Bessie Huey was a fixture of the working-class Pennsylvania neighborhood where my husband spent his childhood. Bessie used to show up now and then at my husband's house, which was filled with children, boarders, relatives, cats, and dogs. Boo, hoo. Boo, hoo, Bessie would cry. I saw you all sitting around the table last night and it was so beautiful. It was so beautiful it made me cry. Bessie once called the police to her home with a report of domestic violence. She claimed her husband, who weighed 90 pounds and was incapacitated by illness, was beating her. Bessie was a large woman, about 200 pounds, and strong. No report was ever filed. Bessie, who favored tent-like dresses on her ample frame, appeared to idolize both domestic health and domestic un-health. Bessie was an eccentric. Healthy neighborhoods include eccentrics. It's the sterile, unbalanced place that does not. My husband grew up in a normal place, with children playing in the streets, mothers at home, couples yelling at each other instead of divorcing, and taverns filled with men at night. It was a normal place, not a perfect one. A big reason why it was normal was that it had a healthy economy. There were plenty of factories and plenty of jobs. That town is gone. Much of America is gone. It's disappeared because Americans have decided they don't need an industrial economy. America has given away its factories to the world. The whole stunning transformation of the…

  Does a child need both a mother and father in his life? Many people today say, 'Not quite.' I was trying yesterday to explain to a friend who is a passionate supporter of same-sex marriage why the answer is yes, but the reasons are so abstract as to be almost unreachable. Many common sense truths, what C.S. Lewis called the Tao of living, are like that. They lie partly beyond our ken. Then I came across this excellent quote by Felix Adler, author of an early 20th century book, Marriage and Divorce. He said: "The child needs father and mother; but it does not need them only as some think, alternately, now the father's influence and then the mother's or in some things the father's influence and in other things the mother's. The child needs the father's masculine influence and the mother's feminine influence always together, the two streams uniting to pour their fructifying influence through the child's life into the life of humanity."  

In this entry, Rose, a “conservative lesbian,” responds to the charge in the previous post that she is self-glorifying and guilty of idealizing woman love. Among her most interesting comments is this: “Eccentrics need a stable society in which to be eccentrics.”

Rose writes, initially quoting the female commenter Kidist Asrat Paulos:

“In a way, she is saying that there is no non-romantic, Platonic (or otherwise) relationship possible between women. She doesn’t say this explicitly, but I have a feeling she believes this.”

I, in fact, do not believe this, and rather agree with what Heather Elizabeth Peterson writes in “Romantic Friendship: Not Just a Code Word for Gay” and “The Misguided Search for ‘Homoeroticism’ A Plea for Research on Friendship.” As you’ve stated, the sexualization of our culture has helped destroy the possibility of nonsexual closeness. A modern Wordsworth would hide the extent of his love for his sister for fear of accusations (as I have read about William and Dorothy) that his regard was incestuous.

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The following is a critique of the widely prevalent notion that the ideal life for a woman is one of “balance,” the judicious mixing of career and home. I call this the “Balance Myth,” one of the central ideas of mainstream feminism.
 
On the face of it, “third-wave feminism,” as it is known, seems reasonable,  an appealing counterpart to middle class virtue. In fact, it normalizes the radical tenets of feminism. Thanks to the Balance Myth, the casual neglect of children, marriage and home are now mainstream phenomena. This seemingly harmless idea wears a soft and pleasing exterior. But, it offends exactly what it purports to uphold: the intelligence of women and their innate desire for meaningful work.

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  This article in today's New York Times states an amazing fact. Apparently, female artistic directors and literary agents have a tendency to discriminate against female playwrights. Are women naturally more competitive with other women? If so, the more women in positions of influence the harder time women trying to break in will have. In other words, the idea that women will be kinder to women is false. Or do women agents, sick and tired of the feminist claptrap that lands on their desks, secretly wish to purge the field of all women? Whatever the answer, the solution is this: Feel sorry for women. Here's another question: Is it possible for artistic endeavour to survive in a world where people are charting its progress?

Kristor writes in response to my comment about the need for praise:

I wouldn’t worry too much about getting attached to compliments. Let them register. After all, their ultimate effect in a basically duteous person will be to raise the bar you set yourself to hurdle every day. Am I right? Plus you’ll never give yourself credit for them anyway, never leave them on the plus side of your personal balance sheet. Right? You’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t me; all I did was interfere with the Lord less than usual.”
 
What counts, what makes the difference, indeed all the difference in the world, is the direction of one’s ultimate orientation. For those who are oriented horizontally, along the plane of the mundane, the world’s effects will affect them by pushing them about therein, to no ultimate relief. For those whose orientation is even a little bit angled up toward Christ’s pure orthogonal to the mundane, the world’s effects will affect them by pushing them about in the world and pushing them up a bit on their diagonal. The closer we approximate to Christ’s orthogony to the world, the more profound this effect, and the more delightful it will be. At the apotheosis, we will see that every worldly experience is radiant with uncreate light; we will enjoy creation as God does. 
 
A purely worldly person, if such there be, refers everything to the world, and is entirely entrapped. Such perhaps is the fate of say Richard Dawkins; it is the Hell C.S. Lewis describes in The Great Divorce, a shadow world of deficient actuality. But almost no one I think is purely worldly; almost all of us want to get out of this shadow world, and into the high bright solid light at the top of the mountain, where our world is no longer obscured, but able at last to be fully itself.
 
I can’t figure out whether Numenius thinks we should be on the peak looking at the boat, or vice versa. Either way, one would be far from the hurry, noise and commerce of the shore. Having spent a lot of time in both situations – wave-tossed and perched on high scarps – I can say with confidence that both are fit places to open and cleanse the doors of perception.

Laura writes:

Yes, Numenius was unclear. I think whatever he meant it involved extreme isolation.

On the subject of compliments, I come from a long Irish tradition of treating them with embarrassment or sarcasm. According to this worldview, which is genetically transmitted, it is presumptuous to see any truth in them. They must be doled out and received sparingly for fear of creating an even minimally self-supporting ego. For instance, if someone tells you have made a great meal or they like what you are wearing, you just sort of shrug your shoulders and grimace. That means, “Gee, thanks!”

I think there are some who are purely worldy in their waking hours. Only at night, in their sleep, do they escape what you call “the shadow world of deficient actuality.”

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  O, vegetative June, Fragrant opiates, Milky pharmaceuticals. O, ruffled doctor, Tend your emerald clinic, Your lab coat askew, Your hair disgraced with tendrils. Dispense your prescriptions. Drug and deceive. Only lengthen this appointment. I cannot hold you close enough.