We're here on an overcast, cool day, unseasonably cold but still laid back as only Amsterdam can be: some guy flinging his leg over his windowsill to have a smoke, leaning just far enough out so that one little push would send him crashing to the pavement but he's cool--he pulls back just in time. Guys in feathers, guys in rubber, a guy in a pink tutu, great tits, and White Rock fairy wings just ahead of us at the hotel registration desk. My eight-year-old advised me as we strolled the streets surrounded by uninhibited merrymakers, "Mommy, I don't feel quite safe here," and I reassured her that she was with us and once we got to the lovely little Portuguese restaurant near the Central train station, she enjoyed her meal very much. We'd been standing on a corner so long trying to find something in the Lonely Planet Guide that we just gave up and decided to walk along one of those skinny, windy, twisty streets with bright round little beer ads above every restaurant sign. And it all worked out. We spent the afternoon at NEMO, the science and technology museum, being thrilled by bubbles, trick mirrors, chain reactions, the sound of DNA (animals, including spiders, sound harmonious. HIV sounds dissonant). There's no music of the spheres in disease, I guess. It was indeed a curious experience hearing the sound of DNA--worth the price of admission, as was the slanted roof garden which overlooks much of the city. It's a friendly city and the language is curious and gutteral--not like English, not like German, but more or less understandable to one who speaks both.
Two of my children thought it might be fun to play their musical instruments and make a little money, so we set them up in front of a long line that we misconstrued as a wait for one of the ferries. It turned out to be a wait for the Anne Frank house. As my oldest remarks, "Good thing I wasn't playing the German national anthem." My youngest was told folks were complaining, and that proved a good opportunity to explain that her cheerful rendition of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik was not appropriate for the very sad story of Anne Frank, which we told her. But P.S. both kids made more than I make in an hour.
The longer we're in Amsterdam, the more I think of the place as ancestor to a better New York. Amsterdam is New York with a middle class, New York un-invaded by the ultra wealthy. Amsterdam has cute little boutiques and gorgeously designed crafts at reasonable prices. It has museums. Outside the Zuidas district--"financial mile"--it's pretty much free of skyscrapers, and the red brick traditional, Cuypers-influenced school of architecture brings the Upper West Side to mind. Plus there's more than an echo of The Strand in Amsterdam's American Book Center (http://www.abc.nl/) whose friendly staff and lively selections made me homesick--not as many miles of books, but service with a smile, even though the honest, friendly Dutchman at the front did not ask to see ID when I offered my passport as proof of age in order to get a discount. "No, I believe you," he offered, imagining I would be pleased. I briefly re-considered Botox treatments, but realized that the amount I had just invested in books was equal to the cost of a single Botox treatment. We took a tour of the Royal Palace and another of the Rijksmuseum, where among the Rembrandts and the Caravaggios and the Mannerists I sought images of William of Orange, since family legend has it that my ancestors, mercenary soldiers of the same, were granted lands in Pennsylvania after some war . . . now which one was it, because at last count there were more than nine Williams of Orange. The Dutch Royal family re-numbered them, starting with the first, the second, etc. in the 19th century, because, my fourteen-year-old says, William the twenty-fourth sounds less cool than William the Fourth, and William the Two Hundred and Fiftieth sounds severely un-cool. He has a point. In any case my relatives are said to have landed in Pennsylvania sometime in the seventeeth century, where, had they remained, my family might have become Philadelphia Main Line--but oh, now, those tough soldiers marched on to the Carolinas, where we evolved into Southern Gothic. Another story.
We toured the Royal Palace and a question that had been on my mind --why do the Dutch Royals look so much happier than the English Royals--got an answer: the Dutch have a tradition of abdication. Queen Beatrix handed over the Queenship to her son Willem, just as her mother Wilhelmina had abdicated in favor of her. Whereas Elizabeth just goes on forever. The English, Shaw observed, think they are being moral when they are only uncomfortable.
Amsterdam is a delight--I highly recommend it, especially for anyone who misses New York
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Angelina Jolie's Breasts, Modern Science, and The Critical Mom
Journalists applaud Angelina Jolie for her bravery in parting with her breasts. She appears to be acting in good faith on the advice of her doctors, who have informed her of the likelihood that she will, like her mother, contract breast cancer. Her mother died at 56--my age--from breast cancer, and Jolie herself has a "genetic variant" that her doctors have told her makes her likely to come down with the disease. Women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations have a risk of 60-90% or of 87% depending upon which medical authority one asks. Their children have a fifty percent chance, says the medical opinion of the hour.
