***
Uncle Pookie hooked up an inexpensive antenna a couple of months ago, so we have TV again after a little over two years absence. As I suspected, we weren't missing much.
***
Being brave in a single, really bad moment is easier than being brave over years of a more ordinary level of bad times.
***
I don't actually care what people's personal aesthethic preferences are, but I think it is a little odd that, in today's hyper-PC world, so many people think nothing of talking about the supposed horror of having white skin showing in summer or recommending ways to fix this "problem".
***
It's just occurred to me John Goodman could play Falstaff without padding. He's a good actor and I have sometimes thought it's a shame his size and shape limit (I assume) the roles he gets. But now I can't decide if he could play Falstaff or not. That's a BIG role. We're talking, to reverse Eddie Izzard, Scooby & Shaggy level big. I'd be willing to watch him try, though. God knows he could do no worse than Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania.
***
I think Genesis may be the most exciting book of the Bible. Aside from a few short begats bits, it's mostly stories of sibling rivalry (including sexual jealousy), betrayal, love and sex, father-in-laws screwing over sons-in-law, etc. Those kind of things make good reading.
***
Do TV people not listen to what they write? I caught a promo for an upcoming program about Hurricane Katrina making the people of Louisiana "despair"? If they've all despaired, why is there all this talk of rebuilding? Then again, maybe I've not been paying close enough attention, maybe it's only Mississippi--the state that was actually hit by the hurricane--that is talking of rebuilding better than before, while Louisiana sits huddled in a corner, despairing.
Or maybe the TV ad writers are postmodernists and have decided words don't mean anything, in which case, it's just as well I didn't want to see the show, because I wouldn't be able to trust that "Saturday at 6PM" (or whatever) meant what it said.
***
Petty annoyance number--oh, who am I kidding, I can't count that high: Microsoft's "Warning: Page has Expired" thing that tells you you have to click the Refresh button to view the page you want--well, I'm fine with that, but then it pops up with an annoying, triumphant-sounding beep and tells you it can't refresh without resending the information and do you want to retry or not. Note to Microsoft: I think I speak for most of your users when I say, IF I DIDN'T WANT THE COMPUTER TO RESEND THE INFORMATION I WOULDN'T HAVE CLICKED 'REFRESH' TO START WITH.
***
Apropos of nothing, I fully expect to turn into Victor Meldrew when I get a few more years on me.
***
I wish there were some way to lay bets that most of the young girls who now firmly declare that they don't wear pants that come up to the waist and who recoil at the sight of shoulder pads will, when fashion changes, happily wear those things.
***
It's rude to let yourself sound bored when you're talking to people, and I don't think it stops being rude just because you're an adult talking to a child.
***
This time every year for years now I've found myself thinking, "I wish I could go to the New Orleans Jazz Fest, it looks like such fun!" This year, reading about Bruce Springsteen's lame anti-Bush shtick, it was, "Too bad I wasn't there, it could have been fun to boo." And I'm not even feeling friendly to Bush right now.
***
I'm tired of writing "iced tea" when just about everyone where I come from says "ice tea". (Well, that's when we bother to say it at all, mostly we just say "tea" or "sweet tea"; tea is automatically assumed to be iced here, so we serve tea and hot tea, not tea and iced tea.) I may start spelling it without the d. Why not, when I already refuse to write "crayfish".
***
I saw a commercial for some sort of PDA or something, and it enthused about how wonderful it is that, with that product, a park bench can become an office, a telephone booth, a movie theater, a gaming station. Yes, God forbid anyone should have to sit on a park bench and look at a tree or make eye contact with another human.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Thursday, April 27, 2006
A Few More Things I've Never Understood
I've already mentioned anti-Semitism, cake mixes, and people who think Shakespeare is too hard to understand and also insist on using nothing but the King James Version of the Bible. Here's some more.
* The attaching of guilt to food--for example, "guiltfree menus" at restaurants or "eat all you want without guilt" advertisements. This doesn't make any sense to me. The only way I would ever feel guilty eating something would be if I were to eat something that belonged to someone else.
* Women who get angry if their husband or boyfriend doesn't give them a present on their birthday/Valentine's Day/Mother's Day/whatever--or worse, get angry if he doesn't give a good enough gift; or worse still (and I've only known one or two women this bad), get angry if he doesn't send the Valentine's gift to their workplace so their coworkers know they got a gift. What are these women, queens demanding tribute? I'm all for men treating their wives like queens, but gifts should be graciously accepted as gifts, not angrily demanded as your due. And in the case of the women who want their Valentine's booty in public, rather than private--how shallow can a person become without drying up completely?
* Women who trash their husbands to other women. Not only is it disrespectful and makes them look bad, but I'll bet they'd have a fit if they heard their husbands criticizing them to other people. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you applies in marriage at least as much as anywhere else.
* People who date, live with, or marry people they don't trust. Especially marry. I wouldn't want to sleep in the same house with a man I didn't trust, much less tie my economic future to him.
* People who say "I hate water". That's like saying "I hate air".
* The attaching of guilt to food--for example, "guiltfree menus" at restaurants or "eat all you want without guilt" advertisements. This doesn't make any sense to me. The only way I would ever feel guilty eating something would be if I were to eat something that belonged to someone else.
* Women who get angry if their husband or boyfriend doesn't give them a present on their birthday/Valentine's Day/Mother's Day/whatever--or worse, get angry if he doesn't give a good enough gift; or worse still (and I've only known one or two women this bad), get angry if he doesn't send the Valentine's gift to their workplace so their coworkers know they got a gift. What are these women, queens demanding tribute? I'm all for men treating their wives like queens, but gifts should be graciously accepted as gifts, not angrily demanded as your due. And in the case of the women who want their Valentine's booty in public, rather than private--how shallow can a person become without drying up completely?
* Women who trash their husbands to other women. Not only is it disrespectful and makes them look bad, but I'll bet they'd have a fit if they heard their husbands criticizing them to other people. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you applies in marriage at least as much as anywhere else.
* People who date, live with, or marry people they don't trust. Especially marry. I wouldn't want to sleep in the same house with a man I didn't trust, much less tie my economic future to him.
* People who say "I hate water". That's like saying "I hate air".
Viva la France! (And Ireland)
Yesterday Reuters had an article about experts pondering the "high" French birth rate--1.9 children per woman, the second highest rate in Europe. Leaving aside the sad fact that a below replacement level birthrate (replacement level in modern industrialised nations is 2.1) can be considered high in today's Europe and leaving aside my suspicion that non-assimilated Muslims may account for a lot of France's birth rate, I want to say "Hurrah for France!"
I know it's popular among many Americans to mock and criticize France and I'll admit to having repeated some French jokes since the Iraq war (before that my response to friends who repeatedly made those jokes was, "Why do you pick on France? Have you ever met any French people?"), but there are things about France that even a conservative can love. High on the list for me is that they showed some (un)commonsense and forethought back in the seventies about a potential scarcity of oil and built nuclear power plants; it's my understanding they now they make about 80% of their needed power with nuclear plants. Possibly due to more of that forethought, they've offered some incentives to child-bearing and are now less close to dying out than most other countries in Europe. Also I've heard creditable people say that, whatever their problems, the French have done a better job of keeping down the fomentation of Islamic terrorism within their country than the British have.Their cultural heritage--especially pre-twentieth century--is nothing to sneeze at, their language is beautiful (even if a French teacher and Francophile I used to know did describe it as "Latin spoken by ignorant peasants"!), and even people who don't like the French are apt to like their food.
And then too French immigrants contributed to south Louisiana culture. It's not a coincidence that the only feast descriptions I've ever been moved to read aloud to my husband were Peter Mayle's mouthwatering description of the dinner he was invited to at a neighboring farmhouse in Provence and a description of some cross-country walkers stopping for a meal in the backwoods of south Louisiana and, when the proprietors heard they weren't accustomed to that food, being given a sample of everything they had (all washed down by real Coca-Cola in a real glass bottle kept so cold it had bits of ice in it; it's Uncle Pookie's idea of heaven.)
I'm not saying I'll never repeat another "cheese-eating, surrender monkey" type joke, but I'm glad the French are having babies and wish they'd have even more.
Oh, and BTW the Irish are having the most babies. At 1.99 per woman, they're almost at replacement level--Go Irish!
I know it's popular among many Americans to mock and criticize France and I'll admit to having repeated some French jokes since the Iraq war (before that my response to friends who repeatedly made those jokes was, "Why do you pick on France? Have you ever met any French people?"), but there are things about France that even a conservative can love. High on the list for me is that they showed some (un)commonsense and forethought back in the seventies about a potential scarcity of oil and built nuclear power plants; it's my understanding they now they make about 80% of their needed power with nuclear plants. Possibly due to more of that forethought, they've offered some incentives to child-bearing and are now less close to dying out than most other countries in Europe. Also I've heard creditable people say that, whatever their problems, the French have done a better job of keeping down the fomentation of Islamic terrorism within their country than the British have.Their cultural heritage--especially pre-twentieth century--is nothing to sneeze at, their language is beautiful (even if a French teacher and Francophile I used to know did describe it as "Latin spoken by ignorant peasants"!), and even people who don't like the French are apt to like their food.
And then too French immigrants contributed to south Louisiana culture. It's not a coincidence that the only feast descriptions I've ever been moved to read aloud to my husband were Peter Mayle's mouthwatering description of the dinner he was invited to at a neighboring farmhouse in Provence and a description of some cross-country walkers stopping for a meal in the backwoods of south Louisiana and, when the proprietors heard they weren't accustomed to that food, being given a sample of everything they had (all washed down by real Coca-Cola in a real glass bottle kept so cold it had bits of ice in it; it's Uncle Pookie's idea of heaven.)
I'm not saying I'll never repeat another "cheese-eating, surrender monkey" type joke, but I'm glad the French are having babies and wish they'd have even more.
Oh, and BTW the Irish are having the most babies. At 1.99 per woman, they're almost at replacement level--Go Irish!
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
I Don't Know About Its Accuracy, But It's Pretty
What Kind of Princess are You? - Beautiful Artwork (Original Music is BACK!!!)
The Traditional PrincessYou are generous, graceful, and practical with both feet planted firmly on the ground. You tend to be a little on the old-fashioned side. You value home, hearth, and family life and love to be of service to others.
Role Models: Snow White, Maid Marian
You are most likely to: Discover a hidden talent for spinning straw into gold.
http://www.quizilla.com/redirect.php?statsid=42&url=http://www.quizilla.com/users/FaerieFriend/quizzes/
Misc.
***
Uncle Pookie's One-line Review of Scary Movie 4: "I gave up staying home, doing the taxes, and giving the government money for this?"
***
FYI, something I discovered when making my Easter dessert: Milled flax seed, mixed with melted butter and a bit of cinnamon, makes a decent substitute for a graham cracker crust for cheesecake; I mostly prefer crustless cheesecake, pies, and quiche myself, but I found this tasty.
I also tried a new (to me) product called Altern. It's an artificial sweetener for cooking made of maltodextrin and sucralose. I got it because the store was out of Splenda in the bag, and it seems to work as well as the Splenda. It's probably worming itself into my cells and killing me even as I type, but then I figure all the artificial sweeteners are killing me, just doing it differently and (it is to be hoped) a mite more gradually than the white sugar would.
***
I found this site months ago, and I can't remember if I linked it back then. It's too big for most of us to be interested in all of it, but I especially like the Insane Projects page; I think it represents what would happen if you combined Auntie Suzanne and Uncle Pookie into one person and gave that person more energy than either of us has.
***
I blogged a while back on the coming revolution in bra technology. Here's something sort of related--a post about the effect of chest shape on bra fit. Do check out the link to the breast augmentation site. It shows why, even with good-sized breasts, some women don't have impressive cleavage.
***
Funny product siting: Sugarfree Honey. Obviously this is imitation honey, but they put the word "imitation" in smaller letters than the rest, so you're apt not to see it until you've already said "what?"
***
Of interest only to people who like looking at old and/or exotic clothes: Oriental Costumes Their Designs and Colors. Lots of plates of traditional clothes; in most instances, you can see the structure of the garments really well.
***
Someone posted this list of quilting acronyms on PatternReview:
FIUF: finish it up frenzy
WOMBAT: waste of money, brains, and timeS
EX: stash enhancement excursion
FART: fabric acquisition road trip
PIGS: projects in grocery sacks
PHIB: projects hiding in boxes
STABLE: stash accumulation beyond life expectancy
HSY (pronounced "hussy"): Haven't started yet
Brazen HSY: years-old HSY
The applications go far beyond quilting. Let "stash" refer to something other than fabric--say, gaming modules or DVDs--and we could be talking about many different hobbies, and WOMBAT, of course, refers to many management decisions I've encountered over the years.
***
I have some "serious" sewing projects planned (not to mention the ongoing PIGS and PHIBs), but what's a to-do list for if not constant expansion. So here's a couple of possible "silly" projects (possible meaning I may possibly think about getting around to doing them one day) I've found.
A free penguin pattern. Uncle Pookie likes penguins and the example ones are awfully cute.
Tea-cozy, with or without irony. I've been trying to wean myself off drinking so much iced tea and, as a tea-free life is out of the question, I'm trying to up my consumption of hot tea; admittedly this plan has not faced a Mississippi summer yet. Maybe a tea-cozy would lend a certain something to the whole tea-sipping experience? If I can come up with a theme that isn't too terribly twee. I remember Sarah Kellerman (one of Charlotte MacLeod's series characters) once made fancy tea-cozies, so maybe a convivial codfish or something in homage?
(Actually, what I really need for my cute little metal pot is a handle cosy. When I asked the clerk wouldn't the handle conduct too much heat, she claimed it was made of a special spage age alloy that doesn't conduct heat well. She may have believed that, but t'aint true.)
***
This isn't exactly a miscellanous, but HAPPY EASTER!
Uncle Pookie's One-line Review of Scary Movie 4: "I gave up staying home, doing the taxes, and giving the government money for this?"
***
FYI, something I discovered when making my Easter dessert: Milled flax seed, mixed with melted butter and a bit of cinnamon, makes a decent substitute for a graham cracker crust for cheesecake; I mostly prefer crustless cheesecake, pies, and quiche myself, but I found this tasty.
I also tried a new (to me) product called Altern. It's an artificial sweetener for cooking made of maltodextrin and sucralose. I got it because the store was out of Splenda in the bag, and it seems to work as well as the Splenda. It's probably worming itself into my cells and killing me even as I type, but then I figure all the artificial sweeteners are killing me, just doing it differently and (it is to be hoped) a mite more gradually than the white sugar would.
***
I found this site months ago, and I can't remember if I linked it back then. It's too big for most of us to be interested in all of it, but I especially like the Insane Projects page; I think it represents what would happen if you combined Auntie Suzanne and Uncle Pookie into one person and gave that person more energy than either of us has.
***
I blogged a while back on the coming revolution in bra technology. Here's something sort of related--a post about the effect of chest shape on bra fit. Do check out the link to the breast augmentation site. It shows why, even with good-sized breasts, some women don't have impressive cleavage.
***
Funny product siting: Sugarfree Honey. Obviously this is imitation honey, but they put the word "imitation" in smaller letters than the rest, so you're apt not to see it until you've already said "what?"
***
Of interest only to people who like looking at old and/or exotic clothes: Oriental Costumes Their Designs and Colors. Lots of plates of traditional clothes; in most instances, you can see the structure of the garments really well.
***
Someone posted this list of quilting acronyms on PatternReview:
FIUF: finish it up frenzy
WOMBAT: waste of money, brains, and timeS
EX: stash enhancement excursion
FART: fabric acquisition road trip
PIGS: projects in grocery sacks
PHIB: projects hiding in boxes
STABLE: stash accumulation beyond life expectancy
HSY (pronounced "hussy"): Haven't started yet
Brazen HSY: years-old HSY
The applications go far beyond quilting. Let "stash" refer to something other than fabric--say, gaming modules or DVDs--and we could be talking about many different hobbies, and WOMBAT, of course, refers to many management decisions I've encountered over the years.
***
I have some "serious" sewing projects planned (not to mention the ongoing PIGS and PHIBs), but what's a to-do list for if not constant expansion. So here's a couple of possible "silly" projects (possible meaning I may possibly think about getting around to doing them one day) I've found.
