More on Sotomayor

Then there's the "wise Latina" remark. If you have no particular philosophy, you have nothing but your self (and the color of your skin). Of course, you fall back on your feelings. You haven't thought anything through, your law school taught you a soulless technical skill, so you go with your instincts. You rely on the sentimental image of a village senora. You stick with the tribe. And my tribe is as good as your tribe, pal-- maybe better! That's moral philosophy today. In this, she echoes Obama's "above my pay grade" remark. No use having thought-out, universally accessible principles beforehand-- that's so white male.

"Without moral philosophy, the people have nothing but sentiment"--Paul Goodman.

Lisa Sotomayor and the Decline of Catholic Education

So, Lisa Sotomayor has never thought about the rights, if any, of an unborn baby. I believe her, even though she went to Cardinal Spellman High School. Such a change has occurred in Catholic education, in just a generation! When I was in high school, at a regular old diocesan school in a working class neighborhood, we studied concepts like natural law, proofs of God's existence, evolution, the soul and human nature, abortion and sexual ethics-- moral questions of all kinds. We did it in religion class, training our minds to work within the framework of Aquinas, which is really Aristotlianism. (Nowadays, Aristotle is that benighted old fool in the front of your glossy science textbook.) We actually thought about things, or at least learned how to think, and we did it in high school, and those who went on to college did it on an even more nuanced level. Or at least they did up till the sixties and seventies--I caught some wisps of the old-style education, enough to give me a taste of what I had missed. In The Closing of the American Mind, Allen Bloom praised Catholic universities for keeping the classic, Aristotlian methods alive. Of course, when he wrote, in 1987, the tradition had largely passed. I've always said I think I learned more in high school than I did in college (Thank you, Oblates of St. Francis de Sales!). At least, the foundations had been properly laid.

Further reading: James Burtchaell's The Dying of the Light, the individual histories of the devolution of Christian education at a number of famous and not-so-famous institutions.

My Time at the Institute for Advanced Study

A couple of years ago L. and I were driving through Princeton, N.J. on our way north. We were on Route 206, I think . It was around Memorial Day or the Fourth of July or something, and we had to detour because of some holiday festivities. We lost our way and wound up on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study. It was a normal-looking place, not very impressive and quite deserted. We spied a brainy-looking fellow making his way between buildings, so we asked him how to get back on 206. He didn't know....

The Story of 821

Did you ever just feel like having a big old sloppy bar cheeseburger for dinner? With a beer or two, just to take the edge off some Shostakovich. One Friday night L. and I were going to a concert, so we thought we'd stop at a slightly (and I do mean slightly) upscale watering hole we knew of, and have a couple of the aforementioned burgers, plus fries. Well, it had been a long time since we'd been downtown, and we discovered that our watering hole had closed. What to do? Nothing seemed to be open but "821," a very upscale eatery. Well, we didn't have a whole lot of time, but I figured we could get something quick in the bar. We found a table, but the menu was the same as the sitdown. I looked at the prices-- I didn't feel like paying $24.95 an entree, the cheapest thing (plus it was a la carte), especially not when I had a cheeseburger in mind. So we wound up ordering wine and appetizers. That, I was hoping, should hold us. I have to keep my wife happy, you know. L. is a girl of strong appetite, which is one of the things I find so charming about her. Frankly, I was feeling like the Three Stooges-- you know, when they walk into some ritzy joint by mistake and try to keep up appearances, hoping they don't wind up washing dishes.

Well, they weren't adequate. I can't even remember what they were, but there wasn't enough. In all fairness, the bartender warned us they were just "conversation starters." He knew what we were about (we shabby interlopers). He was sympathetic but maintained his profesional distance. Genteel poverty can be so disconcerting.

We poured the last of the wine and desperately scanned the menu--and L. found it. It was a cortini, Barkeep informed us, a side dish: sweet potato, quick fried in nice long strips in honey and ginger. It was delicious, and there was a lot of it. For $4.95! And I think we only ordered one dish! Anyway, we left sated and happy, ready for Socialist Realism.

And that's the story of 821--one of those little survival tales that couples treasure.

Fine Lines

"The human predicament is here presented neither as divine comedy nor fully blown tragedy, but is seen from a viewpoint located somewhere between Olympus and Gethsemane...(Seamus Heaney in the foreword to The Canon : the Original One Hundred and Fifty-four Poems by C.P. Cavafy).


Another haiku:

The portulaccas,
Now a heap of tangled vines;
Still-- tongues of color!


And this is good: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html