking in the American wilds of I'm not sure where. Because long distance bikers need to fix their bikes there is also quite a bit of motorbike repair info which I would guess works Ok. Identifying the...

A lifetime of London. It must be like having a pound in your pocket and only finding fifty pence of it worth spending. I'm an ex-Londoner. Good. Iain Sinclair's anthology often strikes gold. He knows a number of older people who have bygone memories of 70s London and before. Two old Jews, members of my own lost tribe, Emanuel Litivinoff and Josef Rudolf make the spirit of the old East End walk. I also like some of the fantasy writings, the...

I've been there, I won a place to a selective school when I was eleven. I think the system's crap. Does anyone believe that the youngsters labelled less academically able at eleven will get the same money spent on them as grammar school students? The argument for secondary modern schools was that these were for young people who would leave school as soon as they were legally allowed. Some would then learn a trade and the employer would give them...

'What are the risks of individuality in a determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially static community?' Good question. Could be me talking about Exmouth, East Devon today. Could be Elena Ferrante talking about the working-class Naples of her dual heroines Lila and Elena. It's Toni Morrison, writing in 2005. She is writing a new foreword to her second novel Sula. It was first published in 1973. At the time she was a single...

Taiko. It's Japanese for big drum. It's a recent thing, started post WW2. Lots of drums, different shapes, a troupe of drummers. Body posture and group coordination play a big part, holding your back straight, raising your arms in unison and letting gravity's force help you hit the skins with the sticks. Yamato are terrific, fabulous rhythm, powerful sound, great costumes, lots of flailing arms hitting the skins, a joy to watch and to listen to...