The monastic preservation of our culture

Our 10.31.2003 RDA was Morris Berman's The Twilight of American Culture, a book, as we noted then, that "inspires copious note-taking and several runs to the library to find the many texts to which he refers in making his impassioned argument for a monastic approach to preserving what is best about our culture."

Berman posits that our culture — as successful and pervasive as it may seem — is in decline. He refers to Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West: “Every civilization has its twilight period, said Spengler, during which it hardens into a classical phase, preserving the form of its central idea, but losing the content. Hence, Egyptism, Byzanticism, Mandarinism. In the American case... ‘McWorld’ — commercial corporate consumerism for its own sake.”

Berman’s is a bleak forecast. “Our entire consciousness, our intellectual-mental life is being Starbuckized, condensed into a prefabricated designer look in a way that is reminiscent of that brilliant, terrible film The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (a great metaphor for our time).”



While we at M-mv don’t necessarily share the weight of Berman's pessimism, we do relish the idea of being part of an army of “monks” (autodidacts!), rather like those in Miller’s quirky little fantasy, A Canticle for Leibowitz, collecting and guarding little bits of the best of our culture. Modern-day monks are unafraid to allude to Shakespeare, the bible, or Dickens, even when the audience looks at us askance. We’re aliens in our culture’s “hardening phase,” but we monks have the satisfaction of collecting what is best about us for the civilizations that follow after our dark age.

Practically speaking, autodidacticism and the monastic preservation of our culture mean that we monks are often wildly out-of-step with the educational models that prevail in our society’s schools. We're still part of that society, though, so, of course, we hope that one or the other of us positively influences those we meet, that we effect change. Our children are too young for us to predict in what ways their uncommon education will render change, but in small ways, they have already influenced others, as have we. ("Mental multivitamin," anyone?)

Read. Think. Learn. That's our job, fellow autodidacts. Let's do it well.

From the "worth repeating" files

From our 6.12.2004 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)":

[I]n other forums I visit, the conventional wisdom is that allowing young minds to indulge in the equivalent of mental M&Ms is bad parenting, capital B, capital P.

As you may have guessed by now, I am anything but conventional.

Here's my recipe for growing readers, thinkers, and autodidacts: Read to your children. Everywhere. Everything. From the moment they arrive in your life. Read. Talk. Think aloud so they can hear. Put books in their hands, under their pillows, in their knapsacks. Give books as gifts. Make a celebration out of their first library card. Let them learn to read like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird. On your lap as you struggle through a difficult text. At your elbow as you read the daily newspaper. Beside you as you rediscover The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Let the words wash over them. Soak into them. And reading will be as breathing, eating, sleeping. It will be something they do simply because they are alive. And goofy mysteries and silly serial novels, movie tie-ins and horrible horror stories will more than fit into your children's reading lives because life's meals cannot all be salads and milk with apples for dessert. One must have chocolate. And cookies. And cake. And Twizzlers. And Smarties. Not too much, of course. But some. Because they taste good going down. Because the empty headachy sensation that follows a binge of Junie B. Jones reminds young readers, thinkers, and autodidacts that Ramona the Pest and Ramona the Brave are far more satisfying books.

Guide their reading.

Don't dictate it.

The recommended daily allowance

On this day in 1547, Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was born near Madrid.

Hey!

Enough talking about reading Don Quixote. Just do it.



See these entries for more information and/or encouragement:

The recommended daily allowance (1.30.2004)
On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.) (12.31.2003)
On your nightstands or, What you're reading right now (some survey results) (12.6.2003)

Memorandum of Understanding

From "Rules of Engagement" (The New Yorker):

Paragraph Six: Hand gestures.
“Italian,” “French,” “Latino,” “Bulgarian,” or other ethnic-style gestures intended to demean, impugn, or otherwise derogate opponent by casting aspersions on opponent’s manhood, abilities as lover, or cuckold status are prohibited. Standard “American”-style gestures meant to convey honest bewilderment, doubt, etc., shall be permitted. Candidates shall not point rotating index fingers at their own temples to imply that opponent is mentally deranged. Candidates shall at no time insert fingers in their own throats to signify urge to vomit. Candidates shall under no circumstances insert fingers into opponent’s throat.

...

Paragraph Ninety-eight: Vietnam.
Neither candidate shall mention the word “Vietnam.” In the event that either candidate utters said word in the course of a debate, the debate shall be concluded immediately and declared forfeit to the third-party candidate.

Heh, heh, heh. Read the acutal agreement here. (PDF file)

The first debate is tomorrow, 9 EDT.

Autumn

The story of Oskar Schindler

Apparently, Schindler's list found Thomas Keneally and not, as it commonly goes, the reverse. Read "The Handbag Studio" in Granta.

I was not the only customer to the Handbag Studio to have been fraternally ambushed by Poldek. In the early 1960s, when Oskar was still alive, the wife of the renowned and controversial producer Marvin Gosch had brought her handbag into Leopold's store for repair. No doubt with many loving poutings of lips and praises of Mrs Gosch's beauty, and with the handbag as hostage, Poldek had insisted that she set up an appointment for him with her husband. For a while Mrs Gosch found this eminently refusable, but Poldek's powers of perseverance and undentable charm wore her down. Poldek told me that when Marvin Gosch invited him to MGM Studios for an interview, the producer at first chided him for being so importunate with his wife.

"You must forgive me," said Poldek, "but I am bringing you the greatest story of humanity man to man."

The recommended daily allowance

All I want for Christmas is my own copy of the OED. I'll settle for the so-called "compact" edition, a photoreduction of the twenty-volume second edition (nine pages of the original reproduced on each page of the compact).

Care to join me in my OED obsession? Start here. Then savor these wonderful books:

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)

Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary (K. M. Elisabeth Murray)

The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)

The harvest moon

From "Encounter the harvest moon on Sept. 28" (MSNBC):

Many think the harvest moon remains in the night sky longer than any of the other full moons we see during the year, but that is not so.

What sets Tuesday’s full moon apart from the others is that farmers at the climax of the current harvest season can work late into the night by the moon’s light. It rises about the time the sunsets, but more importantly, at this time of year, instead of rising its normal average 50 minutes later each day, the moon seems to rise at nearly the same time each night.

