Kidist Paulos Asrat offers some reflections here on this official portrait by photographer Annie Liebovitz of the Obama family. She points out the way Malia is draped about her mother.

This is characteristic of the open affection often displayed by mothers today with their older children. Affection is good and important. But what we’re seeing is something on an entirely different level from normal and healthy maternal love. I have seen grown adolescents sitting in their mothers’ laps stroking them and kissing their necks. This is fine in private, but what is strange is that it is done in front of outsiders and in the middle of conversations with others.

It seems physical contact has replaced other forms of intimacy – most especially the intimacy to be found in words and conversation – in relations between men and women, and within families. This outward display may seem to signal intense rapport. But in truth, I believe it often masks distance and a lack of  inner connection. Open hugging and vows of love – hastily and very publicly delivered by cell phone – cover up the void.

It’s also very difficult for a mother to maintain any sense of authority with her older children when she allows them to publicly sit in her lap. It becomes impossible to send out the subtle and all-important maternal signals of approval and disapproval.

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THE HBO series Rome, which was made in collaboration with the BBC and aired from 2005 to 2007, was such a popular success that a film version is in the works with Bruno Heller, producer of the TV series. In the meantime, past episodes are still shown on HBO 2.

According to a reader named Diana, the lavishly produced TV show, filmed on a five-acre lot in Italy and billed as an “intimate drama of love and betrayal,  masters and slaves, and husbands and wives,” panders to modern female audiences with wild distortions of Roman history. It also underscores the dark side to the contemporary fascination with ancient Rome.

Diana writes:

A few years ago HBO and BBC TV collaborated on a  blockbuster, highly-touted miniseries on ancient Rome, focusing on the crucial transitional period from the Republic to the Empire. The series was touted as being a genuine, historically accurate depiction of life in ancient Rome, as opposed to the fake, artificial products of “Holly-Rome.” The first season focused on the events leading up to and culminating with the assassination of Caesar in the Senate The second season focused on the consequences of that act, and the rise of his adopted son Octavian as the first emperor.

As a counterpoint to all the comings, goings, and doings of the patrician political class, the series focused on two real, historical plebeians: a legionary (infantryman) and a centurion (officer), both of whom were soldiers mentioned in Caesar’s chronicles of the Gaul campaign. (Caesar apparently pointed out these two otherwise unremarkable commoners because they had put aside personal difficulties to save one another’s lives with exceptional bravery.)

I am not an expert in ancient Roman history. But I can smell horse manure, and every time my antennae went on alert, I looked up the record on the Internet and discovered that my gut was right.

In the interests of brevity I will focus on two aspects of the series that I found most dismaying: the portrayal of Roman women and its depiction of sex.

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THE HEALTH CARE LAW passed by Congress yesterday represents an unprecedented seizure of power by the federal government. If it is upheld by the Supreme Court, we will be divested in a new and dramatic way of our constitutional foundations.

Never before in our history has the federal government ordered citizens to buy a specific product or service. There is no provision in the Constitution relegating personal health or medical commerce to federal oversight. Remember the Tenth Amendment: 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

While it’s true the federal government has exceeded its mandate for years, never before has it so boldly dispensed with the limitations on its powers. Let the facts be submitted to a candid world. The people have lost.

By the way, according to the Congressional Budget Office, an individual earning $44,000 in pre-tax income will pay an average of $7,300 a year for the mandated government-controlled insurance and for out-of-pocket medical expenses, totaling 17 percent of  total pre-tax income. A family earning $102,000 will pay an estimated 20 percent of its pre-tax income.

I highly recommend this article at the American Thinker for a full summary of all that is wrong with this health care bill.

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       SUMMER DAYS

When Mother hangs the laundry out
Along the backyard lines,
I steal between the flowing sheets
While all the morning shines.

The sheets are cool and dripping wet                                                             
And it’s shady here inside,
As I walk my breezy corridor
In my favorite place to hide.

I can smell the bleach and soap
In a world all white and clean,
In this hallway of the clouds
Where I know I can’t be seen.

When I reach the morning light
Outside the sheets and shade,
I hear my Mother calling me
As her voice begins to fade.

It’s time to do the morning chores
Before the sun’s too high,
To gather from our garden
The beans before they dry.

When Mother brings the laundry in
I’m there to help her fold.
I think about the sun in them
In bed when nights are cold.

