Forget the dead white guy writer

We in the fan club think J.D. Salinger wrote a few good stories(not including Catcher in the Rye, which has not stood the test of time—ask anyone under 20!) and then coasted for the rest of his life. Nice job if you can get it! He could have been as over-rated as John Updike if he’d written more.

We have not been successful in recruiting DGF to trash JDS so we’ll move on to something much more interesting.

Susie Boyt has agreed to join the fan club! We are not sure which is more astonishing—that she agreed or that we were bold enough to ask her! Perhaps now we’ll summon the nerve to invite Geraldine Brooks.

To say Susie Boyt writes about fashion is like saying William Faulkner wrote about farming. She ventures broad and deep through philosophy and psychology. Her ethical and decorating sensibilities are finely tuned. She can make it perfectly clear how a particular dress, worn in a particular way to a particular occasion, can be a deeply moral act.

We have long been fans of hers, reading her columns aloud to one another at meetings. But a recent one of hers, appearing after we’d been made furious by valances, sent us into an ecstasy of identification. You see, Susie Boyt is embarrassed by pelmets (look it up). http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/976b0a58-cfe0-11de-a36d-00144feabdc0.html

SB is obsessed with Judy Garland and Henry James. She said the most wonderful thing about her HJ obsession in her autobiography: “The question that intrigued me in terms of both love and work was this: how can one be good and live fully in the world without taking on all any of the taint that the word 'worldly' carries.”

We are honoured to have Susie Boyt as a member of the club and to make her an honorary Southern Lady.

Wake up people!

The fan club, frustrated by the hostile tone of public discourse, has decided to throw in the towel and enter the fray.

We are taking as our model the Wide-Awakes, recruiting people to dress in capes and caps, light torches, and march solemnly in formation through the streets of Cambridge at all hours of the night.

Just as the Wide-Awakes provided moral support and inspiration to an embattled and progressive leader, so shall we support dear Drew Gilpin Faust. Join us! Everyone looks good by fire light!

(I can see her face on the banner but wonder about the eagle.)

Ladies who skate

DGF did not pick up on our suggestion to move the Fogg to Allston, but we can’t complain that the skating rink was a bad idea.

Ice skating is an alien activity to southern ladies, but those of us transplanted north find it a delightful way to keep our figures and an excuse to wear cute outfits. I won’t say that we went skating with Drewdie, but I will say that she continues to demonstrate her ability to balance on a fine edge without losing her poise.

Over a few mugs of mulled wine after some mildly strenuous activity involving spinning and gliding, DGF and I dissected some of the finer points of winter footwear.

Miss Grimke: How many pairs of boots should a lady own when she lives up north?

DGF: One.

Miss Grimke: Last week I wore my black Bean duck boots, my two-tone La Canadiennes with the sheepskin lining, my brown Rockport hikers, and my shiny back tight-calved high-heeled dominatrixs. And that was on Tuesday.

DGF: I find that my wellies suffice for all occasions.

Miss Grimke: That’s because the world comes to you, and you have a “car,” as they say.

DGF: I need boots to check on the goats and rearrange the Christmas tree branches protecting the perennials.

Miss Grimke: You also need them to wade through the mess that your “critics” emit.

DGF: I find that a sense of humor makes quick work of that.

Looking ahead

In the first working week of the new decade we are looking forward, only. Looking back gives us a crick in the neck. What does the future hold?
To answer that question, the fan club convened in a warm cozy spot quite unlike the Elmwood garret. We curled up on the persian rug in front of the fire with the ouija board. Fortified with mulled wine, made from an old family recipe, we asked the following questions and received the following answers.

Q: Are over-the-knee boots as warm as they look and will they be worn by a certain southern lady of a certain age?
A: No.

Q: Will anyone have a job in June?
A: A modest fiscal stimulus focused on aid to the states would be a helpful insurance policy against a further weakning in the economy.

Q: Hinc lucem e pocula sacra?
A: Dum spiro spero.

Q: Will Richard Bradley stop whinging about DFG's not being up to the task, as if he weren't some kind of pretentious ignorant name-dropping pipsqueak?
A: No.

Q: Do the people who criticize DGF for not fixing over night a series of horrendous problems she inherented have a lot in common with the idiots who think Potus should have saved the world by now?
A: Yes.