Vincent D'Onofrio

"Watching Vincent D'Onofrio's casual intrusions into the body space of the guilty is one of the pleasures of his role as Detective Goren." (Sydney Morning Herald, September 3, 2004)

Ayup.

"Law & Order: Criminal Intent." Sundays at 8 PM.

The Sun-Times

Chicagoans can be loosely divided into two groups: those who favor the Trib and those who read the Sun-Times. (Note the distinction there.) Some folks have mistakenly gone further, positing that the Trib generally attracts the city's white-collar workers; the Sun-Times, the blue-collar. It's a generalization that doesn't hold up on close inspection. You see, many of the so-called professionals who carry the Trib actually read the Sun-Times, surreptitiously scanning discarded copies on the train or swallowing whole the thanks-John copies in the men's room.

Ayup. Newsprint snobbery. Who knew?

We like both papers, but when we decided to get delivery service out here in the country, we opted for...

the Sun-Times.

Scandals (and there have been a few) aside, the paper has much to recommend it:

■ It's home to Roger Ebert.

■ Its tabloid format makes it easy to read over breakfast.

■ Hell, let's face it: It's easy to read. Period. In a life brimming with literary challenges, headline news complemented by color photos and pull-quotes is not necessarily a bad thing.

■ It's home to Roger Ebert.

Besides, we like our news delivered with a chuckle or two. From yesterday's Sun-Times, "Ready or not, you've been heading toward a fall":

Autumn is . . . when the trees cut off nutrients to the leaves, and the leaves are slowly strangled to death.

The green becomes red and orange and yellow as it happens.

If the leaves of the trees could scream, they would scream.

This is pretty much what you need to know about autumn.

Puts a different spin on your foliage walks, now, doesn't it?

Sunday afternoon...

in the prairie...

in the woods...

and in the wetlands

Hey, what are you reading?

Dont' forget: Send us a note telling us some of the books that have spent time on your nightstands, under your pillows and beds, in your knapsacks, etc. Next week, we'll publish our readers' responses.

Speaking of readers and responses, La Maitresse concluded her list of current books, "You are so wise to not have the 'comments' feature turned on." I don't know about wise, Maitresse, but I'll grant you sane. On 1.4.2004, we wrote, in part:

[W]e chose not to include a comments feature initially because it was a premium product when we began. Within two weeks of this project's inception, several free comment services were identified, but by then we were already receiving more email messages daily than we'd ever have time to address. Moreover, we had (and have) concerns about the (potential) content of a comments section, given that the site is public and that its traffic is greater than we had ever anticipated. (The number of click-throughs to Amazon.com from M-mv told an amazing story even before we added the counter. Again, wow. And thank you.) We haven't the time or inclination to police comments, yet we want to control all content presented to our readers, so... no comments feature.

Nothing has changed. We still want to control content. We still don't have the time (or the inclination, frankly) to address every message. So we still refrain from engaging the (now) free and (now) easy comments feature.

"Mental multivitamin" is primarily a tool of synthesis for us. We read. We talk. We think. We write. We learn. And then we read, talk, think, write, and learn some more. While we have developed a couple of delightful correspondences with other readers, thinkers, and autodidacts, this project is primarily a one-sided transaction.

And that's okay with us.

Anyway...

Our field guides, binoculars, maps, and cameras are packed. It's time to head out.

Yes, again.

Happy Sunday, autodidacts. Make this weekend mean more than chores and television and a trip to the local Wal*Mart.

You can do so much better than that.

What's at the center of the Milky Way?

Frozen sugar, according to "the Green Bank team," the astronomers who man the Green Bank Telescope, "the world’s largest fully-steerable radio telescope." Thanks to Donna of "Quiet Life" for the link to this article.

Donna also wrote, "I love the picture you posted of yourself as a child. So very sweet. What was your favorite book as a child?"

I am still trying to erase the memory of a book-poor childhood, Donna, but let's see... When I was six? An illustrated, abridged edition of Black Beauty (Anna Sewell) and Richard Scarry's a Story a Day: 365 Stories and Rhymes.

And, I regret to report, I was not sweet, my virtual friend. Not then. Not now. I was prickly, always questioning and challenging and talking. I was too thin, according to mother and pediatrician, and, as a "motor mouth," or, in kinder moments, a"bony pony," I did not, apparently, inspire in folks much in the way of cuddling. At the time that photo was taken, I had already spent more time in teachers' "thinking chairs" than I had in my assigned seats. I was, however, always, always comfortable in the company of books. To the school libraries and their bad-tempered keepers, to the town's tiny library and my future employer, I am forever indebted. They kept alive in me a love of reading, thinking, and learning. They helped grow an autodidact.

Portrait of an autodidact as a young girl

Portrait of an autodidact as an old(er) woman

(Note: This image first appeared on this site here.)

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."

— Austin Phelps

Hey...

This (the fast-approaching end of the quarter) is as good a time as any for our PBS-like promotion. Ahem. If you're enjoying your "Mental multivitamin" and a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com is in your future, please make your purchase via one of the many Amazon links on this site (including this one or any of the book links in our entries and RDAs). Nope. As we've said before, we're not in this for the money. But, man, it doesn't hurt. It doesn't hurt, at all.

Many thanks.

The next Einstein

(Note: Registration to read the L.A. Times online is required but free and painless.)

From "Einstein's Very, Very Good Year":

Stephen Jay Gould has pointed out that the reason it's so hard to hit .400 in major league baseball today is that the whole level of play has been raised. In the 1920s and 1930s there were many weak teams, against which it was easy for top hitters to pump up their averages. Today though, there are fewer consistently weak teams. Batters have a higher standard against which to try to stand out.

Einstein was like one of those old-time batters. Today there are thousands of physicists in the world, but when Einstein was at the patent office there were scarcely any — perhaps six full-time physicists in Switzerland and at most a few hundred in other major countries. He could take the time he needed for quiet mulling without too much worry that anyone would catch up to him.

Read a banned book.

Banned Books Week: September 25 through October 2

Banned Books Week emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

— Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

For more about Douglas, click here.

