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The Worst Kind
Me, seated in Millies Cafe finishing my Tri-tip and doing the Sunday New York Times Crossword:
Well, I think I’ve come to the end of what I can do.
My Wife, dryly:
Imagine
Good thing I had swallowed the last of the Tri-tip. And by the way Her Great Grandmother was a Hiemlick.
“Never Mind”
Ahh. Well….
I guess having more or less trashed the coaches stupid idea of putting his offensive receivers on defense I ought to mention that in the third quarter of the last game the opposing team, coming in with a hot running game, had minus six yards of offense.
Coach on.
Beware the Dork
I’m still kind of smiling when I think of it. On the way home yesterday the traffic on the freeway came to a complete halt. A guy in a black pickup truck pulled over to the shoulder and opened his door. He snapped his fingers and whistled and a canine appeared from somewhere on the freeway, trotted nonchalantly past his truck, ignored the whistling and the beckoning fingers and went down off the shoulder of the road and into the bushes. It was a nice gesture on someone’s part, he apparantly thought the animal was a dog he was rescuing, but one has to wonder how much fun it might have been if the coyote had taken him up on his offer.
Hey, Nancy, do you have coyotes in your subdivisions or is Texas now tamed?
La Donna Mobile
So the guys and I walk into Donnas house to move everything out and into a storage bin or her garage and so she says “sorry you caught me in all this disorder”
And I make some sort of really hilarious joke about
“better disorder than dishabille”
And two more equally hilarious sallies and she leans into my face and says
“I just want you to quit blathering on in my face”.
Which was a good shot but
Steve then said,
“What and take away half of his shtick”
And Merle, The quiet guy, said
“What the heck could the other half be?”
Merle, I think I like the quiet thing better.
If you Shtick me do I not bleed?
(I ride with a “rough bunch” and you better be able to take it)
Long time passing
Long time ago
A sports column about my hapless team says that :
“Receivers moving to defense”
The coach hopes to overcome the defensive secondaries weakness by replacing it with the offensive receivers. At least the receivers wont be bothered with that pesky ball anymore. Thats one major annoyance removed. It must have been like being crazed by gnats buzzing around your head all evening.
As a solution, at least it isn’t boring. The only real problem I see with it is that the receivers couldn’t. And if we are talking talent and not training here, it doesnt seem likely that they will be more talanted as defenders than they were as receivers. I’m also almost certain that they will be less trained in the new position. So ….. What the hey.
And where is the defense (so to speak) going? It’s subtle but I think I see the reasoning here. The defensive secondary who couldn’t defend will replace the offensive receivers who couldn’t catch. It’s the perfect ballanced solution.
Well, what have we got to lose. Oh! yeah.
The column goes on to say:
“Because of injuries and just plain lack of talent, ……….’s football team is weak in the defensive secondary, as evidenced by the way ….. and ………tore through the ……. in piling up a combined 81 points against them the last two games”.
Yes, the defense has been bad, and the offense almost non existant but now with the untalented defense on offense and the clueless receivers playing defense the mornings dew pearled and alls right with the world. The quarterback will now have a whole fresh crew to almost pass to. That’s fine I guess, because there doesn”t even seem to be a passing interest in the lack of scoring in the last game. Further, with his recievers playing defense who does the quarterback almost pass to now? He or somebody better be able to run. And I think if they could have run they would already have run. Perhaps in a metaphoric way its just like my own life (especially the lack of talant thing). It’s just going to be defend like crazy, run out the clock, survive looking a little less whipped and hope to hit one, at the end of the game, probably on a gimmick play, and perhaps even win.
The quarterback is actually pretty good ( I dont see him being exchanged with the kicker). His problem is that you just can’t look great if everything you throw is dropped or misjudged. And how much of that was just lack of confidence, experience, training and the resulting frustration, on the part of everyone, fans, team and coaching staff alike.