A free penguin pattern. Uncle Pookie likes penguins and the example ones are awfully cute.
Tea-cozy, with or without irony. I've been trying to wean myself off drinking so much iced tea and, as a tea-free life is out of the question, I'm trying to up my consumption of hot tea; admittedly this plan has not faced a Mississippi summer yet. Maybe a tea-cozy would lend a certain something to the whole tea-sipping experience? If I can come up with a theme that isn't too terribly twee. I remember Sarah Kellerman (one of Charlotte MacLeod's series characters) once made fancy tea-cozies, so maybe a convivial codfish or something in homage?
(Actually, what I really need for my cute little metal pot is a handle cosy. When I asked the clerk wouldn't the handle conduct too much heat, she claimed it was made of a special spage age alloy that doesn't conduct heat well. She may have believed that, but t'aint true.)
***
This isn't exactly a miscellanous, but HAPPY EASTER!
Monday, April 10, 2006
Best Quote and Strangest Thing
Best Quote I've Seen Lately:
Strangest Thing I've Seen Today:
McCall's 4103. It's a children's pattern for a gi, basic pull-on pants, and what looks for all the world like a scrub top. The gi I understand--lots of children take karate or other martial arts classes--and a child could wear the pants just about anywhere, but how many children need scrubs? And why is McCall's catering to the niche market of children hospital workers when the company doesn't currently carry so much as one pattern for men's basic fly-front, zippered pants?
In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were
faced with the practice of "suttee" - the tradition of burning widows on the
funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably
multicultural:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We
also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their
necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will
build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow
ours."
(Mark Steyn column 3/25/06)
Strangest Thing I've Seen Today:
McCall's 4103. It's a children's pattern for a gi, basic pull-on pants, and what looks for all the world like a scrub top. The gi I understand--lots of children take karate or other martial arts classes--and a child could wear the pants just about anywhere, but how many children need scrubs? And why is McCall's catering to the niche market of children hospital workers when the company doesn't currently carry so much as one pattern for men's basic fly-front, zippered pants?
Random Thoughts
***
Seersucker is an odd word. It sounds as if it should be either an insect or an obscure insult from a fantasy novel.
***
As far as I can tell, my kitchen garbage can has only two states--empty and completely full; I have never seen it, say, a third full. I wonder it it's some sort of reverse Schroedinger's cat thing.
***
I wonder if the most lasting result of my reading Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons will be that I'm haunted by the term "voluntary quadriplegia".
***
Another thing that haunts me is Jung's (?) line about how everything that irritates us can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. It often wanders through my head when I'm--again often!--irritated by some petty thing or other. What does my irritation say about me?
***
Community is very important, but any place-based community will have one or two people who just don't fit in and never will. Humans may be social animals who work best in packs, but some of us are lone wolves. In the Renaissance, I would have been that eccentric woman on the outskirts of the village, happily talking to the toads and plants, who, if she were sufficiently unlucky as to her time and place, ended up on a fire. Valuable as it is to bloom where you're planted and to learn to get along with people you might not have much in common with and all that, I have a lot of sympathy for the guy who strikes out for Alaska to be a hermit in the wilderness.
***
I've seen beautiful older women (two famous ones would be Sophia Loren and Maureen O'Hara), but neve a cute one. Until recently. I was watching Rosemary and Thyme and UP remarked of the now 60-ish Felicity Kendall (whom we both know from the delightful Good Neighbors), "She's cute." He's right, but I might not have thought it possible for a woman that age to be cute before I saw her.
***
We often say/think how fragile life is--how one seemingly light blow to the head can kill a cat or a man, a tiny clot of blood can fell someone in otherwise perfect health, etc. But at the same time, it can be very hard to kill a person or an animal. Look at how much effort it took to kill Rasputin or how even a caterpillar will fight when you try to knock it to the ground to step on.
***
Green tea probably doesn't count as a St. Patrick's Day food.
***
I wonder if the women who obsess over dress size would be helped by stopping themselves saying, "I am size 12" (or whatever) and instead saying "I wear size 12".... Then again, probably not. I've heard of women who won't let a friend sew them something, because they would have to buy a pattern in a size larger than their RTW size--never mind that the physical objects, unlike the numbers attached to them, would be the same size. That kind of obsession is probably beyond any help vocabulary juggling could provide.
***
Are more people suddenly saying "if I was" instead of "if I were"? Everywhere I turn this past week I hear/read someone saying "if I was". When I mentioned this to him, Uncle Pookie had something to say about "bundling", but maybe there were always so many people using this construction and I just never noticed until now.
***
Heard from Uncle Pookie: "I don't have a sarcastic bone in my body. My cartilage, on the other hand..." Change that sarcastic to smart-assed and it's a perfect bon mot.
***
Why when we say "martial arts" are we always talking about traditional Asian fighting skills? Martial arts should describe all the martial skills, modern as well as old, Western as well as Eastern. An American recruit in basic training is learning martial arts, yet when we say martial arts we picture Bruce Lee or the kids in the local tae kwon do school.
***
Perfectionism is a more complicated problem than it might seem (saying "Just lighten up!", while sensible advice, won't cure it) and perfectionists often have what's called poor self-esteem, but I wonder if sometimes there isn't a bit of arrogance in the mix too--"I'm too good to make a flawed product or perform badly." You have to be humble to be willing to make a mistake.
Seersucker is an odd word. It sounds as if it should be either an insect or an obscure insult from a fantasy novel.
***
As far as I can tell, my kitchen garbage can has only two states--empty and completely full; I have never seen it, say, a third full. I wonder it it's some sort of reverse Schroedinger's cat thing.
***
I wonder if the most lasting result of my reading Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons will be that I'm haunted by the term "voluntary quadriplegia".
***
Another thing that haunts me is Jung's (?) line about how everything that irritates us can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. It often wanders through my head when I'm--again often!--irritated by some petty thing or other. What does my irritation say about me?
***
Community is very important, but any place-based community will have one or two people who just don't fit in and never will. Humans may be social animals who work best in packs, but some of us are lone wolves. In the Renaissance, I would have been that eccentric woman on the outskirts of the village, happily talking to the toads and plants, who, if she were sufficiently unlucky as to her time and place, ended up on a fire. Valuable as it is to bloom where you're planted and to learn to get along with people you might not have much in common with and all that, I have a lot of sympathy for the guy who strikes out for Alaska to be a hermit in the wilderness.
***
I've seen beautiful older women (two famous ones would be Sophia Loren and Maureen O'Hara), but neve a cute one. Until recently. I was watching Rosemary and Thyme and UP remarked of the now 60-ish Felicity Kendall (whom we both know from the delightful Good Neighbors), "She's cute." He's right, but I might not have thought it possible for a woman that age to be cute before I saw her.
***
We often say/think how fragile life is--how one seemingly light blow to the head can kill a cat or a man, a tiny clot of blood can fell someone in otherwise perfect health, etc. But at the same time, it can be very hard to kill a person or an animal. Look at how much effort it took to kill Rasputin or how even a caterpillar will fight when you try to knock it to the ground to step on.
***
Green tea probably doesn't count as a St. Patrick's Day food.
***
I wonder if the women who obsess over dress size would be helped by stopping themselves saying, "I am size 12" (or whatever) and instead saying "I wear size 12".... Then again, probably not. I've heard of women who won't let a friend sew them something, because they would have to buy a pattern in a size larger than their RTW size--never mind that the physical objects, unlike the numbers attached to them, would be the same size. That kind of obsession is probably beyond any help vocabulary juggling could provide.
***
Are more people suddenly saying "if I was" instead of "if I were"? Everywhere I turn this past week I hear/read someone saying "if I was". When I mentioned this to him, Uncle Pookie had something to say about "bundling", but maybe there were always so many people using this construction and I just never noticed until now.
***
Heard from Uncle Pookie: "I don't have a sarcastic bone in my body. My cartilage, on the other hand..." Change that sarcastic to smart-assed and it's a perfect bon mot.
***
Why when we say "martial arts" are we always talking about traditional Asian fighting skills? Martial arts should describe all the martial skills, modern as well as old, Western as well as Eastern. An American recruit in basic training is learning martial arts, yet when we say martial arts we picture Bruce Lee or the kids in the local tae kwon do school.
***
Perfectionism is a more complicated problem than it might seem (saying "Just lighten up!", while sensible advice, won't cure it) and perfectionists often have what's called poor self-esteem, but I wonder if sometimes there isn't a bit of arrogance in the mix too--"I'm too good to make a flawed product or perform badly." You have to be humble to be willing to make a mistake.
Monday, March 27, 2006
A Nice Place to Visit, But They Wouldn't Want You to Live There
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that this weekend evangelical Christian teenagers rallied in San Francisco. The rally, "Battle Cry for a Generation", was held by a group called Teen Mania whose goal is to guide teenagers away from the negative influences of pop culture. Not surprisingly for an evangelical group, they also want to create more youth who are evangelizers, helping other young people with problems and trying to bring them to Jesus.
A San Francisco Assemblyman said of the evangelicals, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." I suppose rallies of any kind are bound to get loud, but funnily enough, the article does not mention even one act by the rally attendees that might earn them the designations "obnoxious" or "disgusting". Could it be there were unreported incidences of rude behavior or crimes by the attendees that made the Assemblyman hostile to them?
According to the article I linked, the city's Board of Supervisors "earlier in the week"--i.e. before the teenage evangelicals got to San Francisco--passed a resolution condemning the gathering. Hmm. The city officially condemned the evangelicals before they had a chance to do anything. That makes it sound as if the problem the city has with them is their presence--perhaps even their very existence--not anything they've actually done.
I don't have a problem with the private citizens who protested the rally (even if they do bring out the rather tired epithet "fascists"), because I would expect it and because I support freedom of speech and assembly--even by people assembling for speech I disagree with. But it seems kind of odd for city officials to say these things. As long as the rally members are law-abiding, gathering peacefully, and not endangering the community by committing or encouraging others to commit dangerous & illegal acts, shouldn't the city be neutral?
I don't necessarily agree with everything the rally organizers and attendees believe. For one thing, I find their referring to the filth of much pop culture as "virtue terrorism" distasteful. For another, I'm neither an evangelical nor a fundamentalist. I'm a Catholic. I consider the people at that gathering fellow Christians--what many Catholics call "separated brothers and sisters"--but at least a few of them probably think I'm a heathen statue-worshipper, so needless to say there's some theological differences. But we're more alike than we are different.
I guess that means San Francisco wouldn't want me either. Maybe I should be impressed by myself. Considering some of the pictures I've seen of various protests & gatherings (none condemned by the city, as far as I know), being too "disgusting" for San Francisco is quite a feat.
A San Francisco Assemblyman said of the evangelicals, "they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco." I suppose rallies of any kind are bound to get loud, but funnily enough, the article does not mention even one act by the rally attendees that might earn them the designations "obnoxious" or "disgusting". Could it be there were unreported incidences of rude behavior or crimes by the attendees that made the Assemblyman hostile to them?
According to the article I linked, the city's Board of Supervisors "earlier in the week"--i.e. before the teenage evangelicals got to San Francisco--passed a resolution condemning the gathering. Hmm. The city officially condemned the evangelicals before they had a chance to do anything. That makes it sound as if the problem the city has with them is their presence--perhaps even their very existence--not anything they've actually done.
I don't have a problem with the private citizens who protested the rally (even if they do bring out the rather tired epithet "fascists"), because I would expect it and because I support freedom of speech and assembly--even by people assembling for speech I disagree with. But it seems kind of odd for city officials to say these things. As long as the rally members are law-abiding, gathering peacefully, and not endangering the community by committing or encouraging others to commit dangerous & illegal acts, shouldn't the city be neutral?
I don't necessarily agree with everything the rally organizers and attendees believe. For one thing, I find their referring to the filth of much pop culture as "virtue terrorism" distasteful. For another, I'm neither an evangelical nor a fundamentalist. I'm a Catholic. I consider the people at that gathering fellow Christians--what many Catholics call "separated brothers and sisters"--but at least a few of them probably think I'm a heathen statue-worshipper, so needless to say there's some theological differences. But we're more alike than we are different.
I guess that means San Francisco wouldn't want me either. Maybe I should be impressed by myself. Considering some of the pictures I've seen of various protests & gatherings (none condemned by the city, as far as I know), being too "disgusting" for San Francisco is quite a feat.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Two Kinds of People...
I'm rereading the Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. The best thing about them (after those wonderful charcoal or soft pencil illustrations by Garth Williams; as a child Little House on the Prairie was my least favorite of those books because it was the only one I had in an edition without the illustrations) is that you get to see people making things. Making a garden, making cheese, making bullets, making straw hats, etc. Sometimes you ask yourself questions like, If I were alone somewhere, two days from a town, and I needed a secure door for my house, would I be able to figure out how to make one?
I'm not all that big fan of the "two kinds of people in the world" thing, but... I think there's two kinds of people in the world: those who enjoy the challenge of figuring things out and "making do" and those who don't. My father is one of the first; just as one example, I introduced him to (purchased) vine charcoal, and the next time I saw him he'd made some on his own. My mother is one of the latter. I knew her on several occasions to make a fairly clever substition in cooking due to being out of an ingredient, but she seemed to regard it as degrading and I never saw her take any pleasure in figuring things out generally.
As it possibly is with any of these "two kinds" divisions, people in one camp may not understand people in the other camp. I know I'm one of those who enjoy figuring things out on my own and making do, and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't. When I figure out how to do/get/make something without resorting to a trip to the store, I not only have the pleasure of problem-solving, I get a little charge out of being independent enough to do it on my own.
I'm not all that big fan of the "two kinds of people in the world" thing, but... I think there's two kinds of people in the world: those who enjoy the challenge of figuring things out and "making do" and those who don't. My father is one of the first; just as one example, I introduced him to (purchased) vine charcoal, and the next time I saw him he'd made some on his own. My mother is one of the latter. I knew her on several occasions to make a fairly clever substition in cooking due to being out of an ingredient, but she seemed to regard it as degrading and I never saw her take any pleasure in figuring things out generally.
As it possibly is with any of these "two kinds" divisions, people in one camp may not understand people in the other camp. I know I'm one of those who enjoy figuring things out on my own and making do, and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't. When I figure out how to do/get/make something without resorting to a trip to the store, I not only have the pleasure of problem-solving, I get a little charge out of being independent enough to do it on my own.
Something I've Never Understood
Cake mixes. They're supposed to save you so much time; I've heard women say they won't make scratch cakes, only mixes, because scratch cakes are "too much trouble". But what time does a cake mix save you? You dump the mix in a bowl, and you still have to measure out oil or butter, milk, and eggs. The mixing takes the same amount of time, so all the work the mix has saved you is measuring and pouring your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and, assuming this isn't a plain butter cake, flavoring--or if you use self-rising flour, only the measuring of the flour; the dumping of it in the bowl would be the same as dumpting the cake mix in. You might also have to wash an additional couple of measuring spoons and possibly an extra measuring cup. All in all, a mix saves you maybe two minutes of time. Maybe a carrot cake mix would bump it up to nearly five minutes, since you no longer have to grate a carrot, but the point is mixes don't actually save you much work; they cost more (unless we're talking double coupons on top of a loss leader sale or something like that), they don't taste as good, most of us don't know what some of the ingredients are, they're less versatile than the ingredients for homemade cake, and yet they still don't save you any significant amount of effort. Why bother?
I haven't bought a cake mix since a day or two before I was married, a little over eleven years ago, and that was only because I wanted chocolate cake in what was still a bachelor's kitchen. If I want cake, I make one from basic ingredients I keep on hand. It's bucking a trend though. As I said (read "overgeneralized") to my husband, if women in my grandmothers' generation wanted cake, they made one from scratch; if women in my mother's generation wanted cake, they used a mix (possibly jazzed up with apricot nectar or something); and if women my age want cake, they go to the store and buy a cake. Maybe making any food at home is weird nowadays. I'm only an adequate cook (defined as "no one will starve around me"), but some people nowadays apparently can't cook at all; I have seen many grocery carts filled with nothing but frozen meals, deli items, and things like Pop Tarts.
Other things I don't understand include anti-Semitism and why people who say Shakespeare is "too hard" are sometimes the same people who insist on using only the King James Version of the Bible.
