Few have captured the female humanitarian with such devastating precision as Henry James. Here is his description of Miss Birdseye, the Boston lady reformer of his novel The Bostonians. She  lives on, different and yet the same, in cities such as Cambridge, San Francisco, London and Oslo.

She looked as if she had spent her life on platforms, in audiences, in conventions, in phalansteries, in séances; in her faded face there was a kind of reflection of ugly lecture lamps; with its habit of an upward angle, it seemed turned toward a pubic speaker, with an effort of respiration in the thick air in which social reforms are usually discussed. She talked continually, in a voice of which the spring seemed broken, like that of an over-worked bell-wire; and when Miss Chancellor explained that she had brought Mr. Ransom because he was so anxious to meet Mrs. Farrinder, she gave the young man a delicate, dirty, democratic little hand, looking at him kindly, as she could not help doing, but without the smallest discrimination as against others who might not have the good fortune (which involved, possibly, an injustice) to be present on such an interesting occasion…. No one had any idea how she lived; whenever money was given her she gave it away to a negro or a refugee. No woman could be less invidious, but on the whole she preferred these two classes of the human race. Since the Civil War much of her occupation was gone; for before that her best hours had been spent in fancying that she was helping some Southern slave to escape. It would have been a nice question whether, in her heart of hearts, for the sake of this excitement, she did not sometimes wish the blacks back in bondage. (more…)

  There is no need to worry about the massive erosion of American health due to obesity, as discussed in previous posts. If the proposed Baucus health care bill passes, our legislators will dramatically alter the relationship between citizen and government. We can just hand over our personal affairs to our overseers. For the first time, citizens will be ordered to purchase a specific product, in this case health insurance. How long before the government gives us menus and tells what to eat each day of the week? Why don't we just go ahead and shred every last copy of the U.S. Constitution? It's irrelevant now. This bill will exacerbate one of the most serious health problems facing Americans: their passivity in the face of their own physical destiny. By the way, more comments on the obesity issue have been added here.

  I hope you will read my article Obesity in America. It's tempting to think there are public policy solutions to this problem, but the real heart of it lies in both overindulgence and the desire for ease. Let's say I became Czar of Health tomorrow and set about banning all pizza and soda, two major factors in  America's weight problem. The truth is it wouldn't matter. Instead of pizza and soda, Americans would consume more burritos and lemonade. Twenty-ounce bottles of lemonade would appear in all the vending machines. I could then ban burritos and lemonade, or at least place a very high tax on them. Presto.  Americans would start consuming more lattés and grilled-and-gooey sandwiches. On and on it would go. America is killing itself slowly and creating a human landscape that is repulsive and obscene.

  Gourmet was once a great American magazine about travel and the art of entertaining and cooking. It was literate and restrained, with photographs of exquisitely decorated tables set for meals with no people in sight. These scenes were fantastically suggestive and encompassed everything from intimate aprés-ski parties to large Easter buffets. The travel articles were evocative and well-written; the recipes were flawless. The magazine was debauched under the reign of former New York Times food writer Ruth Reichl, who turned it into a journal for urban "foodies" with their decadent obsession with chefs and the hottest restaurants. She defaced it with photographs of  smiling models, a  violation of the Gourmet aesthetic which always left something up to the imagination, and filled it with bizarre recipes that called for exotic ingredients in uninviting combinations. Condé Nast announced on Monday that the 69-year-old magazine would shut down, blaming it on the economy. It had to go. Old bound editions of the magazine will be treasured for years to come.

  A female reader writes: I am a stay-at-home mother of two. I have been a homemaker for ten years now, and the rude questions and comments from outsiders still take me by surprise sometimes, though not the way they used to. I just wanted to say I love your blog. I read a response you wrote to a young homemaker who was insulted by a friend on Facebook and I so wish I had read that when I was first a homemaker and others were making constant comments about what in the world I was doing. I had some very valid reasons for staying home, but I did not care to share our business with the world so I meekly took the comments and issued few comebacks. I have a college degree I worked hard for, and your observations about what is encouraged in our society are completely correct. I got more affirmation for being a court reporter writing rubbish for the front page of the local rag than I ever did for staying home and taking care of my family. Your advice is fantastic and your observations show keen insight into what homemakers face. Laura writes: Thank you very much. Yes, after a while, I started to think of myself as a sort of suburban Solzhenitsyn, without the beard or the gulag. A middle class housewife who is committed to her vocation is a social dissident whether she likes it or not.

