Alpha Study Club met at the Gladbrook Methodist Church on February 27, 2024, with acting hostesses Avriel Koester and Jo Anne Sash. President Avreil opened the meeting with a poem about spring being in the air. Let’s hope so!

Roll call was answered by 17 members. The Secretary’s and Treasurer’s reports were read. Pauline Flamme and Kathy Herink will work on the library recognition project. There is a hostess switch in March and April. Pat Clausen will be hostess at the Peace Church on March 26 and Bonnie Murty will be hostess at the April 23 meeting at the Methodist Church. Pat Goos and Sue Storjohann are on the nominating committee. They will be contacting people to be officers.

Joan Appelgate reviewed the book, “The Dress Diary: Secrets From A Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe by Kate Strasdin.” In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments, she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs. Anne Sykes. Nearly 200 years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unraveling the secrets contained within the album’s pages. Piece by piece, she charts Anne’s journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain’s cotton industry and a look at the British Empire in full swing. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of the clothes we choose to wear.

After the review, lunch of strawberry cake, coffee and tea were served by the two hostesses.

Our next meeting will be on March 26 at the Peace Church with Pat Clausen as hostess.