The recommended daily allowance

From 100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova):

The phrase "suppressed on political grounds" casts a shadow of a heavy-handed government blocking its citizens from receiving information, ideas and opinions that it perceives to be critical, embarrassing or threatening. This image, unfortunately, is too often reality. It is not, however, limited to dictatorships such as those of Hitler's Nazi Germany, Stalin's communist Soviet Union and Suharto's Indonesia. The governments of democracies also participate in attempts to censor such critical material in order to protect their own perceived state security.

Further, the impression that censorship for political reasons emanates only from national government is mistaken. The second common source of such activity is at the local community level, generated by school board members or citizens, individually or in groups, who attack textbooks and fiction used in schools or available in school libraries.

Like All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque), Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo), Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut), and The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn).

"Shockingly provincial"

Yeah. I know. We're going to run the responses to our "What are you reading?" entry next week. But this one tickled us.

Heyyas,

I've been reading "Mental multivitamin" for quite some time now. I found it doing a search for Roe Conn back when the negotiations totally broke down. [For more about this, use M-mv's FreeFind (in the sidebar); search "Meier."] I also found Blogger through your site, so [M-mv] is partially to blame for "Shockingly Provincial."

Anyway, while going through my library I came across a book that was assigned for one of my upper level English courses (it may have been the grammar course), and while it doesn't quite fit the style or theme of my rants, it may be something you may chose to read and recommend on your site. It is The Deluxe Transitive Vampire by Karen Elizabeth Gordon. I used the Blogger search bar to search your site and see if you had already used this book, but from my own experience of searching my own site I know it doesn't work as well as I would like it to.

Anyway, I enjoy reading your site, and one of these days I'm even going to look up "autodidact" in the dictionary.

Rich Rosenthal

This is what they had to say about us on "Shockingly Provincial" back on June 25, 2004:

My more cerebral pursuits bring me to Mental Multivitamin, a site I found while looking for news about the Roe and Gary split. This blogger reads books and has pretty good insight into things. Makes fun of Oprah selected authors too. That is a Good Thing [TM].

Heh, heh, heh. Yes, it is.

Hey, Rich isn't the only one to find us via a Google or Yahoo or whatever search for news about Roe and Garry. Does Garry have any clue how loyal and interested his listeners are? Just the stats from our little site would give him comfort, we think. The Roe and Garry debacle. Man, what were they thinking. We still miss Garry.

Well, thanks for the nod and the note, Rich. Oh, and this is just for you:

autodidact
Pronunciation: "o-tO-'dI-"dakt, -dI-', -d&-'
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek autodidaktos self-taught, from aut- + didaktos taught, from didaskein to teach
: a self-taught person

(Via Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)

Added later: Don't sweat it, Rich.

What are you reading?

Send us a note telling us some of the books that have spent time on your nightstands, under your pillows and beds, in your knapsacks, etc. In a week or so, we'll publish an entry of our readers' responses.

Arthur Miller, now in Chicago

From Neil Steinberg's column today:

Attention must be paid.

There was a great profile on Arthur Miller in the New York Times over the weekend, in advance of the debut of his play "Finishing the Picture" at the Goodman this week.

In case you missed it, I'll share the best moment. Miller, 88, kisses his 34-year-old girlfriend, and she bops off on errands. Miller explains, quite sensibly, "I like the company of women; life is very boring without them," yet the interviewer feels the need to ask him "why a man his age would saddle himself with a new relationship and the inevitable host of accompanying demands. Wouldn't it be so much easier just to call up friends when he wanted company and have them come over?"

"Not if they're dead," Miller replies.

A peek in our (e)mailbag

After reading yesterday's RDA, M. wrote:

I just finshed [The Picture of Dorian Gray] a couple of days ago, per your suggestion. What a wonderful piece of writing. I was starting to write down wonderful quotes, and I realized I just needed to buy the book and underline most of it. I appreciate the info on the painting, too. That was neat to see after just reading the book. Keep up the wonderful work! My only question is, how do you find time to read everything you want to read? I read quite a bit, compared to most, and I still feel that I wish I had more time so I could keep up with you Recommended Daily Allowances.

Oh, M. I brew another pot of coffee, stay up a little later, and get up a little earlier. On my deathbed, I doubt that I'll regret missing a little sleep to read.

D.W. sent us a note earlier this week, too:

Spent a delightful 10 or 15 minutes looking through the M-mv archives last night and enjoyed seeing the list of books that others were reading. Any chance that you would ask that question again, now that your "best and perfect audience" is growing? It's my favorite question to ask people in an attempt to know them better.

What do you think?

Spendid idea, that's what I think. Folks, send us note telling us some of the books that have spent time on your nightstands, under your pillows and beds, in your knapsacks, etc. In a week or so, we'll publish an entry of your responses.

Hmmm. Time for one more letter. Let's see. Ah! L. made us laugh with her reply to this entry:

Your excerpt from Smithsonian was funny on its own. When I turned on the television the other day just a few minutes too early for the seemingly unending next hurricane update, I discovered the source of the comedy. I caught the tail end of Oprah comparing notes on her summer selection and hawking wares for her book club. It was like rubbernecking at an accident, I couldn't help myself. Tee shirts, pink frilly pajamas, hats, all emblazoned with her book club logo. Sure the money goes to a good cause, and maybe, like one of your other readers noted, at least she's getting her viewers to pick up a quality piece of literature, but those people were way more interested in being part of the Oprah phenomenon, the antithesis of actually expanding their minds.

Oprah hyped the next book, The Good Earth, as, "It's juicy as all get out!"

An M-mv book club would be fun, and just think of the possibilities for merchandising tie-ins.

Excuse me while I run to the loo.

Heh, heh, heh. Just what does a "Mental multivitamin" look like and on what shall it be emblazoned?

Excuse me while I run to the loo.

The recommended allowance

For word-smithery like this:

It is a sad thing to think, but there is no doubt that Genius lasts longer than Beatuy. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. The thoroughly well-informed man — that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.

and this:

Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

and this:

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

we recommended The Picture of Dorian Gray in our 9.6.2004 RDA.

Now we'd like to recommend the 1945 film, which features a young Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane and Ivan Albright's famous painting of the decayed Dorian Gray, now owned by the Art Institute of Chicago. Read more about the painting here.

The bog

Mr. M-mv says to Mrs. M-mv, "It's a beautiful day. Let's do something."