And yet, yes dang it, I hope this desperate silliness works (in a real or a metaphoric way).
the fires are out in our area but as I drove over the pass this morning I saw a Santa Anna gust of wind pick up a mass of ashes and swirl it away like a fog.
Fly ash is on everything and you can occasionally see it twisting in the air when the sun angle is right.
Well, annoyed ones anyway
I had high hopes for my old college and its new football team. We have a new coach and things looked hopefull.
I watched them play last night. I think play is the right word. I will not name the team out of respect for the dead.
The first step to fixing a difficultyis to identify the problem.
Let me put it succinctly. They can’t stop the run or the pass. Or in other words, the defense doesnt. Beyond that, their receivers can’t. But boy can that Quarterback pass. Not accurately of course.
I am not so hopeful any more
or perhaps
What Youse Women’s Wants
or even
Yale to the Chief
You will probably want to skip this one. It’s long and specialized (well, that’s one way to put it). I just got going on it and didn’t want to throw it away.
I’m going to comment on this but I hope I haven’t been sucked in by a clever parody of the feminist position
LA Times
23 September 2005
What Yale Women want
By Karen Stabiner
If the Last generation of women obsessed about cracking the glass ceiling, a new crop of college undergrads seems less interested in the professional stratosphere than in a soft—cushy—landing.
Watch this space for the definition of cushy. I think all women who stay home and raise children will be surprised. Ah heck, that is the definition of cushy (other than the being surprised part).
The New York times recently got its hands on a Yale University questionnaire in which 60% of the 138 female respondents said that they intend to stop working when they have children, and then to work part time, if at all, once the kids are in school. A reporter talked to students at other elite East Coast colleges who echoed the same back-to-the-future sentiment: Work is but a way station; a woman’s place is in the home. The young women think they’re doing the right thing for their eventual children, having watched too many of their moms’ generation try to juggle career and family. And at least one male student at Harvard finds the whole lord-and-master idea “sexy.”
So the women are determined to do it better than their mothers who they have seen struggle. That doesn’t sound so bad. Further, where did this Lord and Master thing come from? What exactly does that mean? If a woman stays home to be a mother is it the absolute implication that she is thus inferior and a peasant bondswoman. How completely insulting to every woman who does stay home
My footnoting wouldn’t transfer to this venue. The original article which gave rise to this article in the L.A. Times is from the New York Times and is the one from which most of Stabiners article is drawn What was actually said in the original New York Times article refered to and paraphrased by our author was :
Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women’s plans to stay home with their children. “A lot of the guys were like, ‘I think that’s really great,’ ” Ms. Currie said. “One of the guys was like, ‘I think that’s sexy.’ Staying at home with your children isn’t as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30’s now.”
New York Times [all the quotes in bold are from the original New York Times article of
September 20, 2005
Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood
By LOUISE STORY ]
There is no mention of “Lord and Master” there. Where did that come from? I guess from the basic unstated assumptions of our author.
This, from excellent students who have clambered over the backs of other, merely good students to gain entry into schools that traditionally have incubated tomorrow’s leaders.
Being smarter and or better prepared than other students is clambering over their backs? I feel like I came in in the middle of the movie. “Non –workers of the world arise. You have nothing to lose but your chains”.
These future moms betray a startling combination of naiveté and privilege. To plot this kind of future, a woman has to have access to a pool of wealthy potential husbands, she has to stay married at a time when half of marriages end in divorce, and she has to ignore the history of the women’s movement.
