Happiness Through the Ages
What makes it so difficult to interpret how people in former times have thought about the human condition is that words change their meanings over time, sometimes morphing into the exact opposite of what they originally meant. As I just learned by reading in ‘The Economist’ a review of “Happiness: A History, ” the word “happiness” has changed its meaning considerably. I didn’t quite realize until today that if God wants speaks directly to people or at least their prophets, he or she has to master the idiom of a given age. To come across as really cool, God could walk up to a woman today and say, “Hey man, what’s up.” If God had done this two thousand years ago, a woman would likely have replied: “Almighty, I am sorry, but you are mistaken. I am a woman and not a man!”
William Wordsworth on Good and Evil
Adam Kirsch in his Dec 5, 2005, review in the New Yorker of Juliet Barker’s new biography Wordsworth: A Life writes that Woodsworth believed that the soul, uncontaminated by wealth and unperverted by extreme poverty, is essentially good; more, that it is part of a universal frame of goodndess, which can also also be glimpseed in mountains and rivers, animals and plants. Sin and death have no dominion over this goodness, which lies just underneath the surface of things, always ready to receive us. To support this interpretation, he provides these lines by the poet:
‘Tis Nature’s law
That none, the meanest of created things,
Of forms created the most vile and brute,
The dullest or most noxious, should exist
Divorced from good—a spirit and pulse
of good,
A life and soul, to every mode of being
Inseparably linked.
Transfixed in the Cineplex
DANIEL MARK EPSTEIN explains in the WSJ review of “The Power of Movies” what happens when we are at the movies.
Seduced, disturbed, beguiled—something strange and compelling happens when we watch a movie: When my daughter was four years old, we took her to see “The Wizard of Oz.” She emerged from the darkness transformed: For the next half-year, we had to set an extra place at the table for the Scarecrow, who had become her constant friend. The girl had gone so deeply into the world of the movie we wondered if she would ever return. Her experience had a certain resonance for me. The first movie I ever saw was “Hans Christian Andersen,” starring the golden-haired Danny Kaye. Since then I have never seriously considered any career other than the writer’s trade. If my first movie had been “High Noon,” would I have wanted to be a gunslinger? Or “The Red Shoes”—would it have made a ballet dancer of me?
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Winslow Homer at the National Gallery of Art in Washington
Dad’s Coming 1873. See the Online Catalog of the Exhibit.
A Lady who Pratices what she Preaches
The other day I strolled in the gothic quarter of Barcelona and came by a tattoo shop. I was very impressed with the lady who stood behind the counter. She was the best advertisement that anyone could have thought of for this kind of establishment. I wondered: Did mom and dad already have a tattoo and this is simply the second generation of making one’s own body the canvass of an artistic impulse? Or did mom and dad absolutely not want her to have any tattoo on her skin and the lady wanted to show her folks that she is truly independent? Or did she fall in love with a guy who was into tattoos? Be it as it may, next to the cathedral of Barcelona, the phrase “my body is my temple” took on a whole new meaning.
Wedding Crashers
If my eyes did not fool me, Senator John McCain made a very brief cameo appearance in this average comedy that in the end takes a big bow in front of the institution of marriage. But there is a lot of loose behavior and fowl language (sometimes funny) that will not please the
Lincoln’s Great Drepression
Surprisingly, the article on Lincoln’s state of mind in this month’s Atlantic Monthly turned out to be very interesting. Making valid inferences after the fact about what propelled a person to act in a particular way is difficult, to put it mildly. With hindsight everyone has perfect vision. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s Lincoln’s Great Depression does not fall into the trap of inferring a grand thesis from one case. Looking at Lincoln’s entire life he finds one episode after another in which Lincoln does not overcome his melancholy for good, but rather learns to live with his sadness and to turn it into a creative force. Shenk argues that Lincoln’s depression forced him to analyze himself and the world around himself, giving him a deeper insight into reality that prepared Lincoln to see more accurately the challenges of his time. Think about this startling implication: if George W. Bush would get a bit depressed, we might all be much better off!
Donate to the Red Cross for Hurricane Relief
Donating money to the Red Cross over the internet with a credit card takes less than five minutes.
Click on the graphic to get to the Red Cross donating page.
Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium
In 1996 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who recently became Pope Bednedict XVI, sat down with Peter Seewald, a German journalist who had left the catholic church, for a long conservation that was published as a book in the following year. Salt of the Earth: Christianity and the Catholic Church at the End of the Millennium became a bestseller in catholic circles. On a visit to Germany (the homeland of the new pope) I stumbled upon the book on the coffee table of my host and started reading. It turned out to be so interesting that I spent the next day reading it cover to cover. Seewald asked Ratzinger all the questions that an unbeliever or critic of the catholic church might want to ask the high church officials. Seewald posed Ratzinger one tough question after another, and you wonder constantly whether Ratzinger will be able to give an intellectually satisfying answer. The picture of Ratzinger that emerges in this conversation is quite different than one that I had collected from reading worldy newspapers.
Getting Addicted to “24”
A couple of weeks ago a friend raved about the TV show 24, which will start its fifth season in January. I rented the first three episodes of the first season from Blockbuster. The entire season takes place in 24 hours. Before I knew it, I had watched the entire season in a few days. The writers of the show have been able to create so much suspense that I (and other people I know) run to blockbuster in the middle of the night to rent the next episodes. This may be the best TV drama that I have ever seen. Go rent it but don’t blame me if you miss work because you stay up late watching one episode after another. I am addicted to this show!
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