Power of humanity

I feel a bit wrung out but uplifted this evening after the events I went to today. I spent the morning doing ironing and some admin stuff, then a chat to JW which was interesting and I think bodes well for future work together.
After some lunch I went over to the Book Festival to see Hisham Matar talk about his new book 'My Friends'. I'd booked to see him with LE since I'd picked up one by him when we were in Siena in May and we both loved his writing. He was great (as was the interviewer and BSL interpreter), talking beautifully about family lies, exile and identity and so much else, including reciting a poem by Ovid in answer to a question about the language of silences. He seemed a warm and deeply intellectual person...I could have listened to him for hours. Interesting to see about 5 members of SPS there....clearly he's of interest to those from social anthropology!
Home for a zoom call with RL for one of the last few governor annual reviews, then out again to Henderson's to meet CR and JT for supper. We enjoyed our various menu choices, talking about the many shows we've all seen and discussing the merits and challenges of avantgarde performances, unecessary nudity and more nuanced and moving productions we all remembered. Having thought we had ages we suddenly realised we were a bit late and literally ran down to the Usher Hall, as the rain was starting.
Well, the concert was wonderful! So immersive and innovative, we loved it. It was telling the story of the Traingle Shirtwaister Factory Fire in NYC in 1911 through movement, sounds, projected images and film. The incredible soundscape created through using the orchestra's instruments in original ways to sound like sewing machines, fire, and sirens, as well as the National Youth Choir of Scotland doing an incredible job of singing complicated rhythms and repeated sounds often taken from the words of the 149 young women who worked and died in the fire. It was so incredibly moving, and particularly as the choir spread around the hall, at times right next to us as we sat in the stalls. At the end there was a rapturous response and standing ovation from the packed house. Incredible...
Afterwards there was a slightly chaotic Q&A session with Marin Allsop the conductor, Julia Wolfe the composer and other members of the creative team. Fascinating discussion of the intense research process behind Wolfe's work, and she talked about how moved she was by reading of Rose Schneiderman's speech after the fire (below). One questioner reflected on how, in so many modern tragedies, the public is still found wanting (striking since CR and I had recently been listening to the BBC docusmentary on the Grenfell Tower fire).
Came out of the hall to torrential rain so I made a dash for home....luckily it eased off a bit so I wasn't completely soaked. 
Brilliant events

Rose Schneiderman's April 2, 1911 Speech
I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.
This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.
We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.
Public officials have only words of warning to us—warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.
I can't talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.
Speech by Rose Schneiderman at Metropolitan Opera House meeting to protest the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire April 2, 1911. From: Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy (New York: Quadrangle/New Times Book Company, 1977), pp. 196-197. First published in The Survey, April 8, 1911.