The Independence Day weekend celebration has begun (well, yeah, of course I'm going to work, but why wait till the last minute?), so I want to offer you an American Hero.

You doubtless have your own heroes that you like to think of on the 4th: your parents, servicemen and women and veterans in your community, historical figures. But you might not know about the hero I am offering you today.

Florence Kelley.

Florence Kelley influenced people to such good effect that she -- working together with many others -- was able to end child labor in the United States. In particular, she worked for the passage of child labor laws, the enforcement of safe working conditions for industrial laborers, the use of factory inspectors (she was one of the first herself), and the use of tags identifying clothing made under safe and decent working conditions -- so that consumers could make an informed choice.

 She did this in spite of personal trials including the deaths of all her siblings, frequent illness, divorce, single motherhood, and the early death of one of her children. She did it in spite of threats against her life, intense opposition from corporate America, and  widespread public acceptance of child labor. She did it without benefit of TV, celebrity spokesmodels, the internet, or even the vote. She did it, as my friend Cleverboots pointed out, without taking her clothes off. She began her crusade at the age of 12 and kept it up till her death at 74.

In honor of Florence Kelley, and especially if you have been thinking that you are too young, too old, too powerless, too poor, or too busy to make any difference, I challenge you to take 10 minutes this weekend and do one of two things.

First, Florence Kelley was one of the first people to use scientific data to persuade people to make social changes. In honor of that, you could go to Stolen Childhoods or the ILO Child Labor site and learn about the continuing problem of child labor. UNICEF, the UN, and many other organizations also offer information online. Click on a few of the links on this page. You may be horrified to learn that this is still an issue in the 21st century. Or you may be pleasantly surprised to learn that the end of the worst abuses -- slavery, trafficking in children, and the use of children in the most dangerous and exploitative kinds of work -- is in sight, as long as we continue to fight against those abuses.

Second, Florence Kelley was one of the first to organize consumer boycotts. In the days when American women couldn't vote, she showed them how to vote with their pocketbooks. "Don't buy clothes made by companies that employ children," was her message. This weekend, please don't buy from Nestle, one of the worst offenders in the area of child labor today. Email or call them and tell them that you care about the problem of child labor, and will shop with them again when they clean up their act. Here you will find a letter pre-written for you, in case you are really really busy. It wasn't what I would have said, but it will get the message to them.

Now, maybe you do not care about child labor. It is -- as you know, if you read my blog a lot and have total recall -- something I feel strongly about. But if you are more concerned about something else, then you could post a challenge or two on your blog, and I will try to do it. Perhaps we could get a wave of Independence Day activism traveling like a pair of Jaywalker socks.

I woke up quite suddenly at 3:30 this morning worrying about #2 daughter's Independence Day weekend. #1 daughter is all by herself on the other side of the country while her husband is on a submarine, but I have given up worrying over her. She is a grown up, and I can't do anything about her weekend. However, #2 daughter, though she is practically finished with school and has a Real Job and may soon actually rent a place of her own, still seems like my responsibility, and as far as I know, she does not have anyone grilling anything for her.

She has a four-day weekend, so obviously she should come home.

I proposed to my husband that he should go get her. This means that he will spend 20 hours of his weekend in a car, driving up and down Highway 71, which may or may not be better than #2 daughter's going without hot dogs. He agreed. But at midnight, he suddenly woke up with the realization that he had a dentist's appointment that would interfere with this plan.

Thus it was that I had to wake up at an ungodly hour to try to come up with a solution to the dilemma.

Actually, I wasn't trying to come up with a solution at that point. I was trying to go back to sleep. I was, however, unsuccessful. So here I am.

Last night in choir practice, we read through a snazzy new piece. They said it was not new. "There's a solo on page 4," said the director. "Who did this last time?"

There was general agreement that I had been the soloist. Um, no. I had never seen this music before, I thought. Frowning a bit, I tried to remember it. "Maybe it'll come back to me," I offered, "but I don't remember singing this."

Well then, they thought, it must have been #2 daughter. You would think I would have remembered that, but I would take their word for it.

The director remarked that it had been January 2004 when we last sang it. I have only been attending this church since March 2005. Surely not, everyone said. They were prepared to argue with me on that point, but I'm pretty confident of that.

So we don't know who sang that solo last time.