But unless you can act on it immediately and knowingly, such information remains harmful. A so-called 87% chance might as well come out of my sixth-grade Math textbook, How To Lie With Statistics. The Spring 2013 issue of Columbia Magazine offers an article on pre-natal genetic testing, asking the question whether genetic markers indicating potential problems in a fetus should be discussed with parents. Yes and no.
It all depends. Even things that are true can be proved. Women worry when they are pregnant. Why give them more to worry about especially when the squiggle in the genetic material suggesting a possible problem may just be a slightly sloppy hunk of human material meaning absolutely nothing? They can't really tell whether certain squiggles are pathological or merely idiosyncratic. Should a mother worry that her fetus might have developmental delays when the geneticists find something unusual? Should Angelina Jolie really have had her breasts removed just because her mother died of breast cancer and Jolie herself has the "genetic variation?"
She regards her own mother idealistically: ‘I will never be as good a mother as she
was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving —
she’s better than me.’ Meanwhile her mother-in-law, a health advocate, insisted she go get tested. What if Jolie's decision is a contorted way of mourning her mother? If Jolie is terrified, then maybe she has a reason to be, but it is she who should evaluate the sources of her terror. Not her doctor. Did her mother breast feed? Jolie breastfed her twins. Breastfeeding is one of nature's protections against cancer, but of course it's not foolproof. Nothing is. But the hunches of the woman diagnosed with problems or potential problems are more important than the diagnosis. A pregnant friend dreamed repeatedly that her baby was being strangled. She told the doctor her dream and he laughed at her. The child had the cord around his neck. I told my doctor that my second child was enormous. With the most sophisticated ultrasound equipment then available, my doctor insisted that he was anything but--"maximum, 3,700 pounds," insisted my doctor, who had done his Ph.d in ultrasound. P.S. My son weighed 4,200 grams (9 1/2 pounds) and was 56 centimeters long (over 22 inches). At birth, he'd outgrown the baby clothes mailed him by well-meaning friends.
Now, my doctor knew much more about medicine than I did. I know nothing. But I was right. I had a strong feeling and I did not tell myself "Oh, well, the doctor knows more than I do." I wonder about Angelina Jolie. Did terror or her own good sense drive her decision?
Sunday, May 5, 2013
The Critical Mom's Memories
Somehow or other, I've always kept a journal, and I'm glad that even though I was writing almost in my sleep when my children were young, I recorded some doozies. Samples:
First son, then age three, ran stark naked down the stairs after a bath when he was supposed to remain upstairs, donning his pajamas. Picture the energetic child laughing maniacally as he escapes the clutches of the middle-aged (at this point 44-year-old; God, how young) mother who yelps ineffectually:
"You come back here! Come here or I'll grab you!"
"Gwab me! Gwab me!" yelled the imp, delirious with delight. "Or I won't like you anymore!" (Pause.) Turning to the exhausted Mom at the top of the stairs with a winning smile, he added, "It's just an expression!"
The same child, the same year, coming home from day care: "Why does it rain? Oh, I know, 'cause God is sad, and also it's good for our plants!"
Unsurprisingly, the kid's brother and sister have at least the same energy level. The brother, same age (three does seem to be a self-assertive time in a person's life): Mommy leaves the room for a nanosecond; comes back to find the brother has dumped an entire jar of strawberry jam on his 14-month-old sister's head. She looks exceedingly startled, then appears to reflect and to conclude that this must be part of the normal course of events. She seemed considerably less sanguine when I left the room for the proverbial nanosecond when she was in the bath, and her brother seized the opportunity to dump half a bottle of shampoo on her head.
Now, this girl is most logical. At six, she looked at an ancient and beautiful monastery which we were observing from the window of a home in a traditional Bavarian village, and when I said that for many years monks had lived there, she asked: "What kind of monks? Chipmunks?"
Ah, those were the days. Now it's all about "Why can't I have Grand Theft Auto?" and "But he really is an asshole and I know I'm not supposed to say that but I don't know another word! Asshole!" or "I don't feel like practicing my recorder today" (with an affecting sob).
It's true. They are growing up. And it's still the greatest show on earth.
First son, then age three, ran stark naked down the stairs after a bath when he was supposed to remain upstairs, donning his pajamas. Picture the energetic child laughing maniacally as he escapes the clutches of the middle-aged (at this point 44-year-old; God, how young) mother who yelps ineffectually:
"You come back here! Come here or I'll grab you!"
