Work leads to Play, as in talking the other day about Princess Mathilde (1820-1904), niece of Napoleon, takes me to the journals of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt with whom she was great friends, and thence to the days of the Second Empire, to empire in general, to Valentine's Day and the way light falls across the table, and so on.

Then there's Sex Machines, photographs and interviews by Timothy Archibald,  Process Media Inc. and Daniel 13, 2005, which combines work and play on a whole other level.  Fascinating.

And speaking of Work and Play and Labor, this entry from Edmond and Jules for 14 May 1868:

"At the upper end of the Boulevard Magenta, in a colony of huts -- which are leased to the poorest of the poor of Paris by Baron James de Rothschild -- a room where the planks that form the walls are coming apart and the floor is full of holes, through which rats are constantly appearing, rats which also come in whenever the door is opened... in this room, six children: the four biggest in a bed, and at their feet, which they are unable to stretch out, the two smallest in a crate.  The man, a costermonger who has known better days, dead-drunk during his wife's labour.  The woman, as drunk as her husband, lying on a straw mattress and being plied with drink by a friend... and during the delivery in this shanty, the wretched shanty of civilization, an organ-grinder's monkey, imitating and parodying the cries and angry oaths of the shrew in the throes of childbirth, piddling through a crack in the roof on to the snoring husband's back."

No wonder we turn to technology.  No wonder we hope labor-saving devices will help, and that machines will offer an alternative.