                                   —- James S. Taylor
 

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  A 400-year-old Connecticut oak, birches in Vermont, a lost pear tree of childhood, and the ancient sentinels of the South American tropics. Readers eloquently describe their favorite trees here.   The Granby Oak

A TREE is movement that never quite moves. Its roots protruding from the ground, an oak seems as if it is just about to take a step. Its limbs bare of leaves, the tulip poplar reaches and points and gesticulates. A row of old Japanese maples near where I live is effeminate and expressive. It is as if a choreographer had once come by and said, "Okay, girls. Arms up! That's right. Now wave. Wave as if you were billowing sails!" When the choreographer left, the trees held their billowing sails in place, awaiting his return. A tree is movement frozen in place, even when its limbs sway in the wind. But that is not all. A tree is wisdom. I was raised by human beings, but I was also raised by trees: oak mothers and fathers; poplar siblings; maple aunts and hemlock uncles; pine and spruce cousins, plus a host of extended arboreal relatives whom I cannot classify. I consider them family because they have that essential feature of all relatives. There is always the mysterious feeling that they know me. I was tree-taught and tree-tutored. I have gone to tree school, leaning against the windowsill on winter nights when there was a full moon and the ancient oaks beyond by window were clarified by the light; walking through their blazing hallways as they dropped their leaves on my head in fall; and resting on spring days against their rough and tender bark. They taught me their alphabet. They taught me tree arithmetic and tree geography, tree philosophy and…

  Grief is like a garden made of rocks and sand. We enter its lonely recesses upon the death of someone we love. We go there day after day to weed and to dig, to pick through the same rocks, to pray for a few drops of rain. The soil is poor and the climate is worse.  It seems nothing will grow. In a world in which there are few rituals for the dead, no sacred fires burning and few public commemorations, this garden is the only place where our memories can be sustained. After a time, things do grow, but not always to our satisfaction. The dead are always with us. From the lifeless earth, out of rock and regrets, our love for them brings forth new life.

  You could have gone to college and become a human resources director. You could have gotten an MBA too. You could have refused to sweep or toss the cinders. You could have tried on another shoe. O Cinderella, what were you thinking? As a role model, you just won't do. .

Housewives and plumbers are natural comrades in arms. They have something very basic in common and that is, they are always and everywhere needed. They address the most fundamental and routine needs of human existence. Civilization cannot function well without them, and yet so rarely acknowledges its dependence upon them. There is something shameful about both the housewife and the plumber because of this dependence. They point to the most trivial of human weaknesses. No day proceeds without clean dishes, swept floors, cooked meals, laundered clothes and unclogged plumbing.

I have a friend who is a plumber. He never goes to social events and limits all casual interaction with anyone but his customers. He lives in perpetual anxiety that harmless interactions with neighbor or friend will lead to requests for his services. I once invited him to our home for dinner and the event was ruined by his suspicion that at any moment we were going to ask for his professional expertise in pipes, drains or septic systems.

So it is with the housewife. People are often eager to create an informal tie with her. She cooks. She cleans. She takes care of young and old. Compared to the average adult today, she seems to possess an eternity of time. She has absolutely nothing to do.

The truth is she has far too much to do. The world is overflowing with need of her services and for the order, tranquility and health these services provide. A neighborhood boy used to show up at our door everyday at 7 a.m. His mother never asked if he could come over before school started. She just assumed because there was a mother at home, her services were there for the taking. The housewife is often veiwed as a de facto employee of the public school and it continually invents the most petty of projects to indenture her.

Of course, the housewife is glad to aid the world. The very best thing about her vocation is that she can meet the spontaneous needs of friend and relative as these needs arise. She can help others without the burdensome scheduling and impersonal interaction that characterizes the commercial world. She is glad to help. The spirit of charity runs thick in her veins. But, the need for the plumber is about as infinite as any basic need in this finite world. So it is with the need for the housewife. She must exercise some discretion. I believe many women have fled to the relative predictability of offices because they could not manage this demand for their time. It’s so much easier to say, “I have to go to work,” than, “No, I can’t do that today.”  This demand would be less pressing  if  the housewife weren’t such a rarity and if more organizations respected her privacy. As it is, she must be like the plumber. She is entitled to her privacy and some leisure. If she’s not cautious, she may be draining pipes night and day.

[See comments below.] 

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