LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:
Here is an English translation of “Vackert Väder,” or “Beautiful Weather,” the Swedish hymn which inspired the song by the quartet Kraja:
In this sweet time of summer
Go out, my soul, and be happy for
The gifts from the great God.
Look, how the earth is decked
Look, how she, for you and me
Is in wonderful bounties.
SAGE McLAUGHLIN WRITES:
Eric writes in the entry on feminism and cooking that, “I am noticing a lot of cooking-type reality shows…I wonder how Hollywood turned meal preparation into a gladiatorial competition.” As a fan of cooking shows (though not the “reality” versions in which loud-mouthed, vulgar chefs abusively deride younger, less experienced ones), I used to wonder the same thing. But it’s not so complicated, really. The entertainment industry is now, much as it has always been, in the “dream” business. Selling visions of people’s dreams back to them is what television has been about for quite some time now, and even the element of competition is not so new, with game shows being one of the oldest and most successful kinds of programming. Look around at the prime time competition shows today and what do you see?
You see The Biggest Loser, a show about a competition in which people get to become rich and famous while losing lots of weight. Whoever thought of this wildly popular show—which has now spawned a line of books, food, videos, clothing, etc.—understands America better than most of us would care to admit. (more…)
THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU WRITES:
Aficionados of The Thinking Housewife do not need to be reminded how degraded commercial culture in Europe and North America has become, how a pornographic esthetic that sexualizes everything has pervaded all forms of mass entertainment including those aimed at children and teenagers. Those aficionados will be sadly familiar with the endless succession of tarted-up adolescent songstresses marketed in glitzy style by cynical promoters to young predominantly female audiences. When any counter-phenomenon appears, it is therefore worthy of note. (more…)
IN AN INTERVIEW in the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Bristol Palin makes single motherhood look great. A baby is extra work, but doesn’t interfere with a woman’s independence. A few decades ago, popular culture celebrated the single young career girl, the Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas who got her own apartment presumably before getting married and settling down. Now that popular figure has a baby too. Bristol Palin is inspirational, not for abstinence but for the single woman who wants, or is compelled, to raise her baby herself.
Elisa Lipsky-Karasz writes:
… Bristol is hardly unhappy, despite her hectic schedule and lack of sleep. “I love my baby more than anything,” she says, which is obvious from the cuddles he gets. “He’s like a Gerber baby. He’s the cutest baby in the whole world.” (more…)
RESPONDING TO this entry on the decline of the family meal, Mabel LeBeau writes:
I haven’t figured out if by modern definitions I’m feministic or feminine or merely female in gender, but have found the most effective way to conduct a family meal is participation by the father figure. If Father is the one to initiate conversations, officially nod approval over the meal, settle disputes over who gets to pass the bread first, provide approval for individual family member’s self-validation and ‘say grace,’ it’s rather pointless to call it a family meal in our home if Daddy doesn’t show up. (more…)
THIS IS a famous, intensely evocative photo, taken in 1894, of Alexander Graham Bell, Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller (seated). Bell introduced Keller to her famous teacher. Keller wrote in her autobiography, The Story of My Life, about her first meeting with Bell:
Child as I was, I at once felt the tenderness and sympathy which endeared Dr. Bell to so many hearts. That interview would be the door through which I would pass through darkness into light…
… [H]e is never so happy as when he has a deaf child in his arms. His labours on behalf of the deaf will live on and bless generations of children yet to come; and we love him alike for what he has himself achieved and for what he has evoked from others.
She dedicated the book to him. (more…)
THE FOOD JOURNALIST Michael Pollan approvingly quotes a statement blaming feminism for wrecking a culture of shared food and civility. His assertion seems far too timid given that millions of children now eat chicken nuggets in front of the TV. But Anna Clark at Salon objects:
Blaming feminism for luring women out of the kitchen, stealing the ritual of the family meal, and thereby diminishing “one of the nurseries of democracy” is both simplistic and ridiculous. It’s true that shared meals are powerful spaces for building relationships and “the habits of civility.” But if we’re going to talk about who’s to blame for our current culture of processed food, why not blame untold generations of men for not getting into the kitchen, especially given Pollan’s characterization of the family meal as having a meaningful role in cultivating democracy? If it’s so important, why is their absence excusable?
That’s right. Men have been doing nothing all these years while women slaved away in the kitchen. Here’s an all-points bulletin: Do not accept a dinner invitation from anyone named Anna Clark. Unless you like chicken nuggets.
JESSE POWELL writes:
There is a movement in the United States to bring about civil unions not just for homosexuals but for heterosexual couples too. It’s interesting to observe how this idea has been instituted in France and its effect on French society. France has not abolished marriage but it has done the next best thing, given couples the option of forming their own contractual relationships according to their own terms. France has created a legal relationship form called the “Civil Pact of Solidarity” in English, or PACS using the French acronym. (more…)
IN MARCH 1876, after more than a year of sleeplessness, harried experimentation and a neck and neck race with a competitor, Alexander Graham Bell filed the U.S. patent for the first working model of the telephone. It was the culmination of intense and varied interest by three generations of Bells in projection of the human voice.