Q: Will southern ladies of a certain age be asked if they are ticklish before they are carefully patted down by ladies of the homeland security?
A: Yes

Q: Is it really stupid that the arch villain in Avatar has a southern accent?
A: Yes

Q: Will Harvard go broke?
A: The top 10 US endowments have outperformed the MSCI global index by 5.2 per cent over the past 20 years. For each $1 invested, there has been an incremental $5 gain.

Q: What about Uggs for southern ladies?
A: No.

Q: When will it start getting warm again?
A: June 29.

The importance of looks

The fan club is so so depressed. Our beloved Gloria Steinem is actually against the Botax. She says ladies need to shoot poison into their heads to look younger. To save ourselves from hyperventilating we called up Drew, knowing her wise eloquence would reassure us.

Miss Grimke: What are your latest thoughts on the importance of looks?

DGF: Funny you should ask. I know I'm overdue a new prescription for my reading glasses.

Miss Grimke: I don't mean looking out. I mean looking in. Have you been rethinking your look?

DGF: Well I have been letting my hair grow out a bit. I was getting tired of going to the hairdresser's so often.

Miss Grimke: Are you sure you don't mean the barber? I happen to know when a lady is looking for change she cuts off her hair. When she has settled into her new sphere, she lets it grow.

DGF: But change is neither immediate nor total. For each moment of exhilarating transformation there are a thousand daily realities, traveling a slower road, far behind our ideals.

Miss Grimke: Did you ever imagine Ms. Steinem would have represented one of those thousands of realities traveling a slower road, far behind our ideals?

DGF: Never never never. And no I do not go to the barber.

Miss Grimke: You know what I think?

DGF: I think Ms. Steinem is overdue for a haircut.

The beer truth

Our dear Dr. Faust is of course heart-broken over the situation in Allston. It’s as if we had started to renovate, pulled down the walls, put up blue plastic tarps to keep out the elements, and then had to stop construction because our bank pulled the plug. I’m sure that has happened to many of us. Allston is just on a much much much larger scale. The blue tarps are flapping. The squirrels are finding their way into the kitchen. It is a sad sad mess. Drewdie is doing her best to shore things up.

We recently took a field trip to Deep Ellum, the hippest bar in Allston if not all of the eastern seaboard to scope out the scene on the ground while kicking back a few pints.

For starters Miss Grimke ordered 2 pretzels & beer cheese, and Drew could not resist the hot damn wings.

It was when we actually looked at the beer selections that the trouble began.

Miss Grimke: What no BL Lime!?

DGF: Look at this. A beer called Ruination. What's up with that?

Miss Grimke: It gets worse. Leather Lips. Flying Dog Doggystyle.

DGF: Duck Duck Gooze is kind of cute.

Miss Grimke: There is something so not right about the whole microbrew naming thing. Or even the whole microbrew thing.

DGF: As a historian, I have to agree with you. You know I'm a fiend for beer, but there's all this faux artsy stuff that's grown up around it, largely among ladies and gentlemen who wouldn't be caught dead in the Fogg.

Miss Grimke: You mean the Gardner.

DGF: Beer peddlers are trying to recover some delightful better past that never really existed, when women and men crafted things of value with their own hands. These beers are actually living a lie. Also they are expensive, so you are paying through the nose for something that is meant to take you back to a better place that never was. They want to keep us from facing the reality that we live in a time when the most important and valuable things are so amorphous they fly around the world at the speed of light.

Miss Grimke: You can't taste Google.

DGF: But you can get high on it.

Miss Grimke: I'll drink to that.

DGF: But what?

We missed Fashion Week. Or did we?

Miss Grimke: Boston has a Fashion Week.
DGF: No way.
Miss Grimke: Way.
DGF: How could I have missed that?!
Miss Grimke: You were busy?
DGF: Yes, that's it.
Miss Grimke: I was looking at people walking down Newbury Street a few years back and I noticed that every single woman, old, young, fat thin, in between, all were wearing jeans, boot-cut jeans. Tops were different, that's all. And some wore heels and some wore clogs or boots and a few wore running shoes or something.
DGF: Amazing.
Miss Grimke: So what do you think I did?
DGF: Do tell.
Miss Grimke: I went straight over to Eddie Bauer and bought me some boot-cut jeans. Whew. That was close. I nearly walked down Newbury Street like some sort of freak.
DGF: I'm glad Cambridge is not so conservative.
Miss Grimke: Lucky you.