Don’t these young women have exactly that pool of wealthy potential husbands? They are surely in the right place at the right time. Did they get there by privilege? Of what type was that privilege? And one supposes that their “best bet” to stay married probably is to stay home and avoid the stress and bifurcated life involved in working and mothering. And taking advantage of an advantage is bad? I can envision cases in which it would be bad but this one seems innocuous enough. What is this, communism? I wonder what horrors would ensue if they did manage to ignore the history of the women’s movement. Where would these “naïve” freshmen girls have learned that particular history anyway? And what is with this repetitive refrain of needing rich husbands so they can stay home. The women I know who work, that’s pretty well everyone all right, assure me that working while raising a family is an expensive proposition itself. At the risk of mouthing the well known banal commonplaces, let me risk one. When you have a baby you can’t just leave it home alone tied to the leg of the table with a bowl of water near by. Someone has to be there. That someone often is not a volunteer. The rest of the arguments you can supply yourself.
When we read the actual quotes from the original New York Times article some of these young women, the ones quoted, seem to have come from anything but a privileged background.
Homework assignment: research Betty Friedens’s motivation for writing “The Femine Mystique”. It’s also helpful if she ignores the following: The number of dual-working couples is on the rise. Ditto the number of women in the work force.
Will it be on the rise if these young women are typical of other young women in America? This seems to be the consensus of those young women interviewed in all the elite Eastern schools. “Forinstance” the original New York Times, not the LA Times, article said:
“At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates. There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want. Many women at the nation’s most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children.”
We may be seeing the thin end of a wedge. What then? Will raw numbers and rising percentages justify the new trend? Apparently so
The one number that’s dwindling? Households supported by one adult, who in the current fantasy would be the extremely well-paid husband.
Isn’t it the extremely well paid husband that is the current fantasy of our author? The young women haven’t mentioned them. Perhaps they are willing to do with less to have more.
Fewer than 25% of American households survive on one paycheck, and in a few years that number will decline to fewer than 20%.
What will the percentages be if we are seeing a swing to staying home? Is one making an argument that one must follow the trend? It won’t be the trend if 60% of everyone decided to buck it.
If the undergrads still believe they can beat the odds, they must have slept through statistics.
What seems to be worrying our author is the “fact” that if these young women do as they intend to do the odds (statistics) will change. That’s pretty empowering.
Or worse, they think they are above the fray.
Holy Hell, it’s an undeclared war and they aren’t doing their part! Soldier on young naïve women! War has been declared!
They seem to have learned one lesson—I’m in it for me—far too well, confusing personal comfort with social progress.
I am flat dumfounded. First, who did they learn the lesson from; I’d guess it was from our author or similar compatriots, and second how personally comfortable is the average mother who stays and home and raises children. Is this bonbon time? Not likely. Has our author decided that stay at home moms are a bunch of ineffectual layabouts. And third, how is working plus raising children a form of social progress of a selfless, self-sacrificing nature? Feminists are thus not in it for themselves? Who then are they in it for? Is it the “great big sister hood of women”? Let us all break into song. Is working not done to advance the individual but to advance a feminist agenda, to advance an ideal? Wow! Tell that to some woman who works for some other woman in some major corporation. Let her appeal to sisterhood when she messes up. Apparently, power, position and money are not one of the ends. How noble and how rare.
Laura Wexler, a Yale professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies, confessed surprise that women still consider this a “private” issue, and she wondered how 25 years could pass without more social change to make women’s decisions easier.
What is more interesting is the actual quote which said:
“For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation’s top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.” “They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they’re accepting it,” said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women’s and gender studies at Yale. “Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.” “I really believed 25 years ago,” Dr. Wexler added, “that this would be solved by now.”
Perhaps what has happened is encapsulated in another quote from the original article:
“Emily Lechner, one of Ms. Liu’s roommates, hopes to stay home a few years, then work part time as a lawyer once her children are in school.” “Her mother, Carol, who once thought she would have a full-time career but gave it up when her children were born, was pleasantly surprised to hear that. “I do have this bias that the parents can do it best,” she said. “I see a lot of women in their 30’s who have full-time nannies, and I just question if their kids are getting the best.”
