Review: Falling Apart

I decided to read more books I think I'll disagree with. In that spirit, I just finished Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.

Murray lays out the evidence that while upper-class white Americans haven't changed much in terms of work, religiosity, and marriage, lower-class whites have. By upper-class he means college-educated people in the top 20% of earners, and by lower-class he means the bottom 30% of earners, which encompasses some working class and some non-working people. (He limits his discussion to whites to demonstrate that he's talking about class and not race differences. He states that the same patterns hold true among other races.)

While my sociology and social work background have emphasized economic and structural disparities in explaining why some groups have it worse than others, Murray points to cultural changes. For example, while the rate of physical accidents is much lower than it was in the 60s, the percentage of people on disability is much higher. To be fair, I'm not sure how much of this is due to the increase in laziness that Murray alleges, and how much is due to changes in definitions of disability such as the inclusion of mental illness.

Murray looks at four of what he considers cardinal values: marriage, industriousness, religiosity, and honesty (in the sense of not committing crimes). While some of these raised my ideology red flags, he does back them up with data about actual quality of life. Declining religiosity, he argues, is correlated with weaker social ties and lower self-reported happiness. Nations without a hardworking population will fail, he argues (taking some cheap shots at Europe along the way). And the decline of marriage, both in terms of higher divorce rates and more never-married adults, is bad for kids. He lays out the evidence that children not raised by their married, biological parents (controlled for income) do worse in terms of delinquency, childhood illness, school dropout rates, crime, early death, and emotional health.

I kept waiting to hear what practical policy changes Murray suggested, but his recommendations were vague. He accuses the upper class of being out of touch with mainstream America (there's a quiz including questions like: have you watched a full episode of Oprah? Have you eaten at a Waffle House this year?) I agree that there's a cultural divide, but it's not clear why exactly this is bad, or how improving my knowledge of NASCAR will help the country.

The piece of Murray's advice I found most interesting was that the upper class "preach what they practice." He says upper-class families still have a grip on industriousness, marriage, and honesty, and that these values are good for them and their families. Keeping these values to themselves and allowing the poor to destroy themselves, he says, will ultimately destroy the nation. And he argues that staying politely silent when you watch people choose foolishly is not actually an act of kindness.

I'm not too interested in Murray's project of preserving the America envisioned by its founders. I'm not interested in blaming the poor for being poor. I'm not interested in blaming single parents for the demise of their relationships. And it goes against every bit of my training to say that some family styles work better than others. But I found the facts on marriage and children especially hard to look away from: both rich and poor used to have kids largely within marriage. The rich still do, but poor people now do it less. Which indicates culture, not just economic forces. And the kids whose parents aren't married to each other suffer for it.

Murray doesn't directly say that he wants more stigma against bearing children outside of marriage. And stigma seems terribly unfair, because it also targets the children who didn't choose their parents' actions. But I wonder - would it actually be better for children overall if there were more stigma? If having married parents is so important, would it be better to exert a bit more social pressure on parents to make that happen?

Followup post: Why kids come out that way

"Indio"

Who counts as Native American in the US is very different from who counts as indigenous in Ecuador. In the US, it's something kind of rare, kind of special. Americans love to tell you about how their grandmother was part Cherokee.

Here 7% of the population is straight-up indigenous, and 72% has mixed indigenous and European ancestry. People here with glossy black hair, sharp cheekbones, and russet skin mostly identify as mestizo. Whether you're read as indigenous or mestizo seems to depend mostly on your dress, hairstyle, and language rather than your physical appearance.

Here there is no Tribal ID number, no process of enrolling in a tribe, no affirmative action, no casino profits. If you marked “indigenous” on the census with only 1/32 Quichua ancestry, people here would laugh at you.


Family in Otavalo

In Massachusetts, 90% of the indigenous population died of smallpox in the first two years of contact with the English, and more were killed in clashes. (Ecuadorans are shocked when I tell them this. Here, the Spanish valued indigenous people as slave labor rather than trying to exterminate them.) The fact is that being Native American means something very different in a country where those people were almost wiped out than where they now constitute most of the gene pool.

At the daycare where I volunteer, another American brought in some coloring sheets for the kids. They had pictures of Disney characters, including an Indian from Peter Pan, half-naked and grimacing as he aims his bow. “Look,” she told the kid who received it. “Un indio.”