  Sarah Palin's life story is ready to hit the stands soon. Palin's relatively uneventful life seems thin material for a memoir. Her ghost writers (she surely did not write this book herself) will play up her outdoorsy, frontierswoman persona, as is clear from the cover and title. If she can shoot a moose, she can lead a country. By the way, is that a windbreaker she is wearing? That makes sense. It's tough-gal chic. I am looking forward to soaking up all the details about Palin's high school basketball triumphs.                                                           

Here’s the photo that accompanied the article mentioned in the previous post. It’s a glowing “family” portrait of a homosexual couple and the boy in their care. It does not trouble the Times, or the two men, that this boy has been deprived of a mother. What’s so special about a mother?

The Times’  report was intended to show the unfair economic costs homosexual couples pay. I see no sign of financial distress in this photo. Also, I wonder if this little boy will be eager to pose for a photo with his two dads when he is a teenager.

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  What is the cost of being a homosexual parent? The New York Times set out recently to find out in a spirit of complete impartiality. You have a heart of stone if, after reading this, you do not cry out at the inherent injustice of a system that imposes financial penalties on homosexuals. According to the Times' personal finance columnists: Much of the debate over legalizing gay marriage has focused on God and Scripture, the Constitution and equal protection. But we see the world through the prism of money. [Laura: Hey, thanks for being honest!] And for years, we’ve heard from gay couples about all the extra health, legal and other costs they bear. So we set out to determine what they were and to come up with a round number — a couple’s lifetime cost of being gay. Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber then go on to analyse the inequities created by Social Security, taxes and health insurance programs that do not view these couples as man and wife. There's one major inequality the Times does not mention. These couples typically spend significant sums to even have children. They go to sperm banks and adoption services to create their artificial families. It's true that some lesbian couples simply resort to male friends, which is a cheap route and a great way to exploit the father of one's future child. But, many choose the more expensive alternative. Given the exhaustive nature of the Times analysis, why didn't the writers mention this extra cost? Could it…

  The discussion abount interracial marriage continues in this entry. See Hannon's comment: "Color blindness" is like fence-sitting. If you feel it is somehow wrong to choose a side for yourself, or your family, in terms of ethnic fidelity, that is a corruption of natural affinity and affiliation. Usually this is not held in conscious awareness (whites being the bellwether example) and normally it should not need to be. But periodically it asserts itself as a matter of survival, as when one's nation is being inundated simultaneously by mass immigration of people from foreign cultures and its political complement, the hegemony of liberal non-discrimination doctrine.  

As I’ve said before, many Western women are functionally schizophrenic. If you are a man who has married a sweet, even-tempered woman only to find yourself  living with a feral, foaming creature who needs medication or a strait-jacket, you are familiar with what I say. If you are a woman who in the aftermath of her wedding day feels as if she has undergone a form of demonic possession, you too know what I mean.

Here’s the reason for this prevalent psychiatric phenomenon. Everywhere she goes, a woman is told to pursue her native talents until she has converted them by hard work and sheer wizardry into some impressive professional feat, perhaps chief of brain surgery at a metropolitan hospital or, at the very least, third grade teacher. But she must not be just any third grade teacher. She must be a teacher who so dazzles a community with her energy that she is appointed Educational Curator of the World.

At the same time, in daily news reports, a woman is told the truth. And the truth is that her children will be unhealthy, stupid and unruly if she, or some very attentive and highly-paid servant, does not pay abundant attention to them. The truth is her home will be a mess and her marriage will be a war zone if she does not have a personal staff or devote a great deal of time to these things.

The media have no problem with feeding women this pack of contradictions. In fact, they love contradictions. These inconsistencies create anxiety and psychological dependence. People keep returning to the same sources of news to try to sort it all out and to ease the very anxieties the media have fostered.