I haven't bought a cake mix since a day or two before I was married, a little over eleven years ago, and that was only because I wanted chocolate cake in what was still a bachelor's kitchen. If I want cake, I make one from basic ingredients I keep on hand. It's bucking a trend though. As I said (read "overgeneralized") to my husband, if women in my grandmothers' generation wanted cake, they made one from scratch; if women in my mother's generation wanted cake, they used a mix (possibly jazzed up with apricot nectar or something); and if women my age want cake, they go to the store and buy a cake. Maybe making any food at home is weird nowadays. I'm only an adequate cook (defined as "no one will starve around me"), but some people nowadays apparently can't cook at all; I have seen many grocery carts filled with nothing but frozen meals, deli items, and things like Pop Tarts.
Other things I don't understand include anti-Semitism and why people who say Shakespeare is "too hard" are sometimes the same people who insist on using only the King James Version of the Bible.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
And the Blogger Rambled On-- A Post About Cooking, Sewing, Advertising, the Cult of Experts, and Possibly the Kitchen Sink As Well
You know how you occasionally read something that really strikes you and leads you to read something else and something else? PatternReview had an article (and follow-up discussion in the forum) nearly two weeks ago that was like that for me--and I don't even know why, since I didn't really learn anything wholly new from it. It was an article by Sarah Jacobs, called "Quick Cheap Sewing"; I almost didn't read it because I figured it was just a few timesaving and thrifty hints, but it turned out to be more interesting than that. (I'd link to it, but the articles are only available to PR members--to free members for 7 days only.) Basically, the article draws some analogies between cooking and sewing.
Most of us who do much cooking have sort of mental slopers (a basic design that more complex designs can be built on) or master recipes for various dishes. For example, we know basically what to do to get a casserole, so we can just look in the kitchen and cobble together a casserole from whatever we have on hand; or, even more simply, we know the basics of roasting a chicken, so we can follow those basics every time to get a dish that is recognizable as roasted chicken and doesn't give us salmonella, but by varying details such as seasoning we can make that dish have a wide range of tastes. For dishes that we seldom cook and so don't already have a mental sloper for, we can look in cookbooks at one or several recipes for the dish to get the basic proportions of ingredients and then build our own version, based on our own preferences and on which ingredients we actually have. This is my main way of using cookbooks--as general reference, rather than explicit directions--and I was pleased to see the article's author saying she uses cookbooks that way too. A more formal version of this practice--which led to a more formal (i.e. written, not mental) master recipe--would be the Tightwad Gazette lady's description of how she came up with her Universal Muffin recipe.
Ms. Jacobs talks about enjoying browsing cookbooks, especially the 1943 edition of The Settlement Cookbook. (I'd never heard of it before, being from the South rather than the Midwest, but the story of this cookbook is pretty interesting, as cookbooks go--you could see it as a womanpower success story. The earliest versions are public domain, and the 1903 edition has been reprinted by at least two different publishers and is available from Amazon and scans of the 1901 edition can be viewed online for free.) Ms. Jacobs said that as a girl she was amazed at the existence of recipes for things we normally buy, like marshmallows; nowadays, some people are amazed if you make cake, let alone marshmallows, from scratch. The Settlement Cookbook had recipes for plain, everyday sort of cakes, as opposed to a Martha Stewart sort of cake. Ms. Jacobs gave us her version--Quick Plain Cake--of a Settlement recipe called Cheap Plain Cake, which is exactly what both of its names say it is. I've already adapted it into a cranberry upside down cake that pleased me; I don't do much making of sweets because I discovered early in my marriage my husband prefers storebought candy, but this recipe is going in my file because it is so easy, quick, and adaptable. (I'd long been thinking of working out a recipe for a tiny cake--just enough for one big or two small servings--and this may become my basis for that.)
The point of the article is that, while many of us approach sewing like the cook who always looks up fancy recipes and follows them exactly, sewing can also be like this everyday kind of cooking. The author cites the early '50s Sewing Made Easy that told its readers how to take a basic commercial pattern and alter it to get many styles of skirts (like altering the flavoring of Plain Cake to get different cakes); people measuring hips and waists to make a skirt (you know the basic shape so you only need the details, like with making a quick casserole you only need to know what you have in the cupboard and how many people you need to feed); and the Jamaican woman who showed the author how to cut around an existing garment to get the pieces for a new one. This version of sewing or cooking can be plainer and quicker and cheaper than the close- following-of-recipe version--cheaper, if for no other reason than you buy fewer patterns. It will definitely reflect the creator's personality more, as she decides for herself which details she wants--from outer appearance to construction methods.
Perhaps most important is that this approach makes the seamster ("sewer" never looks right in print) less dependant upon experts. In the forum discussion of this article many people said that their grandmothers sewed this way, but that the method had not been passed on. Two people specifically said that, although grandma had done it, mother had not had the confidence to deviate from a pattern or recipe; the first said she wondered if the post-WWII advertising had been to blame. I read this right after reading in Crunchy Cons (book and blog) speculations about 1950s advertising convincing people that storebought convenience food was better--cleaner, more scientifically wholesome--than homegrown and/or homecooked food. I think the 1950s, even if it was a Golden Age in some ways, encouraged an over-reliance on "experts" and "convenience" that has only snowballed. Many traditional skills have been lost. I don't just mean obsolete skills (like, say, plowing with a mule) or nearing-obsoletion ones (shade tree mechanics have become relatively rare as cars have acquired more and more electronic parts that you really do need special tools to work on.) Utne Reader had an article a decade or so ago about the dying of food knowledge--many people with teen girls in the '60s and '70s didn't bother to teach their daughters how to cook or even how to select produce and meat, so that these girls had to learn for themselves or rely on convenience food as adults, then they generally had less knowledge to pass on the their teenagers, and so it goes. The Home Ec classes that in at least some cases tried to teach people to ignore the traditional peasant cooking of their Italian immigrant or poor Southern mother in favor of "scientific" cooking (a euphemism for upper middle-class WASP cooking?), then reliance on a basis of convenience foods, are now, it is my understanding, sometimes not taught at all, because why learn to cook when you can live on frozen dinners (or sew when you can go to a store or clean when you can hire an "undocumented worker"). Many people today not only don't know how to sew on a button, it's apparently never occurred to them that they could figure it out if they tried. Many people call a plumber or repairman for even simple jobs, without even asking themselves if they could fix it themselves; on TV much sitcom hilarity can be counted on if a character dares to think he can repair something himself. If you need some item around the house, the "right" thing to do is to go buy one, not figure out how to make the item or a substitute yourself; only an eccentric or a hick makes his own toilet paper dispenser. A mother whose small child received only homemade toys for Christmas would probably find her acquaintances muttering darkly about "abuse" because everyone knows children "need" new, storebought toys--i.e. toymaking is best left to the experts....Okay, I'm rambling now. And maybe this is being mitigated somewhat by the surge of interest in crafting, DIY television programs, and cooking programs, but I think the over-reliance on experts to feed, clothe, educate, and entertain us is still going strong. I think there's still a lot more people watching food programs than making food.
The person who has basic skills and, perhaps more important these days, the attitude that it is okay to figure things out yourself and do it your own way is less reliant on experts than people who don't have skills or this attitude. And that, as expert Martha Stewart might say, is a Good Thing. (Then again, she might not, because it might make you less likely to buy her magazine.) Rural (not to say backwoods) Southern women of my grandmothers' generation put pictures on their walls wherever they felt like it, but ones of my mother's generation learned they must place them artistically; the increased sophistication may have been a good thing overall, but I'll bet the earlier generation had more confidence in their picture placement choices--"I like it there, so it's good" vs. "Is this really the way the [women's magazine, Home Ec text, TV show] said it should be arranged? Maybe it should look more like that living room I saw in that movie." And that's not even getting into the fact that societies in which people lack basic skills--i.e. more highly specialized societies, i.e. societies in which experts hold sway--are more easily destroyed; ask a survivalist or possibly an historian.
It's also not touching on other things that came up in the article and subsequent discussion--even if only for me. Like how many people around the world don't use patterns for sewing: Indian tailors measure their clients and make salwar kameeze or other traditional garments based on those measurements and their own mental slopers; traditional kimono were sewn just from the person's measurements marked out on cloth; there are few patterns for home sewers in Africa or, it is my understanding, Asia; presumably there are no commercial patterns for pygmy loincloths, and so on. The history of patternmaking is actually pretty interesting; I've found interesting tidbits at the McCall's (or was it Butterick?) website, in a children's book called Design It, Sew It, and Wear It by Duane Bradley, and several adult sewing or clothing books. Thanks to the article & discussion, I have several additions to my mental "pick it up if you see it in a thrift store" booklist and I'm now rereading the Little House books. This little article may be reverberating in my mind for a while.
(Okay, so I didn't actually get in anything about the kitchen sink, but it's past midnight and I'm really sleepy--not to mention drained--so I'll have to get back to it some other time.)
Most of us who do much cooking have sort of mental slopers (a basic design that more complex designs can be built on) or master recipes for various dishes. For example, we know basically what to do to get a casserole, so we can just look in the kitchen and cobble together a casserole from whatever we have on hand; or, even more simply, we know the basics of roasting a chicken, so we can follow those basics every time to get a dish that is recognizable as roasted chicken and doesn't give us salmonella, but by varying details such as seasoning we can make that dish have a wide range of tastes. For dishes that we seldom cook and so don't already have a mental sloper for, we can look in cookbooks at one or several recipes for the dish to get the basic proportions of ingredients and then build our own version, based on our own preferences and on which ingredients we actually have. This is my main way of using cookbooks--as general reference, rather than explicit directions--and I was pleased to see the article's author saying she uses cookbooks that way too. A more formal version of this practice--which led to a more formal (i.e. written, not mental) master recipe--would be the Tightwad Gazette lady's description of how she came up with her Universal Muffin recipe.
Ms. Jacobs talks about enjoying browsing cookbooks, especially the 1943 edition of The Settlement Cookbook. (I'd never heard of it before, being from the South rather than the Midwest, but the story of this cookbook is pretty interesting, as cookbooks go--you could see it as a womanpower success story. The earliest versions are public domain, and the 1903 edition has been reprinted by at least two different publishers and is available from Amazon and scans of the 1901 edition can be viewed online for free.) Ms. Jacobs said that as a girl she was amazed at the existence of recipes for things we normally buy, like marshmallows; nowadays, some people are amazed if you make cake, let alone marshmallows, from scratch. The Settlement Cookbook had recipes for plain, everyday sort of cakes, as opposed to a Martha Stewart sort of cake. Ms. Jacobs gave us her version--Quick Plain Cake--of a Settlement recipe called Cheap Plain Cake, which is exactly what both of its names say it is. I've already adapted it into a cranberry upside down cake that pleased me; I don't do much making of sweets because I discovered early in my marriage my husband prefers storebought candy, but this recipe is going in my file because it is so easy, quick, and adaptable. (I'd long been thinking of working out a recipe for a tiny cake--just enough for one big or two small servings--and this may become my basis for that.)
The point of the article is that, while many of us approach sewing like the cook who always looks up fancy recipes and follows them exactly, sewing can also be like this everyday kind of cooking. The author cites the early '50s Sewing Made Easy that told its readers how to take a basic commercial pattern and alter it to get many styles of skirts (like altering the flavoring of Plain Cake to get different cakes); people measuring hips and waists to make a skirt (you know the basic shape so you only need the details, like with making a quick casserole you only need to know what you have in the cupboard and how many people you need to feed); and the Jamaican woman who showed the author how to cut around an existing garment to get the pieces for a new one. This version of sewing or cooking can be plainer and quicker and cheaper than the close- following-of-recipe version--cheaper, if for no other reason than you buy fewer patterns. It will definitely reflect the creator's personality more, as she decides for herself which details she wants--from outer appearance to construction methods.
Perhaps most important is that this approach makes the seamster ("sewer" never looks right in print) less dependant upon experts. In the forum discussion of this article many people said that their grandmothers sewed this way, but that the method had not been passed on. Two people specifically said that, although grandma had done it, mother had not had the confidence to deviate from a pattern or recipe; the first said she wondered if the post-WWII advertising had been to blame. I read this right after reading in Crunchy Cons (book and blog) speculations about 1950s advertising convincing people that storebought convenience food was better--cleaner, more scientifically wholesome--than homegrown and/or homecooked food. I think the 1950s, even if it was a Golden Age in some ways, encouraged an over-reliance on "experts" and "convenience" that has only snowballed. Many traditional skills have been lost. I don't just mean obsolete skills (like, say, plowing with a mule) or nearing-obsoletion ones (shade tree mechanics have become relatively rare as cars have acquired more and more electronic parts that you really do need special tools to work on.) Utne Reader had an article a decade or so ago about the dying of food knowledge--many people with teen girls in the '60s and '70s didn't bother to teach their daughters how to cook or even how to select produce and meat, so that these girls had to learn for themselves or rely on convenience food as adults, then they generally had less knowledge to pass on the their teenagers, and so it goes. The Home Ec classes that in at least some cases tried to teach people to ignore the traditional peasant cooking of their Italian immigrant or poor Southern mother in favor of "scientific" cooking (a euphemism for upper middle-class WASP cooking?), then reliance on a basis of convenience foods, are now, it is my understanding, sometimes not taught at all, because why learn to cook when you can live on frozen dinners (or sew when you can go to a store or clean when you can hire an "undocumented worker"). Many people today not only don't know how to sew on a button, it's apparently never occurred to them that they could figure it out if they tried. Many people call a plumber or repairman for even simple jobs, without even asking themselves if they could fix it themselves; on TV much sitcom hilarity can be counted on if a character dares to think he can repair something himself. If you need some item around the house, the "right" thing to do is to go buy one, not figure out how to make the item or a substitute yourself; only an eccentric or a hick makes his own toilet paper dispenser. A mother whose small child received only homemade toys for Christmas would probably find her acquaintances muttering darkly about "abuse" because everyone knows children "need" new, storebought toys--i.e. toymaking is best left to the experts....Okay, I'm rambling now. And maybe this is being mitigated somewhat by the surge of interest in crafting, DIY television programs, and cooking programs, but I think the over-reliance on experts to feed, clothe, educate, and entertain us is still going strong. I think there's still a lot more people watching food programs than making food.
The person who has basic skills and, perhaps more important these days, the attitude that it is okay to figure things out yourself and do it your own way is less reliant on experts than people who don't have skills or this attitude. And that, as expert Martha Stewart might say, is a Good Thing. (Then again, she might not, because it might make you less likely to buy her magazine.) Rural (not to say backwoods) Southern women of my grandmothers' generation put pictures on their walls wherever they felt like it, but ones of my mother's generation learned they must place them artistically; the increased sophistication may have been a good thing overall, but I'll bet the earlier generation had more confidence in their picture placement choices--"I like it there, so it's good" vs. "Is this really the way the [women's magazine, Home Ec text, TV show] said it should be arranged? Maybe it should look more like that living room I saw in that movie." And that's not even getting into the fact that societies in which people lack basic skills--i.e. more highly specialized societies, i.e. societies in which experts hold sway--are more easily destroyed; ask a survivalist or possibly an historian.
It's also not touching on other things that came up in the article and subsequent discussion--even if only for me. Like how many people around the world don't use patterns for sewing: Indian tailors measure their clients and make salwar kameeze or other traditional garments based on those measurements and their own mental slopers; traditional kimono were sewn just from the person's measurements marked out on cloth; there are few patterns for home sewers in Africa or, it is my understanding, Asia; presumably there are no commercial patterns for pygmy loincloths, and so on. The history of patternmaking is actually pretty interesting; I've found interesting tidbits at the McCall's (or was it Butterick?) website, in a children's book called Design It, Sew It, and Wear It by Duane Bradley, and several adult sewing or clothing books. Thanks to the article & discussion, I have several additions to my mental "pick it up if you see it in a thrift store" booklist and I'm now rereading the Little House books. This little article may be reverberating in my mind for a while.
(Okay, so I didn't actually get in anything about the kitchen sink, but it's past midnight and I'm really sleepy--not to mention drained--so I'll have to get back to it some other time.)
