The ladies of Pinkwick’s Society of the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics disdained the glossy new “old library.” It had been remodeled over the summer into some quaint, Disney Old Fashioned Land version of a respectable library. In the societies early days as an organization they had held a number of meetings in the venerable Humanities Reading Room (despite the general popularity of the Humanities.) It had musk and dark leather bindings and mahogany library tables. It used to have floors made of stik –em tile carpet squares. This is not necessarily an ancient and revered flooring method but it did add nicely to the feel of decay and moulderingness in the old room. As it stood now it was the Melinda Gates Charitable Fund reading room with Laminate floors—a louder substance for a library had not been found yet—and granite counters. And for whatever reason, no library tables. It had a series of bistro tables set between what could be considered facsimile cigar chairs. As though an evening of coffee and cigars should be held in the library. It had ceased to be an historic pile. It was just a functioning government institution.
The ladies had made a solemn vow not to visit the remodeled library. It wasn’t that they wanted the old structure to fall on their heads. Not at all. But back those ten years ago, when the remodel had been proposed, there had been a member of the Society with an interest in historic buildings. She had the plans on hand and reported to the society the number of disappointing changes intended.
That member had long ago left the society. Marriage and family does eventually call some members away.
Currently one Rosemary Swish, a member at large with a degree in General Studies, though the “general” actually covered a hodge podge of unappreciated fields such as the history of cloth, Canadian folklore and the study of the Welsh Language, had taken to visit the new facility incognito.
Florence Pinkwick hadn’t approved at the beginning, when the trip was proposed. However Swish made a good case for herself. In the first part, she had not been a member of the society when the solemn vow was taken. And as the solemn vow of Metropolitan Library Abandonment had been not ever been put into the constitution she had actually never taken the vow. In the second point, the library held some important works in their reference section that could not be had through inter-library loan. Not only was there a first draft of Harrington’s complete Tales of the Peoples North of Hudson’s Great Bay and Other Facts of Their Ways of Life, circa 1876 (the first to include actual interviews and to be written entirely on field) but the library had recently acquired a number of other Pinkwick’s Selected Texts.
This was the point that made the Society relax in their rules. There had been rumors in the local library union mailings that a large number of new acquisitions had been made. Flo. Pinkwick herself had made over one hundred requests in the days that the society used the Metropolitan facilities. It could be that the assorted Pinkwick Society requests came to over one thousand texts and documents. If those, or even a percentage of those, could be had, seen, or copied, needed to be determined.
Rosemary Swish took the task upon herself. The results of her, shall we say, undercover persuits were the catalyst for a great change in the society. That is to say these results and the ardent perusal of membership by one Gertrude Standish made a great change in the Pinkwick Society for the Advancement of Ladies in Unappreciated Academics.
But before any changes could be outlined a general description of the Society, it’s persuits and its founding should be made.
Florence Pinkwick herself was a woman of great intelligence. Entering upon her fifth decade she held more degrees than any other female alumni of her University. Before entering University she had already published a book of verse, as editor and translator. The book was Rhymes of Bolivian Street Children and Discussion of the Third Language Translation Process. This was the book she published in her teenage years to be followed by dozens of others, many more than one hundred times the length of her first work. In her first work she failed to grasp the current jargon used in the linguistics feild but handled the theory so perfectly that some technical terms and jargon were permanently changed.
Florence Pinkwick was raised primarily in three parts of the world, in Monte Video, the capital city of Uruguay, in Stockholm, Sweden and in Portland, Oregon. Her parents had a great love for Monte Video which is what kept them returning to that bustling and fantastic metropolis, though it was their business interests that made keeping homes in Stockholm and Portland of the utmost necessity. It was in Portland the Florence Pinkwick eventually made her home and her society, but her travels were not restricted in life to either Oregon or Uruguay or Sweden.
She was a cosmopolitan woman. She did not want to be pegged a linguist at such an early age so began to attend the university of Stockholm with the goal of a degree in the History and Culture of Laplanders. To thoroughly follow the whole of Pinkwick’s career would be a novel in its own right. But we can know with no uncertainly that every degree she set to finish she did in record time. And to her parent’s dismay none of them would equip her to run their sea-life product distribution company. It was a great discouragement to them, for their empire was growing vast and the number of products that could be derived from sea-life seemed to be ever growing. They were the first people in Florence’s life to truly be unappreciative of her pursuits in academia. And for that I think they should be thanked. Without external pressures Florence Pinkwick may never have felt the need in her soul to gather together a Society of like minded women.
