\It was both slightly surreal and very wonderful to have an old friend from England talking at USC (without me having any hand in it) - Dinah gave a talk to the Ruskin Art Club of Los Angeles - which has been going since 1888 - and which was meeting in our Library. Indeed, I learned much about the Art Club from her talk, even though that wasn't its main focus: it was founded by four women as a kind of self-directed, self-educational, and highly serious project, and had its analogue in various Ruskin clubs in England. Central to all was the importance of work - although she slightly soft-pedalled when it came to Ruskin's disapproval, if one could call it that, of paid work for women. It was a pitch perfect talk to a room (and on line audience) that was extraordinarily heterogenous, and hence not a little challenging; it was a talk, I think, of which Ruskin himself would have thoroughly approved.
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