I didn't want to cause a scene in front of the kids or the teacher, but I wanted to ask her, “Did you think about the fact that every one of these children is descended from indigenous people? Did you think about the fact that “indio” is an insult tossed around on the street here? Did you notice that the teacher in the next room wears her hair in a long tress? Have you observed that growling and shooting stuff are not common pastimes here? Have you observed that four-year-olds absorb every scrap of information we give them? Do you realize you're teaching them more than fine motor skills?"

Nerd life

I just finished Brian Nugent's very enjoyable book American Nerd.
There are sections on the history of nerds, nerds and Japan, nerds and Jewishness, old nerds, nerds and jocks, fake nerds, nerds and autism, nerds and polyamory, nerds and escapism, nerds and science fiction, nerds and debate clubs, nerds and ham radio, nerds and the SCA, nerds and roleplaying games.

Except almost nothing on gender. What?

So, to fill that gap, a few vignettes from my life as a girl nerd:
….................

It's lunchtime in fourth grade. I am explaining to Leslie, who has no friends but me, why we should stick together. “We're both rejects,” I tell her. She draws back, affronted. “We're not rejects!” she says. I'm puzzled. It hadn't occurred to me that she wanted to be normal.

…................

It's the first week of eighth grade. In a lesson on prehistory, the teacher is trying and failing to pronounce “Australopithecus.” I blurt out the correct pronunciation (which my father taught me in early childhood because he thought it was fun to say). The boy next to me gives me a glare and begins looking for alliterative insults. “Fruity female” is the best he can manage. “Geek girl” seems more apt, but I don't suggest it.

…..................

It's lunchtime in seventh grade. I'm sitting next to my two best friends, Bridget and Christine, on one side of a cafeteria table. We have been obsessed with Star Wars for a year now, and the school's two male Star Wars fans are seated opposite us. Under Greyson's leadership, we are making up roleplaying characters. I begin describing my character, a space-traveling musician named Anya. “Why are your characters always girls?” Grayson complains. “Just because you're girls doesn't mean your characters have to be.”

“Your characters are always boys,” we retort. He's right, though – female characters are an anomaly in the Star Wars universe. George Lucas (a boy) populated his trilogy with 97% male characters.

…................

It's Bridget's thirteenth birthday, and four of us are spending the night at her house. While her parents sleep, we are roleplaying that we have been captured by Imperials and are escaping a detention cell. This is not papers-and-dice roleplaying, but advanced make-believe with lots of pretend blaster battles and dodging behind furniture.

Christine and Cass, aspiring writers, use roleplaying as a way to test out plots in which they make daring raids and die nobly. Bridget, a future lawyer, and I, a future social worker, use it as a way to test out moral principles. Bridget has been trying to persuade us that the Empire is a legitimate government and we shouldn't be trying to overthrow it at all. I've been trying to persuade Amy that shooting stormtroopers is wrong. They are having none of it.

We all like daring escapes, though, so we do plenty of that.

…...............

It's two weeks after the Columbine shootings, and the local paper has run an editorial denouncing parents who raise "geeks and goths." I write my first-ever letter to the editor, defending geeks as kids parents should be proud of. A girl sidles up to me at the lunch table. "I really liked your letter in the paper," she mutters, and skitters away.

................

It's tenth grade, and I can't bring myself to tell the president of the chess club how desperately I love him. One day I go to chess club just to be near him. There is only one other girl there, and she's really good at chess. I'm not, and I spend the meeting leaning silently on a wall because I can't stand to lose to a boy. Anyway, I despise the girls who join robotics club to be near boys they like, and I don't want to be one of them.

................

It's eleventh grade, and we are gathered after school to play Dungeons and Dragons. (My father, who originally forbid me to play D&D because he had heard it would lead us to hack each other to pieces with axes, has relented.) Christine is Dungeonmaster, and she has recruited two feckless boys to play with us. One of them is in love with her.

(Nugent points out that D&D is essentially combat reworked for physically awkward people, a way of reducing battle to dice rolls and calculations. Christine has been trained by her uncle in the typical swords-and-sorcery style of play, but when she and I play the culture is different. All our adventures feature pauses for our characters to make tea and omelets.)

