Category: Manners and Mores
-
Social Distance and Good Relations
Social distance aids in the preservation of good relations with people. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, disrespect. In the famiglia, especially. Conventional usages, phony and formulaic as they often are, have their uses. They allow for civil interaction while preserving distance. "Good morning." "After you, sir." We all want respect even while aware of how…
-
Why Typos Don’t Matter Much and the Musical Watershed of the ‘Fifties
This is a re-post from 21 September 2011. I dust it off in dedication to my friend Dr. Vito Caiati, historian and old-school scholar who is excessively worried about typographical errors in his missives to me. He is not alone; he has recently been joined by long-time blogger buddy Tony Flood who shares Vito's worry.…
-
Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children
Top o' the Stack. Related: Our Little Barbarians. Excerpts: Recently, an establishment called Nettie's House of Spaghetti in New Jersey announced they will no longer allow children under 10 to dine at their restaurant. The move caused controversy, with some respondents applauding the policy and others accusing Nettie’s staff of being “child haters.” But the…
-
Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality
'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings. Impersonality in the minimalist style typically takes the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better…
-
Tucker Carlson on the Tulsi Gabbard Show
Long, but good. Tony Flood comments: Their occasional descent into verbal coarseness was as disappointing as it was unexpected. It seems that even for some people I most admire, the effort to resist that cultural pull downward is no longer worth the bother. Our society-wide descent into verbal and other forms of coarseness and crudity outside of…
-
Self-Deprecation
A little self-deprecation is good, but more is not better. Nobody likes the boaster. Take self-deprecation too far, however, and people will have contempt for you.
-
Half-Way Cultural Appropriation
You appropriate our science and technology, why not then appropriate the values, virtues, attitudes, and behaviors that led to the science and technology? Here are some of them: hard work, self-control, self-knowledge, deferral of gratification, focus, protracted study, objectivity, rational thinking, coherent speech, respect for legitimate authorities, respect for elders, and punctuality. Why the…
-
William Faulkner on Privacy
Harper's Magazine, 1955.
-
“Not Hung Up on the Completion Thing”
In grad school I knew people who fit the above description. I used to joke about them ending up graduate student emeriti. Desultory and undisciplined, and allowed to take incompletes in their courses, they took them in spades. And so the above line from The Big Chill (1983) stuck with me. William Hurt has died…
-
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 1940’s Proto-Rock
Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece. If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack. Man it's better than chicken fried in…
-
The Introvert Advantage
Social distancing? I've been doing it all my life. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo! Happy solitude, the sole beatitude. How sweet it is, and made sweeter still by a little socializing. Full lockdown? I could easily take it, and put it to good use. It provides an excellent excuse to avoid meaningless holiday socializing with…
-
Christmas Cards and Virtue Signalling
The cards are coming in. While I lack the power to peer into souls to discern motivations, I suspect that many who send pictures of themselves in masks are signalling their politically correct virtue. Or maybe it's a fashion statement they are making. In a restaurant a while back I espied a couple of…
-
Women Need to ‘Man Up’
A member of the distaff contingent advises. If men are too 'cocky,' then perhaps the female equivalent is the answer rather than the cultivation of grievances: How did we create an entire class of highly privileged, mostly affluent young women who feel unsafe on campus, microaggressed at every turn, utterly unable to cope with the…
-
The Upside of the Shutdown: A Salutary Slowdown
A strange vibe supervened the other morning during a leisurely meander over the local hills. It was as if the world's volume had been dialed down. Things had become calmer and quieter. Or so it seemed. "An upside of the shutdown," I said to myself. The typical American's life is frantic, frenetic, and hyperkinetic. For…
-
Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality
'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings. Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still…