1) Hmm . . . it’s Good Friday, Tax Day, the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination and the Titanic’s sinking. That’s quite a bouquet.
1a) This week I did manage to reread Hugh Brewster’s Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage about first class (spoiler alert: eventually everyone dies), particularly those who weren’t really of the leisure class: military aide Archie Butt, artist Frank Millet, Broadway producer Henry B. Harris, novelist Jacques Futrelle, silent movie star and model Dorothy Gibson, etc. But of course the plutocrats come in for their share of examination.
1b) Have you experienced instant friendship? I was moved by the story of Marian Thayer sitting next to Archie Butt at the Widener’s dinner party for Captain Smith and how immediately they took to each other and communicated so much from the deepest parts of themselves in only a few hours. She survived, he drowned.
1c) The other was that Frank Millet’s sons, mistakenly believe their father had survived, showed up for the docking of the Carpathia with whiskey and cigars for him . . . but he never came down the gangway.
2) We are going to have a day of sunlight, birdsong, and ambient construction noise from down the street.
3) I feel like I should be spending the day making lists. Suggest some lists I should make, please.