We then moved on to the thorny question that bedevils all Southern churches at this time of year (Northern ones too, for all I know): to robe or not to robe?

There is strong feeling that it is too hot to wear robes. Some churches have separate robing rooms for the men and the women, so the ladies can sing in their slips. Now that I think of it, this doesn't help the men much. They don't walk into the sanctuary with their ankles and bare necks showing under their robes, so they obviously can't just be starkers under there.

Other churches give up robes for the summer. Invariably, this causes shock and dismay among the higher-leaning folks, and singers who like to wear jeans and T-shirts to church.

"If you're going to go without robes," the director said, "then you have to dress nicely."

This touched off a tie vs. no tie controversy. The Oldest Tenor, who likes to wear overalls under his robe, remained silent, but there were mulish announcements from the second sopranos: "I'm not gonna wear a dress."

It could have been one of those complicated responsive readings.

Basses: "Do we have to wear a sport coat?" Pitch that low and put the word "sport" down in the basement.

Tenors: "Ties? Ties? Ties?" Let that one be a rising 1 3 5, repeated continually with a crescendo.

Altos: "I don't own a tie." An occasional legato phrase, ending below the top note of the tenors.

Second Sopranos: "I'm not gonna wear a dress." This can echo the tenors, an octave above.

The sopranos said nothing. They include the wife of the pastor, who doubtless already feels that she has to wear a dress.

Aha! When the dentist's office opens, we can change the dental appointment. I'll stock up on watermelon and ice cream and dust off the croquet set. Too late to go back to bed, though.

I was thinking yesterday not so much of miscommunication, exactly, as of ambiguity.

A customer called to ask for posters on DNA and evolution. It struck me that "a poster showing the process of evolution" was a tall order, but I was able to find him books with prepared transparencies depicting dinosaur family trees, diagrams illustrating natural selection, and stuff like that. When he arrived, I took him over to the biology area.

"We know it didn't happen," he assured me as I was showing him things in the biology area. "Evolution never happened."

I was struck dumb. Obviously, I couldn't say, "Who's this 'we' -- you got a mouse in your pocket?" or settle him down to review the theory of evolution and the evidence for it.

I contented myself with, "You want to teach it anyway?" Just trying to clarify the situation so I could help him find what he needed.

What he was after, he said, was a poster that would illustrate his anti-evolution talk. We naturally do not have anything actually designed to mock scientific theories, so I sold him his DNA poster and let it go at that.

I think, after consideration, that he actually wanted one of those ape-to-man pictures which are often parodied. I am not old enough to have seen the serious forerunner of the parody, if there ever was one, but this guy must have been expecting that our biology posters would include one.

In another example, #2 daughter has started part time at her new job, training. If I understand correctly, the training section consisted of someone's showing her to her office and leaving her alone with nothing to do.

From the brief reports I'd had, it seemed possible that the other workers resented her and were shunning her, or that she had happened into an internal mess of some kind which no one was prepared to explain, or that her new boss was scatty in the extreme.

On the third day of this, she began cleaning and organizing things. "What are you doing?" the new boss asked in alarm. "Working," said she. He thrust a stack of things at her and said that he wanted them to be computerized. "You remember we talked about the scanning thing?" he said.

It seems to me possible that he, being an older gentleman, could have thought that when, in the interview, he mentioned that he wanted his company to move into the 21st century, he had given her the information she needed.

"All this straw," he figured he was saying to Rumplestiltskin, "I want it turned into gold."

#2 daughter, being of a different generation, might have assumed that he meant he had some specific computer tasks for her to do. She might have thought he was saying, "I would like our current systems updated and streamlined." She then would wait for some intimation of what the current systems were.

I don't really know either what the poster shopper or the company owner wanted, but I always like to have a theory.

I got to the gym yesterday after having been off all last week with appointments and illness. It was good to be back, but today I will work in the garden instead of going to cardiopump class. As you see, the garden needs me.

Having finished my Knit the Classics project for June, I am toying with the question of what to make for July.  I have read a summary of the book -- A Passage to India-- and am waiting for the movie to arrive in my mailbox. So far, I am inclined to make something reminiscent of India, rather than inspired by any particular character as my previous KTC projects have been. A bit of research shows that India has no tradition of knitting, so forget that approach.

