Melinda gave a book talk on Katharine Lee Bates: From Sea to Shining Sea at the August 18 meeting of the UK Wellesley Alumnae Club, at the London home of an alumna.  She reports, "After a delicious brunch, I gave a talk, written especially for them, and illustrated with a slideshow, on the importance of England to Katharine Lee Bates’s life and career.  One alumna, who had come down from Oxford for my talk, exclaimed with surprise at my image of James Murray working on the Oxford English Dictionary, where she currently works!  I told the story of KLB’s visit to Murray’s Scriptorium, where they were working on the letter C, where she nearly fainted…just what Murray expected American women to do when they got near a dictionary!"

Note all the bare feet. Melinda says that, true to all the sterotypes about English weather, it was pouring down rain when they arrived. Fortunately, she was adequately shod, because she was on her way up to Edinburgh--and the sun did come out when she started talking about Katharine Lee Bates.
 

Our London classmate Elizabeth Block was unable to attend the meeting, but Melinda was able to enjoy a wonderful lunch with her on the patio at the Wallace Collection--fortunately on a day when the weather was lovely.