Monday, November 30, 2009


This book is delightful (thanks Hopkins!). A) It is short. B) It is loaded with religion and politics and a conversion. C) It is about a house full of girls who make do with what they have. Yes, Washington and Lee is a sort of May of Teck Club.
Email from my mother to me and my siblings: "FYI-there is a short article of interest on the Iran-Contra affair on Wikipedia.
Mom"

Email to my brother replying to all:
"FYI- there is a short article of interest on every single thing in the world on Wikipedia.
#1tomatolover"


Wednesday, November 25, 2009

I was flying into Chicago at night
Watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke
The sun was setting to the left of the plane
And the cabin was filled with an unearthly glow




In 27-D I was behind the wing
Watching landscape roll out
Like credits on a screen
The earth looked like it was lit from within
Like a poorly assembled electrical ball as we moved
Out of the farmlands into the grid
The plan of the city was all that you saw
And all of these people sitting totally still
As the ground raced beneath them thirty thousand feet down

It took an hour, maybe a day
But once I really listened, the noise
Just went away

And I was pretending that I was in a Galaxie 500 video
The stewardess came back and checked on my drink
In the last strings of sunlight, a Bridgette Bardot
There's a hat on my headphones
Along with those eyes that you get
When your circumstance is movie size

Liz Phair

Actually, when I was flying into Chicago last night, it was a rather cloudy and I could only see things in patches.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

On Conferences

I spent this weekend in Philly with the delightful Sayers and Mr. Sayers. Also, I attended the Northeastern Political Science Association conference. Conference absurdity was pretty high on my panel: I was the only one of four presenters who showed up. So it was my discussant, me, Wystan, a friend from Baylor and a random guy (I gave him an out to leave if it was not my paper he came to hear, but he stuck around). In the end, it worked out fairly well--I got lots of feedback on my paper. Still, it clearly wasn't a panel presentation. And it was held in a hotel room without the bed--there was a bathroom attached to the room we were in.

Monday, November 16, 2009






















































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?!)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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

(Be jealous, Wystan.)

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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.

Friday, November 13, 2009

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.)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Travels































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

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

[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.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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

Monday, November 9, 2009

"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

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Serendipity and the Internet

(My answers to the poor souls who stumbled across my blog through silly google searches.)

pronunciation of kowit
--Cow it.



trip to a dentist poem
--Trip to a dentist haiku:

My last dentist trip

Involved a loudly screaming

Little, tooth-pulled girl


I got three cavities
--I'm very sorry. I only have a half of a cavity, and that is due to a tooth deformity.

elbow patches origins
--Elbow patches are a distinctly upper-class style that originated when the King of England fell in love with their chic-ness and had them sown onto all of his blazers, particularly the ones that were corduroy and tweed.

do you say concord or con-curd
--Depends on if it's harmony or Massachusetts.

poems for leopards--Necessary! Leopards love poems, particularly limericks.

ladies occasional blouses--These are blouses that you only wear occasionally. Not to be worn more than once every three months.

love in language confusion--See Lost in Translation.

inadverdant
--Not toward green.

lips do the helen white leopards
--I don't know what to say
here.


fashion is political--Everything is political, especially art.

Of course, by political, I probably mean pre-political.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

G.K. Chesterton on Women


The questions that the following (very long) excerpt raises for me include:

Is Chesterton arguing from nature? If so, why is the woman better fitted for being the generalist than the man is? If not, why should it be the woman rather than the man? Alternatively, he may be arguing that women commonly have a particular proclivity toward one way of thinking. In this case, why must we persuade women to adopt the role that only oftentimes best fits them?

Why protect the woman from specialization (this reminds me of Tocqueville's argument that we must preserve women from the horrors of the democratic public sphere)? Granted, nature isn't irrelevant here on any account: women bear the children, and then there's breast feeding, etc. But after that, what is the argument?