On this afternoon, our characters are venturing into the countryside and come across two emaciated farmers who tell us their fields are unplowed because dark elves from the forest keep attacking them. “They're going to starve if they don't get a crop in the ground,” I declare. “We've got to plow at least one field.” The boys go along with this plan.

“The farmers tell you their plow has rusted and doesn't work,” the Dungeonmaster informs us from behind her screen.

I persist. “There's got to be something we can use. I look around to see if there's anything else pointy I can use as a plow.”

The Dungeonmaster considers. “There's a metal gate,” she decides.

“Okay, I rig up some kind of harness and hitch it to the pony.”

“It's rusty too,” intones the Dungeonmaster, “and pieces of it keep breaking off. Look, you're not supposed to be farming. You're supposed to go into the forest and find the dark elves. I don't have anything else about the farmers. The elves are the adventure.” Reluctantly, I give up my agricultural rescue plan and we go into the forest to hack at elves.

…............................

I'm 25 and Jeff's sister's boyfriend is complaining that he never gets to play Magic: the Gathering because he doesn't know anyone who plays. “You could play with Julia,” Jeff suggests.
“Very funny,” says Danner, rolling his eyes.
Jeff and I look at each other. I realize geeks no longer read me as a geek. I still love ideas, love alternate imaginings of how life could be, love being right, but now I care about seeming normal.
“...I wasn't joking,” Jeff says.
“It's okay,” I reassure Danner. “I used to play every day, but I've pretty much forgotten how.”

Turning green

It's almost St. Patrick's Day, which means the city of Boston is turning green. We already have a basketball team named the Celtics and a low-cost insurance company called Celticare whose ads feature people of color. Apparently “Celtic” is supposed to invoke Boston itself rather than an actual race or ethnicity.

By far, most of the “Irish” people in Boston have never seen Ireland and are five or six generations removed. And most by now are of fairly mixed ancestry – Italian, English, German, and whatever else. Those English and German ancestors in Boston were burning Irish convents and so forth 130 years ago. If you could pass for Anglo-Saxon at that point, it was probably very tempting.

And yet today, Irish is the most common ethnic identity in the state. Most of the country is has a plurality of self-reported German ancestry, but Southern New England claims to be very Irish.

To be fair: Boston does have actual Irish people. I have a classmate from County Mayo who spent the 90s in Boston associating only with other actually Irish people. And Boston did get a lot of Irish immigrants in the mid-nineteenth century.

Of course, if your family is recently from Nigeria, Laos, or anywhere else, your ethnicity is more than drinking green beer once a year. And many long-time Americans had their ethnic languages and cultures stolen from them by slavery. (See Mary Waters' ”Optional Ethnicities: For Whites Only?”)

Looking at children's names, Celtic names are in – Sean, Caitlin, Liam, and Maura are not just for Irish kids anymore. More obscure ones like Maeve and Callum might be for families who have some Celtic ancestry, but not necessarily. Even though most white Americans have German ancestry, nobody's naming their kids Klara or Emil. Lots of Boston-area residents have an Ashkenazi background, but those names are right out. Even people who originally had Yiddish names didn't keep them - Moishe, Schmuel, and Chavele became Morris, Sam, and Eva upon arrival on American soil.


"Celtic": not just for Celts

So why is Irishness so popular? It can't be the food.

They do have beer, but so does all of Europe and North America. They do have a firm pub culture, which might actually do a lot for a sort of ethnic identity.

Enough Irish came to Boston that they had a kind of critical mass here. It's more fun to be Irish with 3,500 of your friends than, say, Welsh with two of your cousins. And it's more worth it to open an Irish bar or dance studio.

The Irish as a whole haven't done anything too embarrassing lately (except decades of terrorism, which Americans didn't notice). German ancestry became a lot less popular with Americans after the world wars.

The Irish do have great music. Riverdance seems to have popularized Irish music and dance, albeit a quite stagey version. People seeing English traditional dance for the first time often ask me if it's Irish, maybe figuring that a cultural activity involving white people and fiddles must be Irish. And people who stare blankly when you say you like “American traditional music” smile and nod if you describe it as “Celtic” instead.

They speak English and have what's considered to be a cute accent. It's unclear whether there's something inherently appealing about an Irish accent. If only we had a way to find out if Bostonians in the era of “No Irish Need Apply” thought it was cute.