Monday, March 13, 2006
Richard Cory in Japan
I read in the news the other day that there's been an increase in group suicides in Japan--mostly young people who meet online to discuss dying, apparently. This is a very sad thing. I understand that Japan has different cultural attitudes toward suicide than we do in the West (though we have our own strand of suicide-romanticization--Goethe, Plath fans, Goths, etc.), but it is sad nonetheless. Japan is a very prosperous country with a heritage to be proud of, yet nowadays the Japanese as a whole can't summon up enough hope in the future to replace themselves and some of the young people they do have can't summon up the nerve to keep living.
I'm very familiar with the phenomenon of Westerners who go on about how the East is more spiritual than the West, Easterners are more holistic and less materialistic, etc. I don't tend to buy this, because I think people are people wherever you go--i.e. human nature is the same, no matter the shape of the eyes, color of the skin, or texture of the hair. You wouldn't get Hong Kong or modern, commercial Japan if people of the East were automatically less susceptible to greed than the West, would you? Anyway, I think these suicides in Japan and its very low birth rate come in part from a spiritual problem. (It's probably a psychological problem too; humans just don't seem to do as well in prosperity as they do in adversity. Not to mention a multilayered social problem.)
When people decide to live only for themselves, it never satisfies. There is a spiritual emptiness. It's good for the economy (short-term), because the less you have in your life that matters the more distractions you need to buy, but it is not good for people. When vast numbers of people in a society decide that there is nothing bigger than themselves worth living for, nothing more important than themselves and the gratification of their own immediate whims and desires, it is very bad for that society's long-term future. Why go on living and working and producing if nothing matters? A man isn't going to die for a country he thinks is worthless and corrupt. A woman isn't going to be willing to lose her figure and her free time for children, if she thinks the next generation isn't as important as her own good time. Why go to the trouble of building families and communities when it's easier to shop and watch TV and have a string of affairs? And when you realize the continual gratification of your appetites never ends because it never really satisfies, why even go on living? If there's nothing bigger than you and all the distractions you're supposed to want because they're so fun and so luxurious don't satisfy, why not give in to weariness and end it all?
I'm not picking on Japan. This "nothing bigger than me" attitude that I think may be contributing to the group suicides is pervasive in Europe and the Anglosphere too. Unless there's a radical change, I expect to see more of this sort of thing in the West. Based on various things I've read over the past fifteen years or so, it seems we're already seeing at least a small rise in suicides.
And I think that is a very bad thing.
I have sympathy for the kind of unhappiness these people may have had in their lives and I understand clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, because I've been there, but I think I lost whatever tendency I may have had to romanticise suicide a good many years ago. (I definitely decided it wasn't an option for me.) And if I did have any residual feeling along those lines, I lost it several years ago, when I first came across these lines by Chesterton:
I hope I never look at henbit or a sparrow and sneer. Or my fellow human beings.
I'm very familiar with the phenomenon of Westerners who go on about how the East is more spiritual than the West, Easterners are more holistic and less materialistic, etc. I don't tend to buy this, because I think people are people wherever you go--i.e. human nature is the same, no matter the shape of the eyes, color of the skin, or texture of the hair. You wouldn't get Hong Kong or modern, commercial Japan if people of the East were automatically less susceptible to greed than the West, would you? Anyway, I think these suicides in Japan and its very low birth rate come in part from a spiritual problem. (It's probably a psychological problem too; humans just don't seem to do as well in prosperity as they do in adversity. Not to mention a multilayered social problem.)
When people decide to live only for themselves, it never satisfies. There is a spiritual emptiness. It's good for the economy (short-term), because the less you have in your life that matters the more distractions you need to buy, but it is not good for people. When vast numbers of people in a society decide that there is nothing bigger than themselves worth living for, nothing more important than themselves and the gratification of their own immediate whims and desires, it is very bad for that society's long-term future. Why go on living and working and producing if nothing matters? A man isn't going to die for a country he thinks is worthless and corrupt. A woman isn't going to be willing to lose her figure and her free time for children, if she thinks the next generation isn't as important as her own good time. Why go to the trouble of building families and communities when it's easier to shop and watch TV and have a string of affairs? And when you realize the continual gratification of your appetites never ends because it never really satisfies, why even go on living? If there's nothing bigger than you and all the distractions you're supposed to want because they're so fun and so luxurious don't satisfy, why not give in to weariness and end it all?
I'm not picking on Japan. This "nothing bigger than me" attitude that I think may be contributing to the group suicides is pervasive in Europe and the Anglosphere too. Unless there's a radical change, I expect to see more of this sort of thing in the West. Based on various things I've read over the past fifteen years or so, it seems we're already seeing at least a small rise in suicides.
And I think that is a very bad thing.
I have sympathy for the kind of unhappiness these people may have had in their lives and I understand clinical depression and suicidal thoughts, because I've been there, but I think I lost whatever tendency I may have had to romanticise suicide a good many years ago. (I definitely decided it wasn't an option for me.) And if I did have any residual feeling along those lines, I lost it several years ago, when I first came across these lines by Chesterton:
"Not only is suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate and absolute evil,
the refusal to take an interest in existence....There is not a tiny creature in
the cosmos at whom [the suicide's] death is not a sneer."
I hope I never look at henbit or a sparrow and sneer. Or my fellow human beings.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
One Woman Can Make the World Better
To commemorate the UN-designated International Women's Day, today's NRO has a list of women who make or made the world better. On a somewhat related note, Uncle Pookie and I started working our way through all of Babylon 5 a few weeks ago (he saw most of it before & I saw perhaps the majority of the middle episodes, from mid-season two to mid-season four; FWIW I highly recommend B5 for its excellent writing), and one of the things creator Stracynski says multiple times on the DVDs is that he wanted to refute the all-too-common idea that one person can't make a difference. These two things make me think of a woman I knew who made her little corner of the world different.
Mrs. A trained as an English teacher, and after graduation she and her schoolteacher husband (who'd left a more lucrative job selling insurance because he wanted to do something meaningful with his life--how's that for "crunchy" ?) moved to a small town. Mrs. A soon began to realize that she really enjoyed making bulletin boards for her classes. She decided to go back to college to qualify to teach art. I believe she started out teaching art at the elementary school, but later this soft-spoken woman convinced the school to start an art department at the high school. Actually she WAS the art department. Mississippi is a poor state and everyone knows art classes are the first to go when there's a tight budget, but that small, mostly working class town school had a full-time art teacher and students could choose art as an elective every year if they wanted. Mrs. A taught basic drawing and painting and a little 3-D art in the form of papier-mache sculptures or painted wooden shapes, and she brought in her own art books and magazines to teach a bit of art history to her students.
She tried to keep improving her offerings over the years. She saw to it that the department got new supplies, including while I was there an air-brush gun and a table saw. To raise funds for the department she oversaw the creation of "historic sites of our town" calendars featuring pen-and-ink drawings by the art students--a project that must have taken up a lot of her leisure time; this proved very popular and was repeated for several years. She arranged displays of student work at various places around town. She arranged field trips to an art museum. Equally important, she tried new techniques herself and would teach them to her students.
In addition to her HS art classes she oversaw the running of the school newspaper. That high school--which, remember, was not a well-off one--had the only weekly school newspaper in the state, and I believe received some state awards. She also began teaching evening art classes for adults.
Mrs. A was interested in improving not just the school, but the town. The most visible way she did that was to convince a number of people in the town to allow her and volunteer students to paint murals or faux windows and doorways on their blank walls. This not only improved the look of a number of walls, it gave the town a better, more unique feel. I believe she was also involved in other community spirit activities (such as an old-fashioned election day town party), as well as being a member of a Methodist church, making many improvements to her old house, maintaining what seemed to be a close marriage, and raising three pleasant, well-behaved children.
These things may not sound important to most people, and it is true that she didn't do anything worthy of UN recognition. But think about it. She exposed hundreds of kids, some of whom would have had no other exposure, to art. She tried to get the town interested in art, or at least the HS art department. At least one of her students went on to become an art teacher herself. Through her adult students, she helped (and continues to help, last I heard) people, some of whom (like my father) had no opportunity for any kind of art training in their youth, acquire skills and a fulfilling hobby--or at least broaden their horizons a little bit. She also made her town look better. None of this happened because she was an innately talented artist. To be honest, her level of talent is pretty modest. But she kept working at it and trying, so that she made the most of what had been given her. Plus she shared her skills and enthusiasm with others, and in the end she really did make her town better. How many of us can say as much?
Mrs. A trained as an English teacher, and after graduation she and her schoolteacher husband (who'd left a more lucrative job selling insurance because he wanted to do something meaningful with his life--how's that for "crunchy" ?) moved to a small town. Mrs. A soon began to realize that she really enjoyed making bulletin boards for her classes. She decided to go back to college to qualify to teach art. I believe she started out teaching art at the elementary school, but later this soft-spoken woman convinced the school to start an art department at the high school. Actually she WAS the art department. Mississippi is a poor state and everyone knows art classes are the first to go when there's a tight budget, but that small, mostly working class town school had a full-time art teacher and students could choose art as an elective every year if they wanted. Mrs. A taught basic drawing and painting and a little 3-D art in the form of papier-mache sculptures or painted wooden shapes, and she brought in her own art books and magazines to teach a bit of art history to her students.
She tried to keep improving her offerings over the years. She saw to it that the department got new supplies, including while I was there an air-brush gun and a table saw. To raise funds for the department she oversaw the creation of "historic sites of our town" calendars featuring pen-and-ink drawings by the art students--a project that must have taken up a lot of her leisure time; this proved very popular and was repeated for several years. She arranged displays of student work at various places around town. She arranged field trips to an art museum. Equally important, she tried new techniques herself and would teach them to her students.
In addition to her HS art classes she oversaw the running of the school newspaper. That high school--which, remember, was not a well-off one--had the only weekly school newspaper in the state, and I believe received some state awards. She also began teaching evening art classes for adults.
Mrs. A was interested in improving not just the school, but the town. The most visible way she did that was to convince a number of people in the town to allow her and volunteer students to paint murals or faux windows and doorways on their blank walls. This not only improved the look of a number of walls, it gave the town a better, more unique feel. I believe she was also involved in other community spirit activities (such as an old-fashioned election day town party), as well as being a member of a Methodist church, making many improvements to her old house, maintaining what seemed to be a close marriage, and raising three pleasant, well-behaved children.
These things may not sound important to most people, and it is true that she didn't do anything worthy of UN recognition. But think about it. She exposed hundreds of kids, some of whom would have had no other exposure, to art. She tried to get the town interested in art, or at least the HS art department. At least one of her students went on to become an art teacher herself. Through her adult students, she helped (and continues to help, last I heard) people, some of whom (like my father) had no opportunity for any kind of art training in their youth, acquire skills and a fulfilling hobby--or at least broaden their horizons a little bit. She also made her town look better. None of this happened because she was an innately talented artist. To be honest, her level of talent is pretty modest. But she kept working at it and trying, so that she made the most of what had been given her. Plus she shared her skills and enthusiasm with others, and in the end she really did make her town better. How many of us can say as much?
Monday, March 06, 2006
A Post About Religion and Cartoons That Doesn't Even Mention Denmark
This past Wednesday was the beginning of Lent--the Ash Wednesday without which Fat Tuesday would not exist. (It's surprising the number of people who know about the Tuesday, but nothing about the Wednesday; Mardi Gras, as a character remarked in Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume, has become just one more party, not a somewhat poignant feast before fasting.) There's a lot that can be said on the subject of Ash Wednesday, fasting, repentance, sin, etc., but here's my slight contribution: I think a good, if not the best, Ash Wednesday comic strip is one from Pearls Before Swine.
(Rat and Goat are sitting together)
Rat: I think I'd be much more likely to be religious if it wasn't for all that 'love your neighbor' stuff.
Goat: And why is that?
Rat: Because I hate my neighbors...They have barking dogs and car alarms and sometimes they even try to talk to me.
(Goat stares at Rat for a long time)
Goat: Your soul's so dark it smudges mine.
Rat: Hey... maybe I could love your neighbors...I never have to see them.
Okay, I probably am only associating this with Ash Wednesday because of that "smudge" (I went to an early AW mass year before last and had people telling me I had a smudge on my head the rest of the day; one nice lady was going for a kleenex before I explained!), but the fallen human nature and spiritual laziness it points to are Ash Wednesday themes. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we have all fallen short. The strip also points to the year-round difficulty of loving our neighbors, who--bless their hearts--have also fallen short. I think the best hope of humanity lies in praying for our enemies and trying to love our neighbors (and that it would still lie there even if the God-stuff weren't true), but nobody ever said it was going to be easy. And I won't say how much I resemble Rat.
Lent leads up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection. A question I've been asked is, "Why did Jesus have to die?" I guess the answer is that he didn't have to, that that is just the way God chose to do it. Which just leads to another why, and I can't really answer it. I know a bit about sacrificial lambs atoning for sin and the Suffering Servant and Messiah prophecies, but this is a deep question that has troubled wiser people than I. I don't mean to trivialize any of this when I suggest that a Bloom County cartoon may suggest a possible partial answer.
(Opus, the orphan penguin who yearns for a mother, has been calling Dial-a-Mom to listen to loving advice, and on this call he interrupts to yell into the phone)
Opus: Mom, get out of my life you narrow-minded, meddling busy-body!!
Dial-a-Mom: Okay, but always know that I would gladly rip both my legs off and feed them to crocodiles to save your life.
Opus: (looking at readers) God, how I need to hear that now and then.
Maybe that's part of the reason Jesus had to die? We are all orphans who yearn for our True Parent and who sometimes need to hear that that Parent loves us so much He'd endure even a bloody death to save us. The Crucifixion shows not just that He would but that He already has.
(Rat and Goat are sitting together)
Rat: I think I'd be much more likely to be religious if it wasn't for all that 'love your neighbor' stuff.
Goat: And why is that?
Rat: Because I hate my neighbors...They have barking dogs and car alarms and sometimes they even try to talk to me.
(Goat stares at Rat for a long time)
Goat: Your soul's so dark it smudges mine.
Rat: Hey... maybe I could love your neighbors...I never have to see them.
Okay, I probably am only associating this with Ash Wednesday because of that "smudge" (I went to an early AW mass year before last and had people telling me I had a smudge on my head the rest of the day; one nice lady was going for a kleenex before I explained!), but the fallen human nature and spiritual laziness it points to are Ash Wednesday themes. Ash Wednesday reminds us that we have all fallen short. The strip also points to the year-round difficulty of loving our neighbors, who--bless their hearts--have also fallen short. I think the best hope of humanity lies in praying for our enemies and trying to love our neighbors (and that it would still lie there even if the God-stuff weren't true), but nobody ever said it was going to be easy. And I won't say how much I resemble Rat.
Lent leads up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection. A question I've been asked is, "Why did Jesus have to die?" I guess the answer is that he didn't have to, that that is just the way God chose to do it. Which just leads to another why, and I can't really answer it. I know a bit about sacrificial lambs atoning for sin and the Suffering Servant and Messiah prophecies, but this is a deep question that has troubled wiser people than I. I don't mean to trivialize any of this when I suggest that a Bloom County cartoon may suggest a possible partial answer.
(Opus, the orphan penguin who yearns for a mother, has been calling Dial-a-Mom to listen to loving advice, and on this call he interrupts to yell into the phone)
Opus: Mom, get out of my life you narrow-minded, meddling busy-body!!
Dial-a-Mom: Okay, but always know that I would gladly rip both my legs off and feed them to crocodiles to save your life.
Opus: (looking at readers) God, how I need to hear that now and then.
Maybe that's part of the reason Jesus had to die? We are all orphans who yearn for our True Parent and who sometimes need to hear that that Parent loves us so much He'd endure even a bloody death to save us. The Crucifixion shows not just that He would but that He already has.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Conservatives and Promiscuity
This weekend there was some discussion on NRO's CrunchyCon blog of whether conservatives are willing to oppose sexual promiscuity. I believe that, while it is undeniable that what little discouragement of promiscuity there is comes from conservatives, the people who say conservatives don't do much in this regard are right. Nobody does much in this regard anymore. Go back a few decades and everyone thought society was served by people controlling their sexual passions; nowadays only social conservatives ever say such a thing, for the most part they don't say it often, and when they do everyone knows they're talking into the wind. I'm generalizing, yes, but then this is generally true.
