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...

Dear Economy,

You suck.

In Work, Louisa Mae Alcott's semi-autobiographical novel written in the late 1860s, Christie is convinced that the man she loves will reject her if he discovers that she has been *shudder* an actress. (It's online free and less likely to make you want to poke your eyes out.)

I really haven't had a sense that the discussion was about Christianity per se, but more about the highly dysfunctional relationship between Elsie and her father and about the context of the book, i.e., are Elsie's beliefs mainstream beliefs at the time, did many people believe that a convent school was a direct road to hell and so on.

I'd make a new blog called The Potbellied Philosopher, but I think some people might now associate the word potbellied with pig more often than stove.

We've never had either a water cooler or a coffee station here at my current job (no free coffee really sucks!). Gossip/hanging out and chatting is done at the cubicle, in the hallways (which pisses off those whose cubicles are near said hallways, so that there are signs hanging in them saying "Please modulate your voices here--conversations can be heard"), or in the bathrooms (or, if you're a smoker, outside).

Does anyone here have discussions around water coolers?

We don't have a water cooler, although we do have free coffee and tea. Mostly, our informal discussions take place while waiting in line for the microwave.

In Work, Louisa Mae Alcott's semi-autobiographical novel written in the late 1860s, Christie is convinced that the man she loves will reject her if he discovers that she has been *shudder* an actress. (It's online free and less likely to make you want to poke your eyes out.)

In Jo's Boys, also Louisa Mae Alcott and written a little later, Josie wants to be an actress, and her parents consent under the condition that she follows the advice of a "proper lady" actress who has a vacation house near theirs, and her first bit of advice is to finish school first.

In a Victorian literature class I took in college, I did a report on Madge Kendall, an actress in London during that period. I found one great quote from her saying that she doesn't know what might happen in some of those other theatres, but nothing happens backstage at her theatre that wouldn't be appropriate for any proper drawing room.