I see now I should have heeded my first instinct and not have mentioned "Quills." It is controversial and disturbing, and wasn't meant to be historically accurate. It does, however, represent shifting mores of the time as influenced by intellectual thinkers. I almost didn't recommend it, but did a search for movies and Enlightenment and found Quills on a college syllabus for this period, so I thought maybe it did have some validity afterall. However, sounds like maybe it doesn't. I had conveniently forgotten how disturbing some of it really was. My favorite book from this period is still Voltaire's "Candide". However, that seems to be the obligatory assignment (or at least when I went to college). I think I had to read it at least three times for three different courses. That did not reduce the pleasure of it for me, though. It still ranks as one of my favorite satires.

Yes, Woodnymph, I had a circle pin after I was married and got quite a few comments about it. I paid $1.00 for my old book, The Shepherd of the Hills by Harold Bell Wright with illustrations by F. Graham Cootes, at a family estate sale. It gives a copyright date of 1907 in the front and says "Published September, 1907." I thought I had made a clever buy but found that there are a zillion copies available. It is in very good condition, and the bookshop owner who looked at it for me said it might bring $10. In it, though, were two postcards with postmarks that I can't make out. They have 1 cent stamps on them and very pretty handwriting. One has a picture of a young couple rowing on a lake and the other of the Masonic Temple in Bloomington, Illinois. That one says the writer is not going to school that summer but is saving herself for San Francisco in 1915. I don't know who either of the senders was but did know the recipient who was the aunt of my aunt-by-marriage. When my daughter was young, we did manage to acquire a complete set of The Little Colonel series, some of them from a private owner who lived in Peewee Valley, the setting of the books. The books themselves are not all of the same set, but some of them are the oldest edition. They are not in good shape, but she is proud of them and keeps them carefully on her bookshelves. I feel like Methuselah on this forum. My mother was a primary school teacher in one-room schools at the beginning of her career. In them, classes ran Grades 1, 2, 3, and 4 every year with 5 and 7 offered one year and 6 and 8 offered in the alternate years. If you started at age 6, you went straight through, but if you started at 5 or 7, you either had to repeat, go ahead and drop back to pick up the year you missed, or skip it and go ahead. Since I was the oldest child, my mother taught me to read at 4 and took me with her to attend first grade at 5, meaning I had to either repeat 4th grade or go to 6th. I did go on and never had 5th grade, which may explain why math was always my poorest subject since that was the year that long division and common fractions were introduced. At any rate, that meant that since my birthday is in July, I graduated from high school at 15, starting college in the fall of 1952. We had the suite-type dorm mentioned above, and my roommate was my best friend from high school (and still is). We had the rules about signing in and out, curfews with later nights on weekends, no one smoked, boys couldn't step foot outside the living room of the dorm. We did our personal laundry in the bathroom sink, but there were ironing facilities in the basement. Housekeeping gave out one clean sheet every week, and you were to put your top sheet on the bottom and the clean sheet on the top each time, taking the other one back to be laundered. We wore stockings and hats and gloves to church and formals to the dances held in the gym. It was certainly another world to...

Pam 53, I do like Minette Walters, but I think I keep buying them only because they are offered through the Mystery Guild at a good discount and I have all of them so far. I can't really say which I like best--she doesn't write a new one really often, and I tend to forget them in between. I do know they all seem to have a very tense, if not downright terrifying, denouement. Karalk, here is the complete poem: THE READING MOTHER I had a mother who read to me, Sagas of pirates who scoured the sea, Cutlasses clenched in their yellow teeth, "Blackbirds" stowed in the hold beneath. I had a mother who read me lays, Of ancient and gallant and golden days. Stories of Marmion and Ivanhoe, Which every boy has a right to know. I had a mother who read me things, That wholesome life to the boy heart brings Stories that stir with an upward touch, Oh, that each mother of boys were such! You may have tangible wealth untold; Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold, Richer than I, you can never be. I had a mother who read to me. Strickland Gillilan

I look forward every summer to have a break from making daily school lunches for my kids, but it comes at a cost....constant use of my kitchen by my four kids! Years ago, I bought four different colored glasses that are their glasses for the day. They don't always use the same glass all day long, but it does help when they try. But yep, four kids on different sleep/activity schedules means someone is always in the kitchen making breakfast or lunch or getting a snack. It's bad in the beginning but I lay down the law and it gets better, tho not good enough that I don't have momentary freak outs. And this summer, I have a fifth "child" temporarily living with us...a 25 y/o adult). He is actually worse than any of my own kids!!!! He never ever puts his dishes in the dishwasher, only partially puts away his food, never wipes down the counter. We were away for a long weekend. I ran the dishwasher before we left. Dh got home before me...to three days of dirty dishes our guest left in the sink!!!! I don't mind that he didn't empty the DW as he might not know where to put stuff, but then at least hand wash your dishes!!!! He's here indefinitely b/c his military orders got screwed up so there is no end in sight (it's been over 4 weeks...). When he leaves, I will breathe a sigh of relief - it does make me appreciate that my kids aren't that bad as well as reinforce to me how to instill in my kids what it means to be a good houseguest!!