Mrs. M-mv retorts (rhetorically), "Is it a day of the week? We always do something!"

Two little M-mv's shout, "Field trip! Field trip!"

And Master M-mv just shakes his head and grins.

Maps. Check.

Field guides. Check.

Water bottles. Check.

Sunscreen and Off! Check.

Notebooks and pencils. Check.

Camera. Check.

And we're off. This weekend's discovery? The Volo Bog, the only "quaking" bog in Illinois to have an open water center.

Ayup.

Pretty cool.

Provando e riprovando

(Loosely): Try, try again, and reject.

Resisting fundamentalism is what science does best, according to Umberto Eco. From "Testing, testing..," (The Guardian):

Science is frequently criticised by the mass media, which hold it responsible for the devilish pride that is leading humanity towards possible destruction. But in doing so they are evidently confusing science with technology.
...
According to these people, all that there is to understand has already been understood by long-vanished ancient civilisations and it is only by humbly returning to that traditional and immutable treasure that we may reconcile ourselves with ourselves and with our destiny.

They're wrong, though, asserts Eco.

Modern science does not hold that what is new is always right. On the contrary, it is based on the principle of "fallibilism" (enunciated by the American philosopher Charles Peirce, elaborated upon by Popper and many other theorists, and put into practice by scientists themselves) according to which science progresses by continually correcting itself, falsifying its hypotheses by trial and error, admitting its own mistakes - and by considering that an experiment that doesn't work out is not a failure but is worth as much as a successful one because it proves that a certain line of research was mistaken and it is necessary either to change direction or even to start over from scratch.

And, he concludes:

This way of thinking is opposed... to all forms of fundamentalism, to all literal interpretations of holy writ - which are also open to continuous reinterpretation - and to all dogmatic certainty in one's own ideas. This is that good "philosophy," in the everyday and Socratic sense of the term, which ought to be taught in schools.

The recommended daily allowance

From The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco):

"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened.

"Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
(Second Day, Nones)


"But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?"

"Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . ."
(Second Day, Compline)


"I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs . . . I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe."

"But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something. . . ."

"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless . . . The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away."
(Seventh Day, Night)

Ding-dong!

We'll bet this pack of M&Ms that "The Underground Grammarian" and "The Grammar Curmudgeon" would be just as disturbed by the wanton use of "wallah" for "voila" and such atrocities as "broo ha ha" for "brouhaha" as we are.

Ah, well.

Inhale, descriptive grammar. Exhale, prescriptive grammar.

Who wants to be a billionaire?

Or be hired by one, anyway?

Still nursing some trauma (more psychological than physiological) from serious dental work in the AM, I hunkered under my favorite blanket last night and allowed Mr. M-mv to dote on me. His treatment plan included Oreos, ice cream, and "The Apprentice 2."

Within four minutes of hearing the Donald's challenge, Team M-mv decided that our flavor would be mint. We dubbed it "Trump's Mint" and determined that it would be served in gold cups. With that resolved so quickly, we used the next commercial to draft (in words) our signage and develop our sales strategy.

Ayup. We won. No problem.

Is it our Häagen-Dazs-fueled imaginations, or are the folks on the show pretty but pretty dumb? Sheesh. Why do they even need to ponder the reasons for taking an extra team member to the boardroom, let alone to expose their slow-wittedness by asking, "Why would I want to do that Mr. Trump?" And tell us what the braggart who sacrificed his "immunity" was thinking? We knew that the ejit was out of there the minute he boasted. Heh, heh, heh. In the last ten minutes of the show, the word "stupid" was bandied about more often than it is at recess on the playgrounds of four elementary schools combined.

And rightly so.

I feel better today. And the only must-see television in our house is "Law & Order," so we may not catch "The Apprentice 2" again, but it wasn't a bad sixty minutes passed.

After all, we know we would have won.

"A case of arrested development"

My affection for Roger Ebert is deep and abiding. Why? Because he's a good writer who makes me think. No, I don't always agree with him, but he tells it like it is. From yesterday's "Oh, how those midnight movies challenge us to think":

One man uttered those words immediately identifying the speaker as a case of arrested development: "I go to the movies to be entertained." We all go to the movies to be entertained, but some of us do not require to be entertained within narrow, predictable limits.

Heh, heh, heh. Loved that. "Immediately identifying the speaker as a case of arrested development," indeed.

Outspoken: Chicago’s Free Speech Tradition

Erika Hartings, associate director of public relations at the Newberry Library, wrote to us this week:

After visiting "Mental multivitamin," I thought that you might be interested in an upcoming Chicago exhibit that examines the past and looks towards the future of free expression in America.

From October 1, 2004, through January 15, 2005, the Newberry Library will present Outspoken: Chicago’s Free Speech Tradition. This new exhibit, presented in collaboration with the Chicago Historical Society, is designed to prompt reflection and promote discussion about how freedom of speech has been and continues to be defined, championed, impeded, and exercised in Chicago.

This exhibit about Chicago's vibrant history of free expression includes approximately 130 objects from the collections of the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society. Objects on display include artifacts, photographs, letters, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera relating to slavery, immigration, labor relations, women's suffrage, communism, women's liberation, 1960s counterculture, presidential elections, Indian rights, Black Power, gay rights, and recent anti-war protests.

For more information about the exhibit and related programs, [click here].

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best,
Erika Hartings
Associate Director of Public Relations
Newberry Library
60 W. Walton St., Chicago 60610
(312) 255-3553

Well, I called Erika this morning to ensure that it was all right to include her name, title, and contact information (no problem) and to ask how she had found M-mv (by exploring Chicago blogs).

Neat.

Neat job. I mean, public relations for the Newberry?! Sweet. Read their mission statement:

The Newberry Library, open to the public without charge, is an independent research library and educational institution dedicated to the expansion and dissemination of knowledge in the humanities. As one of the world's leading repositories of a broad range of books and manuscripts relating to the civilizations of western Europe and the Americas, the Library's mission is to acquire and preserve research collections of such materials, and to provide for and promote their effective use by a diverse community of users. As a library, the Newberry is dedicated to the highest standards of collection preservation and bibliographic access; as a research and educational institution, it is committed to facilitating research, teaching, and publication in an atmosphere of full and free intellectual inquiry.