"Gwab me! Gwab me!" yelled the imp, delirious with delight. "Or I won't like you anymore!" (Pause.) Turning to the exhausted Mom at the top of the stairs with a winning smile, he added, "It's just an expression!"
The same child, the same year, coming home from day care: "Why does it rain? Oh, I know, 'cause God is sad, and also it's good for our plants!"
Unsurprisingly, the kid's brother and sister have at least the same energy level. The brother, same age (three does seem to be a self-assertive time in a person's life): Mommy leaves the room for a nanosecond; comes back to find the brother has dumped an entire jar of strawberry jam on his 14-month-old sister's head. She looks exceedingly startled, then appears to reflect and to conclude that this must be part of the normal course of events. She seemed considerably less sanguine when I left the room for the proverbial nanosecond when she was in the bath, and her brother seized the opportunity to dump half a bottle of shampoo on her head.
Now, this girl is most logical. At six, she looked at an ancient and beautiful monastery which we were observing from the window of a home in a traditional Bavarian village, and when I said that for many years monks had lived there, she asked: "What kind of monks? Chipmunks?"
Ah, those were the days. Now it's all about "Why can't I have Grand Theft Auto?" and "But he really is an asshole and I know I'm not supposed to say that but I don't know another word! Asshole!" or "I don't feel like practicing my recorder today" (with an affecting sob).
It's true. They are growing up. And it's still the greatest show on earth.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
The Critical Mom's Favorite Marinade
Got some pork you want to make interesting? Often a little tired of the stuff and think the sight of one more breaded cutlet will make you say something unprintable? Here's a great way to spice things up deliciously and easily.
You will need:
Fish sauce (any Asian store will have this)
light soy sauce
piece of ginger the size of a man's thumb
garlic, garlic, garlic--the more the merrier
one fresh stalk of lemongrass (most good supermarkets will have this, but if not, an Asian store will)
Plant oil (corn oil or rapeseed oil will do)
A little sugar
pork--about three slices of pork cutlet with fat on it.
With a sharp knife, dice the ginger and put it into a large bowl. Dice the garlic and add that. Dice the lemongrass--you may wish to remove the outermost layer, if it feels very dry. Everything should be diced very, very fine. Add a tablespoon or two of fish sauce, same of light soy sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix well and add the meat. Spread the mixture well over each slice. Dribble over all this a tablespoon or so of oil. Cover cover the bowl with plastic wrap. (Alternatively, you can put the entire mixture, with meat, into a zip lock bag). Leave in refrigerator for at least a few hours--overnight is better.
You can broil this, or fry it in a pan. It's good with Thai sticky rice and steamed snow peas or broccoli.
You will need:
Fish sauce (any Asian store will have this)
light soy sauce
piece of ginger the size of a man's thumb
garlic, garlic, garlic--the more the merrier
one fresh stalk of lemongrass (most good supermarkets will have this, but if not, an Asian store will)
Plant oil (corn oil or rapeseed oil will do)
A little sugar
pork--about three slices of pork cutlet with fat on it.
With a sharp knife, dice the ginger and put it into a large bowl. Dice the garlic and add that. Dice the lemongrass--you may wish to remove the outermost layer, if it feels very dry. Everything should be diced very, very fine. Add a tablespoon or two of fish sauce, same of light soy sauce and a teaspoon of sugar. Mix well and add the meat. Spread the mixture well over each slice. Dribble over all this a tablespoon or so of oil. Cover cover the bowl with plastic wrap. (Alternatively, you can put the entire mixture, with meat, into a zip lock bag). Leave in refrigerator for at least a few hours--overnight is better.
You can broil this, or fry it in a pan. It's good with Thai sticky rice and steamed snow peas or broccoli.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Critical Mom's Guide to Basic Geography, Bombers, and Basic History
How many of you out there can find India on a map? How about Iran? Iraq? The Czech republic? Too many can still find a country that no longer exists, Czechoslovakia. Here is the Wikipedia definition of that former nation:
Czechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.
Ever since January, 1993, the same piece of earth has been peacefully divided between the Czech republic and Slovakia.
Some 2,000 miles away (that's 3,066.7 km) is Chechnya, and both that nation and the Czech republic start with a "ch,"as in "cheese," none of you should be smiling. You should all invest in a globe and spin it every day, letting your finger land on a country and remembering which one it is, where you found it, and what other countries surround it.
