women-academics-from-scotland

"I am busy and new patients turning up. I am satisfied there is a corner for me to fill. I have spent part of this evening fitting a truss on a young girl. It was dangerous for her going without but she never would have allowed a man to do it. I have had two gentlemen patients today and I am getting more of them. I shall not refuse any without good cause. I am also getting more black patients. They feel, I think, that I treat them like human beings and not niggers as the term is here."

"It is a pity you do not get the Cape Times. I like it better than the Argus although in many things not agreeing with it. The Times gave full reports of the Synod, far better ones than the Argus and one longed for one of our old Scotch heroes to stand up and lash them with his tongue. For an elder to stand up an say that total Abstinence was the work of the Prince of Darkness and for others to wish that no member with the blue ribbon on should get the sacrament, a to please the wine farmers, made one think that the Devil himself must be inspiring the deliberations. What hope for the country when such is the highest spiritual teaching."

"I have been doing very little writing for the last two or three months simply through press of engrossing work. Many confinements and other very anxious and worrying work taking it out of me in every sense of the word and sending me home so tired at night that the sight of pens and paper was enough. Sunday work was the rule and sometimes all Sunday. This is the first real Sunday rest have had for a long time and so I am writing a few letters. I have been thirty years now here and have gained a lot of experience in every way and yet I feel if I knew nothing. I am engaged already for a number of confinements next year. What a wonderful difference the antiseptic method makes in a confinement. My patients are delighted with the sweetness of their rooms and if absence of fever, even of milk fever. To do it perfectly takes any amount carbolic wool and gauze, Iodoform pessaries, Quinine and Condy. But if purity and sweetness of the patient, bed and room are worth it all. I never syringe now. It does not always do and with the present method is not needed."

"My letter has got to be longer than I intended. One puzzle here is, where the bounce has gone to of our Dutch brethren, they are very docile at present. Sir Hercules has got a well deserved slap in the face and MacKenzie is to the front again. Noble is greatly pleased for he has been a very loyal friend to MacKenzie and has steadily backed him."

"I give a lecture in May for the same Society as last year. I have refused all the other Societies. It will be a sequel to the one I gave last year and the title “The Higher Education of Women. Its duties and responsibilities”. I have not begun it yet but I am in a thinking mood at present so hope to evolve something."

"[After her interviewer had asserted no human had ever changed biological sex] I'm not actually sure we can say that because we don't have the chromosomal make-up of every single human being. We don't know that. Do you know what your chromosomes are? I've never had mine tested, I don't know what mine are."

"[It was suggested Bryson was posing as trans to avoid serving their sentence in a male prison] Well we do'’t know that was the only motivation that Isla Bryson chose to do that [...] Isla Bryson is a trans woman ... it’s very very clear that we cannot let single cases determine the entire legislation that we're talking about here."

"[Asked if Isla Bryson should be able to identify as trans] I think any trans person should be able to get the gender recognition certificate that they seek, that recognises, in law, something that the rest of us just take for granted."

"The Scottish Greens stand in solidarity with Rape Crisis Scotland, Edinburgh Rape Crisis, survivors of gender-based violence, Mridul Wadhwa, and trans people across Scotland. Rape Crisis Scotland and rape crisis centres across the country provide vital, life-saving support, therapy and advocacy for survivors of gender-based violence."

"The Indus civilization has challenged scholars’ understanding since its discovery some eighty years ago, and in recent years the application of systematic and problem-orientated research, coupled with much new and unexpected data, has overturned many previous interpretations."