And remember: the annual book fair at the Newberry Library is number eleven on our list "Chevalier Noir for the Reader, Thinker, and Autodidact's Mind."

Neat, too, that Erika realized that the folks at M-mv (to say nothing of the folks who visit M-mv) might be interested in the exhibit.

Thanks for visiting and writing, Erika.

Riotous laughter

Since my third, last, and more-than-difficult labor and delivery, I have (among other things) a minor, erm, personal issue that sends me racing to the restroom whenever I attempt to stifle wild laughter. To protect myself from embarrassment, I have, in the last six years, affected a hearty (but physically safe) chuckle to signify, "Boy! That's funny!" Hey. It serves. Every once in a while, though, something demands an unmitigated guffaw — as in, "Boy! That's really funny!"

Two things made me scramble for the bathroom this weekend: Larry Groce's "Junk Food Junkie" —

Well, at lunchtime
You can always find me
At the Whole Earth Vitamin Bar
Just sucking on my plain white yogurt
From my hand thrown pottery jar
And sippin' a little hand pressed cider
With a carrot stick for dessert
And wiping my face
In a natural way
On the sleeve of my peasant shirt
Oh yeah
Ah, but when that clock strikes midnight
And I'm all by myself
I work that combination
On my secret hideaway shelf
And I pull out some Fritos corn chips
Dr. Pepper and an Ole Moon Pie
Then I sit back in glorious expectation
Of a genuine junk food high

and Smithsonian's Oprah interview —

Oprah: But you do feel strongly about education, I understand. You even started a school for peasants on your estate?
Tolstoy: Correct.
Oprah: Wow, that must have been hard.
Tolstoy: Yes, serfs are suspicious and greedy.
Oprah: Right.
Tolstoy: And forget about homework. It was always "the village idiot ate it."
Oprah: If you had a ruble for every time, right? Now before we go, what are you working on these days?

How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?

Remember: Registration to read the NYT online is required but free and painless.

From Stephen Greenblatt's article (September 12, 2004):

After patiently sifting through most of the available biographical traces, readers rarely feel closer to understanding how the playwright's achievements came about. If anything, Shakespeare often seems a drabber, duller person, and the inward springs of his art seem more obscure than ever. The work is so astonishing, so luminous, that it seems to have come from a god and not a mortal, let alone a mortal of provincial origins and modest education.

And yet one of the prime characteristics of Shakespeare's art is the touch of the real. Even before a gifted actor makes Shakespeare's words come alive, those words contain the vivid presence of actual, lived experience. The poet who noticed that the hunted, trembling hare was "dew-bedabbled" or who likened his stained reputation to the "dyer's hand," the playwright who has a husband tell his wife that there is a purse "in the desk/That's covered o'er with Turkish tapestry" or who has a prince remember that his poor companion owns only two pairs of silk stockings, one of them peach-colored — this artist was unusually open to the world and discovered the means to allow this world into his works. To understand how he did this so effectively, it is important to look carefully, as scholars have long done, at his voracious reading and verbal artistry. But to understand who Shakespeare was, it is necessary to follow the verbal traces he left behind into the world to which he was so open.

Interesting, no? Order Greenblatt's book, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.

The recommended daily allowance

Sure, we've discussed such commonplace nonsense as Jim Carrey's comedic scope, the best way to smooth rough heels, and the subtext of certain television programs.

Ahem.

But in our high-soaringist moments, Aunt M-mv and I discuss such profundities as the parallels between how folks present themselves virtually and how they present themselves in what is conventionally labelled "real life" — an exploration of the grammar of self-presentation, if you will. (And, yes, today's conversation grew from "Doubt.")

This one is for you, Aunt M-mv.

From The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Erving Goffman):

First, let it be said that there are many individuals who sincerely believe that the definition of the situation they habitually project is the real reality. In this report I do not mean to question their proportion in the population but rather the structural relation of their sincerity to the performances they offer. If a performance is to come off, the witnesses by and large must be able to believe that the performers are sincere. This is the structural place of sincerity in the drama of events. Performers may be sincere — or be insincere but sincerely convinced of their own sincerity — but this kind of affection for one's part is not necessary for its convincing performance. There are not many French cooks who are really Russian spies, and perhaps there are not many women who play the part of wife to one man and mistress to another; but these duplicities do occur, often being sustained successfully for long periods of time. This suggests that while persons usually are what they appear to be, such appearances could still have been managed. There is, then, a statistical relation between appearances and reality, not an intrinsic or necessary one. In fact, given the unanticipated threats that play upon a performance, and given the need (later to be discussed) to maintain solidarity with one's fellow performers and some distance from the witnesses, we find that a rigid incapacity to depart from one's inward view of reality may at times endanger one's performance. Some performances are carried off successfully with complete dishonesty, others with complete honesty; but for performances in general neither of these extremes is essential and neither, perhaps, is dramaturgically advisable.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

Ayup. Another month gone. Another heap o' books read. We tossed the joint over the weekend, checking on nightstands, under pillows (and beds), in knapsacks, under chairs, on the library table, and in the, erm, bathroom. Here are a few of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations. No, you aren't imagining things; there are some repeats. That's allowed, folks, especially in the case of, say, Shakespeare.

The Discoverers (Daniel Boorstin)
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (Garry Wills)
A little world history. A little American history. Wonderful stuff for the permanent library.

The Complete Pelican Shakespeare
Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare : A Guide to Understanding and Enjoying the Works of Shakespeare (Isaac Asimov)
Oh, we list these repeatedly. Again, wonderful stuff for the permanent library.

Mutiny on the Bounty (Charles Nordhoff)
The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (Caroline Alexander)
Mr. M-mv at sea again, this time with someone other than Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin.

Another Life: A Memoir of Other People (Michael Korda)
This was one of Miss Georgiana's recommendations, placed on the top of an already teetering pile of books she was ringing up for me. "Try this," she confided. "It kept me up nights, laughing and thinking. If you don't like it, bring it back next time." Not like it? I've been rereading sections this week. Miss Georgiana worked in the now-defunct book department of Marshall Field's on State Street. Korda's memoir, a splendid match made by my book-loving acquaintance in that magnificent store's basement, was just one of the reasons I visited at least once a month, despite the fact that books were rarely discounted. For quality book talk, one can pay full price, no? A couple of years ago, Barbara's Books took over in a new space in the redesigned Field's, and Miss Georgiana retired, as did a number of her colleagues. I haven't been back since.