I think that I get riled up by the idea of protecting women. Don't get me wrong: I love being protected. But it isn't just women that we should seek to protect. Women have a responsibility to protect men, too. And not just be being protected, I think.

It's funny to me that he calls women a Trimmer at the end of this section--this is what Oakeshott calls a person who seeks to uphold tradition. Oakeshott also emphasizes the bravery of the one who fulfills this role.

HT: Whigwham

But here's Chesterton:

And it should be remarked in passing that this force upon a man to develop one feature has nothing to do with what is commonly called our competitive system, but would equally exist under any rationally conceivable kind of Collectivism. Unless the Socialists are frankly ready for a fall in the standard of violins, telescopes and electric lights, they must somehow create a moral demand on the individual that he shall keep up his present concentration on these things. It was only by men being in some degree specialist that there ever were any telescopes; they must certainly be in some degree specialist in order to keep them going. It is not by making a man a State wage-earner that you can prevent him thinking principally about the very difficult way he earns his wages. There is only one way to preserve in the world that high levity and that more leisurely outlook which fulfils the old vision of universalism. That is, to permit the existence of a partly protected half of humanity; a half which the harassing industrial demand troubles indeed, but only troubles indirectly. In other words, there must be in every center of humanity one human being upon a larger plan; one who does not "give her best," but gives her all.

Our old analogy of the fire remains the most workable one. The fire need not blaze like electricity nor boil like boiling water; its point is that it blazes more than water and warms more than light. The wife is like the fire, or to put things in their proper proportion, the fire is like the wife. Like the fire, the woman is expected to cook: not to excel in cooking, but to cook; to cook better than her husband who is earning the coke by lecturing on botany or breaking stones. Like the fire, the woman is expected to tell tales to the children, not original and artistic tales, but tales--better tales than would probably be told by a first-class cook. Like the fire, the woman is expected to illuminate and ventilate, not by the most startling revelations or the wildest winds of thought, but better than a man can do it after breaking stones or lecturing. But she cannot be expected to endure anything like this universal duty if she is also to endure the direct cruelty of competitive or bureaucratic toil. Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school mistress, but not a competitive schoolmistress; a house-decorator but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman's professions, unlike the child's, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful; so tragically real that nothing but her universality and balance prevented them being merely morbid. This is the substance of the contention I offer about the historic female position. I do not deny that women have been wronged and even tortured; but I doubt if they were ever tortured so much as they are tortured now by the absurd modern attempt to make them domestic empresses and competitive clerks at the same time. I do not deny that even under the old tradition women had a harder time than men; that is why we take off our hats. I do not deny that all these various female functions were exasperating; but I say that there was some aim and meaning in keeping them various. I do not pause even to deny that woman was a servant; but at least she was a general servant.

The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the idea of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion on extravagance. The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's. There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable. And many of the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health. Much of what is called her subservience, and even her pliability, is merely the subservience and pliability of a universal remedy; she varies as medicines vary, with the disease. She has to be an optimist to the morbid husband, a salutary pessimist to the happy-go-lucky husband. She has to prevent the Quixote from being put upon, and the bully from putting upon others. The French King wrote--

"Toujours femme varie
Bien fol qui s'y fie,"

but the truth is that woman always varies, and that is exactly why we always trust her. To correct every adventure and extravagance with its antidote in common-sense is not (as the moderns seem to think) to be in the position of a spy or a slave. It is to be in the position of Aristotle or (at the lowest) Herbert Spencer, to be a universal morality, a complete system of thought. The slave flatters; the complete moralist rebukes. It is, in short, to be a Trimmer in the true sense of that honorable term; which for some reason or other is always used in a sense exactly opposite to its own. It seems really to be supposed that a Trimmer means a cowardly person who always goes over to the stronger side. It really means a highly chivalrous person who always goes over to the weaker side; like one who trims a boat by sitting where there are few people seated. Woman is a trimmer; and it is a generous, dangerous and romantic trade.