Twenty-Seven Wives

Much encouraged by your expressions of interest, I pressed on with a few pages of my mother’s book last night, finishing the brief introduction and starting to scan the First Wife, Miriam Works, whom Brigham Young married (I now know) in his youth, in New York state, before even Joseph Smith had discovered and translated and published the Book of Mormon. I think she’s going to die young.

I had expected a tidy package of typescript, as rejected by the latest publisher. On the contrary, some of the mss is messy, with crossings-out and underlinings (which the OCR software particularly dislikes) and a clear switch of typewriters at least once. So there’s editing to be done, as well as scanning and formatting. I caught my mother in a misspelling last night, which was a real shock. Tamar, I’m sure you’re right that I should keep a print-out when the job is finished. The idea is to give the actual fragile typescript to Mt Holyoke College, of which my mother was an alumna. I wonder if they’ll want it.

MamaLu, I need your email address so that I can discuss your kind offer. Mine is jean at milesandmiles dot demon dot co dot uk. That’s one of the tidbits of information that I will incorporate in my sidebar when the Work’s All Done This Fall.

Italian Radio

I’m listening to Radio Rai. That link takes you to an introductory page which includes a summary of the day’s news – a useful crib. There’s a line halfway down which invites one to “ascolta Radio One live”. If you click on that, you get not just Rai Radio One, but a choice of stations. I found all this by Googling on “radio station in Italian”.

But I must emphasize that I do not understand what I am listening to, I really don’t. Except that I learned this morning that Bologna is going to introduce a congestion charge for traffic in the city centre, just like London.

Knitting

I ought to include some reference to the subject. No VK yet. We’ve decided to wait until Monday for the next departure to Strathardle – who knows? The weather might improve. That gives the magazine two or even three more chances to turn up before we leave. It sounds as if the current Knitter’s, which should also be on the way, is a real bummer.

I’m knitting the row that finishes off the introductory roundels on my sister’s shawl. Tonight I should reach the stage of establishing the real lace patterns for the main body of the shawl – that will liven things up. Perhaps there will be enough for a photograph tomorrow.

The phrase which Dolores shouted when the the Bad Girls beat the Good Girls at hockey in Franklin’s latest competition, must be the French translation of Pheidippides’ last words, when the Good Guys won the battle of Marathon. They appeared here recently, in English translation, when we won the Calcutta Cup. I found (like many, I suspect) that I had heard of almost all of Franklin’s Bad Girls, but only about half of the Good ones. I voted for the latter, anyway – the ones I did know were a tough crew.