I have met Shuna a couple of times (and missed having dinner with her some months back because of car trouble, dammit!). I should have known that you (Teresa) would love her blog!
Patrick #8, I take that point.
Anna #10, yes, of course, there are many good things about Catholicism. I'm interested, not scornful (of Catholicism). I'm scornful of Gingrich.
David #17, the Catholic church does value the natural world. Also human life: the one truly admirable thing about the church's abortion policy is that it is equally uncompromising about the death penalty, unlike most American "pro-life"
believers.
Patrick, #35. *snort*
I hadn't heard that Gingrich had converted to Catholicism. As someone who has had two close friends convert in their late 50s or early 60s in the last few years, I'm (not judgmentally) curious about why people make that choice. It seems an especially odd choice for Gingrich since, as Patrick implies above, his base (and his buddies) tend to be a pretty anti-Catholic crowd. Has he written anything about his reasons?
I was once with a couple of perfectly fine parents who came that close to leaving their 3-year-old locked in their night club, sound asleep, when they went home.
She would have survived, although she would also have been scared to near-death.
And I saw their faces when they realized what had almost happened.
I heard Cecelia Holland read in October. In the question period afterward, she was talking about writing historical fiction and she said, "We knew more about the Kennedy assassination the day it happened than we know now." I didn't get a chance to ask her to elaborate on that statement, but it sure has stayed with me.
I just dropped in to say that after I posted the donation link in my LiveJournal, I got this comment from a friend:
"I don't know the people in question but I am so happy to see so many people I do know taking up their cause that I donated a little out of joy."
Posting it here hoping Velma will see it.
On food in France:
The one night I ever spent in Paris, my traveling companion and I were too tired to stay up and get seated in the good restaurant recommended by our tiny hotel, so we picked a place at random and had a singularly unmemorable, not even good, meal. I was very sad, as I had thought Paris would be a source of fine food memories.
The next morning, we got up and went to the Gare d'Austerlitz to board a train to Madrid. On the way through the station, we spotted a stall vendor selling saucisses, and bought a bundle. Once we sat down on our train, I reached for les saucisses and took a bite.
I looked at Alan and said, "You know how you always get the extra potstickers? These sausages are payback." They were the best I'd ever tasted.
We found them again, or ones very much like them, three years later in rural France. I can taste them when I think of them.
Okay, now how do we get this essay into the New York Times and the Washington Post?
John L, #8: It's not about liking or disliking low and middle income Americans; it's about seeing us as votes rather than people. Once we've voted, we're not very important for four years, and most of the ones who die in between were probably Democrats anyway.
I currently have a friendly acquaintance, a woman I admire very much, who may not die of late-stage Lyme disease, if her friends come up with enough money. She's one reason I don't donate to Obama--I donate to her.
Thanks for spelling this out. Now, how do we get people who need to read it to read it?
Song for Judith (by Judy Collins)
Open the door and come on in
I'm so glad to see you, my friend
You're like a rainbow comin' around the bend
And when I see you happy
Well, it sets my heart free
I'd like to be as good a friend to you
as you are to me
I have to say that it feels to me like a smokescreen to cover the shameful Democratic behavior on FISA.
"Hey, we're not so bad! Look, we're willing to impeach!"
Like Lizzy, I met him once or twice, glancingly, but did not know him.
Like Patrick, I certainly read him, almost always with appreciation.
As a culture, we are not kind to our writers, our artists, our gay men, our curmudgeons. I think he was a victim of all of the above. I wish not so much that he were still alive as that he had been happier.
I don't think the underlying legal issue is "fair use," at least not in the quantitative sense. According to the excellent Stanford University Press copyright site, "Criticism, comment, news reporting, research, scholarship and non-profit educational uses are most likely to be judged fair uses." My professional understanding is that this is specifically to allow analysis and discussion.
Of course, it's 2008, the courts are populated by far too many Bushie idiots, and who knows. But there are some good grounds on which to challenge this absurdity.
Nothing to add. I just wanted to express appreciation for all the work that goes into the blog and all the work that goes into restoring it. You're a public service, youse all, and I value how careful you are with it all.
Interestingly enough, even when textbook publishers (or publishers
who have historically been textbook publishers) pay on the net
receipts, they are still not paying on the profits. Even (very
respectfully) taking C.E. Petit's point about accounting, I shudder to
think what authors would actually receive if the publisher's overhead,
calculated to minimize publisher costs and maximize profits, was
deducted before authors were paid.
This is sad, unexpected, and comes sooner than one would hope. I never knew Robert well, but I always liked what I knew.
One of the stories that I hope Teresa will tell in more detail is how Robert volunteered to copy-edit Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, with the consequence, among other things, of one of Teresa's finer essays.
Born in 1951. I have very vague memories of my parents doing political work for Adlai Stevenson, which would have been 1956.
I remember the Sputnik launch and the sense of how terrible it was that we were being beaten by the Russians, but my first clear political memory is watching the Kennedy/Nixon debates with my mother in 1959, and her being dispirited because I liked Nixon better than Kennedy. In retrospect, I have to wonder why I liked the funny-looking older guy rather than the charming younger one.
I read this story early last week, and have been unable to get over being horrified.
One aspect that I find worth noting is that Megan Meier fat, always a factor to look for in cases of bullying and harassment of girls and women. ("She was heavy and for years had tried to lose weight. ... She had shed 20 pounds, getting down to 175. She was 5 foot 5½ inches tall.")
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 5 |
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| 2006 | 5 |
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| 2004 | 2 |
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