OF A GOLDEN AGE

Busy day.

Today’s Jerkcity is genuinely funny, instead of the usual abstruse and baffling.

Seth Godin tells us why it’s never okay to say “I just work here”:

Susan said, and I’m quoting precisely the same line, “All I do is work here. They pay my salary, but I’m me, not them.”

No, Susan, you are them.

The reason your brand is falling apart is because so many of your colleagues are saying the same thing, denying the same responsibility. Consumers don’t believe (or care) that there are warrens and fiefdoms and monarchies within your company.

From the Frugal Vegan (such a good blog!), a thoughtful, resonant post on choosing childlessness:

More than once, I have spoken to parents who said that knowing what they know now, they would have chosen not to have children. [ . . . ] I am always told “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I love my kids but if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t have them.” My mother in law even said the same thing after a long discussion.

Popular wisdom does hold that the people who should have children are the ones most likely to choose not to. Maybe it’s because they grasp the full ramifications of their decision and have the most genuine sense of fear of inadequacy as parents.

Abraham Lincoln’s most famous speech is the Gettysburg Address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

And here, from the Caustic Cover Critic, this preview of Penguin’s latest set of Great Ideas volumes:

What a magnificent design. The others in the Great Ideas series are equally compelling.

A fascinating acquaintance and Beloit College classmate now works at a Heartland Alliance office a few doors down from my office. He was sitting in the patio area of our local independent fair-trade coffee shop.

Nonprofit Heartland Alliance offers a variety of services at various Chicago locations, including very low-cost healthcare, life skills education, and help for those transitioning from or on the brink of homelessness. Beloit College is some kind of wonderful do-gooder factory, as I can’t even count the number of people I know who’ve gone to work at nonprofits, in higher ed, teaching English overseas, and so forth.

One of Andrew Sullivan’s substitute bloggers posted an excerpt from Mark Oppenheimer’s excellent feature on two prominent Holocaust deniers.

Oppenheimer’s final paragraph is the most provocative moment in what is otherwise a triumphant, thoughtful piece. The money thought (emphasis mine):

I remember what the theologian Stanley Hauerwas once told me about premillennial dispensationalists, those fundamentalist Christians who extrapolate from the Bible extremely complicated, unbelievably detailed, scenarios about the end times, like those in the Left Behind novels. “They’re very smart,” Hauerwas said. “You can’t be stupid and come up with that. God gave them minds, and they need to use them.” In other words, forbidden by their religion from developing real intellectual curiosity, they turn their brainpower toward half-baked biblical exegesis that makes sense according to its own hermetic logic. Weber and Smith are trapped like that. Holocaust denial is, like more benign species of fundamentalism, a well-furnished playground for immature and sometimes deranged intellects. It isn’t necessarily about Jews, or even about the Holocaust; it’s about finding something to do with one’s mind.

Yesterday’s Minimalist is an exhaustive list of salad ideas sorted into vegan, vegetarian, seafood, meat, noodle, and grain. It’s wonderful and inspiring, but the funniest part is this five-times-repeated instruction every time Mark Bittman mentions cucumbers:

(if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first)

Good advice, regardless.

It includes this brilliant idea (one of many in the list):

78. What happens when your Chicago hot dog falls apart: Toss together tomato wedges, chopped pickles, hot peppers, shredded lettuce and a few slices of broiled or grilled hot dog. Dress with a vinaigrette made with mustard (should be yellow for authenticity, but …) and celery salt. (You could throw in freshly made croutons; inauthentic, but better than a hot dog bun.)

Why he fails to mention cucumbers in the Chicago hot dog salad, I can’t say. Dirty pool though. Wikipedia says the cucumber is considered optional. Dirty pool again!

17-year-old Edna St. Vincent Millay, in a letter to her sister:

I’m glad you’re not here, Norma, so that I’d have to show you I’m neither a pickled lime nor a pants-button.

I hope we are all able to say the same, unless some of you are indeed pants-buttons.

During this time in her life Ms. Millay signed her correspondence “Vincent,” which is wonderful.

Yesterday my mom and I did some comprehensive shoe shopping, which went pretty well considering I have large, uniquely shaped feet. My friend Sam, who is the king of not just the Birkenstock and clogs school of thought but also wearing them with handknitted socks (can you tell he is the best?), seemed the right person to tell about my new sandals:

caroline: Shmuel
tychoish: yes dearest
caroline: I bought some Birkenstocks today.
caroline: First pair.
tychoish: you’ll have a girlfriend by the end of the summer

This weekend I talked with a friend of a friend who’s a teacher about the way her students use hate speech without realizing it. My mom, who’s also a teacher, constantly tells her students not to use slurs and other hate words in class and it’s an uphill battle.

Christine tells her students the classroom is a “No Hate Zone,” and in a classic back and forth, they insist that their slurs aren’t really slurs. Yeah, what else is new: Fairly intelligent kids I used to know would say, sincerely, “The word ‘gay’ doesn’t mean the same thing when I use it.” Oh really? Sorry, I didn’t realize you could singlehandedly change the English language.

Apparently her kids use the phrase “no homo” in this context: “Mike and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie, no homo.” It’s basically a hatey version of the way we joke about bromance or man-dates. Instead of good-humoredly acknowledging their homosocial behavior they have to turn it into a “Gay people, gross!” thing instead.

(See also: Frindle. Not a true analogy since in that book he invents a completely new word and assigns it an existing meaning, instead of trying to, you know, swapsies.)

Ernest Hemingway friend-cum-memoirist and allaround talented good guy A.E. Hotchner has an ethically shocking editorial today. Apparently the new edition of Hemingway’s final (posthumous) book A Moveable Feast contains extensive edits by a family member:

[Hemingway's] grandson has removed several sections of the book’s final chapter and replaced them with other writing of Hemingway’s that the grandson feels paints his grandma in a more sympathetic light. Ten other chapters that roused the grandson’s displeasure have been relegated to an appendix, thereby, according to the grandson, creating “a truer representation of the book my grandfather intended to publish.”

Hotchner presents a narrative about his friend Hemingway working on the book over time, sending manuscripts to his publisher, and so forth. The San Francisco Chronicle tells the story flatly without mention of the editorial wherewithal of son Patrick or grandson Sean Hemingway. The Boston Globe criticizes the rearrangement of and additions to the text but in a less pointed way.

So who has the higher ground? The children and grandchildren of Hemingway’s second wife, who began as a mistress and, Hemingway wrote in the original Moveable Feast, homewrecker? Or Hemingway’s peer who seeks to do honorably by his friend’s memory and legacy?

Via A Suitable Wardrobe:

May your day be sunny and your trousers the right length.

Can I get an amen!