They have a body of myth, which appeals to aforementioned arty kids. But so does Scandinavia, and there's no craze to embrace your Norwegian heritage (unless in the Midwest?)

Anyway, I can't see any harm in this genealogical fad. I've been tempted to find some Irish ancestry for myself, but the best I could turn up was a lot of English people and one Scot.

What your hat says about you

Last night I was at a discussion where someone claimed to be surprised that anyone picks a car based on what "message" it sends about them. He felt it was very materialistic to do so, and said he would never think of buying a car in order to make a personal statement.

I doubt this is true. Several years ago Jeff's parents were buying a car and had the problem that one of the reasonably-priced and reliable cars they were considering was from a company with a reputation for luxury cars. This is a family that darns its socks, and they would be embarrassed to drive such a car.

I have the same dilemma buying clothes at the thrift store. I hate wearing something with a visible high-price logo, even though I know I paid $4.99 for it. I don't want other people to think I'm the kind of person who paid $70 for a sweater (whatever that "kind of person" is).

I think of it as the John Woolman Hat Problem. John Woolman was a Quaker abolitionist in the 1700s (before abolition was a thing, even among Quakers). At one point Woolman refused to wear dyed clothes, because indigo and other dyes were produced by slave labor. So he wore an undyed hat, but he had the problem that such hats were popular among young dandies. His pale hat made him look like someone who cared about fashion, which was not the image he wanted. In the end, he wore the hat and suffered a principled embarrassment.

Economist Robin Hanson calls this signaling. We all care what other people think of us, and we do lots of things to project certain messages about ourselves. Companies have an economic interest in getting us to signal "I am rich and have good taste" by buying expensive cars or whatever. But those of us who scoff at such things are trying to indicate "I don't care about such shallow things as brand names - I'm not materialistic like that." Which is, of course, its own signal.

Crazies

Last week, my dad and I were talking about the uproar about someone letting her nine-year-old son ride the New York subway alone. “I don't know,” my suburban father hedged, “Aren't there a lot of crazies on the subway?”

Meaning people who mutter to themselves? Occasionally. Disheveled people? Definitely. Drunk people? Sometimes. People who strike up unwanted conversations with strangers? Sure. Violent? I did see two people get on a shoving match on a subway car one time, but both of them appeared willing participants.

But dangerous to people who are minding their own business? No. There may be other dangers on a subway – theft, sexual harassment – but I don't think mental illness has anything to do with that.

I've heard similar reactions to my landlord situation. My landlord is paranoid, and my housemates and I are the objects of her paranoia. She believes we're practicing witchcraft against her and poisoning her with electromagnetic radiation. This results in her doing things like banging on our door at odd hours, duct taping our porch door shut, and writing us letters in all caps.

The reaction from our friends: “This is beyond entertaining, and you need to get out of there.” “It is almost as crazy as she is to stay there.” “Maybe you could have her committed!”

There's a reason she hasn't been committed: she hasn't done anything dangerous. Annoying, yes. In breach of our lease, yes. But not dangerous. And people don't seem to understand that distinction.

People who have lost touch with reality are not out to get you. If anything, they might think you're out to get them. Working on the psych ward, I have not met a single patient who would hurt a stranger. Maybe the nurse who's giving them meds, maybe an ex-boyfriend, maybe themselves, but not a stranger.

Yearning to breathe free

This summer I'm volunteering helping refugees find work. When I ask, "What was your last job?" I'm often surprised by the answer from people who are now applying for jobs as dishwashers or housekeepers.

"In South Africa, I own clothing store."

"I taught at a university in Angola."

"I distributing rice in Haiti after earthquake."

"I never had a job - I was studying to become a teacher. My parents already came here, so I was running the house for my brothers and sisters."

It's amazing how versatile they've had to be. Today I listened to a worker writing a resume with an Afghan woman. "What languages do you speak?"

"Well, Farsi and Tajik and Russian. Now English."

"Wow. Tell me about your work history."

"I was gynecologist seventeen years. When I live in Russia I doing massage. Also, I make all clothes for my family. Also, I make carpets."

"You make carpets? With all those little loops?"

"Yes. Also, I can cut hair, but I don't have license."

