Daily Office:
Friday
A while back, Édouard ran a snap of these hideous, hideous statues, which stand outside a townhouse across Fifth Avenue from the Museum. I had been trying to keep their ugliness a neighborhood secret, but É has outed it.
Morning
¶ Cards: Judith Warner writes with sad lucidity about “playing cards.” As in, “the autism card.”
Now I’m off to the movies. Have a great weekend, everybody!
Oremus…
Morning, cont’d
§ Cards. She also talks of “compassion deficit disorder.” In this land of make-nice, we’re strangely (or perhaps not) prone to resent other people’s problems.
From where — other than ignorance — does all this ugliness spring? From a cultural moment when people feel locked in hand-to-hand combat, competing for an ever-shrinking stock of resources. The kids applying to college — in what promises to be, demographically, one of the toughest years ever — are feeling this whittling-away of the cultural pie most acutely. As a result, they’re particularly susceptible to the awful miserliness of spirit that accompanies periods of shortage.