Jordan spoke at my graduation, and believe me, -we- felt honored. She died at age 60 -- much too soon.

I remember she spoke of how her debate team from a school in Texas pushed Harvard to a tie and decided they'd won, all things considered.

A woman of very great gravitas and dignity.

I'm not as worried about Hillary Clinton's corporate ties because I have a feeling they'll be put under an electron microscope. She is still junior Senator from NYC, and Spitzer and Cuomo are zealots for corporate and educational compliance. Besides, the people who explored Whitewater and her commodity trades last time (including THE WALL STREET JOURNAL) will be on the lookout again. I agree: I don't think Obama is there yet, but I'm afraid the wrong Edwards is in physical shape to make the running.

A woman on one of my Listservs posted an article about women writing, starting with their having to CONSENT to taking it on themselves, in today's NY TIMES. These are people who have to put themselves on the platform: every woman I've mentioned -made- that decision to say "me." "I can."

If you haven't seen this article, the last paragraph is a doozy.

OPINION | October 15, 2007

Editorial Observer: Politeness and Authority at a Hilltop College in Minnesota

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

It's a delicate thing, coming to the moment when you realize that your perceptions do count and that your writing can encompass them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/opinion/15mon4.html?ex=1193112000&en=6c7dc63b41b50bfc&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Holly, I'm having serious cognitive dissonance about how you described yourself to H0tr0d.

You came from "dirt," you say (I'm paraphrasing), and you went back to it.

I -so- don't think so. However poor your family was, somehow you got the background to make through an appallingly demanding selection process and through a college whose culture was alien to you. (By the way, I had one of the same experiences: trust fund brat telling me, after a summer in Stockholm [which she simply HAD to pronounce 'Shtockholm') that SHE thought I should write my dissertation in EUROPE, wasn't that special? I was lucky to be making my expenses, and I ripped her one. Fortunately, she had quantities of social guilt, so that shut her up.)

But back to the point at hand:

You worked with poor people for 20 years when you could have been working for a hedge fund or a consulting firm, as the 1990s-decade graduate pointed out. You have a monthly column. You have at least three book contracts?

You can call it dirt if you want to whack yourself over the head, but I personally would say that that is very fertile soil indeed and you have done well with it.

That is not to be patronizing. I'm a writer myself. It's respect, and I think you should accept it.

MerelyMortalMale, I didn't I "settled" by going to Mount Holyoke. If I remember correctly, President Faust went to Bryn Mawr. Hillary Clinton went to Wellesley. While I'm hardly in the same league as they, what's your point?

Now, as to not being sent to die in combat, women were not eligible to register for the draft and therefore not eligible to be drafted. Or, therefore, to undergo the machinations, doctors' reports, and other quests for deferments "suffered" by many middle class and ruling-caste men. Rather like a lot of them in office.

And all hell was raised when women started entering the service academies.

Not being in positions of sufficient power, we really didn't have much of a voice in making those rules. So, to cite them as something for which we're blameworthy is more than a little illogical.

I think whatever bug bit Fetboy yesterday bit me today. "I didn't think I settled" is what I wanted to say.

You don't have to believe it.

What I write is either circumscribed by legal departments or so far off the beaten track that I tend to be literal at unexpected time, Holly. I'm relieved that you don't regard yourself as dirt and your schedule is not so killing. But reverse snobbery is still snobbery.

Ursula K. Le Guin says it better than I in THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS. "To oppose something is to maintain it.

They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk another road."

I hope that's not over fair use. I took it off wiki. If it is, please feel free to delete it.

Le Guin's prose is so fine that she doesn't need electronic bells and whistles: she can go minimalist.

I've met her -- she wasn't wearing denim, but sort of academically "artsy" garb, what you expect to see someone wear if she has a strong interest in anthropology, but very, very simple.

Another one -- Radcliffe, from the early 1950s, like Anne McCaffrey.

The Mishnory Road metaphor has always indicated to me that it's not enough to be -against- something, but -for- something different and productive.

BTW, did you notice the parody of Harvard in THE DISPOSSESSED? I howled.

I knew Harvard was powerful. I had no idea that it had single-handedly mandated registration of all males for a now-non-existent draft. I suspect that this isn't so much a red herring as a Crimson herring.

And I doubt that "flatulated" is a verb. Try "farted." It's disrespectful, but less absurd, and more indicative of what you're trying to say.

But I do have a question: has a descendant of slaves -not- a right to speak of victimization? Myself, I call that denial or, less tactfully, wishful thinking.