History Discussion Group

"Just cash the cheques, you'll be dead someday"--Mad Men

Tuesday I was going to meet Bev for lunch at the Bobbette and Belle near her house at 1:00, but for some reason she thought it was later and arrived just after I left.  We'll try again next week.

Wednesday night I went to the first event of the History Discussion Group Meetup.  Anjelica started the group but withdrew just before the event, so I took over as organizer and hosted the meeting at Just Desserts near the Wellesley station.

Anjelica had originally planned it as a club where we'd get together to discuss a history book or a history movie. (She originally called it "History is cool!" which seemed to me to be trying too hard, like Fonzie saying "School is cool!") Venera, a Kosovar who wears a head scarf, suggested focusing on an historical subject instead.  So the next event, in May, will be on the world in 1914. (We may also get together to see historical movies.)

I've suggested some books to look at:  E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and The Proud Tower, Rupert Brooke's poems, Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys," and even the comic book Corto Maltese:  The Ballad of the Salt Sea, as well as the movies Reds and The Wild Bunch.  I titled the event "The Age of Men," after a line in a Mary Poppins song.  The next event will focus on Canadian history, and I'm thinking of future subjects like the frontier, the age of revolutions (1776-1815) and the world in the two decades after 1945.

I've rented the first half of the last season of Mad Men from 2Q. (Shouldn't that be the second-last season?) It isn't getting any brighter...