Here’s a perfect example of what I mean. In this recent story  in The New York Times, Jane Brody, a woman who spent years bragging about her ability to effortlessly juggle career and family, reports that is essential for mothers to talk to their babies from birth. I agree. It is important for mothers to talk to babies. Babies are not baggage. Babies are not toys. They are human beings, often filled with curiosity and the frustrated desire to communicate.

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  In a single year, support for abortion appears to have declined significantly despite the election of a pro-abortion president. According to the New York Times, a Pew Research Center poll taken last year showed 54 percent of respondents for legalized abortion and 40 percent against. The same poll this year shows 47 percent for and 45 percent against. The Times speculates that abortion supporters "may have grown complacent." Perhaps people have begun to see the logical fallacy behind the position of someone like President Obama. Obama says abortion is not wrong and yet he says the numbers of abortions should be reduced. If something is not wrong, why does it make any difference how many instances of it there are?  

If God created the world and directed evolutionary change, then why didn’t He provide a textbook? This book could be distributed to high schools everywhere. Since He didn’t provide a biology textbook, God does not exist. The Darwinian scheme of evolution, despite all its maddening gaps, must be true.

Lawrence Auster responds to a similar argument here. Below is most of his exchange with a reader:

Auster:

I’ve never presented a theory of human evolution. I’ve presented my own speculations and intuitions, always making clear that that is what they are. I’ve also said that I believe that the universe, life, and consciousness come from God. I”ve said that since Darwinism and theism are mutually contradictory, and since Darwinism is inherently impossible, theism must be true. However, saying that life comes from God does not explain how the evolution of life occurred. It is no more a scientific theory than the general statement that life shows ample evidence of intelligent design is a scientific theory. At the same time, scientists claim to have knowledge of how evolution happened which in reality they do not have. I’ve said over and over that the scientific truth is that we do not know how evolution in general happened, and how human evolution happened, and that the only way science can regain its integrity is for the scientists to admit that they do not know.

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Last spring, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran a magazine article about the best places in town to kiss. The article caused a small uproar and not because of the topic itself. On the cover of the magazine, the paper ran a photo of a black man and white woman kissing. 

The paper’s online forum was besieged with angry comments such as “Haven’t read the story but don’t  like to see blacks and whites kissing.” It was a rare occasion when the visceral opposition many people still feel toward interracial relationships came into view.

By the way, more comments have been added to the ongoing discussion on interracial  marriage.

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  Subliminally affected by the advice of one of our foremost religious and philosophical leaders, I turned to my kitchen cabinets today in search of the homeliest of legumes. I found it there, unassuming in its knobby chickpea-liness and suggestive as always of humble desert feasts. Martha didn't say chickpeas will make you healthier. She said they will make you happier. The Romans roasted chickpeas and ate them as a snack. Their civilization didn't last, but there is substantial and undeniable evidence that they were happy. I have soaked, cooked and served chickpeas a fair amount, taking part in the ancient tradition of converting this bullet-tough pea into something edible,They are filling and delicious when freshly-cooked and mixed with garlic, lemon, olive oil and parsley. They seem to have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, possibly because people are drawn to their irresistible ugliness and definitely because there are more vegetarians. But I have never noticed whether they make for greater happiness. I hereby undertake an experiment. Over the next month, I will be serving chickpeas in noticeably increased portions to my family. Many housewives have this spirit of scientific inquiry. I will not be spritzing myself with essential oils as recommended by Martha. This goes against every particle of my temperament. To spritz with essential or even inessential oils strikes me as shameless idolatry, no different from constructing an altar and beckoning others to light incense and tapers at my feet. Chickpeas, yes. Essential oils, no.

When the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was studying at Oxford University in 1866, he decided after much intellectual grinding of teeth to convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. He spoke with John Henry Newman, Oxford’s most famous convert, after he made his decision.  Hopkins, who came from a large and loving family, dreaded telling his parents.  He was right to fear their reaction. Manley and Kate Hopkins, a distinguished and cultivated couple, were devastated by the news. It was almost as if their son had been killed.