These people have been through things I can't imagine. They've started over and over again, fleeing from one country to another. By the time they get here some are still proud, still trying to find jobs worthy of their qualifications. Others are more pragmatic and fill out application after application. The hardest part of this work is not breaking down in tears when I help a professor or doctor apply for a job cleaning floors.

America, be grateful. The professionals of the world are lining up for visas. Their English is often faulty, but they are not. How will you welcome them?

Bus talk

Bus etiquette is different from etiquette on other kinds of transit. Buses are cheaper than faster, more convenient forms of transit (rail, cars, planes), so you get a poorer clientele. Maybe the etiquette difference is cultural, but I think it also has to do with the correlation between poverty and mental illness.

In any case, there's this woman who rides my Tuesday evening bus. She's always trying to get other passengers to go to church with her, and I once heard her propose marriage to a stranger. She also doesn't know how to regulate the volume of her voice. This week when I got on the bus she was talking loudly on her phone.

After a while, a man behind me began shouting back. "Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah! Shaddap!" Talking Woman did not appear to notice.

Once Angry Man voiced this complaint, other passengers apparently began to see Talking Woman as an actual problem (though Angry Man was far more annoying). A well-dressed woman who looked like she normally would not speak to anyone on a bus approached the driver. "Excuse me, there's a woman who's been talking nonstop on her cell phone." The driver grunted that there was nothing he could do.

But now Angry Man turned against Bourgeois Woman. "Nobody can stop her from talking! She's got a constitutional right! What is it, third amendment? Freedom of the press!"

This doesn't happen on the commuter rail.

Another world

After reading a post on a feminist blog about the Biblical womanhood movement, I had to learn more about it. I've spent the last few days immersed.

There are several main components. There's the modesty piece, about how you should dress, sit, and stand. There's the work piece, about how you should work at home or in a family business because no human but your husband or father should be your boss. There's the courtship piece, about why dating will ruin you for marriage. There's the fertility piece, about why you should have as many babies as possible. And there's the stay-at-home daughter phenomenon, which holds that home and not college is the right place for young women until marriage.

There's backlash, obviously. Commenters on feministe.com said things like, "Disgusting . . . I’m beginning to think I ought to go vandalize a church." Within Christianity, there are some more thoughtful and compassionate responses.

But I was surprised at how much I found to like. While I'm not a fan of the denim jumper look, I share the distaste for skanky clothes. I don't want men or women relegated to anyplace based on their gender, but I cheer the revival of homemaking and homesteading. This family's 1200-square-foot house with twelve residents? Awesome. And I have to admire the courage of people who live a profoundly counter-cultural lifestyle.

The movement is all about the family. This article on how daughters can treat their fathers better made me do a double-take - don't we normally advise parents on how to treat their children? Filial piety is totally out of style. And while a lot of the writing around daughters makes me want to gag, these people are on to something. Look for the good in each other. Communicate. Try to function as a unit instead of everyone striking out on their own. Give more than you take, and don't be "thing-hungry". (I can imagine that would be very important to men who are the sole wage-earners in large families).

Despite the stereotype of evangelical Christians as ignorant hicks, it's such a text-based culture. Take this argument by an eighteen-year-old homeschooled blogger. She goes through several texts, analyzes them and their historical contexts, finds flaws in her prior beliefs, and comes to a new conclusion. How many teenagers do that kind of thing without any arm-twisting?

Granted, sometimes the textual analysis goes horribly wrong. Please, please, do not use The Taming of the Shrew as your model for marriage.

Waiting it out

One of the first lessons I remember from high school Russian class is about why it's traditional for Russian brides to be sad. It's because they are leaving their family to live with their husband's household. As in many traditional cultures, women had no clout outside the home and had to get all their power within the family. The matriarch ruled over daughters and daughters-in-law. A girl marrying into the family could gain rank by bearing sons. Stick it out enough generations, and eventually you become the matriarch.

Jeff comes from the kind of close-knit family you rarely see in our culture. There are so many of them, it's overpowering. At our wedding, there were eight of my relatives and thirty-four of his. The house is like a shrine, covered in photographs of ancestors. And woe betide the woman who marries in and tries to change things. When Jeff's widowed grandfather fell in love with an abrasive woman, the men in the family took it in stride and the women freaked out. Even aunts who married in years ago never make it to the inner sanctum when it comes to making decisions.

