On Beth in her last days: "The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the schoolchildren daily passing to and fro--to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needlebook for some small mother of many dolls, penwipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pothooks, scrapbooks for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers up the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs"--Little Women
The other day I got my hair cut again. I told Margo, my Hungarian barber that Father had passed on, and she said she'd really liked him. "I'll light a candle for him." I hope he can hear her.
John fell and hurt his leg a few weeks ago so he hasn't been coming around as much. I was in an accident of my own--the wheelbarrow tipped over and one of the handles caught me in the chest--and I think maybe I broke a rib. He was here on Wednesday and we had something to talk about: I've started watching the Ennies Lobby storyline of One Piece, which he also loves.
I'm now up to Level 8 in the Royal Conservatory's music theory series! Just the other day I learned about the alto and tenor clefs.
I finished Little Women and the Russian Revolution history, and now I'm reading John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (for the second time) and an entertaining history of Indonesia.
The History Meetup on the Russian Revolution was a zoo, despite the much-appreciated assistance of Maria and Sergey. But the second book club discussion of Little Women was successful. I'm pleased that Farshad has restarted his Short Story Meetup: on Monday we discussed some famous Gogol stories. (A fortnight ago our subject was Tolstoy's "The Forged Coupon," a revelation for me.)
I'm really appalled about Keir Starmer's witch-hunt attempts to purge Jeremy Corbyn from Britain's Labour Party! First he got him suspended for making comments on that EHRC report which the report itself says he's allowed to say. Then, when the National Executive Committee reinstated Corbyn anyway, Starmer improperly denied him the caucus whip. All this is arbitrary and heavy-handed, and may backfire badly. (I recall someone saying last spring when Starmer got elected leader that in one year he'd end up getting removed...)
I've bought enough Ebooks from Kobo to qualify for a free one, so I got a graphic-novel treatment of Mata Hari.
