Monday, March 21, 2022
Good morning.
As we enter our last two weeks of our snowbird escape to Florida, a return to a topic in my last message via a lengthy dialogue with a long-time friend (of nearly 50 years), other thoughtful reactions to the bits and pieces, and a few entries (and responses) from my Facebook page or from my high school class Facebook page. There are some other odds and ends as well.
I have this dilemma. Some of what I put on Facebook I would in earlier days have put in an epistle. But a number of the recipients of my epistles are not on Facebook. So for some, part of the message is a duplication. The challenges of social media and communication. To save people time: What was on my personal Facebook page I have highlighted in yellow (primarily focused on The Ringling and the question of what surname people should take when getting married). What was on our class Facebook page is highlighted in gray (focused on the extent to which one can separate the artist from the art when you find something disagreeable about the artist). You know who you are and can skip or skim whatever you wish. This missive is much longer than normal because I include much writing by other people, in the discussions on various points.
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I posted this on my class Facebook page:
On our local oldies station yesterday I heard a song that I liked back in the day (and still do), "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison (1967), nostalgia for a lost love. I like Morrison's music in general. I went on the web to check on a few of the lyrics to "Brown Eyed Girl" and was surprised to learn that one line in particular, "making love in the green grass behind the stadium" was considered too "suggestive" for radio stations, so a phrase from earlier in the song was substituted. My how times change. I also learned that Morrison doesn't particularly like the song. "It's not one of my best. I mean I've got about 300 songs that I think are better."
The Independent (UK): "Morrison says that the song was originally called "Brown Skinned Girl" and was about an inter-racial relationship. He changed it to make it more palatable to radio stations." That would certainly cast a different light on the song. The Wikipedia entry confuses the issue. "Originally titled "Brown-Skinned Girl", Morrison changed it to "Brown Eyed Girl" when he recorded it. Morrison remarked on the title change: "That was just a mistake. It was a kind of Jamaican song. Calypso. It just slipped my mind [that] I changed the title. After we'd recorded it, I looked at the tape box and didn't even notice that I'd changed the title. I looked at the box where I'd lain it down with my guitar and it said 'Brown Eyed Girl' on the tape box. It's just one of those things that happen." I have no idea what this means.
Here's a question for you: I've learned that Morrison is anti-vax and anti-mask. Given my views, I suddenly have a lot less respect for him. But we don't do politics on this page; my question is whether you can continue to like an artist's work without liking the artist. Can you separate the art and artist? How do I think about Morrison's songs now that I know I differ strongly from him on a matter unrelated to his music? (Many opera lovers face this with Wagner's operas: Wagner was an outspoken anti-Semite. So was Martin Luther, a number of whose hymns are lovely.) What do our musician friends think?
A number of classmates offered thoughtful views. There emerged a clear consensus.
--That is also one of my favorite songs, as is the album it is on. I do think I can appreciate the music without condoning less than perfect behavior. Hey, I'm not perfect!
--If it was a mediocre artist, I might hold it against them. I'm definitely opposed to Van's anti-vax view, but I love his music so I try not to think of it.
--He's always been kind of a nut, thinks record people set him up to be robbed and killed. Possible, but doubtful. He whines a lot too, about fame, people that talk about him, "Name Game", etc. I love his music and think he's a genius; I wish he and Clapton hadn't gone down the anti vax path, but their work still resonates for me.
--I try to avoid putting artists, musicians, athletes, politicians and such on a pedestal. They often disappoint in the end. Eric Clapton is a recent example for me. He's done some great work over the years in the recovery field but on the flip side he's an anti-vax guy. His vaccine stance really bothered me but then I heard his latest album and couldn't resist it! So good. Yes, we're all flawed. We can't cancel everything we disagree on.
--Music and freedom of expression transcend politics as the former requires an open mind, the latter not so much.
--As a general rule, separate the art from the artist's politics I like Frank Sinatra, but I am appalled by his association with Mafia people. Van Morrison is a knucklehead about vaccinations and wearing a mask, but he is not an infectious disease expert. He is a great musician. The Dixie Chicks lost a lot of country music fans when George W. Bush was president; the Dixie Chicks criticized Bush. I think the fans who disassociated with them made a mistake. If I attended a Van Morrison concert and he went on a diatribe about vaccinations during the concert, then I would be annoyed. Same for the Dixie Chicks if I were a Republican and attended a Dixie Chicks concert.
--I am a committed Christian. I have MANY friends who are not only not committed Christians, they are not believers at all. My life wouldn't be nearly as rich without them in it! So - my philosophy is hate the sin, love the sinner, EXCEPT I'd have a tough time considering having a friendship with someone I knew was a racist or an antisemite. I love the work of many actors, comedians, artists and musicians with whom I would not choose friendship. I think relationship makes all the difference.
--My views also! We can't make everything right again by taking down all art, statues, books, music and renaming lakes, schools, streets, etc. We can re-educate, speak truths and reform. We are all human and imperfect. I've learned to compartmentalize pretty well.