I could probably push more before I met with real resistance, but I'm terrified to try it. I don't want to be that woman they laugh at. This weekend on a family vacation I tried to negotiate for the presence of mustard at a meal. It was a disaster.

Our lease is up in a few weeks, and we've considered moving back into the family house rather than paying too much rent for our tiny apartment. We love them and they love us, but it would be nuts. At this point, I just need to remember that there's a reason I have my own household. I came to this family twenty years too late to be on even footing. In another generation or two, I'll have a chance at being a matriarch.

Sociological moment

Recently Jeff and I went to my cousin's very posh wedding on Cape Cod. At the rehearsal dinner, the main course was whole lobsters, antennae and all. Most of us didn't have a clue how to get at the food inside the shell. The bride stood up to demonstrate, holding her lobster tail aloft.

"You grab it like this - and you crack it like this - and then you pull the meat out."

So we poor bumpkins were educated in the haute cuisine of Cape Cod. But of course, lobster is only posh food because we think it is. If we went to a wedding in some other culture and saw the bride cracking crustaceans open with her bare hands, we'd think they were barbarians!

What changes

At the wedding, a friend asked me if I thought being married was going to change my life. I can now answer:

My relationship with Jeff doesn't feel different, except that we have more free time now because we're not planning a wedding. What does feel different is our relationship to society at large.

This whole wedding thing has made me feel embarassingly status quo. I always hated the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" because they sounded so smug and teenagerish. "Fiancee" is even worse, as it sounds like an irritating woman who keeps waving the rock on her left hand at people. I quite liked "partner", partly because it made other people say things like "Wait, are you marrying a man or a woman?"

As soon as we got engaged, people who really only knew one of us started addressing party invitations and Christmas cards to both of us. Facebook was suddenly full of ads for teeshirts emblazoned "Future Mrs. Smith" and "Mrs. Williams In Training". The other day we got our first package addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Kaufman. (As far as I can tell, I'm not a Mrs. of any kind.)

On the more pleasant side, we can file our taxes jointly - Jeff is doing it right now, although he spent the first half of the evening filling out the 2007 forms by mistake. I'm on his insurance. We were actually registered as domestic partners for this purpose last fall, but it's cheaper if the federal government recognizes your relationship. If we end up applying to the Peace Corps, we can go together. We can travel together in more conservative countries and not have to stay in separate rooms. Heck, we can even stay in my childhood bedroom without my father forbidding it on the grounds of being "too awkward."

In stepping into this pattern, I keep thinking about the people who can't or don't. The tax breaks they don't get, the insurance coverage, the cards sent to both of them, the congratulations, the soup pots and spatulas.

The most important part is still the part I was worried about the October night I sat Jeff down under a tree and told him I wanted to marry him. I had tried looking at my life without him in it, and I didn't like how it looked. I wanted him to know I was in it for good, and I wanted to know if the same was true of him. I wanted us to be able to plan where we were going to live, how we were going to live, knowing we could each count on the other being there.

Will you forgive me for closing with a little sentiment?

If truth be told,
It was not priest, who made us one,
Nor finger
circled with gold,
Nor soft delights when day is done
and arms enfold.
These bonds are firm,
but in death-storm
They may not hold-
We were welded man and wife
By hammer-strokes of daily life.

Ellen Sophia Bosanquet, 1938

Required to emote

I see more and more sales pitches based, strangely enough, on love.

From Citizens’ Bank “Credo”:
Hug the customer. Smile. Say thank you. Return phone calls and e-mails in a timely manner. Do whatever you can every day, in every way, to provide world-class service. Give customers a reason to say, “Wow, I love these people.” In short, treat the customer the way you would love to be treated all the time.

It's an odd blend of professionalism and Barney the dinosaur. Of course bank workers should return my phone calls, but they should not hug me. I may appreciate their good service, but I will not say, "I love these people." And as a worker I shouldn't be required to display emotional attachment to people who are in fact not my friends but my customers.

When Jeff and I were researching wedding rings and the ethical problems with the gold industry, I read a series of incredible statements by companies selling "ethical gold". Cred Jewelry's slogan is "Mined with love, made with love, to show your love". On their website they explain that they mean their company "will work toward" standards like:

Employment is freely chosen.
Working conditions are safe and hygienic.
Child labour is not used.
No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed.