Once the British introduced knitting to India, the local folks used it to make baby clothes, and #2 daughter has been babysitting a baby so cute that I am thinking of making something for him. She has taught him to say "Ta-da!" after every accomplishment, including negotiating the stairs, and that just sounds ravishingly cute, doesn't it? It may drive the parents mad in time, but at my distance, I would like to give the kid a prize.

But there are other possible directions. I've gotten to the handwork on my paisley blouse, and am loving it. The paisley motif is from India (look here  or here if you want the history), and I have a chart for intarsia paisley. Indeed, the history of the paisley design is one of cultural exchange between India and Europe, as is the book, so this might be the perfect symbolic motif. We know also that it is likely that the color work of Fair Isle was inspired by the local knitters' attempts to copy the patterns of Indian shawls. A scarf or other small item in paisley colorwork might be just the thing.

Or the fiber might be the way to go. India's history is bound up with both silk and cotton. I've been intending to make a bunch of dishcloths for my kitchen, and little squares of cotton are a comfortable knit for hot July. I could knit them while contemplating Colonialism and the position of women in India.

Then the wildlife of India comes to mind. Monkeys and tigers... And India's current position with regard to knitting is a growth in industrial knitting. I have some purple knit fabric. A stuffed purple monkey for #2 daughter's charge, dressed in a little knitted cotton paisley bolero?

On the other hand, I am currently knitting Jasmine, in the Silken Damask color of Endless Summer's cotton blend Luna. I counted the Regal Orchid color of this sweater for Moll Flanders back in May, so I obviously couldn't claim that I was knitting this sweater just for A Passage to India, but since I am also considering skipping the reading of the book, I could just knit it while watching the movie and be officially sitting this month out. In my heart, I would know that a shiny pink cotton sweater says India, and continuing on with one's own plans regardless of the group consensus could count for imperialism.

My goal to spend yesterday resting was almost entirely successful.

I did get in some hemming. Here's my finished  "wearable muslin." I know that some of you would not use the word "wearable" to describe anything this flowery, but I have to say I really like wearing this. As Chanthaboune would say, it really brings out the gray in my hair. 

I have to say, though, that this business of making a muslin is hot stuff. It is enormously easier to make a garment the second time.

When I consider that I have been sewing clothing for thirty years and haven't ever bothered to do this, I am somewhat horrified. I keep thinking how much easier projects like #1 daughter's wedding gown would have been had I known of this before.

If you would like to check out the sewing blogs and find helpful information like this, you could do worse than to start with Susinok. Not only does she update frequently and interestingly, she also has a good list of links to other sewing and knitting blogs.

I was also able to discover what the other members of my household normally do while I am at church.

My husband watched his new Lao karaoke DVD. I like this one. All the songs sound alike, of course, but the visuals are better on this. I was lying on the couch with my feet in my husband's lap, so he deigned to translate for me. There was a touching ballad about a couple of men drinking whiskey without being able to pay for it. This had a scene where the barkeeper went to the man's house, and his wife beat him with the wooden tool used to grind up dried hot peppers. We have one of those, but I have never considered it as a weapon.

Another dramatic one was the song of a woman who thought she had a really good son-in-law till he took to drink. Their confrontation out by the chicken coop (I was not able to identify this on my own, I admit -- the chicken coops there look like giant baskets set upside down) was quite an exciting one.

There were songs of advice to the Big Wife (first wife) and Small Wife (second and later wives) on how to be happy in their marriages. This one was illustrated with a girl crying all over her teddy bear, so the translation really helped a lot.

There were songs about not forgetting your homeland, which had nice travelogue footage. Laos is a beautiful country, and my husband told me many interesting things about the places and the people who lived in them. Sometimes there would be an animal or insect in the scenery, and he would tell me how to cook them -- this is his response whenever he sees a living creature who is not actually a pet. He loves animals, and is exceptionally good with them, easily the best I have ever seen, but it is embarrassing to go to the zoo with him.

However, if you want to know how to cook those long-antennaed bugs which live in bamboo, or a good recipe for fish with red-ant sauce, I can totally help you out on that.

#1 son played his guitar and video games, sometimes simultaneously.

After a bit, #2 son called and asked for a ride home from his sleepover. Both my husband and #1 son claimed to be too busy to go get him, so I went.