--I have struggled with this for many years because there are quite a few authors, film makers and actors who are amazing at their craft but not great human beings. Particularly in children's literature there are several great authors who are racist, sexist, anti-semites, liars, pedophiles, and more. Some books I enjoy in my memory but cannot reread. Others I am able to go back to. Why? I'm not exactly sure myself. But as others have already said, we are a conflicted species in many ways. We cannot throw everything out because the creator is flawed.
--I feel the line is whether we honor or glorify that individual & whether other people are offended; I also try to avoid me being responsible for their financial gain
I also invited Elliott's views.
--My thought re: art and artist is that as you go back in time more than about a hundred years, almost everyone was racist and sexist by today's standards. So unless we're determined to only consume media from contemporary individuals who have the latest politically correct seal of approval, you're going to have to do some level of separation if you dig into their beliefs. I just don't bother. As long as the content of the lyrics themselves aren't offensive, go for it. Furthermore, social media has shown us that a considerable percent of the population, artists included, holds views that are contrary to the scientific consensus or general social good. And I'm sure it has always been the case. Humans haven't changed. We just didn't have social media until now.
So you separate the art and artist. I confess, however, that every time I hear a Van Morrison song now, I won't be able to avoid thinking about his "knucklehead" views on vaccines and masks.
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For the second time we visited The Ringling, the estate of John & Mabel Ringling, he of circus fame, in Sarasota. I don't even care that much about circuses but one of the two circus museums had one of the more extraordinary displays I've ever seen in a museum: a 3800-square- foot miniature reproduction of the circus as it would be set up in a town. The guy who created it has worked on it for 65 years, with some help. It's accurate down to the smallest measurement and has hundreds of little people figures. Here are a few photos. (The estate also has the 36,000 square-foot Ringling house, facing the Gulf, and a fabulous art museum of all the works they collected, primarily Italian Renaissance painters.) The estate is now owned and operated by Florida State University; Ringling donated it to the State of Florida when he died in 1936, which the State eventually turned over to Florida State.
A portion of the "Big Tent" (cut away to see inside)
The spectators in the Big Tent; the people figures are perhaps 2" in size.
The food tent for the workers (again, ~2" people)
Here is the Ringling house on the Gulf (this taken from over the Gulf looking east):
We paid the extra $10 to go inside the house, which we didn't do last time. I'm still uncertain why anyone would need a home with 36,000 square feet; I guess you build it because you have the money. Sure, I'd like a house slightly larger than the one I've lived in since 1989—but I don't need one 18 times larger!
It's actually a sad story. The house was constructed 1924-1926, cost $1.5 million (~$15.9 million in 2022 dollars), with intensive supervision by Mabel Ringling. She died in 1929 and he died in 1936. As a couple they had little time together in it.
I have commented before that I'm done with looking at the interiors of houses built by gazillionaires, but I acceded to the wish of the others and agreed to see it. I will say this: in comparing the Ringling house with the James J. Hill house, the Hill house seems dark and ponderous compared to the Ringling house, which is light and airy. The Swan Turnblad house (aka the original part of American Swedish Institute) is in between.
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Part of the reason I started thinking about abortion and democratic theory is because last fall I bought two new (literally brand new, published in the fall of 2021) books for Florida reading by the two leading historians of the American revolution, The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents 1773-1783 by Joseph Ellis (I've read his books before and like him), and Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution by Gordon Wood. Ellis summarizes a lifetime of learning and research into a highly readable history. We learn that Washington didn't win the war with brilliant generalship (he wasn't particularly good), that the British largely lost the war because of bad generalship (the responsible general blew some key military decisions, opportunities to utterly defeat the American forces), but that the British probably would eventually have lost in any case because while they could hold enclaves on the coast, they could never get much of a foothold inland. It's also clear that despite his rather mediocre military talents, Washington garnered nearly universal respect among his military and political peers.
The gist of Ellis's book, however, is what a mess the country was both during and after the war. The debate that raged—and what nearly did in the revolutionary effort—was about what became known as federalism: what power should accrue to a national government and what to the states? At the end of the war in 1783 we were 13 little nations; by 1786 it was clear that system wasn't working, so a bunch of wealthy lawyers and land-owners and slave-owners got together and wrote a new constitution. Their document and its amendments didn't mention abortion or gay marriage and the formula for allocating power between the federal and state governments was ambiguous. The current Supreme Court is moving in the direction of reversing 100+ years of jurisprudence and taking away power from the center and giving it to the states. The nation did well with power in the national government and it did poorly when the states had more of the power. This trend does not seem to me a good idea. (I haven't finished Woods's book yet, but so far it's equally good.)
On an entirely different tack, I can ask myself why, at my age, I need to read more about the American revolution. I've read American history off and on for much of my adult life. What I learn is incremental; apart from details, I knew in broad outline what Ellis was going to examine (but it was fascinating to read it again anyway).
The other question that bothers me is whether I am reading two outstanding histories of a country that will no longer exist in a few years. It may be like reading about the rise of the Roman Republic.
