Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

This is the Wakefield Doctrine’s contribution to the Ten Things of Thankful (TToT) bloghop. Our foundress, L, as the recipient of a grant by George V as part of a deal to ‘get the rest of those malcontents off to the ‘new’ world and generally clean up London’. (The subtext being to focus on the rabble-rousing nouveau-social activists like Mrs Cooper and her sisters-in-law, Ann and Margaret Fletcher who seem to have travelled the length and breadth of Lancashire raising support for the locked-out-workers*. This last, one of those elegant (and mnemonic) slogans and catch-phrases that dot the admittedly under-researched period of the worker’s rights movement in both the UK and the States. The thing about these events? One might infer something about catchy phrases and… well, it rhymes with ‘Pen things of Rankful’.  (Seeing as we’re on the topic of worker’s rights, we would be negligent if we did not mention the strike of personal interest, ‘the Bread and Roses Strike**’ (‘Short Pay! All Out!) which served as a focal  point for the first part of our WIP ‘Almira’.

1) Una

2) Phyllis

3) the Wakefield Doctrine

4) the Unicorn Challenge ‘Prime Ear of the Week’: ‘The Robber‘ by jenne (‘In which our story-teller walks us into a veritable maelstrom of un-tagged dialogue. Some of us Readers found ourselfs running through the story like a puppies in it’s first snow flurry’.)

5) the Six Sentence Story, ‘The Six of the Week’: ‘Untimely Utterances- Part II, Mystic Rains‘ from Friend of the Doctrine, Spira/Nick In the way of the virtual world and synchronicity our intro here was written prior to reading Nick’s post. We love that stuff. “Linear, monolithic timeline reality!?!? “We don’ need no steeken’ linear, monolithic timeline!” As it happens, we’re the clear beneficiaries of this juxtaposition as our reference to the seemingly endless river of antipathy towards those without power by those with, could have gone afield, had it not been the availability of the jinn of hyperlinks to provide context. Nick’s most excellent post was far more challenging.

6) yard project/status in photation (Grat 7)

7) as soon as it stops with the endless rain

8) something, something

9) Bridge Update (Nothing new to report. We suspect the timeframe for the project has been pushed back as Phyllis’s mallard family are, as the New Yorker Magazine* might say, ‘In residence’)

10) Secret Rule 1.3 (From the Book of Secret Rules, aka the Secret Book of Rules) that states and provides for, in part: “[t]he process of reaching Grat Items eight (or seven, if you’re feeling all-powerful) is, legitimately, and without qualification, a valid item on the list (“…gratum notatio gratitudinis.” op.cit. page 222); with the proviso (Latin: prōvīsiō (“preparation, foresight” but said while wearing, like, a toga)

* reference here to Ten Percent and No Surrender Strike 1853-1854

** ok, here is the perfect example of the difference between rogerian literalness. The title of the Wikipedia article we’re citing is: ‘The Lawrence Textile Strike’ also known as ‘the Bread and Roses Strike’. While we are not experts in the history of the worker’s rights movement in the early 20th, we are experts in a certain theory of personality. Guess which of the three would be drawn to the first title and which would be attracted to the second. The question you might ask yourself, provided you, the Reader’ are still with us but are pausing, ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’

music vids

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Language Advisory! (Strenuous use of ‘fuck’ as a lyric motif, if not an excessively enthusiastic anaphora)

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