Leaving aside the doctrinal differences that led to Hopkins’ decision, I am fascinated by his family’s reaction and by what it says about the vast gulf between that time and ours. Today, parents generally consider their adult children (Hopkins was twenty-two) to be intellectually independent, in no need of philosophical guidance whatsoever. Or, do they? Perhaps the  reaction of the Hopkins family is similar to the way atheist parents might react today if they were told by their son he was going to become an evangelical Christian.

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Continuing the discussion on marriage and race, Hannon writes:

While it is difficult to resist the broad front opened by Ellen and Karen, I would like to offer a few thoughts on miscegenation. I think it is just as you say– the germane question is not so much to do with the principle of the thing, but rather with the long view taken by society toward this issue. In principle the marriage between any man and woman should not attract scorn or derision simply because their races are different.

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Martha Stewart, the Polish girl from Nutley, New Jersey, is no different from many of America’s female celebrities in embracing a heady mix of Eastern spirituality and New World materialism. To Martha, a woman on the path to eternal enlightenment must practice yoga, worship healthy food and commune with her karmic bliss while painting her crown mouldings and furthering her career. At her website, Martha offers “9 Ways to be Happier.” Number Eight is “Practice Mindfulness:”

“The practice of mindfulness (referred to as smrti in Buddhism) leads to concentration (samadhi), which in turn leads to insight (prajna). The insight you gain from meditation can liberate you from fear, anxiety, and anger — allowing you to be truly happy.”

What else should one do? Martha suggests:

1. Learn to give.
2. Eat more avocados.
3. Fix your career.
4. Do more yoga.
5. Spritz with essential oils.
6. Stock up on strawberries.
7. Learn to rejuvenate.
8. Add chickpeas to your diet.  

This is a creative list.  It’s not big on self-denial, but then it doesn’t call for outright hedonism either. She doesn’t say, Stock up on strawberry ice cream, does she? I admit I was thrown by the avocados, strawberries and chickpeas, but then I am not as healthy or wise as Martha, who is pictured below with her daughter Alexis. Here is a description of Martha’s fitness routine, which is both aggressive and meditative:

For Martha, exercise is nonnegotiable — and it starts bright and early. While others are hitting the snooze button, Martha’s meeting her trainer, Mary Tedesco, at 6 or 6:30 a.m. each morning for a session in her home gym. She also fits in a daily session of yoga with an instructor at the Martha television studios. “That hour is so important to me,” she says. “Yoga is incredibly relaxing, but strenuous, too.” And while Martha says she does suffer occasional aches and pains (“probably from riding in the car — but also from stress and the economy,” she notes), exercise and yoga have helped tremendously.

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Kim, a 23-year-old mother of two children, writes:

Just after I saved your blog to my favorites, I received the meanest letter you could imagine from an old high school friend on Facebook. She is now a kindergarden teacher who plans to be a principal. She is living with her “soul mate” boyfriend and doesn’t plan to marry or have kids until after age 30. I gently questioned her constant  “I’m-so-perfectly-happy” posts by asking when she planned to get married.

Her guilty conscience got sick of me quickly! In her reply, she said things like “even a crack addict can pop a baby out” and “my uterus isn’t going anywhere.” She called me ignorant and said that I had just “chosen the lesser path in life.” She thinks I hide behind my kids because I have not had my own successes to be proud of. And she said, “By the way, I love that you are a stay-at-home mom at 23. It’s just the cutest thing.” She was not the least bit lady-like and her writing was poor, even next to mine! And she had all these statistics. It hit me: This is what they teach in college! This is how the world really views me! But I had you to turn to, and it turned my hurt pride into sorrow for the pain she and many other girls are facing.

Laura writes:

There have always been, and always will be, people who despise motherhood. This is not hard to understand if you think about it. No job or profession is as holistic as motherhood. No job calls upon all facets of human nature, utilizing the mind, the heart, the will, the body, as does motherhood. There is no more fulfilling vocation on earth.

So it is understandable that mothers, especially mothers with young children who are utterly dependent and loving, inspire envy. But what Kim is describing is not ordinary. We live in extraordinary times and the hatred of motherhood and domesticity is allowed a rare freedom of expression and given open encouragement.

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