"In contrast, changes taking place in the Saraswati Valley in the early second millennium were probably a major contributor to the Indus decline. In Harappan times, the Saraswati was a major river system flowing from the Siwaliks at least to Bahawalpur, where it probably ended in a substantial inland delta. The ancient Saraswati River was fed by a series of small rivers that rose in the Siwaliks, but it drew the greater part of its waters from two much larger rivers rising high in the Himalayas: the Sutlej and the Yamuna. In its heyday the Saraswati appears to have supported the densest settlement and provided the greatest arable yields of any part of the Indus realms. The Yamuna, which supplied most of the water flowing in the Drishadvati, a major tributary of the Saraswati, changed its course, probably early in the second millennium, to flow into the Ganges drainage. The remaining flow in the Drishadvati became small and seasonal: Late Harappan sites in Bahawalpur are concentrated in the portion of the Sarawati east of Yazman, which was fed by the Sutlej. At a later date the Sutlej also changed its course and was captured by the Indus. These changes brought about massive depopulation of the Saraswati Valley, which by the end of the millennium was described as a place of potsherds and ruin mounds whose inhabitants had gone away. At the same time new settlements appeared in the regions to the south and east, in the upper Ganges-Yamuna doab. Some were located on the palaeochannels that mark the eastward shift of the Yamuna. Presumably many of the Late Harappan settlers had originated in the Saraswati Valley."

"The decline of Harappan urbanism probably had many contributing factors. The shift to a concentration on kharif cultivation in the outer regions of the state may have seriously disrupted established schedules for craft production, civic flood defense, building and drain maintenance, and other publicly organized works on which the smooth running of the state depended. The reduction in the waters of the Saraswati and the response of its farmers by migrating into regions to the east tore apart the previous unity of the Harappan state, disrupting its cohesion and its ability to control the internal distribution network."

"‘[The desertion of the Drishadvati and the Sutlej] is typical of the instability of the river courses in the Indus plains—but in the case of the Saraswati, the effect was not localized but devastating on a major scale. Cities, towns, and villages were abandoned, their inhabitants drifting to other regions of the Indus realms and eastward towards the Ganges, pushing back the centuries-old eastern boundaries of Indus culture and venturing into uncharted territory.’"

"This work revealed an incredibly dense concentration of sites, along the dried-up course of a river that could be identified as the ‘Saraswati’. . . Suddenly it became apparent that the ‘Indus’ Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the rise and development of the civilization, the ‘lost Saraswati’ River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity...Many people today refer to this Early state as the ‘Indus-Saraswati Civilization’ and continuing references [in her book] to the ‘Indus Civilization’ should be seen as an abbreviation in which the ‘Saraswati’ is implied."

"The now-dry Hakra River forms part of this river system. Surveys along its dry bed revealed that this was one of the most densely populated areas of the 3rd millennium, the agricultural heartland of the civilization, although it is now virtually desert."

"In the Indus period the Saraswati river system may have been even more productive than that of the Indus, judging by the density of settlement along its course. In the Bahawalpur region, in the western portion of the river, settlement density far exceeded that elsewhere in the Indus civilization . . . While there are some fifty sites known along the Indus, the Saraswati has almost a thousand . . . [The Yamuna] shifted its course eastward early in the second millennium, eventually reaching its current bed by the first millennium, while the Drishadvati bed retained only a small seasonal flow; this seriously decreased the volume of water carried by the Saraswati. The Sutlej gradually shifted its channel northward, eventually being captured by the Indus drainage . . . The loss of the Sutlej waters caused the Saraswati to be reduced to the series of small seasonal rivers familiar today. Surveys show a major reduction in the number and size of settlements in the Saraswati region during the second millennium."

"For me it was a lot of fun. It was exciting. There were lots of people who came to stay from different parts of the world. You would come down in the morning and there would be different bodies on the floor or on the sofa. There would be Party socials in the house where people would sing songs and recite poems. It was a very social upbringing…"

"I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…"

"I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be…It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother…"

"Even though there’s a massive amount of people of colour now living in Scotland…this country is 30 or 40 years behind any other English city in terms of racial attitudes and integration. There’s no proper acknowledgement of the slave trade and how many Scottish cities were founded on money from that. Our children are just not taught that history."

"Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in."

"Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief."

"Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love...I am trying to be truthful."

"Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art."

"Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon."

"When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light."

"This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.There is no word net.You want him to fall, don't you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him."

"One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye."

"There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning"

"What do I have to help me, without spell or prayer, endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous, the death of love?"

"As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets."

"I cannot say where you are. Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable in the air, even if souls are stars."