Funny

All t-shirts tend to be too big to manage when you are this skinny...

Luckily I was able to detach the boy from the railing and we had a nice, cool hour visiting the National Heritage Museum in Lexington.

Rainy Day!

Let it pour! I love the rain!

Just Desserts

Tomorrow is my last Jane Austen class. I had over 100 pages left of Emma to read. It felt a little daunting at first until Tyson decided to match me and he read 105 pages of his own. A couple of hours later we finished and decided to celebrate our accomplishment with banana splits. YUM!

Hold On Jane...

picture from stepheniemeyer.com

Today, during our break in my Jane Austen class, we chatted about having seen the new movie, Eclipse. We bantered back and forth about how exciting it was, whether it was better or worse than the other two movies, and then we got down to business discussing the characters. There is always a good debate between Jacob and Edward. One intriguing point drawn up by my classmate was that she despised Edward because he was cold and controlling, manipulative, and seemed to push the crazy patriarchal position of the mormon author. Being mormon, her comment struck me quite forcibly. Wow! Is that really how members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (aka Mormons) are seen? I do know that there are some cold, controlling and very manipulative men around, but I believe they are found in and out of all religions including those who are agnostic.

Most of the mormon men I know are actually pretty respectful and encouraging of women and I, by no means, feel controlled by our "patriarchal" culture. I hope I stand as an example that women have a voice, independence, and even a right to help mold the world around them. I have never felt that my religion has ever even tried to dissuade me from these views.

Perhaps one fascinating fact, relevant to this argument is that Utah (the majority of which was and is Mormon) was the second territory (eventually state) to grant women the right to vote. Follow this gov link to read more. Women are not cowed and taught exactly how to think and act in our religion and it is insulting to have people continue to believe it.

Ok...off the soapbox and back to the ever-enduring, wonderful novels of Jane Austen. Thanks for your patience.

Fanny Price Makes a Good Point

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient-at others, so bewildered and so weak-and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul!-We are to be sure a miracle every way-but our powers of recollecting and forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out."

taken from Mansfield Park by Jane Austen