After that, consider planet Earth from the perspective of an astronaut heading back from the moon. Earth is tiny. Okay, not the smallest planet out there, but anything but big. Let's not magnify differences between different countries and different nations, let's not tar all Chechens with the brush of the accused brothers.
Besides, although the accused bombers have expressed an allegiance to Chechnya,they did not actually grow up in that country. They grew up in Kyrgyzstan, a former republic of the Soviet Union, in a town called Tokmok, where many Chechens lived. The family left Krygyzstan and moved to the Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region (get out that globe, and while you are spinning it, remember that the Czech Republic is way far away in Central Europe).
In 2002, the family came to Cambridge, Mass. as refugees.
You want to blame somebody? Don't blame the Chechens, and don't blame the Czechs. Do take a tour through the past, when, after September 11, 2001, anybody who appeared to be ethnically Arab (and that included persons of Central American, Native American, and Japanese descent) got brutally attacked. Before that, in the hysteria following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Americans (and sometimes even Chinese Americans, or anyone deemed to be of Japanese descent) got herded into internment camps in the deserts and deserted places of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. Before all that came Cotton Mather asking "What Must I Do To Be Saved?" in a sermon that threatened hellfire and damnation, fueled the emotions generating the Salem Witch Trials of colonial America, and generally set a pattern for bad behavior.
We haven't come a long way from Cotton Mather. But we could at least learn some geography.
Czechoslovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe that existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until its peaceful dissolution into the Czech Republic and Slovakia on 1 January 1993.
Ever since January, 1993, the same piece of earth has been peacefully divided between the Czech republic and Slovakia.
Some 2,000 miles away (that's 3,066.7 km) is Chechnya, and both that nation and the Czech republic start with a "ch,"as in "cheese," none of you should be smiling. You should all invest in a globe and spin it every day, letting your finger land on a country and remembering which one it is, where you found it, and what other countries surround it.
After that, consider planet Earth from the perspective of an astronaut heading back from the moon. Earth is tiny. Okay, not the smallest planet out there, but anything but big. Let's not magnify differences between different countries and different nations, let's not tar all Chechens with the brush of the accused brothers.
Besides, although the accused bombers have expressed an allegiance to Chechnya,they did not actually grow up in that country. They grew up in Kyrgyzstan, a former republic of the Soviet Union, in a town called Tokmok, where many Chechens lived. The family left Krygyzstan and moved to the Republic of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus region (get out that globe, and while you are spinning it, remember that the Czech Republic is way far away in Central Europe).
In 2002, the family came to Cambridge, Mass. as refugees.
You want to blame somebody? Don't blame the Chechens, and don't blame the Czechs. Do take a tour through the past, when, after September 11, 2001, anybody who appeared to be ethnically Arab (and that included persons of Central American, Native American, and Japanese descent) got brutally attacked. Before that, in the hysteria following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Americans (and sometimes even Chinese Americans, or anyone deemed to be of Japanese descent) got herded into internment camps in the deserts and deserted places of Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. Before all that came Cotton Mather asking "What Must I Do To Be Saved?" in a sermon that threatened hellfire and damnation, fueled the emotions generating the Salem Witch Trials of colonial America, and generally set a pattern for bad behavior.
We haven't come a long way from Cotton Mather. But we could at least learn some geography.
Friday, April 19, 2013
The Critical Mom's Guide to Basic Literacy
Are you a student? Majoring in English, or Humanities, or History, or Cultural Studies? Or maybe just a person who likes to read and wants to understand Western culture?
Then you need these three things:
(1) The King James Bible
(2) Any good handbook of Greek and Roman Mythology; here are some favorites of mine:
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943
If you want a quick fix, with pictures, this is a good one, but it is intended for children, so all the really gruesome stuff is toned down.
Edith Hamilton's Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/Mythology-Edith-Hamilton/dp/0316341517
Bullfinch's Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_7?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bullfinch%27s%20mythology&sprefix=Bullfin%2Cstripbooks%2C343&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Abullfinch%27s%20mythology
The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Classical-Mythology-Meridian-Edward/dp/0452007852/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366552366&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Meridian+Handbook+of+Classical+Mythology
You can get a used copy, as of this writing, for $6.26. Forget the new, which is over $200.