I admit that I was cross about this. I had stayed home from church in order to rest. I had baked, cooked a hot breakfast, and cleaned up the kitchen before ensconcing myself on the couch to begin the process of resting. It was obvious to me that neither of those guys was actually busy. I had been sick all week. They had called me -- the only one at work -- the night before to ask what I was cooking for dinner. They showed no signs of planning to cook dinner last night, either. All this came to mind as I icily put my shoes on and left to pick up #2 son.

However, it was a lovely day, and a beautiful drive. There were wildflowers, and fields and trees and hills, and generally lots of nice scenery. I enjoyed visiting with #2 son's friend's parents, and while it did take exactly the length of time I would have spent at church, I did get right back to my resting once I got home.

It is hardly surprising that I finished reading a book. I am not sure whether that ought to be the third book for last week on The Summer Reading Challenge, or the first book for this week. Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson is a classic, a story of a small group of people doing not much -- but at the same time a microcosm of human foibles and strengths. Reminiscent of  Pride and Prejudice, if you like, or Seinfeld.  It is the first of a series of six, and if you haven't read it, you should go get a copy immediately. If you have read it, but not in the past year, you should read it again. That is all.

Later in the day, #1 son weeded the garden and #2 son did the dishes, so things have not been left in absolute complete disarray.

We had garlic-rubbed chicken with avocado-pineapple salsa, brown rice, greens, and watermelon for dinner. Lemonade to drink, homemade oatmeal cookies for dessert.

Then I returned to my arduous schedule of lying around reading.

No one went with me to the farmer's market before work, so I was efficient about it. The French bakery didn't have a stall yesterday, but I got #2 son's favorite sourdough bread from the American baker. While I was there, the French farmer came up to snag a pastry.

Most of the farmers are local boys (you can be a boy around here till you die, though you do become an old boy) or, increasingly, Southeast Asian. But there is one French farmer who grows lovely vegetables and arranges them at his stall with verve and encouraging captions written in chalk on neat little blackboards.

"What you slinging today, Patrice?" asked the baker. "Greens?"

The French farmer confided that his butterhead lettuce was particularly succulent, and I snipped right over and got a bag full of his salad mix. Normally, I would have continued around the square, searching out the youngest and most handsome green beans, admiring the dogs, and otherwise enjoying market day, but yesterday I snagged some Asian cucumbers, green beans, and blueberries, and left it at that.

We were tolerably busy at work, and then I came home and finished up the Wuthering Heights tea cosy. It looks pretty festive on the teapot, doesn't it?

The design is a very practical one, as the pleats trap air in woolen chambers, making for very good insulation. With one of these, you can get a second cup of tea that is nearly as hot as the first.

Add a fresh loaf of zucchini bread, and you have a fine breakfast. Next I will try Scriveling's Brother's Chocolate Zucchini Cake, the recipe for which she kindly shared with me. The boys have specified that zucchini cookies will not be tolerated.

The pattern for the tea cosy is from Traditional Victorian White Work to Knit and Crochet for the Home by Shelagh Hollingworth.

I am feeling much recovered, but since I was sick (and at work) all week and am going back to work tomorrow, I am planning to stay home and coddle myself a bit today. No apologies. My sister is representing her ... um, region? not sure.... some geographical area surrounding her house anyway... at a national bridge competition, so the family honor will be satisfied for the weekend. I am not sure that I could support either the idea that family honor requires productive activity at all times, or the idea that activity on the part of any member of the family covers it for all members of the family, so I will stop right here.

Ozarque is having a discussion about hopelessness, and Chanthaboune recently wrote a very sensible post about infatuation, and both of those readings reminded me of an entirely unrelated conversation I had with Rosalyne01 in which she said that we are becoming, as a nation, hyper-emotional.

People, she claimed, do not make decisions on the basis of reason any more, but rely merely on emotions. Further, she said, we wallow in emotion. She pointed out the existence of reality TV, where people are paid large sums (though not, of course, what it would cost to have any actual script and professional actors and stuff) to behave badly in front of numerous watchers. The way that just a few of the daily horrors of the war are strategically dredged up by government or media to be mourned over loudly on TV. Emo music. She could have pointed out the breathless delivery of CNN presenters, all of whom seem to be trying to match the famous (but sincere) broadcast of the Hindenberg tragedy. We may not really be more emotional than before, but maybe we are more inclined to act on our emotions, and to give them greater importance than we used to. The idea that, while we cannot control all the circumstances of our lives, we can control our reactions to those circumstances may be falling out of favor.