All that said, a dialogue with a friend. The friend's responses in italics.
I have also spent some time thinking about abortion. I have no strong conviction one way or the other about when "life" begins. It seems to me that it is some point between conception and birth. I don't know when that point is, but I do know that there is a point. So to me, the question of when an abortion becomes a "killing" is a serious and momentous question. The conundrum is that for those who have a strong feeling about that, one way or another, it is hard to "agree to disagree" with such large issues at stake – those large issues being the life of the unborn child and the impact of giving birth to an unwanted child on the life of the mother.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will be because they determine that the Constitution is silent on abortion and, thus, these kinds of questions are given to the States to decide. (The reversal will be of the finding in Roe that there is a directive on abortion in the Constitution). I think there is no possibility, for example, that they will ban abortion. They will simply say that without a Constitutional directive, the issue of drawing those lines is a State issue. In my view that is the right answer. It is also the better answer for just the reason you state: It takes the decision out of the hands of an unrepresentative group of legal philosophers and returns it to a rather large group of democratically elected office holders. Keep in mind that it was the same unrepresentative group of legal philosophers who wrote the original decision.
As much as I think that is the right decision, I regret that it may become an even more dominant issue in our State politics and elections. That is regrettable. Elections should be based on a broader set of questions than only that one. I am not sure how that issue plays out in our partisan division in Minnesota. I have heard arguments on both sides as to which Party gets an "edge" if that issue starts to dominate State politics and elections. Fact is, I don't think anyone can predict the impact.
What troubles me about passing the decision back to the states is that that means a woman in Texas cannot get an abortion but a woman in California can. Roe nationalized the public policy; putting it back in the states leads to what I see as disparate outcomes. (This is on my mind because I just finished Joseph Ellis's The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773 - 1783. A wonderful book by one of the preeminent historians of the revolution, it focuses on the disarray that resulted from having 13 separate little nations during and immediately after the war. The states can be laboratories of public policy, but certain matters should be decided at the national level, in my opinion.)
I also think it's unwise to rely on the "when life begins" standard because medical science advances; it's already possible to keep a fetus alive from a very early stage. Scientists note different developmental stages as a fetus grows; which stage marks the transition from a collection of cells with potential to a "person" that can survive removal from the womb? I don't think there's any logical point, so unless you believe life begins at conception--which, of course, many do--then any point you pick to allow an abortion is somewhat arbitrary. Roe picked one that most Americans seem satisfied with. I probably would have chosen a somewhat looser standard, but that gets into the weeds and I can live with Roe.
What I didn't include in my quote from Wikipedia was this: "In practice, access to abortion varies greatly between Muslim-majority countries. In countries like Turkey and Tunisia, abortions are unconditionally legal on request. On the other hand, in 18 out of 47 Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq, Egypt and Indonesia, abortion is only legally permitted if the life of the mother is threatened by the pregnancy while 10 countries provide it on request."
So there is widespread disagreement on whether or not it should be available. Much of the world—Jewish, Christian, Muslim—does not see abortion as murder. I think it a violation of the notion of the separation of church and state to allow states to impose a religious rule. Why should a Muslim or Jewish woman in Texas be required to obey a law predicated on (conservative) Christian religious beliefs?
The other problem I see is that in a number of states, "a rather large group of democratically elected office holders" isn't an accurate description of the politics of the state. It is surely true that the voters in many states of the South, along with Idaho, Utah, etc., would vote more conservatively than those in other more blue states, but the structural impediments to a fair representation of the electorate are troubling.
Many years ago you complained to me that you wished abortion would just disappear from politics. I agreed with you then and I still do. But I am afraid that won't happen. Alas. As for which Minnesota party benefits, you're right--who knows? My suspicion is that Democrats will, by a slight margin, because suburban voters—likely both men and women—will not be happy with proposals to severely restrict access. But that's just a guess.
I agree with much of what you say, but disagree about the virtues of federalism and the value of elected legislatures making decisions. The issue is a huge distraction from other critical issues, and I don't look forward to its impact on state politics, but I don't see any particular problem with varying laws across jurisdictions. My hope is that abortion law that is resolved through public debate rather than legal dictate will settle everything down. My hope maybe in vain.
Anyway, it is an interesting conversation and I thank you for it. There is far too much hysteria in our politics these days. It is nice to think about things in a less angry tone.
As a general proposition I agree about federalism. But I'm not positively disposed to wide variation on matters that can so fundamentally affect the life of a woman/family. Building codes, contract law, traffic rules, gambling, etc., etc., fine. The debate over what should be left to the states and what should be handled at the national level, of course, dates to the founding of the Republic.
I fear that the debate, for the anti-abortionists, will not end until they prevail, because they show no sign of ever giving up. I see that Vermont has a proposal to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. If that happens--and apparently it is highly likely to be adopted--it will be interesting to see what position the anti-abortionists take there. And California is proposing to become a location where women may come, with expenses paid, to have an abortion. It could end up being a pretty crazy pattern. . . .