The Society existed in her heart for a number of years before it existed either on paper or in meeting form. She was lonely. She had her knowledge of Lapland culture, her ever growing stack of published works. She had income in the form of interest from her shares in Pinkwick’s Sea-life Products. (How it burned her soul to have her name associated with fish oil extraction!) She was what the feminist movement raging around her would have considered perfectly situated. She had intelligence, independence, and pursuits. In fact the local branch of Democratic Women for Change sought after her for her money, opinion, and reputation. They gave up their quest after a number of lunch meetings where, to their disappointment, it was discovered that Pinkwick had no problem with capitalism, just fish oil, that she had no problem with married women in particular but had never met a man who could keep up with her mind, and that she was so very terribly conservative in the fiscal sense. In fact, it was that more than anything that disappointed the Women of the DWC.
Pinkwick’s independent means had given rise to the rumors of great wealth. While she was very wealthy in the sense that she had no need to work, she stubbornly continued to write and publish books no one bought and to live under her means. And those means (as result again, of her shares in the Sea-life company) were about the average salary of those days and nothing particularly impressive from the donations and foundations point of view.
Eventually the democratic women stopped calling and Pinkwick found herself missing their company. She was haunting the Humanities Reading Room deep in the middle of her newest work, tentatively called “The Rise and Fall of Grain Industry in Romania and how Current Diet trends Affect the European Peasant” when she met Theodora Baxter.
“Pardon me.” Theodora said politely, as she set a stack of books on the same library table that Pinkwick was using.
Florence raised her eyes and smiled politely. Florence wasn’t bothered by the interruption but as yet saw no point in engaging.
“I see that you have stacked all of Marthe Bibesco’s work with you, but are not at the moment reading all of them.” Theodora hesitated, smiled and the indicated her stack of books. “The one book that I have been looking for most eagerly today is on top of your stack. Would you mind terribly if I used it with you, as you are not currently reading it?” Theodora was being especially careful. She had been looking for Bibesco “Isvor” for almost two months now. She spoke in a quiet voice and gestured with small movements as though the sought for book might notice her and fly quickly away.
Pinkwick looked at the stack of books the library patron had set down. They were quite the collection of Romanian Histories and encyclopedias “RA-RUM.”
Pinkwick set her book down and picked up “Isvor, Pays des saules.” She hadn’t gotten to it yet, in fact it was next on her agenda. Hence its being on the top of the stack. She looked from the book to the one requesting the book. The requestor was apparently nearsighted. She was wearing camel colored trousers and a mud colored blouse tied at the neck. Her hair was neither long and flowing nor tied up in a bun. It was shoulder length, mouse brown and thin but clean and shiny. She seemed like she would be careful with the book.
Pinkwick passed the book to Theodora. “Please take your time. I am Florence Pinkwick.”
Theodora expressed her relief in a heavy sigh. “Oh thank you.” You don’t know what this means to my thesis.” She sat down gracefully and opened the book gingerly. She gazed at in admiringly for a moment then looked back up. “Pardon my inexcusable rudeness. I am Theodora Baxter. I just couldn’t have finished my thesis on the ‘Ancient Worship of Trees and Shrubs in Eastern Europe and the Impact on Modern European Peasant Life’ without this book. It just couldn’t have been done.” Theodora brushed the cover of Isvor tenderly.
“Indeed! I should say it would be far from complete without reading Bibsco. And I hope you don’t find this too forward of me, but you might consider my own work “Trees, Diety, and the Ancient thought process of the Europen Peasant as useful to your work.” Pinkwick smiled broadly as she suggested her book. It was a true pleasure to her to share resources of the mind.
“But surely, you are not the F. Pinkwick! If you are well—but of course you are, how could it have been otherwise? It was reading your work in my course on European Animism that inspired me to pursue the same line in regards to how this ancient mythology affect the rural people of Eastern Europe in today’s world.
“Indeed? I am glad to hear it has already been useful to you.” And with that, both ladies buried themselves in their work, both especially pleased to have made the acquaintance of the other