I think the reluctance of conservatives to oppose sexual promiscuity goes back to the reader email Jeremy Beers posted 2/24. It said that there were three main methods of promoting Good, namely
Anybody? I doubt it. We don't want to seem intolerant or judgemental or, worst of all, prudish. Besides, we're hip, we're not old-fashioned, easily-shocked people; if we say anything against promiscuity people will think we're not only judgemental and un-hip, but too uptight to be any good in the sack. Can't have that.
I disagree slightly with the author of that email I quoted in that I don't think this sort of thing is a product of the American frontier mentality (although there may be a little of that contrariness in it.) I think it's a product of more recently developed attitudes. Americans used to be more willing to say that promiscuity and having children out of wedlock was wrong. For example, when I was a child in the '70s the pejorative term "shacking up" was used to refer to cohabiting outside of marriage; the way adults used the term left no doubt that they considered the practice at worst highly immoral or at the very best a trifle declasse. Even on frothy '70s television, it wasn't considered outrageous that Mr. Roper would refuse to rent an apartment to a (straight) man and two girls; can you imagine that situation on a sitcom today? Mr. Roper would be hauled into court on a discrimination charge faster than you can say "intolerance", and Jack Tripper and the girls, if not actually involved with each other, would be giving us quite a lot of details of their very active sex lives--or else complaining humorously and in detail about how the only sex life they have is with themself.
Nowadays nobody even bothers to be discreet about their promiscuity, much less be chaste. I live in the Bible Belt where we're supposedly more conservative socially, and yet it's nothing any more to hear young coworkers talking about their "booty calls" or hear your cashier casually telling the cashier next to her about how she was having a shower with her boyfriend in their apartment before work, yada yada yada. One of the few things you can bet on not hearing is terms like "shacking up" or "illegitimate"--nobody wants to be so negative as to use terms like that.
And I'm as guilty of it as anybody. Just writing this makes me afraid I sound like a prude and makes me want to add that, "I'm not offended by any of this myself, oh no, it's just that I don't think rampant promiscuity is good for society." I think we could use more people willing to cluck their tongues disapprovingly when promiscuous behavior is mentioned, but I'm not eager to be the one of the first to revive that practice and I'm willing to bet not many conservatives are. It's one thing to say "promiscuity is socially destructive" in an online opinion piece or a church group discussion, but how many are willing to say it to a neighbor or coworker?
***
I wrote the above Sunday night, but have been hesitant to post it. Like many, I don't want to be mistaken for a prude or a puritanical killjoy. Possibly like some others who've only come to realize that promiscuity is a disintegrative force in society relatively late in life and whose pasts were more checkered or even hedonistic than we now know to be good for people, I have a niggling fear of laying myself open to charges of hypocrisy. Like most, I don't want to be viewed as nosy. Like many, I don't want to be seen as advocating social disapproval.
But I am advocating social disapproval. I don't see how conservatives can get around the fact that if we want to decrease the incidence of family-destabilising behaviors, we have to disapprove of those behaviors. Not just in the things we say in internet discussion groups but in the things we say in real life, to our family, friends, and acquaintances. "I love you, but I can't approve of what you're doing." "You're my friend and you're welcome in my house, but I can't allow you to do X in front of my children." "I like him, but I wish he wouldn't behave like that." Things like that can be really uncomfortable to say, but if we never say them, what is the message we send?
I hope it goes without saying that our words then have to be supported by our actions.
I think the reluctance of conservatives to oppose sexual promiscuity goes back to the reader email Jeremy Beers posted 2/24. It said that there were three main methods of promoting Good, namely
"1) Personal suasion, religious teaching, conversion, appealsand that Americans have little tolerance for the second one. There's some truth in that. How many of us, when a coworker announces her unmarried twenty-year old child is about to become a parent, are willing to ask, "When is the wedding?" How many of us, when we've just watched a movie with friends and are discussing it, are willing to say anything against the movie having depicted it as completely natural that its unmarried hero and heroine were having it off a few hours after they met? How many of us are willing to so much as frown slightly when someone we know announces he or she is about to start cohabiting?
to beauty and justice;
2) Social pressure, the threat of ostracism,
moralistic disapproval;
3) Governmental diktat."
Anybody? I doubt it. We don't want to seem intolerant or judgemental or, worst of all, prudish. Besides, we're hip, we're not old-fashioned, easily-shocked people; if we say anything against promiscuity people will think we're not only judgemental and un-hip, but too uptight to be any good in the sack. Can't have that.
I disagree slightly with the author of that email I quoted in that I don't think this sort of thing is a product of the American frontier mentality (although there may be a little of that contrariness in it.) I think it's a product of more recently developed attitudes. Americans used to be more willing to say that promiscuity and having children out of wedlock was wrong. For example, when I was a child in the '70s the pejorative term "shacking up" was used to refer to cohabiting outside of marriage; the way adults used the term left no doubt that they considered the practice at worst highly immoral or at the very best a trifle declasse. Even on frothy '70s television, it wasn't considered outrageous that Mr. Roper would refuse to rent an apartment to a (straight) man and two girls; can you imagine that situation on a sitcom today? Mr. Roper would be hauled into court on a discrimination charge faster than you can say "intolerance", and Jack Tripper and the girls, if not actually involved with each other, would be giving us quite a lot of details of their very active sex lives--or else complaining humorously and in detail about how the only sex life they have is with themself.
Nowadays nobody even bothers to be discreet about their promiscuity, much less be chaste. I live in the Bible Belt where we're supposedly more conservative socially, and yet it's nothing any more to hear young coworkers talking about their "booty calls" or hear your cashier casually telling the cashier next to her about how she was having a shower with her boyfriend in their apartment before work, yada yada yada. One of the few things you can bet on not hearing is terms like "shacking up" or "illegitimate"--nobody wants to be so negative as to use terms like that.
And I'm as guilty of it as anybody. Just writing this makes me afraid I sound like a prude and makes me want to add that, "I'm not offended by any of this myself, oh no, it's just that I don't think rampant promiscuity is good for society." I think we could use more people willing to cluck their tongues disapprovingly when promiscuous behavior is mentioned, but I'm not eager to be the one of the first to revive that practice and I'm willing to bet not many conservatives are. It's one thing to say "promiscuity is socially destructive" in an online opinion piece or a church group discussion, but how many are willing to say it to a neighbor or coworker?
***
I wrote the above Sunday night, but have been hesitant to post it. Like many, I don't want to be mistaken for a prude or a puritanical killjoy. Possibly like some others who've only come to realize that promiscuity is a disintegrative force in society relatively late in life and whose pasts were more checkered or even hedonistic than we now know to be good for people, I have a niggling fear of laying myself open to charges of hypocrisy. Like most, I don't want to be viewed as nosy. Like many, I don't want to be seen as advocating social disapproval.
But I am advocating social disapproval. I don't see how conservatives can get around the fact that if we want to decrease the incidence of family-destabilising behaviors, we have to disapprove of those behaviors. Not just in the things we say in internet discussion groups but in the things we say in real life, to our family, friends, and acquaintances. "I love you, but I can't approve of what you're doing." "You're my friend and you're welcome in my house, but I can't allow you to do X in front of my children." "I like him, but I wish he wouldn't behave like that." Things like that can be really uncomfortable to say, but if we never say them, what is the message we send?
I hope it goes without saying that our words then have to be supported by our actions.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Surely This Kind of "Parade" Is Worth More Points Than a Marching Band?
An AP news story from Saturday says 17 counter-demonstrators were arrested before and during a neo-Nazi march through a predominantly black neighborhood in Orlando, Florida. A few points:
* If the marchers really want to encourage white people to unite, as their signs suggest, shouldn't they be marching through predominantly white neighborhoods?
* I don't know about this particular group, but many neo-Nazi and white supremacist types portray themselves as patriotic Americans. If they're such loyal Americans, why do they align themselves with the National Socialists--enemies we fought and defeated, but who claimed many American lives while we were doing it.
* In a time when America faces real enemies around the world, why are these people wasting their time on this crap? If they must hate, why can't they focus it on the people who want to kill us and destroy our way of life?
* According to the article, 14 of the 17 counter-demonstrators arrested were members of out-of-town groups and the marchers were part of a Minneapolis-based group. What were these outsiders doing in Orlando? If Orlando really wants this sort of thing in its city, can't it DIY it?
* The article said police said the arrested faced charges "including disorderly conduct, battery on a law enforcement officer and wearing a mask". I don't know if it's my proximity to America's Mardi Gras Central or if it's my con experiences and enjoyment of live theater, but one of those charges makes no sense to me.
* To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, "I hate Minnesota Nazis." (And Florida ones, and German ones, and Arab ones... :-) Actually I just hate the ideology; the individuals involved are still God's children, of course, and their souls should be prayed for.)
* If the marchers really want to encourage white people to unite, as their signs suggest, shouldn't they be marching through predominantly white neighborhoods?
* I don't know about this particular group, but many neo-Nazi and white supremacist types portray themselves as patriotic Americans. If they're such loyal Americans, why do they align themselves with the National Socialists--enemies we fought and defeated, but who claimed many American lives while we were doing it.
* In a time when America faces real enemies around the world, why are these people wasting their time on this crap? If they must hate, why can't they focus it on the people who want to kill us and destroy our way of life?
* According to the article, 14 of the 17 counter-demonstrators arrested were members of out-of-town groups and the marchers were part of a Minneapolis-based group. What were these outsiders doing in Orlando? If Orlando really wants this sort of thing in its city, can't it DIY it?
* The article said police said the arrested faced charges "including disorderly conduct, battery on a law enforcement officer and wearing a mask". I don't know if it's my proximity to America's Mardi Gras Central or if it's my con experiences and enjoyment of live theater, but one of those charges makes no sense to me.
* To paraphrase the Blues Brothers, "I hate Minnesota Nazis." (And Florida ones, and German ones, and Arab ones... :-) Actually I just hate the ideology; the individuals involved are still God's children, of course, and their souls should be prayed for.)
Friday, February 24, 2006
Some of the best news I've heard lately...
A Washington Times article by Scott Galupo asks a question that I've asked myself many times over the past couple of years: where are the movies of heroism related to the War on Terror? This would be good news just because I'm glad someone besides myself is asking the question, but it also relates that Bruce Willis doesn't like the media treatment of the war and is in talks about a movie that will presumably have a more heroic storyline. I can't say I've followed Willis' career with much interest since the early Moonlighting, but I wish him well of this project.
The article does quote Craig Mazin giving a good reason why we haven't seen much in the way of Iraq or Afghanistan movies:
I think we all know the main reasons we haven't seen such movies, though. Fashionable lefty attitudes and pacifism (or at least the faux pacifism that condemns all wars that certain countries engage in.) Anti-military feelings. Anti-Americanism and general Western civilizational self-flagellation. And, I think, the attitude of some--too many--contemporary writers and other artists that they are above doing anything that is intended to inspire or comfort ordinary people.
I am not asking for out and out propaganda, especially not anything that demonizes our enemies as less than human. I just want to see some movies with heroes. I'd like one or two of them to be set in Iraq and some to be more general, terrorist-fighting movies. But they don't have to be. Just some movies that portray American military personnel (or soldiers from allied countries) behaving in an heroic way; it could take place in any conflict, even an entirely ficional one, and the characters don't all have to be heroes--just one hero per film with a few reasonably good people in the mix would be great. They don't all have to be--and shouldn't all be--about military people. Moreover they don't really have to be about Americans or anything closely related to contemporary conflicts; I would love to see some heroic, inspiring films set in our past--stories that all of the Anglosphere and Europe could warm to.
You can't tell me that people wouldn't want to see these movies. People have always wanted heroes in their stories; it was true of people sitting around campfires thousands of years ago and it is true of people now. It's why Hector going out to face Achilles still thrills us, why John Wayne movies still have a viewership, why any story with a mother sacrificing for her child or any news item with a man risking his own life to save a stranger touches us. It's why Maximilian Kolbe's story is more affecting than that of some saints--his last sacrifice made him a hero, as well as a saint. It's why the song wasn't called, "I'm Holding Out for an Anti-Hero".
You can't tell me that contemporary people will no longer accept stories with heroes who are in the military. One of the reasons Babylon 5 was so popular (just a decade ago) was that we got to see people being heroic--people, human and alien, making personal sacrifices for the greater good--and some of those people were military.
You can't tell me you can't make a good film that's also patriotic and inspiring. Laurence Olivier's Henry V could well be called propaganda, but it is still worth watching today. Heck, just reading Henry V makes me want to cry out, "God for Harry, England, and St. George!" and I'm not English.
You also can't tell me that it's impossible to make a good film about a war that's still going on. Mrs. Miniver puts the lie to that.
The article does quote Craig Mazin giving a good reason why we haven't seen much in the way of Iraq or Afghanistan movies:
"Hollywood is reasonably cautious when it comes to depictingI understand and accept this as one reason. There are at least two other good reasons, namely artists' understandable reluctance to compromise their artistic integrity with material that might, without care, stray toward mere propaganda, and (something I hadn't thought of) the military not making it easy for people who are interested in stories of heroism and/or information that might help them depict such stories on screen to find out what they need to know.
any war in progress," Mr. Mazin says. "Doing a movie after a war's conclusion
means that you can frame a narrative safely within the confines of historical
fact and public perception."
I think we all know the main reasons we haven't seen such movies, though. Fashionable lefty attitudes and pacifism (or at least the faux pacifism that condemns all wars that certain countries engage in.) Anti-military feelings. Anti-Americanism and general Western civilizational self-flagellation. And, I think, the attitude of some--too many--contemporary writers and other artists that they are above doing anything that is intended to inspire or comfort ordinary people.
I am not asking for out and out propaganda, especially not anything that demonizes our enemies as less than human. I just want to see some movies with heroes. I'd like one or two of them to be set in Iraq and some to be more general, terrorist-fighting movies. But they don't have to be. Just some movies that portray American military personnel (or soldiers from allied countries) behaving in an heroic way; it could take place in any conflict, even an entirely ficional one, and the characters don't all have to be heroes--just one hero per film with a few reasonably good people in the mix would be great. They don't all have to be--and shouldn't all be--about military people. Moreover they don't really have to be about Americans or anything closely related to contemporary conflicts; I would love to see some heroic, inspiring films set in our past--stories that all of the Anglosphere and Europe could warm to.
You can't tell me that people wouldn't want to see these movies. People have always wanted heroes in their stories; it was true of people sitting around campfires thousands of years ago and it is true of people now. It's why Hector going out to face Achilles still thrills us, why John Wayne movies still have a viewership, why any story with a mother sacrificing for her child or any news item with a man risking his own life to save a stranger touches us. It's why Maximilian Kolbe's story is more affecting than that of some saints--his last sacrifice made him a hero, as well as a saint. It's why the song wasn't called, "I'm Holding Out for an Anti-Hero".
You can't tell me that contemporary people will no longer accept stories with heroes who are in the military. One of the reasons Babylon 5 was so popular (just a decade ago) was that we got to see people being heroic--people, human and alien, making personal sacrifices for the greater good--and some of those people were military.
You can't tell me you can't make a good film that's also patriotic and inspiring. Laurence Olivier's Henry V could well be called propaganda, but it is still worth watching today. Heck, just reading Henry V makes me want to cry out, "God for Harry, England, and St. George!" and I'm not English.
You also can't tell me that it's impossible to make a good film about a war that's still going on. Mrs. Miniver puts the lie to that.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Check-in
The past two or three weeks I've increasingly felt that history is speeding up--you know, having one of those times it occasionally does when events seem to move more quickly than usual, even to cluster. The bombing of the Shiite mosque in Iraq today--not to mention the reprisals--didn't alleviate the feeling any; it made me feel quite sick, in fact, and I'm not even Muslim. The annoying part--other than the fear and sorrow we can feel over the loss of life that turbulent times often bring--is not knowing which of the many things seeming to go wrong are important, knowing that only history will tell that tale or tell if the feeling is even right or not. Hindsight is relatively easy; being in history is confusing. Prayer for those who have more active roles in history-making can sometimes seem a flimsy defense against chaos.
Maybe I just pay too much attention to the news?
One good distraction just started though. NRO started a book blog yesterday to discuss Rod Dreher's newly released book, Crunchy Cons. I forgot to pre-order the book, so I don't have a copy, but the blog is interesting. A little "How should we live?" discussion beats "What the hell is going on out there?" worrying.