[A second message] I want to follow up briefly. First, thanks for the kind words. I agree with you. Discussions are far too heated, and I spent my entire working life at an institution devoted to civilized and thoughtful discourse (which it lived up to about 95% of the time). I am alarmed, however, at the large number of people who seem not to want such exchanges and who vilify and condemn rather than engage in discussion. You have to admit that the kind of exchange we can have, that we prefer, is not acceptable to many.
Second, in line with your view, should Obergefell also be reversed? Heaven knows there's no mention of gay marriage in the Constitution! I have a hypothesis about what would happen if the Court were to reverse it. The national outcry would be substantial (from leaders, anyway) and businesses might begin to move out of states that outlawed gay marriage. Abortion won't do it, racist laws won't do it, but gay marriage would. You heard it here first.
Third, I agree completely with you that abortion is a distraction from what you and I see (and anti-abortionists vigorously do not) as critical issues facing the body politic, including the survival of the democracy, infrastructure, jobs, a pandemic (that could recur or get worse), international relations--the list is long. The debate becomes focused on one topic and people don't give enough attention to other ones. But as we know, anti-abortionists do not agree with our assessment of the relative importance of all these matters. They are against murder.
I would love to spend more time talking to rational progressives about the larger issues of our government: federalism, the role of courts, the rule of law, the separation of powers, etc. But most people involved in politics these days, on both sides, have no time for that stuff. It is all about winning, and the ends justify the means. Trump was a serial offender of these important things, but by no means the only one.
I am probably wrong, but I believe that greater attention to what I consider to be the genius of our Constitution would do a lot to get people to calm down and focus on working together constructively.
This is an elitist statement, but I think that having the discussion you seek would be extremely difficult without an understanding of federalism, courts, etc. At least 75% of the population would need an education in all of that before they could begin to have the discussion.
Where you and I might disagree is which public policies should be national and which should be left to the states. I feel strongly that matters of human rights and civil liberties should be national (e.g., abortion, gay marriage, criminal justice rules, and others I can't think of right at the moment). It could be interesting to have this discussion with the devolution of certain responsibilities to the Scottish parliament and retention of others by Westminster as a potential example.
At the same time, hasn't politics always been about winning? There have been a number of occasions where I have not been excited about a candidate for whom I'm voting, but I do so because I see that candidate as the only one likely to win--and that candidate, even though I'm lukewarm about them, would be better than their opponent.
I have also come to believe, in recent years, that the Constitution is not a particularly good charter of government. The Senate, in particular, is not representative, and a small part of the population can thwart the will of the large majority. That is not the way a republic should operate. While I have always admired Marshall for his adroit footwork in Marbury v. Madison, what that decision has led to is a tribunal that answers to no one but makes enormously important public policy decisions. I don't know what a *perfect* republican/representative form of government is, but whatever it is, we don't have it. A parliamentary system might be better (although those are hardly perfect, either).
Electoral politics are always about winning.
The politics on governing, however, were once about compromise and good public policy. Or perhaps that is my revisionist history. In my four years working in the Senate, for a member of the minority, I felt Sen. Durenberger and others like him had a real impact on policy. The competition of elections rise up every two years, but in between, elected officials should be seeking compromise and progress. Of course both sides engage in the childish "you started it" trope when you point this out. As most parents of multiple children know, following that rabbit hole gets nowhere.
Speaking of the Senate, I regard it as one of the more brilliant inventions of the Constitution. That it slows down or even halts the passions of a majority is a feature, not a bug. It has prevented both parties from advancing stupid policies that enjoyed some temporary House majority. Furthermore, in is a significant force binding our diverse states and regions in a single national government. Without it, the Union would likely have exploded long ago. This is part of its genius.
Well, we certainly don't agree on that! It makes the entire system far more conservative than necessary for good and stable government. I look around the rest of the developed/industrialized/"first world" stable, democratic countries and I see public policies that have advanced the health, welfare, and happiness of the citizens far beyond the ability of the U.S. to do so. (I think here of health care, education, parental support, and so on.) The primary reason it has not done so is the Senate.
This was the end of the exchange with my friend. It helped me clarify a couple of points in my own thinking.
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Another friend wrote, "I think the advent of drug-induced miscarriage ("medical abortion") is liberating for many women, even in places it's made illegal. It is too easy to keep private, and miscarriages are common anyway. There is a problem in that this method is limited to early enough in pregnancy that the woman might not realize they are pregnant."
That could become a way to sidestep the entire issue in politics, but I somehow doubt that those who oppose abortion will be supportive of a drug-induced miscarriage, which they will characterize (probably accurately) as simply an abortion by another means. Given that states are now proposing to criminalize people (or providers? I'm not sure) who have abortions performed in other states, the likelihood they'll let drug-induced abortions be permissible seems remote. One hopes that the courts will not permit one state to prosecute behavior it deems illegal that another state has deemed legal. What a legal morass that would be. (What if the freeway speed limit in Minnesota is 70 and in Wisconsin it is 60. Can Wisconsin prosecute me for going 70 in Minnesota?)