There have been times in our history, of course, when people were proud of being emotional and not cerebral beings. Maybe we're having another of those. The lecturer at my Tuesday night class once said that people are inclined to act upon their emotions because they don't believe that there is an objective reality.

I found that a very interesting idea. Myself, I avoid acting on my emotions, because I don't believe that emotions have much objective reality. They are, as Ebeneezer Scrooge said in a different context, disordered by the least little thing. Hormones, fatigue, failing to have one's morning cup of tea.

But if you think -- or feel -- that your emotions are reality, then it would seem reasonable to act upon your feelings. Counterproductive, lacking in public spirit, and self-destructive, perhaps, but there's a lot of that going around.

There is also going around, in blogland, a frank showing of our crafty clutter. It has been suggested that our pictures showing our projects neatly arranged on plants or stuffed animals or dangling in front of lovely views are presenting a dishonest image. In order to show objective reality, the argument goes, we must embrace our clutter and take pictures of the products of that creative clutter in situ. I therefore offer you pictures this morning of my current projects in mess.

First, I cut and did the basic sewing of my "muslins." Serious dressmakers make their patterns up first in muslin, the equivalent of swatching for us knitters. But around the sewing blogs, there is the concept of the "wearable muslin," which is a muslin made up in a cheap but attractive fabric, so that it can be worn if it turns out well. So I, auditioning patterns for my paisley print fabric, made up a couple in pretty quilting cotton from the remnants table.

The woven T (Butterick 3383) looked like hospital scrubs. In it, I looked like a bolster. This pattern definitely is nice only in soft and drapey fabrics.

I shall cut it off below the armscye and sew up the remaining edges to produce a pillow for my bed, and put the top into my quilt scraps collection

The shell, on the other hand (Butterick 4467), took well to the broadcloth. I followed Kalimama's sensible advice on fitting (supplemented with a little reading on the practice of "pin-fitting") and it ended up looking sweet and unassuming.

In the service of maintaining a grip on objective reality, I show it to you here on the pile of all the other sewing projects I have underway.

This, by the way, was not the plan. When #2 daughter and I had our sewing marathon, we cut and did major seams on a bunch of things and completely finished only one or two. I had expected that I would finish up those hems and buttons and things in the following week, and mail her stuff up to her, and be ready for my print top... Ah well. I have the Fourth of July off. Perhaps I can have a marathon finishing weekend. If so, I will put everything neatly on hangers and photograph them. Presumably, I will have all this clutter cleaned up, as well.

Perhaps not, though. Because here is another bunch of clutter, unrelated to the sewing mess. In it, you can see the Wuthering Heights tea cosy, which I intend to finish by the deadline.

I still have not drummed up any enthusiasm for reading Passage to India. I have put the movie version of it at the top of my Netflix queue, in hopes that it will persuade me to shell out $15 for the book. If you have read this book and loved it, please tell me why.

If you own it and would like to lend it to me or swap it for some book that I have, speak up! Frugalreader does not have it. Probably the library does, though, and I know that the library has The Namesake, the other book about India that I am supposed to read for my real-world book club.

Isn't it just too hot to think about India?

Okay, I have offered you links to hopelessness and infatuation, shown you clutter, and whined about not wanting to do my assigned reading. I sincerely hope that I have not nudged you over the edge of hopelessness by doing so. At least I can tell you that I am all but recovered from my bout of the flu or whatever it was. I must do the grocery shopping and then go to work, and tonight I will add to my sewing clutter by cutting out the print top for my SWAP. Then I can add it to my pile of hemming and hope to get all that done while watching Passage to India.

Thank you all for your kind words and wishes. I am feeling a bit better, sitting up and taking nourishment and all.

However, I have been stricken with sewing paralysis. It is actually a moot paralysis (perhaps that could be a useful medical term), because I haven't had much time to sew, and the time I have had for sewing, has been devoted to finishing up all the hand work on the things #2 daughter and I made during our marathon sewing weekend. I particularly need to finish up her stuff, since she is now employed. As far as I know, her new employer doesn't have a sign like her former one, saying "Remember why you got your job: You Look Good" but still, a girl wants to look sharp at her first real grownup job.

