Letters to the Editor
K. M. Parsons
Published Letters: 16 Editor's Choice: 3
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That's right . . . .
[Read the article: Canada's ferocious NAFTA growl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Many Canadians would absolutely love to see NAFTA "renegotiated". And, yes, _this_ country won the War of 1812, as was mentioned earlier, and burned your White House. Please do keep these things in mind. I mean, we're an easygoing, peace-loving folk, but, to co-opt one of your southern military mottos, don't tread on us.
Seriously.
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Surely the only universally-reasonable response to this, regardless of one's convictions, is:
[Read the article: Make it stop: Professional baby planners]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gawd help us all.
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Emily Gould is _beautiful_?
[Read the article: Another pretty face of a generation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Heavens. You lot are rather more easily impressed than I had thought.
Also, the works of Shakespeare--which form such a big glob of stuff in that man-written thing called "the canon"--are all about his navel-gazing, can't-see-past-my-own-hand life, is that right?
Okay. Gotcha.
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The wisdom of youth . . . .
[Read the article: Knowing me, knowing ABBA]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Like most of us, I cannot look back upon my childhood or adolescence and say that I did many things or held many views of which I am now proud. After all, surely most of us, looking down the inverted telescope of the years, can hardly even recognise our younger selves as in any way integrated into our present existences. But I can say with unmitigated satisfaction that, even as a girl of no more than ten, I wasn't impressed by Walt Whitman, I couldn't sit through _The Sound of Music_, and I didn't like ABBA.
All three of those things still hold. As the young people say, Solid! Er, at least I think that's what they say.
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I don't know if this has yet been sited, but . . . .
[Read the article: What's up with black names, anyway?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dr. Condoleeza Rice's first name is a corruption of "con dolcezza" ("with sweetness" or "with gentleness"). An appropriate name for a woman with her background as a classically-trained pianist, perhaps, but still rather unfortunate in its corrupt spelling.
I think perhaps much of the derision aimed at exotic-sounding African-American names does not pertain to what may be a name's genuine origins in, say, Islam--although many do find bizarre and even laughable the attempt to attach oneself to a tradition or belief system with which one has had no real connection via a name that you're told "means" something in that tradition. I think it has more to do with analogues of those names--the ones that, in short, are made up. Names that "sound" profound, ancient or significant when they're nothing of the sort give many people a giggle. That's just the way it is.
There is a venerable Puritan / Calvinist / American low-church tradition of giving children names like (to pick on a couple of leaders in one organisation currently popular in the American fundamentalist community) Honour, Justice, Triumph, Perseverance--no, as Dave Barry would say, I'm not making this up--and Jubilee. Frankly, I laugh my Irish arse off at these, too, just as I often do at the phenomenon of people of Irish descent giving their children names that are so Irish, they spend the rest of their lives explaining the pronunciation of those names to North Americans. But at least, in these cases, the names do truly mean something, and may once have been common. But it's still funny.
Our desperate belief in each individual's uniqueness--a subtle, nuanced, delicate thing, individuality--inevitably bumps up against the fact that we are so very like most of those around us, and against the fact that we are mortal. It seems nearly impossible to root oneself in the world in any way that is lasting or meaningful, and the harder one's lot in life, the more acute this dilemma may seem, even for those who do not or cannot articulate it this way. The anxiety over this reality often trumps taste, discretion and so-called common sense when it comes to one of the first things we impose on new human beings--names.
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Pardon for my _own_ corrupt spelling . . . .
[Read the article: What's up with black names, anyway?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My previous title should, of course, contain the word "cited", not "sited".
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Natural . . .
[Read the article: "Natural" C-section? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sure, drug-free, "pushing" birth is natural. So are heart attacks, cancer, spitting, defecation, and just about anything else of which the human body is capable. Oh, yeah, and puerperal fever, leading to sepsis and death (an alarmingly common end for western women delivering children in just about any century before the 20th), is pretty natural too. It doesn't mean these things are desireable, pleasant, safe, or in any way ethical or moral.
Until we can get past the notion of some kind of hierarchy in this matter--until we can actually abandon the patently absurd notion that one way of getting a child safely into the world is superior to another--I will always have a little pit of fear in my heart for women's true liberation and progress.