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"Your comment about looking after yourself first is interesting. I imagine that everyone but the most saintly feels this way on some level. I tell myself that the hours and money I gave to [an activity] were for 'others' but, of course, I had situated myself more or less securely in order to do that. I enjoyed it and there was no real sacrifice. Now, since age 68 or so (pandemic?) I feel kind of like cocooning - the world's problems, great as they are, are no longer my problems to solve. I don't have any fight in me."
Another friend wrote that, "apropos of one of your comments, I thought perhaps you'd like the Hillel tagline (one you may have heard) better than the ones from Aristotle and MLK: 'If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?'" I confessed to being uncertain about the meaning of the message; my friend told me "the point is that it goes both ways, which is why I thought you'd like it. We need to watch out for ourselves, but we also need to care deeply about others and not just ourselves." I agree completely with that interpretation and with that view of life.
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Apropos of decluttering, one of my friends wrote that her daughter told her, "Mother when you die, I will be mourning you & make quick decisions to sell your condo. I won't have time to read all your post-it notes attached to items. Your condo doesn't allow an Estate Sale. Enjoy them now or start parting with them." Yikes! There are marching orders!
I wrote back. I don't think you're under any obligation to part with your belongings! If you like having them around, you should keep them. Your daughter can figure out what to do when the time comes--I figure that's just the hazard of being a child of parents who possess anything :-) Elliott is aware that he'll inherit a boatload of "stuff" and will have to decide what to do with it all. I've gradually been getting rid of some things, but I also have over 20 xerox boxes of stuff labeled "For Elliott" that he can sort through. (He's going to get all those boxes as soon as he and Martha get into a house. Those plus the couple of dozen boxes of Legos that I've been saving for him--at his insistence!)
On that same topic, another wanted to avoid a situation in her own family. "On your section on 'stuff' one's collected - this past summer our son-in-law's widowed mother passed away. She was living in the house that our sister-in-law grew up in and was a hoarder. My daughter and sister-in-law spent days going through the house, it was terrible. I do not want to do that to my children. We are not hoarders but we have a good-sized house and so much stuff we never use. We keep promising each other that we are going to get rid of stuff - some from my grandparents and parents, some from [my husband's] parents and aunt, and some from ourselves. I yearn to be a minimalist."
I responded. A friend of mine wrote back, apropos of Marie Kondo, observing that she must have never been deprived, because if you were, you don't get rid of stuff. You and I and our generation are grandchildren of the Depression: our parents were children of the Depression and learned to save everything; that habit became ingrained in many of our generation. Our kids? Not so much. I think it's also the case that affluence matters: if you have enough money, you can toss things you haven't used in awhile and if you need it again, you just buy another one. I confess that I reached that point; if we haven't used it for a year or more, out it goes. If we need it again, OK, we'll buy another. (And that rarely happens.)
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I have nothing novel to say about what is going on in Ukraine. I did find this Facebook meme to be apposite.
Like many or most or probably all of you, I am dismayed, alarmed—scared—and saddened that talk about the use of nuclear weapons is back in the air. I suspect Hitler would have used them if he had had them (FDR thought the same); he wanted to take Germany down with him, so why not the world? Does Putin have that same mindset? Is Putin as deranged as Hitler became at the end? One shudders to think that the future of human civilization—such as it is—can rest on the shoulders of one angry person. Who knows if it would make a difference, but Putin has two daughters (maybe three) and a granddaughter while Hitler had no offspring. Would the fact that a nuclear holocaust wipe out his family matter?
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I raised a question on my own Facebook page. I received many responses. First my post:
What do you think? My daughter-in-law-to-be has been grappling with the question of her last name once she and my son get married. One sentiment is to keep her family name. Another is to change it to Engstrand. Another is to hyphenate their names. If it matters: the plans for the future do include kids and she is still young in her professional career. (The irony of the dilemma, as I'm sure every woman reading this knows, and as Gail Collins pointed out in the New York Times a number of years ago, no matter which one she chooses, she still has a *man's* last name—her father's--because in the Anglo-American patronymic naming tradition, the vast majority of women have no last name independent of their father—there are no *women's* last names. Collins's view, as I recall, was "who cares?"). I told my son's fiancée that I sympathized and I had no good answer.
The responses:
--I have done it both ways and found myself much more comfortable using the surname I grew up with. I began hyphenating while living in Mexico so I wouldn't be "de xxx" (of xxx). I'm much more comfortable being a xxx now after 40 years! But will always think of myself as a [family name at birth]
--This is indeed a tough question, Gary. [My wife] and I were lucky that we had an easy choice, since we did not want children. In fact, our conversation was very brief. While in line to get our marriage certificate I asked, "you are keeping your name, right?" "Yup." That was it! 😂 (GE: I agree that it's kids who complicate the question. Otherwise, what would it matter?)