Maybe I just pay too much attention to the news?
One good distraction just started though. NRO started a book blog yesterday to discuss Rod Dreher's newly released book, Crunchy Cons. I forgot to pre-order the book, so I don't have a copy, but the blog is interesting. A little "How should we live?" discussion beats "What the hell is going on out there?" worrying.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
More of That "Freedom of Choice" We Hear So Much About
Wal-Mart has chosen not to carry the "morning after pill" in its pharmacies, except in Illinois where it is required to do so by law. Now three women, reportedly backed by abortion rights groups (big surprise), have sued Wal-Mart for not carrying the morning after pill in its Massachusetts stores. They sued on the grounds that state law requires pharmacies to stock all "commonly prescribed medicines", which I believe is the same reason Wal-mart is required to carry it in Illinois--though it remains unclear to me how commonly morning after pills are prescribed and whether megadoses of hormones given to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg really constitutes "medicine". Nevertheless, the Massachusetts pharmacy board has ruled that Wal-Mart must carry the drug. If forcing a business to sell a product it does not want to sell constitutes a blow for freedom, then we may count this as a victory for freedom of choice and assume the Massachusetts pharmacy board is pro-freedom--you might even say pro-choice.
One of the plaintiffs applauded the ruling, because now her patients won't have to "shop around." Yes, heaven forbid that.
NARAL Pro-choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League), either anticipating this victory or celebrating after it, announced that it would be bombarding Wal-Mart with letters urging it to carry the drug. Well, good for them; all Americans have the right to try to influence a business' decisions by telling it what we, as consumers, want to buy. But it goes further than that. NARAL Pro-choice America's argument, in their petition, is that Wal-Mart has no right not to carry the drug. Wal-Mart's choice not to stock it interferes with a woman's decision to take the drug--or the doctor's decision to prescribe it or--well, it interferes with someone's decision about something. And that interference doesn't promote freedom. Fortunately, if Wal-Mart doesn't change its mind and choose to carry the drug in all states, the lawyer for the Massachusetts women says he is ready to sue in other states. Viva freedom!
I must say I find this all very instructive. I never before knew that if I couldn't find a product I wanted at one store, I could sue to make them carry it. Silly me thought I had to go down the road to a store that did carry that product. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to buy a loop turner for sewing and the Wal-Mart fabric department doesn't carry them, so I foolishly went to Hobby Lobby and bought one. Now I know I can just sue the store to make it carry everything I want so I don't have to shop around.
For instance, I have checked several Wal-Mart stores and two Sam's Clubs in south Mississippi and Louisiana multiple times over the past few years and, as best I can tell, Wal-Mart does not carry Catholic bibles in its stores--no, not even in south Louisiana, which has a high proportion of Catholics. Clearly they are trying to limit my freedom of choice to buy those products. Because Wal-Mart did not carry them, I was forced to shop around for my purchases, and if I want to buy more copies I will be forced to shop around again, rather than enjoying the convenience of buying my Bible at the same time I buy my eggs and toothpaste at the local Supercenter. Or I would have been forced to do so. Now I know I can simply sue them and force them to carry all the products I want.
And now I think about it, why should anyone have to shop around for anything? Everything should be available at Wal-Mart. If my neighbor wants to buy the latest copy of Hustler or Spanking Feminists, why should he have to shop around to find an adult bookstore? Shouldn't he have the right to pick it up as he goes through the Wal-Mart checkout line with his milk and doughnuts next Sunday morning?
I assume NOW will also want to see freedom of choice extended and will be carrying ads for these products in their newsletter. (Yes, they advertise products; I used to get the newsletter.) And feminist bookstores will start carrying Phyllis Schlafly's oevre, lest their customers be forced to shop around for her books. It's all about freedom.
One of the plaintiffs applauded the ruling, because now her patients won't have to "shop around." Yes, heaven forbid that.
NARAL Pro-choice America (formerly the National Abortion Rights Action League), either anticipating this victory or celebrating after it, announced that it would be bombarding Wal-Mart with letters urging it to carry the drug. Well, good for them; all Americans have the right to try to influence a business' decisions by telling it what we, as consumers, want to buy. But it goes further than that. NARAL Pro-choice America's argument, in their petition, is that Wal-Mart has no right not to carry the drug. Wal-Mart's choice not to stock it interferes with a woman's decision to take the drug--or the doctor's decision to prescribe it or--well, it interferes with someone's decision about something. And that interference doesn't promote freedom. Fortunately, if Wal-Mart doesn't change its mind and choose to carry the drug in all states, the lawyer for the Massachusetts women says he is ready to sue in other states. Viva freedom!
I must say I find this all very instructive. I never before knew that if I couldn't find a product I wanted at one store, I could sue to make them carry it. Silly me thought I had to go down the road to a store that did carry that product. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to buy a loop turner for sewing and the Wal-Mart fabric department doesn't carry them, so I foolishly went to Hobby Lobby and bought one. Now I know I can just sue the store to make it carry everything I want so I don't have to shop around.
For instance, I have checked several Wal-Mart stores and two Sam's Clubs in south Mississippi and Louisiana multiple times over the past few years and, as best I can tell, Wal-Mart does not carry Catholic bibles in its stores--no, not even in south Louisiana, which has a high proportion of Catholics. Clearly they are trying to limit my freedom of choice to buy those products. Because Wal-Mart did not carry them, I was forced to shop around for my purchases, and if I want to buy more copies I will be forced to shop around again, rather than enjoying the convenience of buying my Bible at the same time I buy my eggs and toothpaste at the local Supercenter. Or I would have been forced to do so. Now I know I can simply sue them and force them to carry all the products I want.
And now I think about it, why should anyone have to shop around for anything? Everything should be available at Wal-Mart. If my neighbor wants to buy the latest copy of Hustler or Spanking Feminists, why should he have to shop around to find an adult bookstore? Shouldn't he have the right to pick it up as he goes through the Wal-Mart checkout line with his milk and doughnuts next Sunday morning?
I assume NOW will also want to see freedom of choice extended and will be carrying ads for these products in their newsletter. (Yes, they advertise products; I used to get the newsletter.) And feminist bookstores will start carrying Phyllis Schlafly's oevre, lest their customers be forced to shop around for her books. It's all about freedom.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
Random Thoughts
***
Am I the only one who looks at the new gaucho pants and thinks of Spock and Kirk's pants from the first Star Trek?
***
People--okay, women--often complain about the unending nature of housework, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about the unending nature of shopping. No sooner do you do a big grocery shopping expedition, than you discover you're low on soy sauce and have to start the list for the next grocery trip; no sooner do you replace the flourescent bulb in the kitchen than you break your butter dish lid and have to buy a new one. It's just as bad as the dishes you do today only to have to do again tomorrow, yet we have more tolerance for it.
***
One of life's largely unsung pleasures is the pleasure of challenging other people's assumptions. The only thing I miss about vegetarianism was the kick I got out of being able to point out to people who knew I was a vegetarian that I approved of hunting.
***
If you find yourself having a conversation about the relative merits of duct tape and electrical tape to hold your breasts up when wearing outfits that are too revealing for a bra, it may be time to reconsider your clothing choices.
***
If animals are really, as the bumpersticker has it, "little people in fur coats", shouldn't PETA throw red paint on them?
***
Why, when the food associated with southern Louisiana is so good and when New Orleans Mardi Gras is (or was?) such a big thing, is the dessert associated with Mardi Gras in Louisisana so bad? Admittedly I've never had King Cake in New Orleans itself, but I've had some that are supposed to be good and as pastries go they were pretty mediocre; most of the ones I've tasted didn't quite make it to mediocre.
***
Young Adult novels are just the right length for making into movies. With ordinary, for grown-ups novels, a lot has to be cut out, both because there may be a lot of subtle, interior stuff that is hard even for good actors to depict and because of length. But a YA novel or a children's novel--some people call them "chapter books", I believe--can be put on the screen with little or nothing cut out. There should be more films made from good YA novels.
***
As any haiku fan can tell you, a very few words can say a lot. One of the posters from the recent Muslim demonstrations says volumes: "FREEDOM GO TO HELL". Mind you, another calling for the beheading of all who "insult" Islam was also succinct, but it just couldn't beat the pithiness of that four word summation of Islamofascist thought--"FREEDOM GO TO HELL".
Pharmacies Should Carry Mental Purgatives
It's amazing the amount of mental junk that we carry around. For example, for years part of my brain has been working on the question of why the Figurines commercial had the woman singing, "I love how I look in my gabardines, so I keep myself fit with Figurines." Well, it rhymes of course, but those were '70s style gauchos, and I never heard them called gabardines and who would call them that--no one says, "I love how I look in my twills/crinkle cottons/houndstooths"--so why have it? Would the audience even know what "gabardines" was supposed to refer to if she weren't kicking up her legs as she sang? Or am I just a non-sophisticate who never knew that all the cool people used to call their gauchos gabardines?
I think the part of my mind that keeps worrying over this ancient commercial is the part that should have been trying to get me into MIT. Or at least keep track whether I need to buy more postage stamps or not.
I also wonder if this is something that has only started happening since the advent of mass media, or if ancient Romans used to find themselves unable to enjoy the latest gladiator spectacle because their mind was insisting on going over the odd word choice in that play they saw twenty-five years ago.
I think the part of my mind that keeps worrying over this ancient commercial is the part that should have been trying to get me into MIT. Or at least keep track whether I need to buy more postage stamps or not.
I also wonder if this is something that has only started happening since the advent of mass media, or if ancient Romans used to find themselves unable to enjoy the latest gladiator spectacle because their mind was insisting on going over the odd word choice in that play they saw twenty-five years ago.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
This Month in Sewing
One of my New Year's resolutions involved improving my sewing skills. January is over--or will be in an hour and a half--and I haven't exactly improved, but when I added up what I'd sewn it was more than I thought I'd done. So here's the tally:
- One self-drafted thread catcher, made of a home dec fabric I found at the thrift store. (I'm planning simple curtains and maybe a throw pillow or two with the rest, and sometimes along about the time pigs take flight painting my sewing room to coordinate with the fabric.) It's weighted with a tile, padded so it can take pins, has a velcroed on (so it's removable) pin cushion, and a shaped bag for threads and fabric trimmings. The bag, which I'd meant to shape around the end of two liter bottle, is too big--I have to learn not to sew in the middle of the night--but it is weighted so well it doesn't even move when I jostle the ironing board enough to make the iron fall over.
- One self-drafted wrist band pin cushion. (Okay, this project was partly gluing.)
- A new apron to replace my made-from-the-back-of-a-denim-shirt-one. It's from the same self-drafted butcher-style apron I've used twice before and is made from a really cool lightning print fabric I didn't want to resist buying. (Someday maybe I'll tell a funny story I have about lightning and AS & UP.) I left off the contrasting bias tape on this one and just turned the fabric under, so I wouldn't detract from the fabric. (The old apron is being relegated to yard work use.)
- Two robes made from McCall's 6264; it's OOP, but it's a basic loose, kimono-ish, unisex robe. It's an easy, quick project; the notches on the band don't match up to the notches on the front of the robe, but construction is so easy it's not a problem. For the first robe, I shortened the pattern to make it knee-length and have short sleeves. I had to do that because I was using a single bed size sheet from the thrift store and trying to squeeze an XL robe out of it (I still had to make the tie out of something else), but it worked out great. The sheeting feels really good against my skin and it's cool enough for MS summer, and with the dropped shoulders on the robe, the sleeves turned out more like three-quarter length than short. For the second robe, I used some really nice dark green flannel from Wal-Mart's dollar-a-yard table, and the result is a big, cozy robe for winter in a color I love and that looks good on a redhead. When you consider I can seldom find robes I like in stores, these projects were money and time well spent.
Here's to doing better next month.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Two Mary Frances Books
The Mary Frances Sewing Book (1913) and The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book (1918)
Last year I read that an old book intended to teach sewing to little girls, The Mary Frances Sewing Book, had generated buzz among doll fanciers. Although it's in the public domain and has been re-released by a couple of publishers, it remains hard to find; the article or post I first read about it in said original copies could fetch nice prices on Ebay, and I found that secondhand copies of the recent paperback editions were priced higher than one might expect. The reason for the popularity is not just that it's a charming book, prettily illustrated and full of nostalgic appeal, but that it does a good job of teaching handsewing skills most contemporary women have never learned and provides a set of patterns for an authentic 1913 doll wardrobe. Some part of my mind remains in the 19th to pre-WWI 20th century (maybe I read too much Alcott as a girl) so of course I was interested.
Several weeks ago a new copy, shrinkwrapped with patterns turned up for under $20 on one of Amazon's affiliated sellers. So I had to get it. Although why I had to order the readily available The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book (there were several Mary Frances how-to books written) to go with it I'm not sure; I'm turning into quite the spendthrift lately. My books are paperback, but you can buy hardcover, "heirloom editions" at http://lacis.com/catalog/mfvict.html ; it might be worth it for the sewing book, especially if you want a gift for a special little girl, but I can't imagine the other books are worth bothering with hardcover.
The sewing book begins by teaching various hand stitches. What I thought was clever here was that the book has the reader learn to do these on canvas (Aida cloth, the stuff cross-stitchers use) instead of normal fabric, so it's easy to see how wide or deep to make the stitches and to keep them even; I used a piece of size 14 Aida cloth because that's what I had, but size 11 would work better. I wanted to see how good the book was for learning, so I worked through the stitches using the directions in the book. All were fine, until I got to the blanket and buttonhole stitch. I already knew how to make a blanket stitch (although it'd been nearly a decade since I'd used it), but I had trouble following the directions until I decided to ignore them and followed the illustration instead. The buttonhole stitch directions were impossible. The illustration wasn't helpful either. I finally gave up and just made tiny blanket stitches the way I already knew. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who had trouble with this. I tried looking up the buttonhole hand stitch online to see if I was offbase in my understanding of it, and I found a website that blatantly plagiarized the stitch lessons from Mary Frances--except for the blanket and buttonhole stitch directions, which were rewritten.
After the basic stitches, the book moves on to making a doll's wardrobe. These projects I have not worked through, but they seem pretty good. The clothes are cute and presumably authentic to the Edwardian or Titanic era, as they come from then. Anyone new to sewing could learn a lot of dressmaking skills here. While the "Thimble people" are walking Mary Frances through the projects, they teach things like seam finishing and plackets. Unless I overlooked something, all the sleeves are cut on, so there's nothing about setting a sleeve, but that's the only thing I could think of that I might like to have seen covered that wasn't. The lessons seem to be pretty well laid out, so that easier things are presented first.
The patterns are sized for a sixteen-inch doll of that time period. There are at least two different Mary Marie (the doll's name in the book) "reproduction" dolls for sale, and the lacis site I linked above sells a pattern for making a cloth doll that will fit the clothes. These would be worth looking into if you want to give the book to a little girl interested in sewing. Otherwise you could just size the patterns up to fit the very popular 18-inch dolls of today. The size is already close. I recently bought a pattern for 18-inch doll clothes (I'm definitely becoming a spendthrift) and laying the contemporary pattern pieces over the Mary Frances pieces suggested they might need a bit less grading up than I'd thought.
There are also a few non-doll projects.
Typically for children's books of the time, there are some moral lessons woven in. One of these I found kind of catchy: "Miss Never-Try/Never can do;/Miss Never-Begin/Never gets thru." Also like a lot of period children's books, the characters may seem too good and nice to be true and to speak in a slightly stilted way at times. It didn't interfere with my enjoyment (much less the educational parts), but some might find it more distasteful; I didn't "buy" the level of goodness and niceness any more than many would, it just didn't bother me. A potentially fruitful topic of discussion with friends or a discussion group would be why modern people find depictions of the very good and nice to be distasteful.
The rhyming and some corniness might get on some adults' nerves. Children might have to look up a few words or find some obvious-by-context word uses odd. That never hurt anybody, though. I had to look up the definition of "guimpe" (a blouse worn under jumpers) myself and survived the trip to the dictionary with dignity intact.
Verdict: I recommend The Mary Frances Sewing Book for adults or children. It is to be hoped someone will put out a new reprint. If they're really smart, they'll package it with a 16-inch doll pattern or offer a separate pack of patterns already resized so little girls can sew for their American Girl or other 18-inch dolls.
