And more reading

This is going to a busy (responsibility-filled, heh) week. This evening is church board meeting (moved from tomorrow night, because...) Tomorrow night my church feeds some 275 high school students and sponsors who are in town for a service project called Hope for Homes. (This is apparently a mission project where they go to the homes of the low-income elderly or disabled and do some of the basic maintenance stuff like painting or building wheelchair ramps that those folks might not be able to get done on their own).

So, not much knitting or quilting will get done. (I did finish one top last week - it was the all-pink one I posted a photo of the pieces for. And I got the binding put on a quilt. When I have the time to photograph them, I'll post them here).

At least I can do a bit of reading. (And it's actually "Dr Wortle's School," rather than how I spelled it yesterday).

I do have a Thirkell book or two on my shelves, I think I bought them used somewhere after reading a commenter who compared her writing to Trollope. Just never got around to reading them.

But I do tend to prefer the so-called "classic" novel to more of the modern ones. (Heh. On CPAAG they are discussing "Fifty Shades of Grey," which is pretty much a pornographic novel, and some of the even-more-mild excerpts people have posted have horrified me. For one thing, the euphemisms writers use for body parts...ugh. I joked on there I'd make a very bad erotica writer because I'd feel duty-bound to use the correct biological terms for things).

One of my favorite novels (and probably I would benefit from re-reading) is Middlemarch. For one thing: while there are people in there (Dorothea, in particular) who make poor choices with their lives, instead of running away or crying that they deserve a mulligan, they do their best to work within the constraints of the choices they made. And, I don't know, maybe it's just my personal experience, but that seems almost a more realistic way of living than some novels where the lead female, when she realizes her boyfriend is a decent man but a bit of a bore, decides to run away to Paris and have a series of semi-anonymous flings and spend lots of money.

(And there are lots of women out here who would be delighted to meet a man who was "decent but a bit of a bore." I consider myself basically a decent person and in some ways perhaps I am a bit of a bore...)

I also wound up pulling another book off the shelf that caught my eye - my copy of "Why Manners Matter" (Holdforth). I kind of skipped around in it but one of the things the author noted was that manners, and consideration for the other person (which really, at its base, is what manners is: etiquette and manners are slightly different; etiquette is knowing what fork to use; manners is going ahead and picking up the "wrong" fork for something if your guest does, because you do not want to embarrass him).

She also makes the argument that not only are manners NOT outdated, that they will be essential to keep us all from killing each other (figuratively, if not literally) in the future. I do think there's something to that.

She also noted that there are generational differences in manners. And perhaps this teaches me something. One of the MOST aggravating things I deal with in class, one of the things that drives me bonkers, is when people talk to each other or text while in class. I think it makes me so bonkers because I interpret it as somewhat of an intentional offense: "I find this class boring and beneath my concern, therefore, I am exercising my right to civil disobedience by checking out." And of course that plays on all my inadequacy issues. When, in reality, it may be something more along the lines of, "I believe I am an expert multitasker, and what's more, no one has ever convinced me it's rude not to pay attention to someone who is speaking."

So I probably need to calm the heck down about people texting in class. But continue to call out the people speaking, because I know it disturbs many of the other students - they have given the talkers the hairy eyeball at the same moment that I did. (As for "I believe I am an expert multitasker," in most cases that is bunk, and typically the grades of the individual in question bear that fact out).

But yes. Early on in life, as a child, I was taught: attention is a form of respect. When someone more senior than you, or with a higher position than you, or who is likely wiser than you is speaking, you shut up and at least PRETEND to pay attention. And actually, most of the time I do pay attention, even if it's stuff I already know. That's also why I would never feel comfortable bringing knitting to a meeting unless someone explicitly told me it was okay.

But yeah. When I see bad manners it bugs me - whether it's the person who's rude to a waiter, or the person who carries on a LOUD and TMI conversation on a cell phone in a public place where the other people can't get away (like a doctor's waiting room), or the person who shoves to the front of the line. Because I'm too good at imagining what the world would be like if everyone did those things.