And we're on the second of twenty books!

(third, actually. It's Spring Break, and I was bored. I'll find new entertainment.)

And we're on the second of twenty books!

And contemplating the one entitled "Elsie's Womanhood" really makes me leery. Unless she marries someone a bit saner than her father.

Elsie's Dad reminds me of those Father-Daughter dances where the daughter promises Daddy that she'll be pure until she's married. Do the boys promise Mommy that they'll be pure until marriage?

I'll find new entertainment

No, I've found it fascinating, especially with the characters who are commenting on what's going on. I wonder if the author is being satirical in some way.

As for the theatre, I think some of the objection was witnessing the actors pretending to be something they weren't. I think I read somewhere that actors were banned from "respectable" boarding houses as much for the play-acting as for the transience of the lifestyle.

Do the boys promise Mommy that they'll be pure until marriage?

Motherboy!

I know that when they first started letting women act on the stage a lot - most, I believe - of them supplemented their income through prostitution. And actors tended to travel a lot, so that added to the lack of respectability.

I believe New York's Little Church Around the Corner was originally the only one that would allow actors in.

Bah. It looks like my sister is looking at a layoff coming soon, like next week. She's the primary wage earner, the one with the health insurance, and they have 2 kids and another on the way.

Crap, Nora, that sucks.

vw, I hope your brother gets some sort of severance and can find another job quickly.

My sister's husband has been laid off (he's an industrial plumber) and been out of work for six weeks now. He's lucky he's union because they're covering his benefits while he's collecting unemployment and my sister's job is still safe but it's stressful having their income cut nearly in half and there's no sign of him going back very soon.

I'm sorry, Nora and vw.

Cashmere, I've always thought being a plumber would be pretty recession-proof. But I guess if you're one who specializes in new plumbing installations, having a major construction slow-down would be a problem.

Maybe there is a good compromise in the Elsie discussion.

Perhaps the Literary Buffistas thread? That way large swaths of discussion can happen, if needed.

I brought this up in the Jossverse thread, but this is a better place to ask.

Does anyone here have discussions around water coolers?

Sometimes I wonder if water cooler discussions happen in real life. Either that or I've always worked at places too stressed out to have time standing around chatting drinking water.

Maybe it's archaic now? Like the image men sitting around a potbellied stove in the general store discussing news...