Letters to the Editor
nigelx
Published Letters: 44 Editor's Choice: 4
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Mary Daly
[Read the article: Naughty nuns excommunicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mary Daly was never a nun, although even she concedes that she probably would have been one if she had lived in the Middle Ages - she was a Catholic theologian and professor at Boston College for many years. At the age of nearly 80, she just published her eighth book, "Amazon Grace".
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Thank you, Hattie
[Read the article: Science fiction wins a Nobel ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I became enamoured of Lessing back in 1969 with the publication of "The Four-Gated City", the final volume of her "Children of Violence" series, which she began long before her writing started to include science fiction - or as she called it, space fiction. Readers who don't care for her contribution to the genre should visit her other works. Long live the Lessing Woman, antidote to the Hemingway Man!
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Going back to hotel room clutter...
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did stay at a small hotel in London some years ago for a week and a half where they never did replace my towel. I'm not very fastidious and was on a Franciscan kick as I was researching a Poor Clare nun, but I found it curious.
As for bottle and soap clutter, if you use the soap once, the maid immediately replaces it, which is wasteful. I have taken home enough bars of hotel soap to open my own establishment, so I pack my own little bar of hotel soap. My husband did the same with a rather large travel size bottle of shampoo - just refilled it from home. But I admit to filching hotel shampoo, conditioner, lotion, tissue packs, pens, and notepads.
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My favorite euphemism
[Read the article: I've always preferred "hoo-ha"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ever since I discovered it in Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" thirty-some years ago, I have used "queynte" (pronounced "quaint-a") -obviously related to another word with, to my ears, a more crude, violent sound. But I only use "queynte" with lovers and family, not doctors.
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$34????!!!!!
[Read the article: Kitchen gadgets: You don't really need a brownie edge pan]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For a brownie pan???!!!
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National air carriers
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In Life magazine (or it might have been Look) sometime in the early Sixties, there was a two-page group photo of dozens - perhaps scores - of stewardesses from different airlines, each in her company's uniform, like a giant class picture. The flight attendant for Japan Air wore a kimono. I remember being impressed by how many airlines there were in existence.
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Photos for breast cancer
[Read the article: Boobs to cure cancer?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How about photos of women who have had mastectomies? That might serve as a dramatic warning.
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Bread and circuses
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I got my usual Monday morning smile from Heather's article, read the letters, then went back to work making a photocopy for a researcher of an article from the late 19th century journal The Art Critic. On the same page my eye fell on the following:
"...Is another catastrophe like that of 1792 in the air? This may seem far fetched but would a social revolution at the end this century really be such a great surprise to us? Two historic events, the clerical revolution in the 16th century and the French have taught us to expect something when the rich and powerful misuse their wealth and power by injuring the less fortunate. The millionaires will not be more sacred to history than the clergy and the nobility. Or has this age merely grown old and is now longing for rest? It has a strange life behind it. After loving with Byron and Heine, it has worked hard, produced many wonderful material results, genuine triumphs of science and invention, and, with great effort also works of art, particularly in music, which will survive many a coming century. Now it is exhausted, weary of life, tottering on crutches to the grave. Can we be astonished that it has grown childish and finds pleasure in an infant's prattle?"
Plu ca change...
(see "Notes on the Fin de Siecle Movement in Parisian Art and Literature," The Art Critic, v.1 no. 1, 1893, pp. 4-9)
From your friendly librarian...
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Being there
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a question I have wondered about, myself, actually. But then I look at it this way: if you didn't get off the plane in Haiti or leave the airport, but had a heart attack and died while you were there, then would it not be true that you died in Haiti?
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Valves for your tubes
[Read the article: Sperm on, sperm off]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every 5 years or so scientists somewhere come up with this idea and it has never actually been implemented yet. In fact I saw a photo of tiny little valves created for this purpose way back in the Seventies in Life magazine.
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Oops
[Read the article: Put up your Dukes!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sarandon didn't play the rebellious housewife in "Thelma and Louise', she was the don't-take-no-crap from-nobody waitress. But yes, she is fabulous.
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Belly dance!
[Read the article: Do not go gentle into that Eileen Fisher]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You don't have to be young or thin, the exercise won't get you injured, you can wear beautiful costuming without exposing your saggy midriff or veiny legs if you don't feel like it, and I swear it keeps a woman young. I'm 57 and only just going into menopause. What's more, you can express your sensuality without tarnishing your wedding ring. And it's fun!
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High crimes & misdemeanors
[Read the article: Another day, another sex scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]David Paterson stated that while having affairs when he was still married he "didn't commit any crimes." However, as of at lest 10 years ago, and perhaps currently, in the New York State penal code adultery is a class B misdmeanor, punishable by 15 days in jail. Any lawyers reading this may correct me.
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Huckabee's announcement
[Read the article: Huckabee to follow in Robertson's footsteps?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Huckabee is reportedly scheduled to speak on Tuesday, April 15 at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY - a patch of bright blue in a sea of upstate red. Stay tuned.
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Okay, I'll bite
[Read the article: TV Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did watch the first half-hour or so - I like to see the parade of states, since most of the contestants we won't see again as the field quickly narrows. Miss USA has always been more glitzy and sophisticated, if I may dare to say so, than Miss America. However, I was struck by how uniform the contestants appeared, and how subtly or not so subtly eroticized. They really did look like cover girls for Playboy.
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Libertarian Party Convention
[Read the article: Bob Barr to run for president]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not only do the Libertarians have a convention, but in 2004 it was covered by C-SPAN, along with the conventions of the Green Party and the Constitution Party. Thank God for C-SPAN!