Rest in peace,

Myra Blankenship.

We'll take good care of Eve.

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For some reason I was thinking about this game that my friends and I played when we were little. It's one of those clapping games where two girls sit facing each other and clap/slap their hands on together/on their knees/on each other's hands rhythmically will chanting a song. Along with "Say Say Oh Playmate" this was one of our favorites:

Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack
All dressed in black black black
With silver buttons buttons buttons
All down her back back back
She asked her mother mother mother
For fifty cents cents cents
To see the elephant elephant elephant
Jump the fence fence fence
He jumped so high high high
He reached the sky sky sky
And didn't come back back back
Till the fourth of July July July

What strange lyrics! I wonder if girls these days still know that song. Some of the lyrics make me think it's very old . . . buttons on the dress and so forth. I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Mary_Mack

I can't seem to find any data on when the song originated, though.
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If you're reading my blog, and are thus at least vaguely within my circle of acquaintance, then you too are wondering What To Do??? about the new Colin Firth movie "The Last Legion." Reviews are horrible, and there are few more horrible films than a horrible King Arthur epic . . . but it's Colin!

Please, I need your support. Write and tell me how you're dealing with this. We are all trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.

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Some quotes from Plato today:


Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

The partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward and leads us from this world to another.

Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.

Let the inner and the outer man be as one.
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I was thinking this weekend about consciousness. Specifically about one state of consciousness. The Greeks might have called it the happy medium. Some would call it health, some happiness. Some wouldn’t think to call it anything at all. I call it the “sweet spot.”

For the vast majority of people, I suspect, consciousness isn’t a puzzle; it’s just there—simple, given, unproblematic. But for some portion of people—and I wish I knew how many—consciousness is hard. For me it’s that combination of a trapping introversion, one in which you can’t find a way to express (at least in a socially acceptable way) who you are inside, and an estranging extroversion, one that serves as a coping mechanism for the introversion. Sometimes it’s a simple as being too loud and talkative when that’s not really you; sometimes it’s losing sight, when you’re in a group, of who the “real you” might be.

With aging it all gets easier, and some days it all comes together. On Saturday I sat out on our deck in the sunshine, reading my book The Barbarian Conversions and drinking my Diet Coke, drinking in too the beautiful trees and dappled light. Then I talked on the phone with my best friend and got to experience the blessing of true connection. It was a good day; a great day. Doing the things I love most, feeling connected with others without betraying those things . . . that’s the sweet spot.
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It comes in this form:













I never wanted to get an iPod because I disagree so strongly with (1) the proprietary nature of the iTunes set up, (2) the fact that Apple doesn't allow competitive manufacturing of its products, and (3) the lack of standardization of MP3 files in general. But my friend Molly gave me her iPod to load some music on a while back, and much like an alcoholic who gets a whiff of rum while baking a fruitcake, a byte of desire was implanted in me. Like a bad virus, it's multiplied in my system all this time, and I finally broke down and bought one, with the excuse: I'll need something to entertain me on those long bus rides between Rome, Florence, and Venice.
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My in box subject-line row this morning reads:

hmm.
HELP!
*hee!*

I remembered a favorite quote from Julie this morning: "It's almost always more fun to do something than not to do something."

Scary.

We are 6 weeks away from our trip to Italy! I recently read a historical novel/mystery set in post-WWII Venice called Alibi. Good mystery, with lots of atmosphere. Ho bisogno di andare a piedi le vie di Venezia!
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Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor-philosopher, the famous equestrian statue of whom only survived early Christian idol-bashing because they thought it was of Constantine.

He coined the word "cosmopolitan" in his statement, "Do not say 'I am an Athenian' or 'I am a Roman' but 'I am a citizen of the universe.'"



But my favorite saying of his is this:

"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."
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cucchiaio
(Italian for "spoon")

Pronounced "Kooky-I-o"

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I despaired of the movies this summer when in spring there was nothing in the multiplexes but multiple showings of Shrek III and Pirates of the Caribbean III--both of which got dismal reviews. But this has turned out to be a surprisingly good movie summer. I haven't seen a single foreign or indie movie in months, but I've been kept entertained by the series of Big Hollywood Blockbusters which also turned out to be Good:

Hairspray
Live Free or Die Hard
The Bourne Ultimatum
Ratatouille
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Knocked Up
Ocean's 13
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http://www.amazon.com/Sorcery-Cecelia-Enchanted-Chocolate-Pot/
dp/015205300X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/
105-6662809-7290852?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186159067&sr=1-1
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Salary Negotiations

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The Washington Post ran an interesting article this past week about salary negotiation differences between men and women. There is a pay gap of about 10% between men and women in similar fields and with similar backgrounds. This article reviews how that gap may have its roots in initial starting salaries, whose effect is magnified over the years by the effect of annual percentage increases.

The researchers found that women bargained for higher starting salaries much less frequently than men, but only when the hiring manager was a man. The researchers found that this is not a problem of socialization with women (i.e., that women need to be more aggressive negotiators) but rather an accurate reading by the women of the effects of negotiation on male hirers. When women negotiate salary with male hirers, the male hirers consider them to be more difficult and are more likely to not want to work with them. This did not happen when male hirers interviewed male candidates, and it did not occur with female hirers at all.

Here is the article in its entirety:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/29/AR2007072900827.html
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