Well, I can see how that happened. Experience has taught them certain things. When these young women decided to do something that didn’t fit what their betters thought they should do they were mocked as self serving.( I don’t see how that mocking them made women’s decisions anything but harder). And how can motherhood be anything but a private issue? Isn’t the not working thing ones own business? Is it really a betrayal of some ideal to privately decide to do things that seem to be a very private decision? When did all this become a group decision? I confess surprise. And I am not kidding.
Her colleague, Yale college dean Peter Salovey, expressed concern that so few students were able to think “outside the box,” gender wise.
He actually is said to have said (I’m beginning to get more careful about purported quotes):
University officials said that success meant different things to different people and that universities were trying to broaden students’ minds, not simply prepare them for jobs. “What does concern me,” said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, “is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”
And why should they? Besides if everyone else thinks the young women are doing or thinking the wrong thing, aren’t the young women thinking outside the box, gender-wise? The problem seems to be that they are thinking out side the deans particular gender box. Really, it isn’t that they can’t think outside the box but that, having thought, they have come to the “wrong conclusion” box. Perhaps the surprise here is that all this teaching (condescending mocking and deriding) has not convinced the young women.
And a Tiffany’s box it is: every step of this retrograde scenario requires capital, from law school – a popular goal for most of these aspiring if temporary professionals—to the husband with bucks. The choice of law is a little chilling in its practicality:
(This has got to be a joke. Practicality is chilling? Isn’t that an admission that ones own, other, position is impractical? Is impracticality now an ideal?)
You can’t take 10 years off from biomedical researcher orthopedic surgery and fit right in when you choose to go back to work, but the law is more of an evergreen profession.
Smart thinking I think. (Is it chilly in here? Did someone leave a window open in this particular box? I’m thinking I’m sensing fresh air or practicality.)
As a working mother, I have nothing but empathy for the desire to avoid what author Arlie Hochschild rightly calls the second shift – in her book of that name – the double workday that most employed mothers put in. I have nothing but anger at the proposed solution. Do we grab a private solution or address the public issue? Is a hedge-fund husband the answer, or should women smart enough to be tomorrow’s leaders seek new ideas that pay more than lip-service to family values.
There is so much elitist arrogance here as to boggle the mind. One must apparently live at a very high financial level or it is not living, hence one must marry a very rich man or one cannot be said to be living. And its apparently ok for the stupid women who wont be leaders of tomorrow to do dumb things like living on (or better yet ,within) one income and staying home and raising their children, but it is not only beneath these young women, but a betrayal of the .. Well, what…? I guess whatever our author is. And she has nothing but anger at a private solution. What is this, a bee hive? And to say that these women ought to be smart enough to seek new ideas about family values begs the question of what these women are thinking. Perhaps they think, having seen those “outside the box ideas” their mothers espoused, that they did not “practically” work and were chilled by the impracticality. Are they to let they and their potential future families suffer for some future as yet unthought-of “pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye” family values in the name of the greater good for the greater number having watched too many of their moms’ generation try to juggle career and family”? Beyond that what would be our author’s definition of a family value?
There are only two possibilities here: If these young women are right that staying home means better children, we have to come up with a way to give more parents—moms and dads—the chance to be at home more frequently during their kid’s formative years.
Only two possibilities? Well, that’s the way of academia I guess. Forget nuance. No grey allowed there. And as to the concept that one must only want “To be home more frequently; I see that as a locked in position. These young women surely mean to be there more than “frequently”. They seem to want always to be there. That seems to be a thought that for our author cannot be thought. She could perhaps rise to wanting to just be there more often but that’s it.
The womens’s movement is about choice and responsibility, not just choice,and the math here should be simle for girls who get over 700 on their math SAT: Opportunity for one coed does not equal choice for all.
The movement is just not about the wrong choice, this particular choice or someone else’s (incorrect) choice.
Is that choice for all coeds with over 700 SAT’s or all girls? I think we can figure that one out without really high math scores. And again we have the assumption that your life is not your own. The hive decides and if you offend it the queen stings. “Opportunity for one coed” must be “choice for all”. Why, and since when? (This sounds a lot like the army where if one did not shave, all got to dry shave to enforce conformity).