On July 9, 1877, the Bell Telephone Company was officially inaugurated and a new era in modern communications began. Two days later, a new era in Bell’s personal life began when he married nineteen-year-old Mabel Hubbard in the parlor of her parents’ home on Brattle Street in Cambridge. It was the first time Tom Watson, Bell’s famous assistant, wore white gloves. Bell gave his wife 1,497 shares in the telephone company as a wedding gift. The Bells’ marriage lasted for forty-five years and in that time, Mabel never once used a telephone herself. She was completely deaf.
As part of my series “Famous Couples,” I look at one of the more interesting couples in the history of modern invention. (more…)
FROM THE SMOKING GUN:
For the second time in recent weeks, a chapter of the Pi Beta Phi sorority is being accused of drunkenly trashing a facility during a formal dance. At a March 6 party sponsored by the group’s Ohio University chapter, attendees engaged in sex acts, used plates as “missiles” during food fights, vomited on carpets, defecated in urinals, and tried to tear off the clothes of a female bartender, according to a letter written by the director of the West Virginia art center where the formal was held. (more…)
JOHN P. WRITES:
I’d like to offer a contrarian view of your post on graduation levels of men and women.
If I understand correctly Jesse Powell’s statistics are aggregate graduation rates for all undergraduate degrees. However, most undergraduate degrees are awarded for liberal arts courses, history, psychology, sociology, English, etc. I don’t have the stats handy but I’m pretty sure that if you look at graduation rates for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields you will find they are preponderantly awarded to men. (more…)
PEOPLE who make bread are the happiest people in the world.
Look at this painting by the Dutch master Jan Steen, The Leiden Baker Arend Oostwaert and His Wife. Notice how glowing Arend is and how sallow his wife. That’s obviously because he is the handler of the dough. Kneading dough is an unparalleled sensual experience and Arend’s countenance speaks of this ancient reality. I mean, it’s almost unparalleled. Anyone who makes bread from scratch at least once a week is guaranteed sanity and a better disposition than if he didn’t make bread once a week. People who never make bread suffer from repression. It doesn’t matter what it tastes like. Making it is good enough.
Do you remember the glass slipper and the poisoned apple, the damsel with hair dangling from a tower window and the whole castle fast asleep? The Age of the Fairy Tale is past, dear reader. Today, we only have tales of self-fulfillment, of the social atom seeking fusion. Here is a perfect example. In a new book, three women describe their quest for motherhood. Complete with donated sperm, abortion, miscarriage, and marriage at the last minute, it’s an anti-morality play that ends in motherhood for all. The New York Times writes:
Three would-be mothers, some “lucky” sperm and — voilà! — three happy families, with all of the pregnancies happening the old-fashioned way. (more…)
BRISTOL PALIN entered a new phase of celebrity last week when it was announced that she has signed a contract with a high-end promoter as a public speaker. She will earn as much as $30,000 per engagement to share her insights into single motherhood and sexual abstinence. Only 19, Bristol is almost assured of success in this new endeavor. Even if her speaking ability is modest, she is likely to grow in celebrity and touch a chord in many. That’s because Bristol represents a new kind of woman who is looking for recognition and reassurance.
Though the Palins are now wealthy and famous, this new kind of woman is neither. She is likely to have a high school education, perhaps a community college degree, maybe a couple of years of college. An interesting and lucrative career is not in her future. She will work for most of her life in jobs that are just jobs. Her love life, her friends and children are the center of things. She is enough of a traditionalist to reject abortion, but not enough of a traditionalist to reject sex before marriage. That’s why she finds herself where she is. She is a mother but not a wife.
She is a heroine because she has rejected abortion. She is a loser because she has had premarital sex in a post-marital age. (more…)
SCIENTISTS HAIL the creation of artifical life, drawing attention to intelligence and creativity. This development is missing the spontaneity of Darwinian processes.
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KAREN I. writes:
It is interesting that Siti “kind of assumes you draw your inspiration” from the fifties. I am sure she is not alone in that and you even agreed, saying “the word housewife conjures images of that era, doesn’t it?” As a housewife today, I wonder why the 1950s are so consistently associated with being a housewife. There is a curiosity about housewives of that era that does not exist for any other time, even though some women have always been housewives. (more…)
LAWRENCE AUSTER compares Michelle’s shocking appearance last night at a state dinner to Victor Mature in a gladiator movie. Our First Lady appears to have been slathered with oil, as if she’s about to enter the Coliseum. Auster writes, “Michelle is to female style and attractiveness what her husband’s presidency is to America–a deliberate transgression, aimed at redefining it as something else.”
CHRISTOPHER ROACH WRITES HERE:
One interesting phenomenon of our times is that the old-fashioned view that one may act on the basis of sincere belief has been hammered out of existence. We don’t even say, “I think” or “I believe” anymore. It’s “I feel.”