The Encyclopedia of North American Birds (Michael Vander)
Birdwatching is much easier in the country, folks, as is skywatching. Much to recommend this life so far. Much.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
Okay. We're wild about Wilde. And that's a good thing. Wordsmithery elevated to art.

The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage (Cathi Hanauer) was actually in last month's column. I borrowed the follow-up, The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom (Daniel Jones), from the local library, which I hastily dismissed as "dreadful" in this entry. As it turns out, I was quite wrong: Anything I need, including The Bastard on the Couch (a title I whispered to the reference librarian in deference to my mild country neighbors who were perusing the Farmer's Almanac and the latest romances), they have hunted down and provided within a week — amazing! Back to the books. Do I recommend them? Um, yeah. Frankly, I found The Bitch in the House compelling and true, if not necessarily true for me, then certainly true for women I have known. Not far enough into the follow-up book, which is edited by Hanauer's husband, to offer a verdict. Oh, and I know M-mv's readership well enough to point out that the titles are meant to shock. I don't need a flurry of e-mail messages disparaging me or the site because you found the language offensive, okay? Great. Thanks.

The two youngest M-mvs brought the following to my photo session this morning:
Hank the Cowdog: The Secret Laundry Monster Files #39 (John R. Erickson)
Guinea Pigs: Owning the Perfect Small Pet (Dennis Kelsey-Wood)
Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)

And Master M-mv brought these:
How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Edward Hirsch)
See our 9.10.2004 RDA for more about this gem.
100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature (Nicholas J. Karolides)
FYI: Banned Books Week will be celebrated September 25 through October 2.

School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School (Edward Humes)
This is a "good books" recommendation at joannejacobs.com. Master M-mv and I are sharing it.

Of course, there are more books, many, many more. Let me leave you, as I did last month, with this reminder from an old favorite of mine (yes, a few of us discovered How to Read a Book years, decades before someone told us we should read it):

The mind can atrophy, like the muscles, if it is not used. Atrophy of the mental musceles is the penalty we pay for not taking mental exercise. And this is a terrible penalty, for there is evidence that atrophy of the mind is a mortal disease.

_________________________________
Previous "On the nightstand" entries:
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

Doubt

DK writes:

First of all, let me just say how much I enjoy not only your blog, but also your posts on the... message board. Truly, I feel as though you are a personal, wise friend who reminds me daily that I need to remember to take time to learn, to think, to enjoy. I majored in English at University of Michigan, and I think I've read more interesting things through links at your blog than I did in 4 years of college (which either says something about your blog, or about U of M, or both — haven't figured that one out yet).

So.

Just tell me this one thing. Didn't you ever have a period — even a MOMENT — of angst? Self-doubt? Confusion? I so envy people who seem so... together. I am 34 years old, mom to three wonderful boys, and I am absolutely striving to help them live their best lives — with the required balance of freedom and work, sprinkled liberally with laughter and fun.

I think, I read, I ponder, I live, I love, I learn. Maybe I am over-analyzing. But I have always envied people who seem so comfortable in their own skin. So tell me the truth. What IS it? What's your secret? Or do you have a hidden self-doubting, self-questioning self that doesn't pop up in blogs and message board posts?

Tell, tell!

In the last year, I've received several messages like DK's, although few were as kindly written. Usually, the questions were thinly disguised accusations, which, to paraphrase DK, probably says much more about the correspondents than about me or "Mental multivitamin."

After thanking her for her message and encouragement, I shared the following with DK:

I have no secret other than this: I like me.

Of course I doubt, KF. And I think. I ponder. I read. I live. And laugh. And love. And doubt again. And wonder. And dream. And think. And read some more. And learn. And grow. I sing. And sleep late sometimes. And watch L&O. I drink coffee, not tea. And write. And am occasionally rejected. So I doubt. Then I send it over the transom again. And am published.

You get the idea. Doubt is okay. And so is confidence, which is probably just doubt courageously cloaked in humor, age, and the ability to enjoy one's self, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

In other words, life is better, in my opinion, anyway, when one dresses in overalls and confidence than in power suits and doubt.

From The Magus (John Fowles):

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

Image used with permission.

M-mv on parenting

For oldies-but-goodies on the subject of parenting, check out these entries:

"And woe to the innocent bystanders." (7.27.2004)

The mommy wars continue, apparently (7.23.2004)

In which R.T., an M-mv fave, responds to... (7.23.2004)

More on mommy myths and wars (6.9.2004)

What motherhood does to and for you (3.31.2004)

For those of you following "The Mommy Myth"(s) (3.4.2004)

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming... (2.25.2004)

Parenting as performance art (2.20.2004)

Speaking of mommy myths... (2.12.2004)

"Shattering 'The Mommy Myth'" (2.10.2004)

A response to our open letter

L., who keeps an interesting blog, writes:

My husband and I had a lunch like that once in our less tolerant, before children days, only ours had a happy ending.

Six adults, the parents and probably both sets of grandparents, enjoyed their meal oblivious to their darling twin girls shrieking and running laps round and round the table, much to the dismay of all the other diners. When it suddenly became quiet, the two of us saw that one of the twins had put her head through the space between the seat back and bottom and had become stuck. In fear of getting in Big Trouble, the two very quietly and unsuccessfully tried to extract the one. By now the other patrons had also noticed, and realizing she was in no danger, we were all able to finish our meals in peace. G. and I even ordered dessert and coffee just to watch the commotion when their party paid the check and prepared to leave.

Hyper-parenting

Heh, heh, heh.

From "Hyper-parenting is no favor to yourself or to your child" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer):

The symptoms of hyper-parenting include the busy child, overscheduled children, who shuttle, or more accurately are shuttled, from one activity, class or program to another with no down time tolerated or allowed. Another symptom is out-of-control parental anxiety, expressed by near addiction to the latest "expert" advice. Moreover, hyper-parents are fairly driven to see their child achieve excellence in a sport, instrument or activity, preferably by age 7. Hyper-parenting skews the relationship of parents and children, as children are turned into products and performers and parents into managers and handlers.