The knitting and crocheting book is a bit different from the sewing book. Starting with the cover illustration. Uncle Pookie saw it and said he thought he might have been watching too much anime, because Mary Frances looked kind of hot! I would have said she looked like a young woman, instead of the little girl I assumed her to be and that she clearly is in the sewing book illustrations; maybe she's supposed to have aged since the previous book, but she's still playing with her dolls so I don't know.
I've worked through some of the early crochet directions--the stitches, a couple of scarves, and a petticoat. I found the directions really easy to follow, and there's no doubt a person could learn to crochet from them. The projects look okay and can be made to fit a contemporary 18-inch doll. On my petticoat--which looks better than I expected (to be frank, I'm not a huge fan of crochet and am a bit bewildered as to why I'm bothering with it)--I added six stitches to the base chain to make it fit an 18-inch doll better, but it could have worked as is; I'm guessing most would work as is. I probably won't bother with any of the other projects, except for the cute little "turban" (it looks more fez-ish to me) and even cuter tam.
I don't know how to knit with needles and am not ready to learn, so I can't vouch for the quality of the knitting directions. They seem okay to me. The book teaches English knitting, although there's a brief bit on Continental knitting in the supplementary material ("The Magic Paper") included in the back. It seems like pretty basic stuff, which is a good thing for beginners, especially if they're children.
Now the bad stuff. The Mary Frances Knitting and Crochet Book just isn't as appealing as the sewing book. It relies on photographs, and reproduced photographs just didn't look very good back then. (I'm guessing the photos made the original book a bit pricey.) The projects may seem a bit weird-looking to modern eyes; the clothes in the sewing book don't seem odd, perhaps because many mothers today like to dress their little girls in somewhat old-fashioned dresses for special occasions, old styles remain popular on dolls, and Titanic-era styles are somewhat in favor since the big Titanic movie in the late '90s. The story's still cute enough, but a bit less engaging.
Crochet hooks (and probably knitting needles too?) were sized differently back then, but there is a gauge given near the front of the book so you can approximate what you need; children might find it frustrating to have to do this, though. A more annoying problem is that the names of yarns have changed. "Knitting worsted" is easy, as is "Angora wool". "Teazle", which the book says is used for trims or, brushed up, as a substitute for angora, could be figured out. The problems are with the yarns used most frequently in the projects. "Germantown Zephyr" I'm guessing is just a softer worsted weight. "Saxony Wool" seems to be baby yarns. "Woolen knitting floss" has me stumped. I thought it might refer to something like the thicker crochet thread, but I substituted baby yarn for it with good results, so I don't know. I found a yarn site online that addressed this question and the author, though seeming extremely knowledgeable, wasn't sure either.
Be warned the knitting and crocheting book has a project that doesn't mesh with modern sensibilities. Mary Frances makes a baby yarn doll out of white string and then gets the idea to make it a nurse doll out of, you guessed it, black yarn or string. There's nothing inherently undignified or degrading about working as a nurse-maid and it is a simple historical fact that a lot of black women in the US did work as childminders for white families, but something about a doll made of very black yarn caring for a white baby doll doesn't sit well with us, even if the doll isn't as garishly stereotypical as some nurse figures I've seen. The black doll is described as "funny" and fortunately that's as far as any racist comments go. She is also given the stereotypical name of Dinah, but I've always assumed that name is often used for black female characters for the simple reason that Dinah was a common name; at least it's not called a "Mammy" doll. (Another interesting topic for discussion groups would be why we find the Mammy figure so offensive.) It's a very small part of the book, but I wasn't expecting it and it was off-putting.
Let's see, what else? Pacifists might find the inclusion of patterns for soldiers (the book was written during WWI) offensive. The self-esteem brigade might be offended by the idea, expressed in the introduction, that knitting for soldiers and parents "makes a person feel of very much account". Atheistic materialists and the kind of Christians who think The Wizard of Oz is satanic will probably be offended by the inclusion of fairies in the book. And I suppose really hardcore vegans might be offended by the very mention of bone needles. Not fitting into any of these categories myself, I'm okay with these things.
I don't recommend the book though. Some adults might find it interesting historically and the directions are fine, but there are better books out there for learning to knit or crochet. I'm afraid children might be turned off the subject by the old-fashioned pictures and find the difference in old terminology and new to be too frustrating.
I'd be interested in comments about others' experience with these books.
Last year I read that an old book intended to teach sewing to little girls, The Mary Frances Sewing Book, had generated buzz among doll fanciers. Although it's in the public domain and has been re-released by a couple of publishers, it remains hard to find; the article or post I first read about it in said original copies could fetch nice prices on Ebay, and I found that secondhand copies of the recent paperback editions were priced higher than one might expect. The reason for the popularity is not just that it's a charming book, prettily illustrated and full of nostalgic appeal, but that it does a good job of teaching handsewing skills most contemporary women have never learned and provides a set of patterns for an authentic 1913 doll wardrobe. Some part of my mind remains in the 19th to pre-WWI 20th century (maybe I read too much Alcott as a girl) so of course I was interested.
Several weeks ago a new copy, shrinkwrapped with patterns turned up for under $20 on one of Amazon's affiliated sellers. So I had to get it. Although why I had to order the readily available The Mary Frances Knitting and Crocheting Book (there were several Mary Frances how-to books written) to go with it I'm not sure; I'm turning into quite the spendthrift lately. My books are paperback, but you can buy hardcover, "heirloom editions" at http://lacis.com/catalog/mfvict.html ; it might be worth it for the sewing book, especially if you want a gift for a special little girl, but I can't imagine the other books are worth bothering with hardcover.
The sewing book begins by teaching various hand stitches. What I thought was clever here was that the book has the reader learn to do these on canvas (Aida cloth, the stuff cross-stitchers use) instead of normal fabric, so it's easy to see how wide or deep to make the stitches and to keep them even; I used a piece of size 14 Aida cloth because that's what I had, but size 11 would work better. I wanted to see how good the book was for learning, so I worked through the stitches using the directions in the book. All were fine, until I got to the blanket and buttonhole stitch. I already knew how to make a blanket stitch (although it'd been nearly a decade since I'd used it), but I had trouble following the directions until I decided to ignore them and followed the illustration instead. The buttonhole stitch directions were impossible. The illustration wasn't helpful either. I finally gave up and just made tiny blanket stitches the way I already knew. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who had trouble with this. I tried looking up the buttonhole hand stitch online to see if I was offbase in my understanding of it, and I found a website that blatantly plagiarized the stitch lessons from Mary Frances--except for the blanket and buttonhole stitch directions, which were rewritten.
After the basic stitches, the book moves on to making a doll's wardrobe. These projects I have not worked through, but they seem pretty good. The clothes are cute and presumably authentic to the Edwardian or Titanic era, as they come from then. Anyone new to sewing could learn a lot of dressmaking skills here. While the "Thimble people" are walking Mary Frances through the projects, they teach things like seam finishing and plackets. Unless I overlooked something, all the sleeves are cut on, so there's nothing about setting a sleeve, but that's the only thing I could think of that I might like to have seen covered that wasn't. The lessons seem to be pretty well laid out, so that easier things are presented first.
The patterns are sized for a sixteen-inch doll of that time period. There are at least two different Mary Marie (the doll's name in the book) "reproduction" dolls for sale, and the lacis site I linked above sells a pattern for making a cloth doll that will fit the clothes. These would be worth looking into if you want to give the book to a little girl interested in sewing. Otherwise you could just size the patterns up to fit the very popular 18-inch dolls of today. The size is already close. I recently bought a pattern for 18-inch doll clothes (I'm definitely becoming a spendthrift) and laying the contemporary pattern pieces over the Mary Frances pieces suggested they might need a bit less grading up than I'd thought.
There are also a few non-doll projects.
Typically for children's books of the time, there are some moral lessons woven in. One of these I found kind of catchy: "Miss Never-Try/Never can do;/Miss Never-Begin/Never gets thru." Also like a lot of period children's books, the characters may seem too good and nice to be true and to speak in a slightly stilted way at times. It didn't interfere with my enjoyment (much less the educational parts), but some might find it more distasteful; I didn't "buy" the level of goodness and niceness any more than many would, it just didn't bother me. A potentially fruitful topic of discussion with friends or a discussion group would be why modern people find depictions of the very good and nice to be distasteful.
The rhyming and some corniness might get on some adults' nerves. Children might have to look up a few words or find some obvious-by-context word uses odd. That never hurt anybody, though. I had to look up the definition of "guimpe" (a blouse worn under jumpers) myself and survived the trip to the dictionary with dignity intact.
Verdict: I recommend The Mary Frances Sewing Book for adults or children. It is to be hoped someone will put out a new reprint. If they're really smart, they'll package it with a 16-inch doll pattern or offer a separate pack of patterns already resized so little girls can sew for their American Girl or other 18-inch dolls.
The knitting and crocheting book is a bit different from the sewing book. Starting with the cover illustration. Uncle Pookie saw it and said he thought he might have been watching too much anime, because Mary Frances looked kind of hot! I would have said she looked like a young woman, instead of the little girl I assumed her to be and that she clearly is in the sewing book illustrations; maybe she's supposed to have aged since the previous book, but she's still playing with her dolls so I don't know.
I've worked through some of the early crochet directions--the stitches, a couple of scarves, and a petticoat. I found the directions really easy to follow, and there's no doubt a person could learn to crochet from them. The projects look okay and can be made to fit a contemporary 18-inch doll. On my petticoat--which looks better than I expected (to be frank, I'm not a huge fan of crochet and am a bit bewildered as to why I'm bothering with it)--I added six stitches to the base chain to make it fit an 18-inch doll better, but it could have worked as is; I'm guessing most would work as is. I probably won't bother with any of the other projects, except for the cute little "turban" (it looks more fez-ish to me) and even cuter tam.
I don't know how to knit with needles and am not ready to learn, so I can't vouch for the quality of the knitting directions. They seem okay to me. The book teaches English knitting, although there's a brief bit on Continental knitting in the supplementary material ("The Magic Paper") included in the back. It seems like pretty basic stuff, which is a good thing for beginners, especially if they're children.
Now the bad stuff. The Mary Frances Knitting and Crochet Book just isn't as appealing as the sewing book. It relies on photographs, and reproduced photographs just didn't look very good back then. (I'm guessing the photos made the original book a bit pricey.) The projects may seem a bit weird-looking to modern eyes; the clothes in the sewing book don't seem odd, perhaps because many mothers today like to dress their little girls in somewhat old-fashioned dresses for special occasions, old styles remain popular on dolls, and Titanic-era styles are somewhat in favor since the big Titanic movie in the late '90s. The story's still cute enough, but a bit less engaging.
Crochet hooks (and probably knitting needles too?) were sized differently back then, but there is a gauge given near the front of the book so you can approximate what you need; children might find it frustrating to have to do this, though. A more annoying problem is that the names of yarns have changed. "Knitting worsted" is easy, as is "Angora wool". "Teazle", which the book says is used for trims or, brushed up, as a substitute for angora, could be figured out. The problems are with the yarns used most frequently in the projects. "Germantown Zephyr" I'm guessing is just a softer worsted weight. "Saxony Wool" seems to be baby yarns. "Woolen knitting floss" has me stumped. I thought it might refer to something like the thicker crochet thread, but I substituted baby yarn for it with good results, so I don't know. I found a yarn site online that addressed this question and the author, though seeming extremely knowledgeable, wasn't sure either.
Be warned the knitting and crocheting book has a project that doesn't mesh with modern sensibilities. Mary Frances makes a baby yarn doll out of white string and then gets the idea to make it a nurse doll out of, you guessed it, black yarn or string. There's nothing inherently undignified or degrading about working as a nurse-maid and it is a simple historical fact that a lot of black women in the US did work as childminders for white families, but something about a doll made of very black yarn caring for a white baby doll doesn't sit well with us, even if the doll isn't as garishly stereotypical as some nurse figures I've seen. The black doll is described as "funny" and fortunately that's as far as any racist comments go. She is also given the stereotypical name of Dinah, but I've always assumed that name is often used for black female characters for the simple reason that Dinah was a common name; at least it's not called a "Mammy" doll. (Another interesting topic for discussion groups would be why we find the Mammy figure so offensive.) It's a very small part of the book, but I wasn't expecting it and it was off-putting.
Let's see, what else? Pacifists might find the inclusion of patterns for soldiers (the book was written during WWI) offensive. The self-esteem brigade might be offended by the idea, expressed in the introduction, that knitting for soldiers and parents "makes a person feel of very much account". Atheistic materialists and the kind of Christians who think The Wizard of Oz is satanic will probably be offended by the inclusion of fairies in the book. And I suppose really hardcore vegans might be offended by the very mention of bone needles. Not fitting into any of these categories myself, I'm okay with these things.
I don't recommend the book though. Some adults might find it interesting historically and the directions are fine, but there are better books out there for learning to knit or crochet. I'm afraid children might be turned off the subject by the old-fashioned pictures and find the difference in old terminology and new to be too frustrating.
I'd be interested in comments about others' experience with these books.
Friday, January 27, 2006
The Sign of the Princess
My husband enjoys military science fiction generally and for some years now has been devouring John Ringo books. Almost literally. The typical scenario is he buys a copy of whatever is Ringo's latest at the bookstore and stays up all night to read it, work the next day be damned. I've been meaning to try some of Ringo's books for some time, especially since I heard the man read from the first of the dragon series before it came out. But somehow I just haven't gotten around to it. (Maybe partly because I just couldn't get into another military sf series Uncle Pookie is fond of, the Honor Herrington series by David Weber; UP says I'd probably enjoy the political wrangling HH books more than the strictly fighting ones.) Until now.
I just read Princess of Wands, a modern fantasy by Ringo. And I enjoyed it. Unusually for any 20th-century or later novel, the heroine is a Christian (Episcopalian) and, perhaps unusually for any novel, her Christianity makes a difference in how she lives her daily life. Also unusually, the heroine is living in Mississippi and the Mississippi (Louisiana too, although to a lesser extent the action there being what it is) we see seems like part of the modern world. Very unusually in fiction, we see a man, probably an immigrant, of Indian extraction in Mississippi; it sounds like a small thing to mention, but I've noticed movies and such set in Mississippi never show the Hindu hotel owners, Chinese restauranteurs, Vietnamese fishermen, etc. that are a part of contemporary Mississippi life.
The premise of the story is this: The government of the US (like many other governments) has a special, non-official branch of the FBI called Special Circumstances that deals with cases with supernatural components. SC operatives have power based on the purity and intensity of their religious faith, and the deity of the faith in question has power based on the number of believers. (Okay, so none of that is very original, but it's still a good story.) Obviously, in America a Christian operative has the potential to be really powerful, but for one reason or another, not many Christians are drawn to this work.
Our heroine, whose name makes me wonder if Ringo browsed some Mississippi phone books, comes onto the scene as a seemingly typical soccer mom, albeit one whose father had been a paranoid, military type who'd insisted his daughters learn a lot of survival skills. And one who happens to have a very strong faith. Someone who thinks Christianity has to do with how you respond to seemingly trivial daily events like someone cutting you off in traffic, not just with whether you show up to church on Sunday morning, and tries to live by her understanding. Long story short, she's drawn to southern Lousiana, kicks some demon and acolyte ass, and is recruited to Special Circumstances, and in the next two parts of the book (it's more like two novellas and a short story than one unified novel), has some more adventures. She encounters some anti-Christian prejudice along the way too; and that's refreshing because so often the fictional picture is one of bigoted Christians stereotyping pagans and secularists, when anti-Christian attitudes are so prevalent inour society they can shut down all of a person's much-touted openness the moment the word Christian hits his eardrum.
A big chunk of the book takes place at a con and that's fun. It's always nice seeing portrayals of cons by someone who's actually been to one and sees fandom as no less valid a way of spending your time than golfing. One of the author characters, Folsom Duncan, seems like a loose self-portrait--other author characters also seem to stand for real people, sort of like the regular characters in Asimov's mystery stories--and it's kind of amusing to speculate about how loose a portrayal it may be.
