It's definitely been a while since I've been as utterly charmed by someone. This weekend:

Emily: "Hi. I'm that girl who accosted you at Georgetown and made you talk to me about Eliot."
RS: "Oh, you're that girl. I was just thinking about that girl two days ago and wondering how she was doing."
...
E: "I'm going to write on women and the public sphere and put off Eliot for a while."
RS: "You're going to put off your life?"
...
RS and his friend on Oakeshott's love life: "Intellectuals are terrible at love. Never get involved with an intellectual. [After a long pause during which I didn't speak...] It's too late, isn't it?"
...
RS: "Men are better than women at cooking and cleaning up. The only thing they aren't better at than women is caring for the children."

We then proceeded to a discussion about how cleaning up after you cook is cathartic. He complained about dishwashers and recommended Mozart for dishwashing music.

What a beautiful post. (Is it really called Waco International Airport?!)

I'm "Tom's Girlfriend" in the Basil Seal's very kind blogroll!

(Be jealous, Wystan.)

On Cupcakes

I've been thinking about cupcakes lately, due in part to Hopkins' recent post. The article she links to suggests that cupcakes are a lie--they are prettier than they are delicious and they advertise a false nostalgia; also, they're faddish and now name brand.

Here's my comment on Hopkins' post:

"Before a lecture I was having lunch with a political theorist. We passed a cupcake shop, and I started ranting about how I don't understand the appeal (my mother never made us cupcakes--whoopie pies were probably the closest thing; I think cupcakes are a little fussy for central Pennsylvania). Anyway, he said that people like cupcakes for the same reason that they like baths--it takes them back to their mother's womb. I also didn't understand that explanation. I like baths because they keep me awake when I need to do more work."

I re-post this here because I bought Georgetown Cupcake designer cupcakes for a political theorist colloquium this week and once again brought up my question about their appeal. One of my colleagues suggested that people like having a whole that belongs just to them--it isn't a piece of something, like a piece of coffee cake, but rather their own, which they chose from among different kinds. This is way more persuasive to me than a mother's womb.

What Makes Man Different from Animals.10

“[T]he true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one; and preferring, whenever possible, the society of those with whom leading and following can be alternate and reciprocal.”

--John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women (democracy makes man different from animals!)

From Ilana: "Oh how I miss this space shuttle."

(The side is from when the lamp post jumped out and hit Stearns.)

Travels

As Steve Martin purportedly said, "Waco is the only city that flips you off as you leave it."

[In beautiful Latin calligraphy:]

The President and Faculty
of Georgetown University
to all who shall see this diploma
Greetings in the Lord
Since it is proper for those who have distinguished themselves by their talent and learning to be honored with some token of this distinction that is both merited and by which their learning may be acknowledged:
We, who have been empowered to this task by the highest authority of this Republic, make known to all to whose attention this diploma may come that our beloved daughter
Emily Elizabeth Hale
has been recommended by the faculty of
The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
and approved in the presence of our faculties formally assembled and promoted to the degree
Master of Arts
and that she has been accorded all and each of the rights and privileges which this degree confers.
So that this may be clear to all, we have presented this diploma, signed by us and guaranteed by the seal of our university.

If you would like to be one to whose attention this diploma comes, you should come to Little Gidding and take a look! Who knew I would be this proud? I showed it to my section today and they clapped. I am the beloved daughter of Georgetown!

Rant

I love communicating. It is one of my favorite activities in so many of its forms, be it the phone, letters, emails, facebook messages, sometimes even gchat. My least favorite way of communicating is passing hello's through third parties. It isn't a form of communicating. It passes nothing along except a smidgen of good will. This same good will could be communicated by simply asking about the other person, which the mutual friend could pass on or not, as he likes.

Plus, it is exhausting for the mutual friend. The mutual friend has to remember who to say hello to. And it's awkward. Because what's the person to whom this hello is passed supposed to reply? (Me: "Oh! Hi back!" Goodness gracious, and then what about the second time those same people say hello? It is just an ugly confluence of hello's.

It's a shame that sweater vests can't have elbow patches.

"Well I guess, some of us write and some of us pitch but so far there isn't any law a man has to go see The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot from St. Louis where Yogi Berra comes from 'Royalist, Anglo-Catholic and conservative.' A damned good poet and a fair critic; but he can kiss my ass as a man and he never hit a ball out of the infield in his life and he would not have existed except for dear old Ezra, the lovely poet and stupid traitor."

-Ernest Hemingway, letter to Harvey Breit, La Finca Vigia, 9 July 1950

HT: Wystan

If Wystan and Hopkins Were a Movie

In the early days of this blog, I used to correlate my friends with actors--I would cast the actors who ought to play my friends in a movie. There was my family, Little Gidding, and The Others. I never made it to Wystan, nor Hopkins, and must remedy that immediately.


Wystan would be William Powell, especially as Nick Charles. First of all, William Powell has a mustache. I would very much like to see Wystan in a mustache. Second, he's wry and witty. Third, I've seen lots of movies with him in them: The Thin Man (there's a whole series of thin men, evidently--I want to see them!), Life with Father (which I know is absolutely delightful, but I can always only remember the way the word "baptized" is accented--bap tized'), and How to Marry a Millionaire (which, as previously noted, is delightful). Fourth, he's old, like Wystan (who is soon to get significantly older).


Hopkins would be Emma Thompson. Ever since I watched Sense and Sensibility, and my father said that I was Eleanor (which is a beautiful, beautiful name) and Stearns was Marianne, I have adored Emma Thompson. She seems to me to be sophisticated, stable, and grounded. And these are lots of my same thoughts about Hopkins--ever since she fed me chocolate late at night and listened to me ramble about boys, and then later when she cooked me dinner and showed me Stranger than Fiction (okay, fine, so Thompson isn't stable and grounded in that film...), and we can't forget the time that she watched me ruin halushky for a small dinner party and calmed me down and told me never to apologize for anything you cook (or something along those lines), and then ate the halushky.