You can even take this free online course, complete with videos:
https://www.coursera.org/course/mythology
(3) Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. One of the two books everybody owned when nobody could afford to buy books.
http://www.amazon.com/Pilgrims-Progress-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199538131/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366354278&sr=1-2&keywords=pilgrim%27s+progress
The influence of Pilgrim's Progress is just all over the place. Subscribe to Vanity Fair? Well, you wouldn't if John Bunyan hadn't invented that phrase as a place devoted to show-offy frivolous stuff. Ever read Little Women--incidentally a favorite book of both Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush? It starts with the four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, reminiscing about playing Pilgrim's Progress when they were little girls. If you have no sense of Pilgrim's Progress you'll be bored and also miss the philosophy of the whole book--that these girls expect to go through many difficult situations ("trials") like Christian in the book, and to persevere, and even to emerge victorious, in the next world if not in this one. Like a lot of 19th century heroines, the March girls always had the idea of the next world to fall back on when things got too tough in this one.
Why do you need these things? And why the King James, which was produced way back in 1612 and is filled with strange, archaic, and above all inaccurate language? So that half the time you don't even know what the heck is going on, which you would know if the teacher would just tell you to read the New International Version (2011) to which there exist many handy links? Like this one:
http://www.biblegateway.com/
Now, just make sure you do get the regular old King James--not the "New" King James, which takes all the joy out of reading and lobs in new stuff that the folks whose books you are reading did not read.
For further details on why you should read the plain old 1612 King James, see this handy article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/weekinreview/24mcgrath.html?_r=0
You want accuracy, we got accuracy--that's the NIV, above. You want poetry, the best in the English language, with the possible exception of Shakespeare, then you take the King James. You take the original, not the "new" King James, however, for a far more pragmatic reason: every single English and American writer worth their salt born anytime after 1612 read the King James. They didn't read the "New" King James" or the Revised Standard or any other translation that wasn't around when they were alive.
Just to make it extra convenient for you, here is the dang thing online, and you even get to look at a facsimile of the original:
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
Why am I writing this? Because the semester just started, and I went in to teach my university students, and I asked them what happened in the book of Exodus, and they did not know. I asked them who Athena was, and they did not know. I asked them who Aphrodite was, and they did not know. I asked them who Hermes was, and they did not know. I felt like one enduring the trials of Job, and one student actually did have some idea who he was.
Take up your cell phones and read, oh ye of little faith. And lo, ye shall be saved from illiteracy.
Then you need these three things:
(1) The King James Bible
(2) Any good handbook of Greek and Roman Mythology; here are some favorites of mine:
D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
http://www.amazon.com/DAulaires-Greek-Myths-Ingri-dAulaire/dp/0440406943
If you want a quick fix, with pictures, this is a good one, but it is intended for children, so all the really gruesome stuff is toned down.
Edith Hamilton's Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/Mythology-Edith-Hamilton/dp/0316341517
Bullfinch's Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_7?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=bullfinch%27s%20mythology&sprefix=Bullfin%2Cstripbooks%2C343&rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Abullfinch%27s%20mythology
The Meridian Handbook of Classical Mythology
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Classical-Mythology-Meridian-Edward/dp/0452007852/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366552366&sr=1-2&keywords=The+Meridian+Handbook+of+Classical+Mythology
You can get a used copy, as of this writing, for $6.26. Forget the new, which is over $200.
You can even take this free online course, complete with videos:
https://www.coursera.org/course/mythology
(3) Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan. One of the two books everybody owned when nobody could afford to buy books.
http://www.amazon.com/Pilgrims-Progress-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199538131/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366354278&sr=1-2&keywords=pilgrim%27s+progress
The influence of Pilgrim's Progress is just all over the place. Subscribe to Vanity Fair? Well, you wouldn't if John Bunyan hadn't invented that phrase as a place devoted to show-offy frivolous stuff. Ever read Little Women--incidentally a favorite book of both Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush? It starts with the four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, reminiscing about playing Pilgrim's Progress when they were little girls. If you have no sense of Pilgrim's Progress you'll be bored and also miss the philosophy of the whole book--that these girls expect to go through many difficult situations ("trials") like Christian in the book, and to persevere, and even to emerge victorious, in the next world if not in this one. Like a lot of 19th century heroines, the March girls always had the idea of the next world to fall back on when things got too tough in this one.
Why do you need these things? And why the King James, which was produced way back in 1612 and is filled with strange, archaic, and above all inaccurate language? So that half the time you don't even know what the heck is going on, which you would know if the teacher would just tell you to read the New International Version (2011) to which there exist many handy links? Like this one:
http://www.biblegateway.com/
Now, just make sure you do get the regular old King James--not the "New" King James, which takes all the joy out of reading and lobs in new stuff that the folks whose books you are reading did not read.
