Betty and the Real World

Heaven is Gentle:
Eliza's brother works for the Common Market in Brussels. Here's a link to a 1971 article in Time about the Common Market as a sort of proto-EU. It was developed after WWII as a way to combat certain (we're all thinking Deutsch, right?) nationalism but critics might see a little anschluss-ian bent. While I simply adore the Euro and what it has done for tourist mobility, I suspect that recent developments re: Germany/Greece might give members pause. You may all take a deep breath now as that's as close to the dangerous shoals of politics this Betty will go.

In drippy Scotland, the asthmatics stay in Nissen huts. They are very similar to Quonset huts in the U.S.--long half-cylindrical structures. The only ones I remember were in the back of my hometown School Administration building (formerly the town high school), whose parking lot I had to cut across to get home from the middle school. I think they held old desks and chairs and looked uncomfortable.

Instead of telling Eliza anything personal about his hometown, Christian relates it's history as a part of the Hanseatic Empire:
an economic alliance of trading cities and their guilds that established and maintained a tradec.13th–17th centuries). The Hanseatic cities had their own law system and furnished their own protection and mutual aid, thus having a sort of a political autonomy and in some cases creating political entities of their own.monopoly along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland, during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period
Is this reminding anyone of that Common Market?--or the Star Wars Trade Federation, come to that?
After the EU enlargement to the East in May 2004 there are some experts who wrote about the resurrection of the Baltic Hansa. Oh. I see it does.

Eliza picks up a little light reading. John Donne--The Broken Heart. As it is awesome I will copy the whole and highlight the best bits:

He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,Yet not that love so soon decays,But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should sayI saw a flash of powder burn a day?
Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.
If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses showA hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.

Never While the Grass Grows:


In Athens, Octavia comes armed with a list of sight-seeing destinations. 'Father told me to be sure and study the Propylaea (--a monumental gateway that serves as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens): and the Erechtheum with its caryatides':
Caryatides, I find, are not bugs (though they do sound like they are). They are those maiden pillars holding the rooftops on their heads.