However, I am determined to do the Sewing With a Plan thing, making the perfect 11-piece wardrobe over the course of the year, and so I am equally determined to make my 2-piece print dress in June and July (two pieces, two months...)

I could have cut out the pattern after work one evening, and sewn the darts another evening, done the major seams in the morning before work on a non-gym day, and done the hemming along with my marathon weekend backlog. Instead, I have dithered. I found myself uncertain of the best thing to do, and therefore found that I just could not put scissors to fabric.

With my self-imposed deadline looming, I will put it all down clearly for myself, in hopes that this will end my dithering and allow me to finish the top in June as planned.

I had intended to make the 2-piece dress from this pattern. I had also intended to find some silky print material. Instead, I ended up with quilting cotton.

I was, and am, concerned that the shell will not look good in this fabric.

Still, option 1 is to go ahead and make the top and skirt as planned. A sub-option here would be to audition the pattern in muslin first, fixing up the fitting issues that resulted in my redoing the darts three times when I made it before.

Option 2 is to make this woven T instead, on the theory that it is more suited to broadcloth and will still have much the same effect with the skirt as the shell above.

Drawbacks to this idea include the fact that, while I made this top in gauze and love it, it may really be similar enough to the shell to be just as unsuitable for the fabric -- and of course there is the whole shapeless sack aspect of this top. I am not supposed to wear things like this.

Option 3 is to make the princess-seamed shell from McCalls 2818. I own this pattern, and was planning to make it -- some months in the future, when I have gotten way better at dressmaking than I am right now. I had a good deal of trouble with the darts for the shell at top, and cut the wrong size entirely of the woven T, so it seems unlikely that I would succeed with princess seams and buttonholes.

I could do as the sewing bloggers do and make a muslin version first. Or just try to pay proper attention and follow the instructions.

Option 4 is to find an entirely new pattern, suited to the fabric and to my current level of sewing skill. There are several drawbacks to this option. For one thing, the patterns I already have were chosen to go together. For another, they were bought at a 99 cent sale. For a third, I have made them both once before, albeit in different fabrics from the current choice, and therefore have a practice-makes-perfect advantage. Do I now want to pay $16 for another pattern, with no assurances of its being any more suitable?

As so often happens, writing this has clarified it quite a bit. After all, if I heard someone trying to guess how a particular yarn would do with a particular knitting pattern, I would tell them to "Swatch, Bucko!", now wouldn't I? Making a muslin is the sewing equivalent of swatching.

So I went to the Hobby Lobby clearance table and picked up a couple of pieces of nice floral broadcloth for the same price as muslin. I will try out the two previously-made patterns, fixing all the fitting issues, and choose based on that. With luck, I will have a couple of simple summer tops into the bargain. If not, I will have some good florals for my quilt scrap collection.

Paralysis cured! With luck, my diphtheria will also soon be gone as well.

I came over faint at work yesterday. My fingers went icy and numb, I broke out in a cold sweat, I had sudden nausea and dizziness, my face was -- as That Man informed me -- ashen.

Quite embarrassing, really.

If I ever take up writing murder mysteries again, I shall use that experience for how it feels to be poisoned. I did not think it likely that I was poisoned, and I just went and sat down for a bit till I could function again, but I think that I could just as well have died hideously, considering the way it came on.

I mean, if I had been poisoned. And then who would have been the culprit? I'd had my teeth cleaned that morning, so it could have been the dental hygienist. Or the Texas choirboys could have spiked my flour jar with arsenic as a student prank, ensuring that I would be done in the next time I made blueberry pancakes. Family members are always good -- they could have dropped something right into the tea kettle.

However, no one actually poisoned me, and I did not die.

Maybe it was dengue fever. Or diphtheria.

Anyway, I left work about an hour early, once I was sure I was safe to drive, and came home and went directly to bed.

I know that I am not seriously ill, because I kept thinking, as I drifted in and out of sleep, about all the things I ought to do.

I am fairly confident that people with diphtheria do not think about such things. They are too sick.