In short, they mean "We're approaching normal American labor law." Because most gold miners work in conditions that more resemble slavery, by comparison this constitutes mining "with love". Likewise, Equal Exchange fairly-traded products have the slogan "From small farmers with love." I can just picture a miner smiling fondly as he shovels, thinking, "Some American will be really happy when her husband pays hundreds of dollars for this bit of metal." Or a coffee farmer picking beans and thinking, "This will make a wonderful latte for someone in Germany." Even if you treat him better than your competition, don't expect me to believe that man loves his job. How about "Mined with dignity"? "Farmed fairly"?

By all means, let's treat each other with compassion and respect. Do whatever you do - mining, selling coffee, answering the phone - fairly and ethically. Work on your agape. But don't confuse business interests with love.

Education

Lately I've read a couple of novels set in 1930s Britain, both of which reference young women hired to do housework in other people's houses. I had always assumed "hired help" was something only the rich had, but I think I was wrong. I think that in the country before there were many jobs available for women, being someone's hired girl was a very normal step between childhood and adult life.

"My girl Polly - she's sixteen now and going out to service next autumn, for whatever people may say and whatever airs they may give themselves, I will maintain there's nothing like good service to train a girl up to be a good wife. It's not standing behind a counter all day selling ribbons and bathing-dresses (if they call them dresses, with no legs and no backs and next to no fronts neither) will teach you how to cook a floury potato."

- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Nine Tailors

In a way, I've followed this pattern myself. I've spent my first year out of college doing work that won't look good on a resume, but that has taught me a lot of basic life skills. Years of my parents' griping didn't teach me to wash dishes as carefully as two months in someone else's house last summer. I finally learned how to fold shirts, and to actually want to fold shirts before I put them away. I was a good cook before, but now I'm a lot better - and I can do it for 150 people (not that that's a skill I plan to use a lot). I've seen how different families order their time and space - here they gather on the porch to play board games, there they eat ice cream on the sofa while someone practices piano.

In the fall Jeff and I will be living with his parents, where I expect nearly all of those skills to go to good use. It's been a year well-spent.

Next step: find a job that pays money.

The lusty month of May

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
- John Milton

Last night being May Eve, or the beginning of Beltane, I fell asleep thinking about the traditional activities thereof. Everything from Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon to Lerner and Loewe's Camelot paints the occasion as a time of giggling young people disappearing into the shrubs to have sex. I lay thinking about the irony of a fertility festival in a day of birth control and women's careers. Fertility is the last thing most of us want - women spend an average of four years of their childbearing years actually willing to bear children. For the rest, pregnancy spells social or economic disaster. We don't want sex to be about fertility.

"Wait," I realized, "Historically, I can't be alone in this. There must have been lots of people who didn't want to get pregnant, even on May Day. And before birth control, the way to avoid babies was to avoid sex. Failure to copulate on May Eve can't be that anachronistic."

It's not so simple, of course, because not all sex requires birth control. In college I read a brilliant article by Henry Abelove about the population increase in England around the time of the industrial revolution. He argues that the higher birthrate is not explainable by higher marriage rates or earlier age of marriage, but that "sexual intercourse so-called became importantly more popular in late eighteenth century England." Before that, he figures, people were more often having sex in ways that didn't make babies. He links the rise in production of goods to the rise in reproduction, suggesting that the emphasis on production in one's work life may have also carried through to one's sex life. Foreplay as such was invented at this point, he says. Just as rest time that used to be lengthier - the English apparently had a three-day weekend until industrialization, when it all got crammed into Sunday - acts that used to be sex in themselves became precursors to "real sex". It's a theory that no one can test now, but I loved the paper.

Sex of any kind on May Day itself seems less likely among those dedicated to early-morning revelry. Round about dawn I was in a field with forty other Morris dancers, singing "We'll end the day as we begun, we'll end it all in pleasure." I have grave doubts about the veracity of the song. My day, for example, began with the alarm going off at 4:25.
"Nnnng. Wake up."
"No."
"Jeff, get up. Up."
"Not time yet."
"It is. Get up."

Any further welcoming in the May will have to wait until we're better rested.

The month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May.

