Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Neither a borrower nor a lender be
[Read the article: My sister is in perpetual crisis -- should I give her $5,000?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Giving her the money is better than lending it to her, because that way you do not have to fool yourself into thinking you might get the money back.
My father gave his impecunious and irresponsible younger brother a gift of some cash about 50 years ago, rather than a loan that he knew he would never get back. The brother remained impecunious and eventually emigrated to New Zealand where he remained impecunious and eventually returned home, where he remains impecunious in his old age. His two sons remained in N and became successful professionals.
Give what you can afford and expect nothing back. Unfortunately you won't be able to take a tax deduction unless you take her children into your household and formalize the arrangement.
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What straight men say to each other.
[Read the article: Do you have to be gay to tell another guy his eyes are pretty?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, straight men do not tell each other they have pretty eyes, unless they are joking. Nor do they say things to each other like "Tiger Woods has pretty eyes and shapely buttocks, don't you think, Maurice?"
Not unless it is a very slow day at the office.
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Love and marriage
[Read the article: I dream of Darcy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Love and marriage, the song says, go together like a horse and carriage. I guess that means that the love comes first, but that on the first steep hill the horse is soon whipped until it collapses and eventually the wheels fall off.
Jane Austen was a very practical woman and was chiefly concerned with financial security. Marrying an obnoxious creep and becoming a breeding machine was not her ideal situation, and this is why she jilted Harris Bigg-Wither, who quickly married another woman and fathered ten children, long since dead, while Austen stayed single and parented a handful of novels that may live eternally.
However she didn't think women should marry for love outside of their social class and strongly disapproved of elopements, sexual entanglements, and irregular marriages. It is very difficult to locate Jane Austen in her novels, but clearly all of her heroines, except maybe Emma Woodhouse, are part of her.
Just as well she didn't marry, really, because if she had, probably no one would ever have heard of her.
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Gaugin syndrome
[Read the article: My boyfriend is nice, but I fantasize about wilder times]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I may offer an armchair diagnosis, here we have an example of female Gaugin syndrome. The great artist, dissatisfied with the bourgeois joys of civilized life decamped to the Marquesas Islands where he enjoyed a life of sexual freedom, painted to his hear, and died of syphilis in 1903.
You go, girl.
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Would Jane have written if married
[Read the article: I dream of Darcy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nope, still don't agree that Jane would have been the same novelist had she married. Although she would still have written the juvenilia and probably the draft version of Pride and Prejudice, I doubt whether she would ever have been published.
Producing a child a year, as did the woman who took over the marital position she turned down, would surely have sapped her creative energies (no prenatal vitamins back then), and the lack of financial need would have removed the other spur to her creative flank.
Charlotte Bronte did marry, but only after she became successful as a novelist, when she married her father's curate. The cause of her death was given as TB, which wiped out her whole family, but she was pregnant at the time and this may have hastened her demise.
So there we have it. The woman who defined the genre of the novel in which the happy nuptials of the female heroine is the successful conclusion of the plot never experienced the "joys" of marriage. It was all wishful thinking.
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It sound terrible...
[Read the article: "She liked to dress provocatively"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It sounds terrible, it really does, but judges do not have an easy job.
BBC reports that doctors who examined the girl thought she was in her mid teens. The age of consent in the UK is 16, so saying she looked 16 means saying she looked legal. Girls from some ethic groups mature quicker than others, and tall, big girls can look much older than you would think.
As the girl was in the care of the local authority, there is a distinct possibility that she was displaying delinquent behavior prior to these events. In any case she was apparently a willing participant and for all we know may have solicited the sex in exchange for cash or drugs.
When I worked on Juvenile Justice (in the U.S.) we had female youth under 16 who gave histories of dozens or scores of adult sex partners, usually in exchange for drugs, but I never knew of a case in which a sexual partner had been prosecuted.
This case has been referred to the Attorney General in the UK for consideration as to whether the sentence is adequate. The guy has already spent many months locked up. Maybe he ought to get more time, but is he a danger to the public? Is he likely to do it again?
Who would be a judge?
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Ask her
[Read the article: I'm an analytical chemist with a two-body problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why not ask her what she wants you to do? Of course she will tell you to go to Toronto, but at least she will be touched that you asked and this may provide some groundwork for future plans.
If you go to Toronto, what happens? Various possibilities:
1. You continue long distance relationship until you get back together or else one or the other hooks up with someone else more conveniently located.
2. You give up on the relationship and drift apart, sending Christmas cards.
Anyhow, what is the point of this relationship? Do you want to have children and raise a family with this woman? Does she?
What is this thing you call love? Is it intellectual companionship, or is it all about sex? Or is it sex with science? Or do you just enjoy similar hobbies?
Judging by the information in the letter, this woman is not going to give up any career opportunities for your benefit, and it is quite possible that if you sacrifice for her, that she will kick you to the kerb anyway and hook up with someone more ambitious than you. Of course you know her, and I don't.