Jane Austen in Boca is book #2 for this week of the Summer Reading Challenge. It is Pride and Prejudice set among elderly Jewish New Yorkers in a Florida retirement community. Since I have so recently been immersed in Pride and Prejudice, I was able to follow the entire thing and note all the connections, but I think the book would be enjoyable even for someone who has not read Pride and Prejudice.  This particular setting is quite exotic to me, and it might have been funnier to someone who knows the population better and has more Yiddish at her command, but I would still recommend the book.

And now I am going back to bed.

The Summer Reading Challenge continues. I have finished the Yellow Rose mysteries (or, at least, all the ones Booksfree sent me), and am moving on to Jane Austen in Boca.

Meanwhile, #2 son is reading -- or is supposed to be reading -- The Grapes of Wrath, A Separate Peace, The Jungle, stuff like that. Yesterday, when I was chivvying him about getting started, he said that 90% of the kids who did the assignment would do it in the last week. Why do kids think that this sort of argument could ever be persuasive?

Knit the Classics votes for books. This is probably not a good idea, at least for me, because I voted for My Antonia and Wide Sargasso Sea and was really quite excited about the prospect of reading those books with the KTC girls. Instead, we are reading Passage to India, which I do not want to read, and Lolita, which I reread quite recently and do not want to read again. The voting process just bred discontent for me.

I don't want to read the book for my real-world book club either -- The Namesake -- though La Bella tells me that I will love it.

One of the things I like about Book Club is that I end up reading things I would not have chosen for myself. Nonetheless, I am feeling a little bit like #2 son, having been given an unpleasant reading list for the summer. Good thing I have plenty of trashy novels around.

A customer was saying in dismay that she had just been reading trash. "Like what?" I asked, hoping for some good recommendations. She didn't want to tell. "She should be reading about curriculum!" said the new girl. "Half and half," said I. She left with an enormous book about encouraging literacy in early childhood. 'It's all or nothing for me," she said.

Yes, well, since I am in the mood to criticize books, let me offer you a comparative critique of a couple of books. You may know, perhaps from reading the sewing blogs, that there are two TV programs called "What Not to Wear," and that both of them have books out. In the unlikely event that you were contemplating which one you should read, I am here to help. Thanks to frugalreader, I have read both.

The British book is called What Not to Wear. I assume it was written first and got the title. It is organized according to "figure flaws." You can flip directly to your short neck, flat chest, or thick waist and read an introduction which explains why this flaw is so egregious.

There are "worst" and "best" pictures showing what a woman with stubby legs (you and I might say "long-waisted") should wear. All the pictures are modeled by the authors. Thus we get to see a size 4 woman pretending that she has a "disproportionately vast bum" and her size 6 friend trying to look as though she has fat arms.

The "worst" pictures naturally have to be shot in bad light, with poor posture and hangdog expressions. Sometimes the other woman is there, staring disapprovingly at the offending body part. Then for the "best" picture the model pulls back her shoulders and smiles.

While I found the photos convincing when it came to the unattractiveness of shapeless sack tops and too-tight knit pants, the message you really come away with is "Don't grimace, and make friends with your cameraman."

The American book, Dress Your Best, is organized by body type, including both the fashionable ones and the unfashionable ones. There is recognition that a muscular man or a long-legged woman might benefit from advice on fit and clothing, even if they do not have any "figure flaws" -- and that a small-bosomed woman might not think that is a flaw.

 The models are men and women who actually are short, or pear-shaped, or what have you. They are not shown in miserable-looking befores, but in a leotard or boxers, and then in well-chosen clothing. They look better in their new gear, but they looked well and happy before, too, so the effect is more convincing.

The American book also has a visual dictionary of terms like "kitten heel" and "ruching," and a listing of what a basic wardrobe should contain (I do not aspire to owning that much clothing, but this could be handy for my job-hunting daughter or for those who have a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear).

So as books qua books, the American one is clearly superior. What about the usefulness of the advice? To the extent that the American book gives advice about figure flaws, it is saying much the same things as the British one. So if figuring out how to buy clothes that fit properly or choosing age-appropriate clothes for your work environment are not issues and you really just want to obsess about your thick ankles, you could go with the British one.

Since I am working very slowly toward the goal of being a chic old lady (I figure it may take me two or three decades, so I am starting now), the American book is the more useful of the two for me.

And of course I am going to reread Wide Sargasso Sea and My Antonia.