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Oct. 9th, 2012
The Jane Austen Society
Oct. 9th, 2012 11:44 amIn 1979 about 100 people gathered at the Gramercy Park Hotel for the inaugural gathering of the Jane Austen Society of North America, dressed in a style The New Yorker summed up as “dinner dresses, subdued-looking jewelry, comfortable-looking jackets.”
When the society took its annual meeting to the Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend for a kind of homecoming, things were rather different. Attendance was over 700, the event lasted three days, and the daytime dress code for many ran to pale Regency dresses, demure bonnets and straw baskets to hold anything that wouldn’t fit into a period-correct reticule.
“This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly,” said Julia Matson of Minneapolis, the creator of an Austen-themed tea line.
-- JENNIFER SCHUESSLER at The New York Times
I just liked that last line. I have only read "Pride and Prejudice" and I did not become a fan. I have tended to think of Jane Austen as being a softer Charles Dickens, perhaps a Charles Dickens for girls and women, as Dickens was known not to be very good on his women characters, apparently being rather tone-deaf on the feminine cast of mind and heart.
When the society took its annual meeting to the Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend for a kind of homecoming, things were rather different. Attendance was over 700, the event lasted three days, and the daytime dress code for many ran to pale Regency dresses, demure bonnets and straw baskets to hold anything that wouldn’t fit into a period-correct reticule.
“This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly,” said Julia Matson of Minneapolis, the creator of an Austen-themed tea line.
-- JENNIFER SCHUESSLER at The New York Times
I just liked that last line. I have only read "Pride and Prejudice" and I did not become a fan. I have tended to think of Jane Austen as being a softer Charles Dickens, perhaps a Charles Dickens for girls and women, as Dickens was known not to be very good on his women characters, apparently being rather tone-deaf on the feminine cast of mind and heart.
The Jane Austen Society
Oct. 9th, 2012 11:44 amIn 1979 about 100 people gathered at the Gramercy Park Hotel for the inaugural gathering of the Jane Austen Society of North America, dressed in a style The New Yorker summed up as “dinner dresses, subdued-looking jewelry, comfortable-looking jackets.”
When the society took its annual meeting to the Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend for a kind of homecoming, things were rather different. Attendance was over 700, the event lasted three days, and the daytime dress code for many ran to pale Regency dresses, demure bonnets and straw baskets to hold anything that wouldn’t fit into a period-correct reticule.
“This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly,” said Julia Matson of Minneapolis, the creator of an Austen-themed tea line.
-- JENNIFER SCHUESSLER at The New York Times
I just liked that last line. I have only read "Pride and Prejudice" and I did not become a fan. I have tended to think of Jane Austen as being a softer Charles Dickens, perhaps a Charles Dickens for girls and women, as Dickens was known not to be very good on his women characters, apparently being rather tone-deaf on the feminine cast of mind and heart.
When the society took its annual meeting to the Marriott in Downtown Brooklyn last weekend for a kind of homecoming, things were rather different. Attendance was over 700, the event lasted three days, and the daytime dress code for many ran to pale Regency dresses, demure bonnets and straw baskets to hold anything that wouldn’t fit into a period-correct reticule.
“This is a place where people can let their Jane Austen freak flag fly,” said Julia Matson of Minneapolis, the creator of an Austen-themed tea line.
-- JENNIFER SCHUESSLER at The New York Times
I just liked that last line. I have only read "Pride and Prejudice" and I did not become a fan. I have tended to think of Jane Austen as being a softer Charles Dickens, perhaps a Charles Dickens for girls and women, as Dickens was known not to be very good on his women characters, apparently being rather tone-deaf on the feminine cast of mind and heart.
"Conservatives, Liberals and Polls"
Oct. 9th, 2012 08:21 pmI was talking with an old friend who is with one of the nonpartisan polling outfits.... We were discussing the large shifts in some of the polls on the presidential election and the feedback he receives whenever he puts out new numbers that make one side or the other unhappy. He offered an observation so priceless that it needs to be widely shared: "When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you; when you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves."
-- E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post
-- E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post
"Conservatives, Liberals and Polls"
Oct. 9th, 2012 08:21 pmI was talking with an old friend who is with one of the nonpartisan polling outfits.... We were discussing the large shifts in some of the polls on the presidential election and the feedback he receives whenever he puts out new numbers that make one side or the other unhappy. He offered an observation so priceless that it needs to be widely shared: "When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you; when you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves."
-- E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post
-- E. J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post