--I kept my father's last name but changed my middle name to my mother's last name. I've always been proud to have the names of two people that raised me and people I so highly admire. With children our decision was to that a boy would have my spouse's name and a girl would have my last name. (GE: But unless you had an unusual naming pattern in your family, your mother's last name was her father's last name--a male. So still patronymic, right? "Yup. But we were trying to move away from that with them.)
--There are several other possibilities. Your son could adopt her surname or they could invent a compound name (not a hyphenate) using elements of each of their surnames. (GE: You're right, they could use her surname or make up a new one. The former didn't appeal to my son (for the same reason women face) and the latter didn't appeal to either of them! "Then perhaps a hyphenated name is the fairest option. It seems only right that both should be equally inconvenienced by the need to update all their documentation. That, or just keep original surnames with no change." GE: The problem with hyphenated names is the children. Pretty soon you have children with 8 names!)
--I think she should keep her last name as her middle name and add Engstrand. (She could hyphenate it, but I wouldn't do that.) My reasons: 1) As you said, she's "young" in her career. 2) Children can also use both names if their parents choose. 3) It's a royal pain ALWAYS having to say explain that yes, you're married, but you decided to keep her maiden name. (GE: As for a pain, that probably depends on stage of life. It's no problem for Kathy to be a Jensen and me to be an Engstrand. It's the question of kids' names that can make things more complicated. As I told my friend, other than that, who cares and why would it matter? "I agree for people in your situation. My response was for your son and his fiancée, who plan to have children.")
--3 thoughts. . .
Hyphenated names can be long and difficult for young children in school.
Hyphenated names can be a bugger (not impossible, though) when searching for a voter's name in the State Voter Registration System.
I kept my middle name & took Floyd's last name because it was both my grandmas' names, and that's the heritage from my side of the family that I wanted to preserve.
--I decided not to hyphenate - too complicated for reasons [xxx] brought up above. Early on I kept my family name as my middle name and took husband's last name. That worked for me and if I would have had children I was planning to use my family name as their middle names.
--Don't hyphenate - take her family name/maiden name as her new middle name. [My wife] did that and we used her maiden name as both our son's middle names… (GE: That's pretty common, I think. My first wife did that, and we used her maiden name as the kids' middle names. But still a patronymic--her dad's surname.) "Let's not go nuts about this…I think sticking with two generations addresses the sensitivities…" (GE: Of course, we guys say "let's not go nuts" but it's the women who lose their family names, patronymics or not! Easy for us to say 🙂)
--It was never a problem having a different last name from [my daughter]. I also have a friend whose husband took her last name because of an uncomfortable relationship with his father.
--I did the same as [xxx] - changed my last name but kept my maiden name as my middle name. I think WHEN you marry matters. It was easy for me as I was 20 and just out of college so didn't have a career yet where I was known by my maiden name. I did draw the line as being labelled "Mrs. xxx yyy" - probably not a thing now but true when I was first married 40+ years ago. That to me connoted that I wasn't someone in my own right. (GE: Yes, indeed, not Mrs. so-and-so, although that was certainly common in previous decades. (And still is on such things as formal wedding invitations--Mr. & Mrs. so-and-so. My son and his fiancée avoided that problem: they sent out invitations electronically, so they all went to email addresses!))
--We didn't really even discuss it. It went without saying that we would both keep our names. Our daughter kept hers as well. Did not have to face the kid's names question for eight years, but then the kids got my name because we did not want to have to deal with hyphenated names or other arrangements. Not sure how it wound up being my name - I think [my wife] made that choice. I guess we had become more conventional by then. Their first and middle names were ancestral names.
--She might consider going where her heart leads her. In perusing genealogical research from the Spanish side of my heritage, in the 16th and 17th centuries, children took the matriarchal surname. The patriarchal surname was worked in there somewhere along with three or so additional monikers. My father's name was [xxx]. From the Swedish side, if the patriarchs name was Anders, the daughter's surname became Andersdotter. The son, Anderson. By now, the wife can be free to take whatever name suits her. (GE: But even in the Scandinavian pattern, the child's name keys off the FATHER--Andersdotter! It's not Marysdotter. My Danish great-grandmother was Jensen (Jen's son!); her husband was Nels Larson (Lars's son).)
--I will always be a [last name]. My spouse doesn't change my identity just my last name.
--If I were do it all over again I would have kept [my family name]. Now I have 2 beautiful children with the last name and named my business after that name. . . What to do! If I ever get married again I think I would remain [what I am now]
--I would suggest that they look down the road and where one might make it more/less an issue with same or different names. Having children is one issue, a woman in a career is another, and even how one might feel about the name later in life (I wish I had kept my own last name or I wish I had changed my name, or I wish...). There may be more. I kept my maiden name as my middle name during my "working" years. I always used my three names for professional meetings, etc. In my early days, it baffled people because they didn't know what to do with what they thought were 2 last names. Now it is quite common. This is actually not an easy decision but one that takes careful thought and is supported by the partner, etc.
