Letters to the Editor
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Funy this thing
about how a male is not allowed to state an opinion that does not agree with feminist orthodoxy without him being smacked by false accusations and deliberate heinous personal attacks.
I'll remember how I am treated by you women the next time a woman asks me to listen to her opinion on anything.
tit for tat, baby. And the men (and SOCIETY) are winning against the isolated and desperate feminists.
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The Underwear
Well handlebar, it's only bad underwear: I'm not sure what to say about it. You can only get it after you have gone through the temple. It's supposed to signify you are one of the righteous because only those who have gone through the temple can wear it. You are supposed to wear it -- forever -- that overused Mormonism. It is supposed to enforce modesty and chastity because you wear it all the time and have to dress around it, therefore shorts, strapless, even sleeveless are out because they won't cover the underwear. For women and men, it comes to your knees on the bottom and has a cap sleeve on top. Of course it covers everything between with little holes for life's more vulgar needs. It used to always be one piece, but two pieces are becoming more popular. My mom's is awful -- billowing, silky yet homely, but there are new styles and fabrics available. None say "Victoria's Secret." For something that's supposed to be sacred it's hilariously plain, prosaic, fusty. It's probably, in a way, a living fossil -- a relic of frontier life that somehow became defied.
They are called temple garments, by the way. We call 'em garms in my family and use the old ones to dust! (Which you are *not* supposed to do!) I have some great garms stories, including an old lover who did the deed in his garms, but they will have to wait until later.
More later.
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The Underwear Continued
Like everything in Mormonism (and the world), sometime temple garms work the way they are supposed to -- then again, likely as not, they don't. When they work the person who puts them on feels cleansed, holy, set apart, and special. The garments serve as a reminder of deep commitments and sacred vows. More often, however, they are just the underwear of the society this person is in. They are like jeans. You wear 'em. What's to say. If you were in the right place in India, it would be a turban.
There used to be many Mormon urban legends about temple garments, of people who were miraculously saved from injury by their garms, as if they formed a shield from God. You don't hear that so much any more. It's more of the old-timey hick Mormonism so many want to leave behind.
Temple garms used to be very visible in Mormon society -- and not just that they were like a bad old-fashioned slip, the kind that crept down, became visible in a very unsexy way -- although that's true too. They are making garms that fit women better so women can wear tees and other pretty, sensible clothes over their garms. Garms are disappearing -- in more ways than one. I've noticed that many people just don't wear them -- or at least there is no visible line, no visible effort to choose clothes that will cover. Mormon women used to have a very distinct look that went far beyond the garms. Today that's not true. It's hard to tell a Mormon woman from any other at the mall. I would guess that many choose not to wear them all the time, others have abandoned them altogether, and those who want to keep the tradition alive have pressured for decent garms they can put under a stylish look.
There are still people in the old tradition that held wearing garms or not wearing garm made a profound statement. I've heard tales of guys putting their arms around a brother (fellow church member) so he could feel for that garm line. I've heard of mothers patting their sons backs and bursting into tears when they couldn't feel garms. The garms are very much an You're-On-The-Bus-Or-You're-Off-the-Bus religious statement -- at least for some.
Garms are also part of large and small Mormon cons, something the Mormon world is infamous for. The way it goes, for what we call a True Believing Mormon (usually designated TBM), if they meet someone who is wearing garms, the TBM feels as though they can trust this person. Some people know that and do whatever they have to do to get some temple garms so they can then have many people instantly trust them, feel they are part of this brotherhood. This is part of why Utah is always at the statistical top for fraud. In a more insidious way, milder frauds are woven into the very texture of Mormon life. Until very recently, a good salesman knew he had to had the garms -- people wouldn't trust him, like him, let him in the door if he didn't. So he goes through the temple, maybe wryly, maybe thinking it's quite the crock. But he plays the game. He knows if he wants to do this work in Utah he plays the game.
It's not all cynical though. It a big picture. There are a lot of details. I think -- I hope -- for most people who wear garms there is at least a moment when the garms feel special, *sacred.*
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Who's a Christian? Ask an atheist or Mormon.
Its interesting that the definition of Christianity is here often left to non-believers, liberals and Mormons of various kinds. However, just as we would expect Jews to define Judaism or Muslims to define Islam, Christians have defined Christianity and this definition excludes Mormons.
Mormons are free to believe what they wish, they are entitled to define themselves, they can borrow from whatever faith tradition inspires them or they can create their own but Christianity is not some open category that includes any claimant. Call it what you want but leave Christianity out of it.
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Valorization schmalorization:
Dear Camille;
Your proposed re-valorization of the trades needs a reality check. I’m a recent Vassar grad who worked for seven months in the field of commercial masonry before I got fed up and quit. The people with whom I worked had been getting fed up for decades, but couldn't quit because they had little or no prospects anywhere else. It's telling that calls for a re-valorization in your letter and in your chosen responders all come from people in education, not tradesmen themselves. Why is that?
In the first days of the job I felt new energy coursing through my veins. Rising with the sun, feeling scabs bud on my palms, and slurping coffee on the tailgate of a buddy's pickup paled the last four years of sex-and-drug-withered existential petrifaction. However, the infusion of testosterone derived from stacking concrete masonry units in shoulder-high piles gives way to the exhaustion that characterizes the lives of most of these men (sorry, there aren't many lady-masons, although there was a wonderfully crotch-scratchin' female electrician called "Barb" on our jobsite).
The age of the tradesman is over, and perhaps it’s a good thing. Most of the breathtaking achievements of the trades were constructed under conditions impossible an undesirable in whatever mess we've made for ourselves in "the present." We are a much more populist society, and it reflects in the design of our buildings. When a project is conceived for an office building or a Wal-Mart, it has a lifespan. Many buildings that go up are predicted to last between ten and twenty years, a far cry from the foresight of our ancestors.
Design and architecture have been reduced to structural uniformity by the demands of the market. While inside a multi-national department store chain the neon panoply of products that capitalism brings forth shiver in their throbbing, android fecundity, the exteriors of these structures are squat and banal in the extreme. What does this mean for the worker? Erector-set construction, quick and sloppy. A count for how many CMU's he needs to put in by the end of the day. A lingering sense of his own unimportance. I hate to say it, but stacking block for eight hours a day makes Marx sound like a comforting friend with a hand on your shoulder.
Vocational training for kids is a great idea. Teach them how to build the machines that can stack block so they won’t have to. Re-valorization of the trades is fabricated nostalgia. Excepting historically oriented restoration, I think many tradesmen would join me in saying that a machine could do their job better. They constantly asked me what the hell I was doing there and exclaimed their regret that they didn't go for a college degree. Are they brainwashed by society’s archetypal projection of a successful man? I'd give them a little more credit than that. I don't know what in the trades contrasts to the "sterility" of prestige office jobs but don't make the mistake of imagining “the trades” as vital or virile (fertile?). Vital and virile people are employed in constructing the massive concrete chunks that dominate the American landscape (for better or for worse, I won't look down my nose at Wal-Mart) but the demands of building them wear down and exhaust the body.
Chris Wait