This, of course, is a syndrome seemingly opposite to that described in our post "An open letter," but, really, we've no doubt that those mothers are part of the breed Anthony B. Robinson skewers.

He writes:

My hunch is that the problem is a deeper one than will be cleared up by naming the syndrome and giving yet another list of tips. It is deeper because what seems to be happening is that the overly competitive, driven and anxious ethos of much of adult society is simply filtering down, way down, down to womb and before with designer genes and genetic engineering.

It was in an article published this past spring in The Atlantic that I first noted the term hyper-parenting. There, author Michael Sandel argued, "The Case Against Perfection: What's Wrong with Designer Children, Bionic Athletes and Genetic Engineering." He suggests that a good part of what it means to be a parent is to be "open to the unbidden," that is to what we cannot control.

Ayup.

Robinson notes:

Parenting, like life, is a tricky business. Parents must strive for a balance between two kinds of love: accepting love and transforming love. The one affirms the being of a child and lets him be, while the other seeks his well-being and prods his growth. Hyper-parenting is an excess of the latter and a deficiency of the former. If some parents err by not asking or inviting enough of their children, others make the mistake of pushing too hard, asking too much. Finding the right balance is the key.

It's a shame that the folks who most need to read this (to say nothing of our open letter) will either (a) never find "Mental multivitamin" or (b) find it and pooh-pooh us as snobs.

Oh, the poor, poor children.

The recommended daily allowance

Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture — the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. I think of Malebranche's maxim, "Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul." This maxim, beloved by Simone Weil and Paul Celan, quoted by Walter Benjamin in his magisterial essay on Franz Kafka can stand as a writer's credo. It also serves for readers.

How to Read a Poem (Edward Hirsch)

D. cares about the truth.

My wife M. forwarded me the link to "Who Cares About the Truth?" on your blog. The article would've been more compelling had it not been entirely devoid of examples of untruthfulness on the left side of the aisle.

The author accurately said, "If you care about your rights, you had better care about truth," and, "Unless the government strives to tell the truth, liberal democracies are no longer liberal or democratic."

But wasn't that the entire point of the Clinton impeachment — that it was about truth (not sex, not someone's private life) and that if our government officials can't be compelled to tell the truth under oath then eventually they can't be compelled to obey other laws they wish to ignore and, ultimately, the U.S. becomes a banana republic (the Central American kind, not the clothes store). Why do I just know that the author wasn't writing articles about the importance of truth during that period of American history?

That the author omits this spectacularly famous set of lies (and any other Democratic lies, past or present) would appear to indicate that truth is, to the author, just another means to power in spite of all his flowery rhetoric claiming to believe the opposite.

High praise

This was a lovely bit of mail. B. writes:

The Rage Diaries got me to your site, and I am delighted to have found it. I only wish there were more archives to peruse. Thank you for all of the work and time that goes into M-mv.

I hope you don’t tire of suggestions for more reading, because I want to recommend to you Jasper Fforde — his novels are smart and funny and literary and are, in sequential order: The Eyre Affair; Lost in a Good Book; The Well of Lost Plots; and Something Rotten. All four are well worth a look, and they get progressively better (best to be compulsive, though, and start with The Eyre Affair).

Thank you, B. — for the kind words and the recommendations.

The recommended daily allowance

Yeah, I recommend this one repeatedly but never in an RDA, I don't think. Anyway, from Vonnegut's masterwork:

There isn’t any particular relationship between the messages, except that the author has chosen them carefully, so that, when seen all at once, they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep. There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)

Triops

These are growing in a makeshift aquarium on my kitchen counter. Learn more about triops here or here. Get your own here.

Is the truth important?

From "Who Cares About the Truth?" (The Chronicle of Higher Education):

An unswerving allegiance to what you believe isn't a sign that you care about truth. It is a sign of dogmatism. Caring about truth does not mean never having to admit you are wrong. On the contrary, caring about truth means that you have to be open to the possibility that your own beliefs are mistaken. It is a consequence of the very idea of objective truth. True beliefs are those that portray the world as it is and not as we hope, fear, or wish it to be. If truth is objective, believing doesn't make it so; and even our most deeply felt opinions could turn out to be wrong. That is something that [William J.] Bennett — and the current administration, for that matter — would do well to remember. It is not a virtue to hold fast to one's views in face of the facts.

The recommended daily allowance

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)

Scream

From "Even the Mona Lisa's smile wears thin after a trillion cheap posters" (The Telegraph):

How much will it really matter if Edvard Munch's masterpiece, The Scream, is never returned to the museum in Oslo from which it was stolen this week?

It is not as if the world would forget what it looks like. The Scream is one of the most photographed and copied paintings of all time - and how many of us can honestly claim to be able to tell the difference between a good copy of a painting and the real thing? I know that I can't.

They could frame and hang a £10 colour poster of The Scream in the empty space on the wall in the Munch Museum and I bet that I wouldn't notice anything amiss.

These philistine thoughts have been prompted by my first ever visit to the Louvre, where I went with my family last week. Like so many other visitors, we made a bee-line for the Mona Lisa, because everyone knows that this is the painting that you just have to see when you are in Paris.

I couldn't help noticing that in the great stream of tourists following the signs to the Leonardo, hardly any of us glanced for more than a couple of seconds at the hundreds of masterpieces we had to pass on the way. Perhaps if they had put price-tags on the paintings, instead of the artists' names and dates, we might have been more interested.

This editorial reminded me of Lord Henry Wotton's declaration, "The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have either been so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse."

"Nuisance Value"

Two brilliant bits from an essay by Adam Phillips appearing in The Threepenny Review.

First this:

In Orwell's view, we despise beggars because they don't earn through work, and because they are poor. If money has become the grand test of virtue, we will be unduly suspicious of those who don't have it. Of course, as Orwell knows, we are duly suspicious of those who have a lot of it. But the point Orwell is keen to make—which seems slightly odd—is that we despise beggars because what they do is not profitable, because they are not good at what they do. Orwell stresses that there is no "essential difference between beggars and ordinary working men"; it's just that beggars, like children, don't work and don't make money. And this is so despicable that the state makes begging illegal; to get money the beggar has to seem to be actually doing something."