--One more on last names. You may recall that [my wife] and I took each others' last names and hyphenated (my birth-name was "xxx"). This was after a lot of consideration of the options and my utter distaste for the patriarchal norm of only one of us changing the name. We did consider our hypothetical children hypothetically getting married and hypothetically needing to deal with this. Ultimately, was a personal (imperfect) choice and one I don't regret (especially since we make up the only four "[their name]" out of the over 6-billion people on earth). I still don't know what our kids might do. [My one recommendation: We did not give middle names to our kids because they had so much last name to contend with. Don't do that. (-: ] (GE: I know what you mean about the kids. My son and his fiancée talked about hyphenation and concluded that it would get out of hand after more than one generation. So I know they're not opting for that alternative. I jokingly suggested that we simply move to numbers and develop a system that tells immediately who your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents were, both male and female. I think that idea may not be going anywhere. . . . Having the unique last name has to be a boon in many circumstances!) "I like the numbering idea! Will have to bounce that by the kids 😀"
--My sister kept her last name and husband kept his. Their children's last name is a combination of both last names. Very unique
--She keep her last name. Son got two last names, not hyphenated.
--I have a close friend who changed her name, as did her new husband, to her maternal grandmother's last name. It would otherwise have died out, as she had no sons to carry on the name.
--I wish I had kept my name. In hindsight I also would have given our children [family name] as middle names. That way the name would have continued on.
--In the end, she should keep the name that feels "like her"….or, like some, they can choose a completely new last name!
Yesterday I happened to hear "Bus Stop" by The Hollies, 1966, which includes the line "One day my name and hers will be the same." It's true that they didn't say which of them would change their name, but in 1966 I'm pretty sure it wasn't the male in the song.
The end of the story is that my son's fiancée decided to take Engstrand as her last name. I haven't talked with her about the reasons she made her decision.
* * *
Related to the foregoing story: Elliott at one point asked me my opinion on what the best metal for a wedding band would be. (Like I'm an expert. . . . Maybe he was just being polite.) Anyway, I duly roved the web for a bit and learned a few things that I passed along. I even contacted a classmate who makes silver jewelry (among other things) and gives classes on how to do so. He provided very helpful advice. I also happened to mention that if wanted it, Elliott could have my wedding ring from my marriage to his mother. I told him I doubted there was any jinx on it and that maybe he'd think it fun to have his dad's ring. (When I married Kathy, I got a new ring. The symbolism was important to both of us. The two rings, however, are identical. . . .)
The style Elliott had been thinking about was very plain, and my ring was indeed very plain, a white gold band with no markings or decoration of any kind. I assured him I had no strong feelings on the matter and that I could understand if he wanted to get his own. He wrote to me: "I have no superstitions around wearing someone else's wedding band. Is not a bad option. Getting it resized would be cheaper than a brand new one." I told him I hoped he had consulted with Martha, who might have a contrary opinion. He had; she didn't. So he is having my ring resized and will wear it.
* * *
While I'm on the topic of weddings, I happened upon a brief interview with the author Margaret Atwood. She happened to mention something that made me chuckle as we prepare for Elliott & Martha's wedding, which I put on Facebook. "You know what Miss Manners said about weddings? 'I suppose you have been told that your wedding day will be the happiest day of your life. Miss Manners sincerely hopes not.'" Maybe if you inserted "thus far" after "life," it would and should be true. But as a general statement, I agree with Miss Manners.
Two friends provided perceptive comments. "It was a unique happiness that will never be repeated and cannot be ranked among other happinesses." True. "As I remember, we both were glad it was over and could start our life together. As I talk with many of my younger friends, they express the same feelings." I can empathize with the latter view in particular.
* * *
I saw a Facebook meme that seemed, for me, right on point. "It's almost impossible to believe that Trump exists. It's as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it up in an old hotdog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face."
From time to time I have wondered why people like Peter Thiel support Trump. This short diatribe was provoked, oddly enough, by a book review of Neal Stephenson's 2021 Termination Shock. Kathy really likes Stephenson, although she didn't think this was one of his better books. I don't care for his writing. What caught my attention was that the reviewer argued that Stephenson, at least with Termination Shock, has become the modern-day Ayn Rand for the corporate/libertarian world. Thiel is a big admirer of Stephenson. My immediate reaction was that if Thiel likes this book for political reasons, I will detest it.
Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and other outfits and is worth about $9 billion (says Bloomberg), surely knows that Trump is not the brightest guy in politics. It's been reported that Trump couldn't be briefed on complex public policy issues and didn't understand them, I doubt he had a clue who his nominees to the Court were (and maybe even many of his Cabinet members), he personally doesn't give a hoot about abortion or religion (except as those issues keep his supporters pumped up), as President he spent hours per day watching TV news, has little knowledge of history or foreign policy, he admires dictators, and on and on. But Thiel and others who share his views are not stupid; I find his views repugnant but I doubt he's dumb.
I've finally concluded that Thiel and many others see Donny as the useful idiot. He can gin up support from voters, he loves the pomp and the perks and power of the presidency, but is uninterested in governing. He leaves the real decision-making to people like Thiel and Steve Bannon, who are appointed to (or influence) high-level positions to seek their goals.
