OUR NEXT MEETING: October 31, Halloween night, at 7:30 PM at the Winslow Center.
HALLOWEEN DESSERT GALA is our program for this fun night! Make [or buy] your favorite fall snack, cake, cookie, candy or whatever, and bring it to share at our HALLOWEEN PARTY. After the feasting and revelry, we can share our snacks that are left and bring them home for further temptation. Bringing an extra container to put your new goodies in makes it easier.

COSTUMES are definitely encouraged! How many different ways can we dress as sheep? Or sheep dogs?

DUES ARE DUE. Please remember to pay Pam the yearly dues at this next meeting.

A MUST READ for everyone who loves sheep.
THREE BAGS FULL: A SHEEP DETECTIVE STORY by Leonie Swann.
On my travels this summer, happily, I picked up up this thoroughly enchanting book. "Three Bags Full" features a flock of clever Irish sheep in a beguilingly original murder mystery for adults. I'm sure Swann must have had in mind as an audience, spinners and other lovers of sheep who could definitely imagine themselves reading aloud romance novels, fairy tales and texts on sheep diseases to these attentive sheep.

George Glenn, their shepherd, was the reading-aloud kind of shepherd--"Sometimes he explained words sheep knew anyway, words like 'prophylactics' and 'antibiotics'". The flock becomes upset by his sudden, violent death. One morning, the sheep find George lying in the grass, "unusually cold and lifeless" with a shovel stuck through his insides. They think he was done in by a wolf. But the cleverest among them, Miss Maple, explains: "Even the most sophisticated wolves didn't drive spades through the bodies of their victims."

The sheep begin to spy on the town's residents to gather "clues" to find the murderer. Their notion of justice comes from a mystery novel George read to them but didn't finish because it was too upsetting. The herd is filled with vivid characters laid out in loving detail. There is humor and naivete in their literal interpretations. They hear the expression "God's House" and decide the priest is God. Othello, a black Hebridean four-horned ram, goes into town to observe George's funeral.

"Othello told them about the strange garden and how George had been buried in a box. A murmur ran through the flock.
"'They don't have a pit there, but the dead don't just decay either. It looks more like a garden, not a vegetable garden, but a garden anyway, and all very tidy. And do you know what they said about that garden?' Othello looked round at them, his eyes sparkling. 'They said it belonged to God.'
"The sheep stared at one another in horror. Fancy planting dead people in your garden! They liked God less and less."

The sense of place is vivid: "The sea looked as if it had been licked clean, blue and clear and smooth." My sense was that I was not only reading about them, but also observing them in person. I have one copy and will bring it along. Anyone interested in this fun read can take turns. [Thanks to a couple reviews on the web for some of the above.]