Then this:

Winnicott is describing the developmental necessity of the returning child's freedom to be a nuisance. If the child enacts his personal repertoire of anti-social behavior and the parents still love him and keep him—if he gives the environment what Winnicott calls "the full blast of his hatred," and it and he remain in touch and remain intact—then he has discovered a home he can trust in, and entrust himself to. If the parents can't allow the child to be a bit of a nuisance, the child cannot find his way back to the parents. Being a nuisance is the way the child makes a home to return to. But this involves not the parents' so-called unconditional love and acceptance, but the parents' being able to experience the child as a nuisance—hate him for it, if need be—and giving the child time to become lovable again. In Winnicott's view, the object becomes real by being hated; we can only love real people, or discover people to be real, when they have withstood our hatred. Nuisance is the nice word for the hateful exchange that a relationship can survive, and by surviving can become resilient rather than merely wishful.

Three responses to our open letter

M. writes:

Oh, you hit the nail on the head again! May I print that letter and stick a copy in my purse to hand out when necessary? Perhaps you can help me word another to carry into the library for the kid that is screaming and whining and for the mom who appears so helpless. [My husband and] I wonder why it would be considered rude for us to politely ask other parents to keep their child a little quieter but ... not considered rude for people to let their kids run wild. Something is a little bit backwards here. Alas, we are off to run, play, sing, swing, and make a whole lot of noise in the park.

And D.W. muses:

Your open letter made me both laugh and grit my teeth. I have been in those situations, as both ignorant mother and irritated patron whose event is being ruined by noisy children. I must say, as annoying as it is to have my lunch/chiropractic appt./trip to the grocery store made more cacophonous, I am much happier to be irritated than to be irritating. I have been those women (minus the designer clothes and nails), and I am much happier with the person I am today! I think it is hard to realize that the claustraphobia felt as a stay-at-home parent will only be worsened by attempting to bring the children along while "getting a break." Children, after all, are people, and they love to be seen, heard, listened to, and cared about. Don't we all? The paradox is, of course, the more we pay attention (when it is time to pay attention) the more we are able to take a break (when it is really time for a break.) I used to feel that I just had — to — get — out — of — here. Now, I spend the morning learning, reading, listening, correcting, and laughing — and then can take a break with a cup of coffee, a great read, and a comfy chair... all here in my favorite place. Home. There are still times when I feel the need for a break, and my attention is needed elsewhere. My teen/pre-teens seem to need to talk a lot more than they used to, and preferrably when their younger siblings are asleep (read: when I want to be asleep.) What a gift, though. Teens and pre-teens wanting to TALK! I am glad and just have to make sure I grab that quiet when I can. A regular rhythm to the days and weeks can secure that all members of the family ... are able to be cared for in the deepest way possible. Isn't that what a good family is all about? I don't feel any less cared for, or any less of a person, because I listen when people need to talk, or stay home when someone needs rest.

And la Maitresse adds:

HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I loved it! Man, I could write pages and pages of similar stuff based on my encounters with so many Park Avenue moms and their children!

An open letter

To the two young mothers who lunched at [insert restaurant name here] today:

Your children disturbed every diner in the room.

You may have chosen stay-at-home-parenthood, but you must now choose to parent your offspring. Yes, we could explore the whole "I need time for me" angle of today's adventure, but it's been done. To death. You will find time for you in the interstices that family life offers. Rise earlier. Turn off the television. Step away from the computer. Put down the phone. Ah, the elusive me-time freed from its shackles.

And now to your parenting.

Put your children in situations in which they can succeed. At their ages, they most certainly cannot succeed in a sit-down restaurant during lunch hour on a business day while their mothers pretend that said children are not (a) bored senseless and (b) too sick to be out in public. You see, you can dress a child up in Nordstrom togs, ladies, but if his or her nose still drips, you should probably choose drive-through. Or. Just. Stay. Home.

Teach the kids to cough, sneeze, and burp into their sleeves, please. My chicken, the pasta salad of the gal in the table behind me, and the entire platter served to the folks at the table next to yours were contaminated when not one, not two, but three of the five small diners in your party spewed their germs and partially chewed hot dogs as they sped past our tables, chasing each other and squealing.

Do not persist in your banal conversation while your children bound out of their seats to "visit" with other patrons. We were not amused when they wiped their noses on the sleeves of their pricey-boutique sweaters, smeared their grimy hands across our tables, knocked into our chairs, and whined (and whined and whined) in a desperate bid to win your attention. Attend to your children, ladies. That's your job. Not ours.

Threats and bribes amount to lazy parenting. If you put the children in situations in which they can succeed, and if you remain focused on the moment that they're in, you need never resort to such flawed and short-sighted techniques. By the way, you thought that your hissed threat to your four-year-old son was discreet, but we all heard it. And in that moment, your coiffed hair, manicured nails, beautiful make-up, and exquisite jewelrey lost any appeal that remained after your children's performance. You were exposed as the woman you really are. And it wasn't attractive.

Give the children some extra Vitamin C tonight and ensure that they get the rest and fluids they need. And once they are well again, take those kids to the park. Or the pool. Or a children's discovery center. Some place in which children can be children. Fit conversation into the spaces between swinging and sliding, running and jumping, singing and laughing. They will only be little for a little while. Don't squander their childhood on your selfish mommy luncheons.

Oh, and you owe me $9.96 for lunch.

Sincerely,

Mental multivitamin

Can a robot save Hubble?

Did you read this NYT article last week? (Registration to read the NYT is required but free and painless.) From the piece:

Scientists and engineers, working on ways to extend the life of one of astronomy's most valuable tools, say early studies indicate they have a good shot at developing a robotic spacecraft that can take the place of spacewalking astronauts in repairing and upgrading Hubble. And even some scientists who at first doubted that a robot could do the job are becoming less skeptical.

Officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say that they should have a plan for the robotic mission by fall, and that further studies, to be completed by next summer, should show whether the effort is feasible. If so, they said, the question becomes finding money for the mission, with early estimates putting the cost at more than $1 billion.

Look up!

Get your interactive sky chart here. Remember: Beyond city limits, you can observe many wonders with the naked eye... even more with a quality pair of binoculars. Astronomy does not require a telescope, folks. Just a clear night in a place free of light pollution with a decent sky chart.

Heaven.