By the way! I have a new favorite professional joke. I’ve been meaning to tell it to you for a long time, but before, I was only a seamstress by training. Now I’m the real thing—by profession and by place of work. It even says so on my employment card: “seamstress at Federal State Institution Penal Colony No. 6.” Back when I was a lawyer, I collected jokes about lawyers. Now I collect jokes about seamstresses. People joke about them less often, so for now my collection has only one joke in it—but it’s a good one. We sew some kind of idiotic straps, and honestly, I’m convinced they just throw them away immediately. The whole thing seems to have been invented just to keep busy the strange underground industrial zone of my “prison within a prison.” Anyway, I’m a seamstress (or seamster, if you like), and I’ve joined the ranks of the working stiffs on first shift. If anyone has Google handy, please check whether seamstresses have a professional holiday—maybe something like Light Industry Workers’ Day? I’ll celebrate it. So, the joke: A sewing and handicrafts lesson at school. The teacher says: — Children, today’s lesson is on turning piping inside out. A straight-A girl shoots her hand up: — Marya Ivanovna (a stereotypical Russian teacher’s name), how can that be? I thought the moral law was above us, and the starry sky within us?