Letters to the Editor
Hecate
Published Letters: 40 Editor's Choice: 6
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Narrative
[Read the article: The body electric]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thank you Ms. Bauer.
This was a well-crafted piece that did just what a good personal essay is supposed to do: present a complex issue from a subjective, first-person perspective in a way that illuminates the issue rather than merely provoking the audience or lapsing into reflexive self-exploration at the expense of critical analysis.
I was most interested to read your confirmation that this highly controversial treatment (and of course I got my impressions of it from "Cuckoo's Nest" too) is not only effective, but beneficial in many cases. I had heard that before but hadn't thought about it since. I take seriously also one reader's observation that this method earned the negative reputation it did because it was at one time misused as a means of repressive social control for queers (and women who defied norms, along with lobotomies).
But you ask us to think, and to rethink; as a reader who comes to Salon looking for exactly this quality, (and sadly finding less of it these days), I appreciate it.
To those who question Ms. Bauer's honesty--she is a writer, a mother, and a person. She has the right to present precisely the details she wishes to about her family in order to focus on the issue her story centers on, to reserve her privacy, and to determine for herself exactly how much emotional exposure she is willing to risk, especially in a medium such as Salon's open letters forum, which has become (predictably) sometimes notoriously vicious.
All writers select details in order to make the point they intend to make. The important part is the issue she presents, and the ways that first-person subjectivity might illuminate this issue _not_ her full and public disclosure of every detail of her personal life. In all of her stories, her presentation of her son is unfailingly compassionate, affectionate and respectful; it is unreasonable to fault her in this regard either.
Again, thank you.
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Fait Accompli
[Read the article: Goodbye to Audiofile]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Salon: Hi Readers. We've dropped something you liked/added something you hate, without asking you what you liked or hated. Tell us what you think!
Most readers: we hate it! Stop that!
Some readers: whatever
Some readers: oh, goody
Salon: ...................................
Etc.
Actually, I liked the idea of Audiofile--I agree with others that execution was unfortunately dull, but I hope that Salon's proposed reorg will include a download/music review feature with some cultural energy. And add me to the list of people who used to love Video Dog and share it often with my friends, and now almost never click on it now, because of the incessant rabbits.
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Arms, Armor
[Read the article: Amma's cosmic squeeze]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]smallpkgs, I was glad to read your reasoned review after all the verbal fistwaving. You're the first poster who seems to have read and responded to the actual article, rather than pulling out a key phrase out of context and stomping all over it instead of actually having to think. You outline the depth, the turns, and the complexity very well.
Mr. Davis isn't blindly surrendering to hug power, nor arguing that he's found the one true way. He's examining, with clear eyes, how her particular version of the guru phenomenon works. She may or may not be a living manifestion of the universal mother, she is certainly a brand, there are certainly politics, both within her organization and in the wider Indian context. He didn't feel anything particularly earth-shattering from her hug, but it was nice--and in some crucial way, radically spiritual, and radically if quietly feminist.
I don't think, incidentally, that by the phrase 'arrogant atheists' he meant that all atheists are arrogant. He meant those atheiests who arrogantly dismiss all spiritual experience. He doesn't mention Dawkins (other posters do). But I agree that the arguments that he and his supporters make are not only arrogant, but intellectually insufficient.
Why should spirituality be anything separate from life, and why should it not inform one's attitude and approach? Religious fanaticism is not the same as spiritual connection--in fact, it's probably the opposite.
I've had one of Amma's hugs--a long time ago, before she was quite such an event. My impression: Nice lady. I'm glad she does this. That's about it.
My aunts, on the other hand, are the closest thing I've ever experienced to divine female energy on earth. They're not big warm huggers. That's not it. They're just powerful, and certain, and hooked into something deeper than themselves, and all of us.