Women's Day

 8 of March.

I remember it quite well from a primary school in Communist Poland.
Day before the celebrations, our class teacher dictated:
In 1910, at an international conference of socialist women, Klara Zetkin and Eugenia Cotton proposed to celebrate International Women's Day ...

Above Klara Zetkin with Rosa Luxemburg.
By Unknown author - Public Domain, Link

The first Women's Day celebrations took place on February 28, 1909, in New York, on the initiative of the Socialist Party of America, at the request of a certain Teresa Malkiel - KLIK.

Socialist Party of America - I sighed appreciatively and clicked to find out something about Mrs. Teresa.
"Ukrainian born American activist".

Ukraine in 1910?
Actually Teresa Malkiel was born in a Polish part of Ukraine, which at the time of her birth was administered by Austria.
Somehow I found these connection quite significant.

No wonder I got quite excited when I learned that my local library organized a Women's Day Trivia Night.
I joined and connected to zoom.

The evening was hosted by Mrs. Tracy Bartram, apparently a very popular presenter of radio programs, comedian, singer.

Her behavior confirmed that she was a professional comedian, because before she said something, she was already laughing, when she started talking, she was choking with laughter every now and then, and when she finished speaking, she laughed until the last person in the audience stopped laughing.

Very quickly she moved to the actual women's issues.
Firstly, memories of sufferings women had to endure while using diafragm as anticonception.
Then the double edge of menopause.

At this time I got a hint - men-o-pause .
As I was the only men connected to the session I paused - switched off 

In the library

My local library is located in Box Hill. I visit it frequently although choice of books is very poor. I got impression, that the main source of books are donations.

But I noticed, that the library turns into some kind of after classes room for students from nearby tertiary educational institutions.

This is how it looked last Tuesday...

Actually, now we have school holidays. So what are all these students doing here?

I got impression, they are all foreign students. Probably they live in some rented apartments and prefer good space in library and opportunity to study together with friends.

And they not only studied here. Few rested their heads on library desk and slept. Some had their lunch...

I was bit concerned about eating in the library. For me books and food do not mix well. But there are no signs prohibiting food and there is a coffee machine.

But eating hot food was bit too much. A lady from library administration informed young people, that heated food emits too much smell and asked them to take it outside. They obeyed this instruction quite happily.

Generally, I enjoyed view of so many young people in the library although I noticed, that they did not use much of library resources. On the other hand, I think it should be noticed by city council and educational institutions, that great demand exists for some kind of after-classes space where students could study, rest, develop their social contacts. It seems to me, that it exceeds current library capacity.