For further details on why you should read the plain old 1612 King James, see this handy article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/weekinreview/24mcgrath.html?_r=0
You want accuracy, we got accuracy--that's the NIV, above. You want poetry, the best in the English language, with the possible exception of Shakespeare, then you take the King James. You take the original, not the "new" King James, however, for a far more pragmatic reason: every single English and American writer worth their salt born anytime after 1612 read the King James. They didn't read the "New" King James" or the Revised Standard or any other translation that wasn't around when they were alive.
Just to make it extra convenient for you, here is the dang thing online, and you even get to look at a facsimile of the original:
http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611-Bible/
Why am I writing this? Because the semester just started, and I went in to teach my university students, and I asked them what happened in the book of Exodus, and they did not know. I asked them who Athena was, and they did not know. I asked them who Aphrodite was, and they did not know. I asked them who Hermes was, and they did not know. I felt like one enduring the trials of Job, and one student actually did have some idea who he was.
Take up your cell phones and read, oh ye of little faith. And lo, ye shall be saved from illiteracy.
Friday, April 12, 2013
The Critical Mom and Scientology
The British have aired their ideas about Scientology. The Guardian describes it as a "neat reflection of the worst aspects of American culture with its repulsive veneration of celebrity; its weird attitudes toward women, sex, healthcare and contraception; its promise of equality among its followers but actual crushing inequality . . . it is, in its own dark way, the inevitable religion to emerge from 20th century America."
Really? Do you think the repulsive veneration of the English royal family (simultaneous demonizing of same); the weird English attitudes toward women, sex, healthcare and contraception ("What's the coldest place in the world? The English bedroom!"); the English pretense of loathing folks who strive for an aristocracy of talent and virtue rather than one of birth and wealth (as Thomas Jefferson put it) . . . makes Anglicanism the inevitable religion to emerge from 16th Century England and continue to dominate to the present?
The real American religion is still Puritanism. Puritanism, yes, Puritanism just as H.L. Mencken described it, the "haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Where would Clinton and Monica Lewinsky be without Puritanism? Not to mention John Edwards. The French don't understand it. The Germans shake their heads--their presidents get married four times, and they kick people out of office for plagiarizing their dissertations or letting colleagues offer the use of their country houses (which falls under the verboten category of accepting favors from business executives) not for having affairs, selling drugs or guns, or starting wars. No, American Puritanism is the endlessly invokable religion, the one that elects presidents, starts scandals, motivates citizens. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and understand that recent exposés of Scientology--by Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer prizewinning journalist, and by Jenna Miscavige Hill, a former Scientologist, point to a streak of indoctrination and fear-mongering that crossed the Atlantic with the Puritan divines on the Mayflower and other leaky vessels.
Scientology as the Puritanism of our time? Yeah, maybe. It's big business in bed with religion, in other words, it's Puritanism and the First Amendment, the one leaning toward separation of church and state, in bed all snuggled up yet again.
Anyone surprised?
Really? Do you think the repulsive veneration of the English royal family (simultaneous demonizing of same); the weird English attitudes toward women, sex, healthcare and contraception ("What's the coldest place in the world? The English bedroom!"); the English pretense of loathing folks who strive for an aristocracy of talent and virtue rather than one of birth and wealth (as Thomas Jefferson put it) . . . makes Anglicanism the inevitable religion to emerge from 16th Century England and continue to dominate to the present?
The real American religion is still Puritanism. Puritanism, yes, Puritanism just as H.L. Mencken described it, the "haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Where would Clinton and Monica Lewinsky be without Puritanism? Not to mention John Edwards. The French don't understand it. The Germans shake their heads--their presidents get married four times, and they kick people out of office for plagiarizing their dissertations or letting colleagues offer the use of their country houses (which falls under the verboten category of accepting favors from business executives) not for having affairs, selling drugs or guns, or starting wars. No, American Puritanism is the endlessly invokable religion, the one that elects presidents, starts scandals, motivates citizens. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and understand that recent exposés of Scientology--by Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer prizewinning journalist, and by Jenna Miscavige Hill, a former Scientologist, point to a streak of indoctrination and fear-mongering that crossed the Atlantic with the Puritan divines on the Mayflower and other leaky vessels.
Scientology as the Puritanism of our time? Yeah, maybe. It's big business in bed with religion, in other words, it's Puritanism and the First Amendment, the one leaning toward separation of church and state, in bed all snuggled up yet again.
Anyone surprised?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)