Sunday brought the quarterly meeting of my local JASNA group. JASNA is the Jane Austen Society of North America. I've been attending meetings for five years. It's a terrifically knowledgable group, which occasionally disconcerts our guest speakers. John Halperin, a Vanderbilt professor and noted Austen scholar, was disagreeably surprised to discover we were not simply housewives who thought the BBC was just precious. He was unprepared to answer most of our questions when he came to talk about social and economic relationships of the English gentry, and not at all pleased by the extent of our familiarity with Austen scholarship in particular, Austen in general, English history, and comparative literature. JASNA may have a downmarket reputation with some people (is it significant that Halperin, who underrated us, was male? I think so) but I've found it an invaluable source of help, information, and primary scholarship.
Sunday's guest speakers were members of the group who had a background in medicine and social work. They spoke about health, wellness, disease, and family socialization in Jane Austen's day. Boy, you don't want to know about most of what passed as diagnosis and medications. Anyway, I found it fascinating and chatted my fool head off afterwards. Three hours passes so quickly when everyone is full of so much information to share about a common subject. It almost made me want to attend this year's JASNA general meeting in San Francisco. Almost, but not quite, because I know it's something like $350 for the conference fee alone. Wah.
Afterwards, I bustled down to Green Hills and visited the cats at the Cat Shoppe. They have three little Manx kitties right now, 8 weeks old, all boys and all energetic little demons. I sat on the floor and soon had them climbing on me, chewing the buttons on my dress, playing peekaboo, and leaping on each other. I fell in love with the Manx boys, I really did. One of them grabbed a fur "mouse" and climbed to the top of the cat perches, growling in a tiny voice if anyone tried to take it away. He promptly collapsed into sleep after his attempt to get the antelope, I mean mouse, into the tree branches. What a pistol! I don't care if someone reading this thinks it's utterly foofoo, I love being around little mammals. If there was a puppy shop, I'd visit that on a weekly basis, too. I draw the line at reptiles, though.
As a final treat to my day out, I wandered across the street to the Green Hills mall and aimlessly strolled through it. I bought a coffee, thumbed through the latest magazines, thought about buying a copy of "Riverdance," laughed at the teenagers in bellbottoms and halter tops who thought they were so cool, and was mistaken for a mall employee by someone in Dillard's who sees me every week. Boy, that's embarrassing. I should have said I was. Maybe she would have given me a discount.