- Sir Thomas Malory

I mean, seriously, Ronald Reagan?

Today my Nordic mythology class had a day-long field trip seeing Viking ships and burial mounds and things. You wouldn't have thought burial mounds would be particularly cozy places, but 20 people huddled in a stone chamber holding tea candles for light is surprisingly friendly. Danish families go there on children's birthdays to enjoy the hygge. It was a lovely day despite the rain, and it reinforced my liking of the professor. Morten's a big tall man with a grey beard who's equally likely to quote Old Norse verse or The Far Side, and we all love him. On the bus ride we clustered at the front of the bus to talk to him instead of in the back like in fifth grade, and he brought us Danish licorice and a bottle of mead.

We somehow got to talking about how strange it is that Jørgan likes Ronald Reagan, which led to how strange it is that I feel like a stranger in their house because we talk so little. Morten said the same thing as Sandy, that assumptions about other cultures are fallible and that it was a learning experience. But he also said what perhaps I've been wanting to hear, that it was sad that I'm isolated like that and very strange that Danes would barely talk to a guest at their own dinner table.

He also thought some of my culture shock was from the fact that my family is "a microcosm of Danishness" because we eat dinner and talk together and rarely watch TV and turn out lights when we're not using them. Not so here. It's strange to leave home and find what you think of as unpleasantly American traits in your Danish family.

It's a silly thing to feel sorry for myself about, because some people live their whole lives like this. I am making an effort to meet people and make friends, and I am making an effort to bond with Tina and Jørgen. This weekend (like most weekends) they're out of town, so I'm going to go make pasta and put on my Irish music and read Tolkien's Book of Lost Tales. It's possible to make hygge by yourself.

Mirror, mirror

Having read The Beauty Myth, I'm rather proud that I came up with most of the main ideas after reading The Feminine Mystique last summer. The theory is that after women's worth no longer depended on their housekeeping abilities, society made appearance more important to continue keeping them down. I don't buy the conspiracy theory thing, but I think the net result is the same. On the one hand, I'm convinced it's natural to want to decorate yourself - every little kid is proud of their hairbow or Spiderman underpants or whatever. On the other, when it becomes mandatory and expensive/painful/dangerous, that's bad. I think the other teacher in my preschool class was a little weirded out a few weeks ago when she put out a box of dressups that included those little purple plastic high heels for little girls to prance around in. When three-year-old Ainslie learned the hard way that they have no tread by crashing to the floor in midstride, the other teacher must have found it strange to see me hugging the sobbing Ainslie with one arm and chucking the shoe back into the box with the other, yelling at nobody in particular, "Isn't it enough that they have to have foot surgery from these things when they're older? Can't we at least give her a decade? Do we have to start on the high heels at age three?"

A few weeks ago I made the happy discovery of a Peggy Seeger tape in the library. The most thought-provoking lines to me in the whole thing came in "Little Girl Child," a song for her daughter: "Your mammy wants you dressed up fine / Not cause you're mine - cause you're yours. / Nothing wrong with looking good / Care for yourself and you'll care for others." It seemed strange on such a feminist album to totally ignore that the girl probably won't dress up for herself at all, but because she wants to be someone else's (and that someone certainly isn't her mother.) The very good logic behind the advice is a few lines later - "Nobody lives alone." I really think the primary motivator behind a decent amount of the effort people put into their appearance is fear that they won't be able to compete and will die alone with cats.

I'm probably not the only girl out there who's learned to associate a certain lack of attention to appearance in guys with geekiness and thus intelligence, although this formula obviously isn't always applicable. But I don't really see the same thing working for girls. A boy could probably rest assured that there will always be girls like me out there who find a degree of social ineptitude attractive, but I'd probably be sorely out of luck if I relied on the same thing.

Simon and I have debates on the topic fairly often, and although after two years I finally believe I really could look like a sack of potatoes without any negative reaction from him, we still don't fully agree on some points. For one thing, I think he doesn't quite realize how super he is (in general, but specifically regarding appearance.) If I could trust that everyone had their priorities in the right place as much as he does, I'd stop worrying about this whole thing. But given lovely statements like this, that won't happen anytime soon. I realize that's an extreme example, but when there's exactly one male in the world telling me it doesn't matter what I look like, I can't really believe him even though at present he's the only one who matters.