Or they’re wrong, and in their smugness have managed to insult every mother in this country who needs to work. Surely some of the mothers of these 138 young women had jobs.
Of course some of their mothers had jobs since the premise of the original article is that “having watched too many of their moms’ generation try to juggle career and family” they are determined not to. Given the statistics sited here of course they did. Now let us try to imagine why all these young women have decided, all by themselves apparently, to stay at home. Does anything come to mind? Try thinking, in or out of the box. More to the point is what the young women really said about this.
“For most of the young women who responded to e-mail questions, a major factor shaping their attitudes seemed to be their experience with their own mothers, about three out of five of whom did not work at all, took several years off or worked only part time.”“My stepmom’s very proud of my choice because it makes her feel more valuable,” said Kellie Zesch, a Texan who graduated from the University of North Carolina two years ago and who said that once she had children, she intended to stay home for at least five years and then consider working part time. “It justified it to her, that I don’t look down on her for not having a career.”
Exactly. But our author asks:
Are their daughters worse off than those whose mothers stayed at home? If all of the undergrads agree that some among them turned out better than others—and that’s where their stay-home logic inevitably leads them – then they should step forward. No consensus
Class dismissed.
“If all… agree that some”? There is some sort of logic being used here but it seems like an” in group”, specialized argot. And Whoops. Class probably got dismissed a little early. It’s not like this logic is so air tight that all of those young women are now slapping themselves in the forehead and saying “what could I have been thinking!” In fact do you think many of them would buy this? There is probably a grand “stepping forward” right now. Certainly many would say some turned out better. They are quoted as saying just that. That is the consensus of the original New York Times article that our author is reacting to. And if some are not better than others why do teachers give grades? Ah! Some probably don’t. I think though, that dismissed or not dismissed, Class is involved. This sounds like an elitist class with its elitist ideas dismissing the class (family) values of the lesser breeds without the law.
In fact look at what the women are saying:
“Uzezi Abugo, a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who hopes to become a lawyer, says she, too, wants to be home with her children at least until they are in school. “I’ve seen the difference between kids who did have their mother stay at home and kids who didn’t, and it’s kind of like an obvious difference when you look at it,” said Ms. Abugo, whose mother, a nurse, stayed home until Ms. Abugo was in first grade.
And
Angie Ku, another of Ms. Liu’s roommates who had a stay-at-home mom, talks nonchalantly about attending law or business school, having perhaps a 10-year career and then staying home with her children. “Parents have such an influence on their children,” Ms. Ku said. “I want to have that influence. Me!” She said she did not mind if that limited her career potential.
“I’ll have a career until I have two kids,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily matter how far you get. It’s kind of like the experience: I have tried what I wanted to do.”
Ms. Ku added that she did not think it was a problem that women usually do most of the work raising kids. “I accept things how they are,” she said. “I don’t mind the status quo. I don’t see why I have to go against it.” After all, she added, those roles got her where she is.
“It worked so well for me,” she said, “and I don’t see in my life why it wouldn’t work.”
Talk about a pregnant paragraph. I wont draw lines under the gravid parts but …the whole counter argument, no wait, its the premier argument isn’t it, is in there. There you go. Are they willing to admit some turned out better than others and to say they see a difference? Guess so. And they think it wasnt feminism tht got them there. Class back in session.
Finally, a correspondent who calls himself Joe said of all this:
I couldn’t agree more that this is not about feminism at all. This is an article chastising the privileged (through wealth or superior SAT scores) for not living up to their privileged potential and [for] attempting to raise their children themselves instead of with the nannies they were raised by. How dare they! And are they calling the author a bad mother? Because she has worked very hard to give them the chance to go to Yale and now they never call.
That opens up a different set of equally valid questions which we will let go for the present.