As The Maltese Falcon Reads Together Selection Ends

At a branch library the Maltese Falcon display has been replaced by large work search books. During the year I spent some spare time reading mystery novels. One book I read again was The Clue in the Diary, a Nancy Drew Mystery. It featured a diary written in Swedish.

The mystery books have been interesting.

Arts at Work Month - Wednesdays at Plumfield with Victorian Authors

The past two Wednesdays I attended a class listed in the Tacoma Arts At Work Month. The visit brought me along a path beside a row of tall poplar trees to our meeting room, which was a large parlor, lamplit from corners and tables. For the second class a cheery fire in the fireplace made this a setting even more appropriate to the reading we did. One Alcott book refers to Mrs. Gaskell - Little Men - and this happy setting surely must remind us of Alcott's Plumfield, and intense rain reaffirmed ideas from Alcott's story. The class was a chance to take my reading of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South farther along. At a certain point in the novel the mill owner brings in Irish Workers to take the jobs of the workers, who are striking. A clear case of human trafficking, by current naming.

Elizabeth Gaskell and the Conference on Human Trafficking

During lunch at the Conference on Human Trafficking I was reading in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South and came to the part where Margaret stops the labor riot. The rioters are on strike, and the management has brought Irish laborers to take their place. When she stands up to the rioters and speaks and his struck on the cheek by a rock someone throws, the rioters disperse before the soldiers reach the mill to arrest them.

She is thought of as being very forward. And she despairs of how low she has sunk.

Weavers' Guild Display at Library

While the books group discussed What Is Left The Daughter, by Howard Horman, an occasional mild bump or pounding kept us aware of the setting-up of the "75th Anniversary of the Weavers' Guild" display in the gallery outside the meeting room door. This looks like another wonderful Weavers' Guild display, also portraying Weavers' Guild materials is the display case outside the Pacific Northwest Room.

Books At 12:10 - November

Howard Norman's What Is Left The Daughter, Books at 12:10's November selection, was set in Nova Scotia during World War Two. World War Two history focuses greatly on the Holocaust; an earlier Books at 12:10 selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, told in letters the story of Nazi invasion of the Channel Islands. What Is Left The Daughter is told as a long letter written by Wyatt to his daughter in the 1960's. Although not among the primary events of World War Two, the U-Boat activity in the Atlantic was significant, an important story. The novel brings the story into focus through people in a village in Nova Scotia during attacks of U-Boats on the Canada East Coast.

The novel's main characters live in Economy, a bus can take them to Halifax. There is a financial constriction that makes their lives limited. The traditions of Nova Scotia are told by an author who has lived and traveled in Nova Scotia. The Books at 12:10's group today discussed the many aspects of the story of Wyatt, the young man taken in by an uncle and aunt after the suicides of his parents, and his continued life in Halifax.

November 6^th is Sweden Day in Finland.

1930, June, about the Runeberg Choir visit to Finland Linnea Gord, who was the nineteen-year-old piano accompanist wrote: At ten o'clock we boarded the boat "Borgå" and were off for "Borgå" the city. We had a very nice boat ride, and we had breakfast and dinner combined...A crowd met us at the dock, and their choir sang for us. We sang at their statue of Runeberg and then we went direct to the Hög Skola at which our concert was to be held...

One photograph was probably taken on the steps of the Hög Skola, of the Choir from Borgå. In the other photographs the Choir from Borgå was at the dock to meet the visiting choir and they sang.

At the Film Series (Before the Race and Pedagogy Conference)

"WAITING FOR SUPERMAN" / "RACE TO NOWHERE" / "PAPERS"

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After the third movie, on Sunday afternoon, the audience moved to a different room in the Cinema Grand for a conversation.

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I had a feeling about the third movie that race was emphasized in the narrative when it discusses students - a transition to adult life is difficult for so many students. Featuring these three movies together (I saw them on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday) allowed the movies to give one another balance. For example, every perfect girl graduating from high school faces the transition to adult life. When this was emphasized in the context of undocumented immigration, I reflected on the idea that teen pregnancy is a transition girls face too often.

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I commented that I noticed one student finishing college, undocumented, plans to work in the field of Measures of Happiness - often as humans we take it for granted that happiness is not measurable. Psychology has taken up this topic. It applies to the discussion about Race and Pedagogy.

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"The world seems to children like "a heartless cold-blooded place because they've been given the short end of the stick and they don't know why," one teachers says in the first movie, "WAITING FOR SUPERMAN".

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The second movie "RACE TO NOWHERE" asks if the system is not wrong, if the displaced, marginalized are trying to achieve an unhealthy ethic - this "quantity-driven model" needs reform, says the filmmaker. (She was present when I attended the film and spoke to the audience.)

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The topic of the third movie, "PAPERS", that 12 million undocumented lived in United States, and 2 million are children, featured interviews with undocumented children graduating from high school. Undocumented people enter the United States through family members, through asylum if they are not safe where they live, or with a visa through an employer, but most undocumented children have no path to citizenship.

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The movie series features a number of other films.