Yet another item in the plus column is the depiction of Asatruar. It's said that there are a good many--and increasing--number of Asatru in Special Circumstances and one of the major characters is an Asatru woman. I like that. Asatru are a small percentage of the neo-pagan movement, but I tend to think it's unfortunate they're so small a part. Reconstructionist pagan groups are more rigorous generally, and I just plain like Asatru. Although a lot of Asatruar, individually, can act like jerks (them and every other group!) and there is, regrettably, some overlap with racists, I find there is much to be commended there. Asatru people tend to be much more scholarly and intellectually honest, more serious about their religion, and more down-to-earth than Wiccans or neo-pagans generally. (I'm generalizing here, so no complaining about the scholarly eclectic neo-pagan you know.) Asatru people are much more likely to reject moral relativism than Wiccans. They also have fairly satisfying religous practices and, of course, all those great stories about the Northern gods. I almost became Asatru. Although I know I made the right decision and believe wholeheartedly that the Church has the fullness of truth, I have a bit of a soft spot for Asatru and Norse mythology. I liked seeing a positive depiction of it when so many people don't even know what it is and some of those pagans who do know about it have a kneejerk reaction that it must be bad because it's Germanic and more masculine in tone than Wicca.
Anyway, my Asatru aside aside, Princess of Wands was fun to read. Books and movies that have a demon show up usually seem a little cheesy to me--at least in the demon fighting scene--but there's plenty of things here to enjoy, and the fight scenes themselves aren't bad. I'll probably be looking at other of Ringo's books.
I just read Princess of Wands, a modern fantasy by Ringo. And I enjoyed it. Unusually for any 20th-century or later novel, the heroine is a Christian (Episcopalian) and, perhaps unusually for any novel, her Christianity makes a difference in how she lives her daily life. Also unusually, the heroine is living in Mississippi and the Mississippi (Louisiana too, although to a lesser extent the action there being what it is) we see seems like part of the modern world. Very unusually in fiction, we see a man, probably an immigrant, of Indian extraction in Mississippi; it sounds like a small thing to mention, but I've noticed movies and such set in Mississippi never show the Hindu hotel owners, Chinese restauranteurs, Vietnamese fishermen, etc. that are a part of contemporary Mississippi life.
The premise of the story is this: The government of the US (like many other governments) has a special, non-official branch of the FBI called Special Circumstances that deals with cases with supernatural components. SC operatives have power based on the purity and intensity of their religious faith, and the deity of the faith in question has power based on the number of believers. (Okay, so none of that is very original, but it's still a good story.) Obviously, in America a Christian operative has the potential to be really powerful, but for one reason or another, not many Christians are drawn to this work.
Our heroine, whose name makes me wonder if Ringo browsed some Mississippi phone books, comes onto the scene as a seemingly typical soccer mom, albeit one whose father had been a paranoid, military type who'd insisted his daughters learn a lot of survival skills. And one who happens to have a very strong faith. Someone who thinks Christianity has to do with how you respond to seemingly trivial daily events like someone cutting you off in traffic, not just with whether you show up to church on Sunday morning, and tries to live by her understanding. Long story short, she's drawn to southern Lousiana, kicks some demon and acolyte ass, and is recruited to Special Circumstances, and in the next two parts of the book (it's more like two novellas and a short story than one unified novel), has some more adventures. She encounters some anti-Christian prejudice along the way too; and that's refreshing because so often the fictional picture is one of bigoted Christians stereotyping pagans and secularists, when anti-Christian attitudes are so prevalent inour society they can shut down all of a person's much-touted openness the moment the word Christian hits his eardrum.
A big chunk of the book takes place at a con and that's fun. It's always nice seeing portrayals of cons by someone who's actually been to one and sees fandom as no less valid a way of spending your time than golfing. One of the author characters, Folsom Duncan, seems like a loose self-portrait--other author characters also seem to stand for real people, sort of like the regular characters in Asimov's mystery stories--and it's kind of amusing to speculate about how loose a portrayal it may be.
Yet another item in the plus column is the depiction of Asatruar. It's said that there are a good many--and increasing--number of Asatru in Special Circumstances and one of the major characters is an Asatru woman. I like that. Asatru are a small percentage of the neo-pagan movement, but I tend to think it's unfortunate they're so small a part. Reconstructionist pagan groups are more rigorous generally, and I just plain like Asatru. Although a lot of Asatruar, individually, can act like jerks (them and every other group!) and there is, regrettably, some overlap with racists, I find there is much to be commended there. Asatru people tend to be much more scholarly and intellectually honest, more serious about their religion, and more down-to-earth than Wiccans or neo-pagans generally. (I'm generalizing here, so no complaining about the scholarly eclectic neo-pagan you know.) Asatru people are much more likely to reject moral relativism than Wiccans. They also have fairly satisfying religous practices and, of course, all those great stories about the Northern gods. I almost became Asatru. Although I know I made the right decision and believe wholeheartedly that the Church has the fullness of truth, I have a bit of a soft spot for Asatru and Norse mythology. I liked seeing a positive depiction of it when so many people don't even know what it is and some of those pagans who do know about it have a kneejerk reaction that it must be bad because it's Germanic and more masculine in tone than Wicca.
Anyway, my Asatru aside aside, Princess of Wands was fun to read. Books and movies that have a demon show up usually seem a little cheesy to me--at least in the demon fighting scene--but there's plenty of things here to enjoy, and the fight scenes themselves aren't bad. I'll probably be looking at other of Ringo's books.
Separate and Very Unequal
John J. Miller has an article up at WSJ.com calling for the elimination of something I've always thought was a bad historical error, Indian reservations. The creation of Indian reservations effectively ended the chance for Indians to become full and equal citizens of the United states. Shoving them on reservations not only treated them as lesser people who could be stowed wherever the rest of the populace found them less inconvenient, but it prevented them from becoming participating members of society. It prevented assimilation. You can say maybe they didn't want to assimilate, but I think that should have been left up to the individuals to decide; Irish, Italian, and other immigrant groups got the chance to decide how far they wished to assimilate into the dominant US culture, why not the indigenous American Indians? Instead, it was determined that their future would be decided by government fiat and that their future would be one where they had, not even second-class citizenship, but a kind of non-citizenship thrust upon them. They count for nothing in American political life; they aren't even counted in voting statistics, last I heard. They have been kept separate from the rest of the country and hampered at every turn from pursuing the American dreams of self-determination, owning your own home, and making a better life for your children. It's a national shame, and it's one that is fueled by racism--the obvious, "hard" racism of the past and the "softer" racism of recent times that says Indians are different, their noble traditions won't permit them to function as citizens of a modern society, and what's more they don't want to do so, so we help them when we keep them separate. I think all people, Indian or non-Indian, can do without that kind of "help".
I guess some might defend the creation of reservations on the grounds some Indians fought the U.S. government and white settlers in their areas. Yes, some American Indians did that but so what? The Confederates rebelled against the whole United States, declared themselves a separate entity, and fought a full scale, bloody war against the US. They were accepted back into the Union and, after a relatively short time of transition, they were once again able to count themselves full citizens. Their descendants are free to do all the things any other American can do. It's long past time Indians were accepted into the national life of American.
I confess I have absolutely no idea how the reservation system could be ended, though. I wonder if Mr. Miller does. All I can imagine is a big old mess.
Oh, and do note I say American Indian, not "Native American". That latter term is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard. I am a native American--white skin, green eyes, freckled face, and all. I had ancestors here when there were just American Indians and various colonists, and every one of my ancestors who was born here was a native American. Until every English speaker develops the miraculous ability to speak in initial capitals so that "native American" is distinguishable from "Native American", I'm going to continue to say this is the stupidest bit of PC nonsense I've ever heard and I'm going to continue to say Indian (or tribal name, such as Choctaw, or individual name, such as Frank or Edna, depending on circumstances.) According to George Carlin, the term "Native American" was the invention of a federal government bureacrat anyway, and that's enough reason to look askance at the term right there, before you move on to considering the fact it's asinine.
I guess some might defend the creation of reservations on the grounds some Indians fought the U.S. government and white settlers in their areas. Yes, some American Indians did that but so what? The Confederates rebelled against the whole United States, declared themselves a separate entity, and fought a full scale, bloody war against the US. They were accepted back into the Union and, after a relatively short time of transition, they were once again able to count themselves full citizens. Their descendants are free to do all the things any other American can do. It's long past time Indians were accepted into the national life of American.
I confess I have absolutely no idea how the reservation system could be ended, though. I wonder if Mr. Miller does. All I can imagine is a big old mess.
Oh, and do note I say American Indian, not "Native American". That latter term is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard. I am a native American--white skin, green eyes, freckled face, and all. I had ancestors here when there were just American Indians and various colonists, and every one of my ancestors who was born here was a native American. Until every English speaker develops the miraculous ability to speak in initial capitals so that "native American" is distinguishable from "Native American", I'm going to continue to say this is the stupidest bit of PC nonsense I've ever heard and I'm going to continue to say Indian (or tribal name, such as Choctaw, or individual name, such as Frank or Edna, depending on circumstances.) According to George Carlin, the term "Native American" was the invention of a federal government bureacrat anyway, and that's enough reason to look askance at the term right there, before you move on to considering the fact it's asinine.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
If I'd Known It Was Coming...
Yesterday was National Pie Day. If I'd only known, I could have celebrated by making a cake or something.
Here Comes Everybody
James Joyce once said that the unofficial motto of the Catholic church is "Here Comes Everybody". I got a personal sense of that before I ever became Catholic. I was already going to mass fairly often and one time I arrived almost late, so that I had to sit at the front and to the side (this was a church with three-sided seating, which I don't approve of, but that's another rant) so I had a good view of people as they left the communion line. As I watched them, I found myself thinking of Joyce's line. "Here Comes Everybody." It really is everybody. Everyone is invited. Young and old, able-bodied and infirm, light-skinned and dark-skinned, male and female, fat and thin, neat and slobby, short and tall, athletic and flabby, well-off and poor, the thoughtful-looking and the slack-jawed, the beautiful and the not-so-beautiful. That particular day I saw a woman who looked like a slightly furtive pekingese. Whatever the attitude of the world in general, in the Church that woman is no less welcome than the most stunning of classical beauties. The Church displays the greatest mystery of her faith openly on her altars every day and invites everyone to see and to join--the poor and lowly no less than the rich and influential, the murderer just beginning to repent no less than the most upstanding citizen imaginable.
There is something of the same thing in the Catholic attitude toward abortion, eugenics, euthanasia--in fact toward human life in general. It is a sort of profligate love, saying, "Anyone God wants to let live, we want to welcome to life's banquet."
There are a lot of people in the world who are eager to say that this or that group of humans is worthless, but there don't seem to be so many saying everyone is valuable and still fewer saying everyone is welcome here. Considering some of the problems that can come--and sadly have come--from the first attitude, I figure there are a lot worse ways to look at life than the welcoming, hospitable one.
There is something of the same thing in the Catholic attitude toward abortion, eugenics, euthanasia--in fact toward human life in general. It is a sort of profligate love, saying, "Anyone God wants to let live, we want to welcome to life's banquet."
There are a lot of people in the world who are eager to say that this or that group of humans is worthless, but there don't seem to be so many saying everyone is valuable and still fewer saying everyone is welcome here. Considering some of the problems that can come--and sadly have come--from the first attitude, I figure there are a lot worse ways to look at life than the welcoming, hospitable one.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
The Marriage Gap--Separate and Unequal Families
This article on the "marriage gap" by Kay S. Hymowitz is a must-read. In fact, I recommend reading it, bookmarking the site, and reading it again later.
I only wish more people--especially parents and church leaders--would talk about the economic and social benefits of marriage to young people. Maybe if young women who are buying into the "I don't need a husband and children don't need fathers" line were confronted with the fact that not being married to their children's father greatly increases the chance their children will be poor--with all the disadvantages that entails--they will rethink their position. Just saying, "Don't do it!", probably won't help (although it's better than nothing), but encouraging them to think reasonably about the future before acting might, because every woman, however young, wants her children (already here or potential) to have a good life.
I only wish more people--especially parents and church leaders--would talk about the economic and social benefits of marriage to young people. Maybe if young women who are buying into the "I don't need a husband and children don't need fathers" line were confronted with the fact that not being married to their children's father greatly increases the chance their children will be poor--with all the disadvantages that entails--they will rethink their position. Just saying, "Don't do it!", probably won't help (although it's better than nothing), but encouraging them to think reasonably about the future before acting might, because every woman, however young, wants her children (already here or potential) to have a good life.
Why Gen-Xers Can't Win
People have a tendency to hang onto the hair and clothing styles that were popular when they were young. This means that when the Baby-Boomers have finally died off, so we don't have to hear about them any more, and Gen-Xers are finally king of the playground, the people who are now eighteen or so will join us in our nursing homes--and many of them will be sporting low-rise pants that give us a highlighted view of sixty five-year old butt cracks, saggy bellies, and wrinkly tattoos. And we poor Gen-Xers can't even depend on poor eyesight to obscure it; the pace of technology may have given us all 20/20 vision by then.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Margaret Sanger
When I was a child I liked finding female heroes. One was Margaret Sanger. I read about her and I saw a TV movie about her starring Bonnie Franklin; by the time I was in junior high school I "knew" Sanger was a great female hero who had rescued women from drudgery and, in many cases, saved their lives. A little later into my teens, I discovered that Sanger and a lot of the other early birth control advocates were eugenicists. That made me uneasy, but I told myself that it was okay, really, that eugenics was such a popular thing at the time that even nice, intelligent people could be excused for falling prey to it.
I've long since stopped making excuses for Sanger. More recently (the past four years or so) I've started wondering if she and others like her really did women many favors.
Here's some sites with more information:
A column by Mike Adams.
http://www.blackgenocide.org/
http://margaretsanger.blogspot.com/
I've long since stopped making excuses for Sanger. More recently (the past four years or so) I've started wondering if she and others like her really did women many favors.
Here's some sites with more information:
A column by Mike Adams.
http://www.blackgenocide.org/
http://margaretsanger.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Something Else
Related to that last post--specifically to Mark Steyn's talk about modern Westerners' lack of confidence in our civilization and the Morse columnist's pointing out that Islamists believe in themselves enough to replace themselves--is this quote from Thomas Sowell:
"No society can survive in the long run without the allegiance of its people. Undermining a sense of the worthiness of a society undermines that allegiance -- and, without allegiance, there is no defense." (Thomas Sowell)
This is true. For the obvious reasons that people who continually downgrade everything their civilization has produced and stands for are unlikely to support it against attack, intellectual or otherwise, or to build it up by continuing and strengthening its traditions and accomplishments. But perhaps also they may be less likely to want to reproduce--if they sincerely believe their civilization is worthless, that is.
Don't get me wrong, I think selfishness and a desire to overplan and overcontrol every aspect our lives is behind most of the childlessness in our society (I say this as a childless woman), but I can see how thinking your whole civilization is without redeeming features could make you reluctant to reproduce. Animals caged in zoos often don't want to reproduce, even though you'd think, if nothing else, they'd welcome the change in routine that a spot of reproductive fun could bring; it may just be my fruitcakey side speaking, but I've always thought it might be because they sense they are not free animals and aren't really content with that that they are able to override the second or third most powerful urge any of us have. Why should a human that views its society and heritage as worthless be any different from the zoo animal that finds little to live for in its environment?
"No society can survive in the long run without the allegiance of its people. Undermining a sense of the worthiness of a society undermines that allegiance -- and, without allegiance, there is no defense." (Thomas Sowell)
This is true. For the obvious reasons that people who continually downgrade everything their civilization has produced and stands for are unlikely to support it against attack, intellectual or otherwise, or to build it up by continuing and strengthening its traditions and accomplishments. But perhaps also they may be less likely to want to reproduce--if they sincerely believe their civilization is worthless, that is.
Don't get me wrong, I think selfishness and a desire to overplan and overcontrol every aspect our lives is behind most of the childlessness in our society (I say this as a childless woman), but I can see how thinking your whole civilization is without redeeming features could make you reluctant to reproduce. Animals caged in zoos often don't want to reproduce, even though you'd think, if nothing else, they'd welcome the change in routine that a spot of reproductive fun could bring; it may just be my fruitcakey side speaking, but I've always thought it might be because they sense they are not free animals and aren't really content with that that they are able to override the second or third most powerful urge any of us have. Why should a human that views its society and heritage as worthless be any different from the zoo animal that finds little to live for in its environment?
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