The primary goal, as has been known all along, is substantial shrinkage of the federal government. I don't see a conspiracy; it's been openly articulated. Take a look at Rick Scott's GOP party platform; it would eliminate many federal employees. (It calls for immediately cutting the IRS by 50%. Who would that benefit? The IRS has recently admitted it doesn't have the staff to audit complicated returns, so it mostly doesn't. Who benefits from their inability to do so? The wealthiest.) Thiel and others (including several members of the Supreme Court) would like to see agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Elections Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, etc., eliminated or so weakened they can't perform useful tasks.
The first salvo is West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, now before the Court, which, if the Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, would substantially restrict the ability of the EPA to protect the environment (in this particular case, to regulate greenhouse gases). The case involves complicated legal issues that I don't want to get into here; the point is that the Court is poised to undermine the work of a significant federal agency, and the views of several justices suggest it will be happy to do so with other agencies as well. There is also the hint (not an overt suggestion) in Mr. Scott's platform that Social Security and Medicare should be allowed to lapse once they run out of money (which it is claimed they will). The primary goal, in other words, is to return the federal government to the role it had before the New Deal: small and with little impact anywhere.
With Trump in office, and the Court that he has appointed (that Mitch McConnell has appointed), the libertarian Thiel and colleagues can move forward with alacrity to dismantle the federal government. The libertarians let Trump and the masses have their abortion and religion issues, and maybe white nationalism, because those are not issues of much interest to them. It's the destruction of federal regulatory power and the social safety net that they're after. Maybe Thiel sees himself as John Galt.
(But Thiel is a mixed bag. He's contributed over $20 million to 2022 Republican Congressional candidates so far; however, Wikipedia reports: "Thiel, who is gay, has supported mostly conservative gay rights causes. . . . In 2012, Thiel donated $10,000 to Minnesotans United for All Families, in order to fight Minnesota Amendment 1 that proposed to ban marriage between same-sex couples there." And: "The Thiel Foundation is a supporter of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which promotes the right of journalists to report the news freely without fear of reprisal," which appears to be a legitimate, free-press organization, not some right-wing shadow group.)
One can ask whether much of the federal government is worth preserving. No doubt there is waste; it's a fact of life for any large organization. But the wholesale destruction of large parts of federal regulatory authority would, to my way of thinking, have a disastrous impact on the lives of most Americans. Weakened environmental protection, backtracking on climate change policies, less oversight of the banking and securities industries, less oversight of food and drugs on the market, less oversight of worker safety (OSHA), increased support for anti-union activities, and so on. This is the opposite direction that virtually every first-world, developed, industrialized country on the planet has gone—and many of those countries offer far better living standards for most of their population than does the U.S. Here we call attempts to improve living standards through the social safety net "socialism." Which they most assuredly are not.
Sigh. Unfortunately, all the indicators are pointing in the wrong direction on these matters.
* * *
So that I don't end on a sour note: One of the joys of sitting on our lanai overlooking a small (surely artificial) lake has been the birds and ducks. We have Muscovy ducks, garden-variety mallards (at one point over 100, but the majority seem to have gone elsewhere, perhaps north), northern mockingbirds (such a variety of songs!), doves (that coo a lot), sparrows (of course), cardinals, and birds that look like small crows. At times there can be much noise, but it's pleasant to listen to. We will return home to brown and gray and not many birds.
One of my long-time bridge-playing friends and I went to the Naples Bridge Center twice. On both occasions we played against the teams with the most experience ("open pairs" rather than tables where you could have no more than a set number of master points) and did reasonably well. We both made subtle mistakes (well, one of mine was outright dumb, nothing subtle about it), which in a highly competitive game is costly. On balance, however, we thought we played solidly.
On that subject, I had an exchange with Elliott about games. I have mentioned "Magic: The Gathering" before, a card game with thousands of cards and new ones every year, that MIT has declared the most complex game in the world. He plays regularly with friends, and I asked him, "do you usually make some or a few mistakes and get annoyed with yourself, like I do in bridge? He told me that "it's impossible not to make less than ideal plays but it's never annoying. It's just how the game goes. It's also virtually impossible to pinpoint any specific 'mistake' you made that cost you the game unless it was the chain of events that literally ended the game." I observed that it is "different from bridge in that respect, because you can see almost immediately on each hand if you messed up and if it mattered. Sometimes it doesn't but mostly it will. But then you can get on to the next hand." Elliott told me what I knew: "Magic isn't broken down into hands that can be analyzed so you'd really have to go step by step through the entire game. There are also a lot of instances where they become impossible to compare because in Magic I could play a card that wipes the field and resets everyone's status." There are times when I would like such a card in bridge.
Yeah, I've finally started doing Wordle each morning. I think success, or number of guesses, depends in significant part on the first word you choose.
To my dismay, I have discovered that an obnoxious creature that lives in Minnesota also lives in Florida: the one that eats socks, leaving you orphans.
I hope you have an enjoyable week.
Gary
