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.

The Universe's Crisis of Stupidity

The fan club is after me to chastise Drewdie for writing such a boring essay in the NYT Book Review. The fan club is made up of my close personal friends, but really we cannot teach by scolding. We must teach by example. So I am going to write the essay as Drewdie should have written it. Post wit, to wit, ipso facto, and et cetera, dum spiro spero, following:

As my close personal friend Louie 'Lou-eye' Gates definitely did not say, 'I'll see yo mama outside.'

Don't be stupid! The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama does not change the fact that you have to be stupid not to see how important universities, both public and private, are. People go to universities to think and learn, and I don't care how smart you are, you can always benefit from thinking and learning.

So don't be stupid! Ask us to help solve the important problems of the day--from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery. We are constantly thinking about things and doing research. Even when you ask us to do things impossible to do this side of science fiction, we manage to rise, almost nearly, to the challenge.

Educate the elite? Sure, we'll do that. Give opportunities to the downtrodden? No problemo! Manage our vast amounts of money so that it grows and grows and grows so tall we can climb up to the giant's castle in the clouds and steal the magic hen that lays golden eggs? We did that! A little problem arose when the giant got mad and came after us but we are working on it!

But ladies and gentlemen, listen up! We can do nearly everything but you have to trust us and let us fool around, experiment, get messy! Tolerate ambiguity! Embrace complexity! The most difficult problems are often solved when someone is working on something else entirely!

That's why we need English majors, and history professors, and other entities that don't have measurable ROI. They stir the pot. Even more obviously you can't follow people around with stop-watches and those little coin counters the ladies who sold you popcorn at the drive-in movies wear around their waists if you want the stew to stay rich enough to bubble up solutions to the problems of the present and future.

I am embarrassed that some of the ideas that are, well, stupid--like the market "knows" how much something is worth--came out of universities. I don't think English majors or history majors ever bought that crap, do you? Do you have any idea how many English majors and history majors are on Wall Street? Do you think that is not part of the problem?

Higher education is about not being stupid. You can't put a price on that.

August at home

While Drew has some well-deserved down time at a top secret location known only to yours truly, the fan club has been doing some long-needed updates at Elmwood, our part-time club house.

Is it possible to hate valances with a passion? If so, we do. Just because a house is old doesn't mean the windows have to dress up like Victorian ladies. What is the point of valances? What is the point of draperies, other than as back-up fabric for down-at-their heels Southern ladies? Ah, yes, Elmwood needs draperies to mute the noise from Route 2. We are keeping them on that side of the house. But elsewhere! Nudity comes to the windows of Elmwood!

We hope DGF likes.

Les derrierres sont nous!

Ladies are scrutinized, pardon my French, sometimes like slabs of beef. One arrow points to a dainty hand, another to a creamy or chocolately shoulder, another to her haunch. Such was the lot of the young Brazilian lady who happened to ascend some steps in what could have been the gaze of POTUS et M. Sarkozy. It was only after the MSM had had its way with her that we saw her face and learned of her many accomplishments. Does the MSM have the mentality of a 10-year-old boy?

Yes! Just yesterday we were treated to macro close-ups of the butt of a gentleman swimmer whose bathing costume malfunctioned.

Miss Grimke: What is up with this? Don't we have enough crises and misunderstandings and humilations and and and

DGF: I don’t feel I’ve made a decision about how to best engage in this discussion.