A good set this week, from Live Journal:
1. If you could live in any period in history other than now, when would it be?
I would have enjoyed being a landed, well-educated gentleman in the Age of Enlightenment. What a thrilling time for science and politics.
2. What knowledge or skills do you think you’d have to learn to be able to fit in your chosen period of history?
Agriculture and at least one skilled trade.
3. If you could take just one thing from the modern world back with you, what would it be?
Antibiotics
4. What period in history would you hate to have lived in?
The Middle Ages. I’m sure I would have been burned as a witch.
5. What thing from the past would you like to see make a comeback?
The practical attitude about marriage that produced the pioneer woman rather than a batch of look-alike painted dolls.
Gardener’s Diary
It’s been a long while: my right knee kicked up again last month, but two evenings ago I dragged out the old push mower and did the lawn, and yesterday felt well enough to do some real gardening and to visit a local plant sale.
Understatement
In 1963-64, I spent one unhappy year at “Pembroke in Brown” as it was known then.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the antidiluvian administration was fighting – a fight they eventually lost – to preserve a way of life and a way of thinking about women in academia that had long gone by the board.
This morning, I found a good description and example in of all places, the Brown Alumni Magazine, which describes the “antiquated rules” that the late Dean Rosemary Pierrel Sorrentino and her Assistant Dean, the detestable Gretchen Tonks, insisted upon enforcing.
Interestingly enough, Dean Pierrel demanded the same freedom for herself that she wanted to deny to her students. She never understood that freedom of thought is the same creature, whether academic or social.
Evidently Pierrel married well: upon her death in 2004, her husband left a bequest to the University in her honor. Some thirty years earlier, in 1971, the College she headed dissolved, marking the end of “Penny Pembroker” and the beginning of the “Brown woman”. If I had an unforgiving spirit, I’d be tempted to write “good riddance” as a coda to both of those events.
Perfect Neighbor?
No wild parties, no barking dogs, no kids to get into fights with other kids, no husband to get into someone else’s pants or to forget to return borrowed tools.
An old lady with a cat, a green thumb and an independent streak could be the perfect neighbor.
Training Mr. Fluffles
Mr. Fluffles has been here since January 31, slightly over three months.
I’ve been trying to teach him to “shake” and this morning, we had a breakthrough: twice, he pawed at my hand without trying to bite it.
I’ve been told by people who are very experienced with cats that they are trainable, and do adapt to new patterns.
Working at Home
I tried out the local co-op workspace yesterday, a well-appointed facility that includes nice-looking floors, a kitchen/bar area, good lighting, lots of desks and chairs and a conference room equipped with an excellent projector.
It’s handsome all right, but being a rehabbed older building, the HVAC is awful. By 5 pm, I was a soggy mess, and glad to be the last person there.
Today I’m back at home, where it’s 68 degrees. I set up a fan and am very comfortable in spite of the fact that outside, the temperature is over 80 in the sun (a friend from Acton wrote that it’s expected to hit 95 there today).
My place is nothing to brag about in the house beautiful sense, but when it comes down to brass tacks, comfort trumps looks every time.
Lost
I’ve been trying to understand why I cried before my adoptive mother’s funeral. I didn’t love her, most of the time didn’t even like her, and her passing meant that there was one person less in the world who had the capacity to hurt me.
NYT Cynical Academic Bigotry: Reader Has It Right
An article in today’s New York Times provides several ugly rationales for prejudice.
Here’s one reader’s outstanding answer:
http://community.nytimes.com/article/comments/2009/04/26/fashion/26looks.html?permid=4#comment4
Friday Five
From Live Journal:
What is your favorite food from each food group?
1. Bread (Grain) Group:
Bagels, 4-corner, Pain D’Avignon Multigrain
2. Meat (Protein) Group:
Baked haddock, charbroiled sirloin tips
3. Vegetable Group:
Never met a potato I didn’t like. Romaine.
4. Fruit Group:
Watermelon
5. Sugars, Fats and Oils:
Pesto. Real butter.
Two Little Pals
My cat Fluffles loves my 9 year old grandson James. When James stays overnight, Fluffles sleeps at his feet. He permits James to pet him and to feed him Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.
This morning, they both had bacon for breakfast. Right now, they are in the guest room watching TV. James is in bed snacking on Goldfish and Fluffles is on his window seat.
Depressed about the ugly state of the yard, I bought flowers yesterday for the deck, phlox and geraniums, and that’s cheered me up quite a bit.
Even though the trees are bare, between the flowers and James being here for an overnight, it almost feels like summer.