They probably are heroic; it’s just that others haven’t known them, and unless somebody gets the stories from them and writes them down, nobody ever will. The immigrants of the past century have had to bridge enormous gaps, from very primitive, impoverished societites to the world’s most modern industrial civilization. It required amazing resiliancy and perseverance to succeed.

Yes, that’s true, I agree. Many of the medical residents I supervise have children, and because I don’t have children, I often feel I am simultaneously *too hard* and *too easy* on them. I am concerned that they spend enough time with their children and want them to have time off for that, but, also, I want them to be VERY prepared for their jobs because it won’t be easy, balancing medicine and children. Yes, the more I think about it, you may be correct.

I haven’t read Brookner. Thanks for the suggestion.

Have you read much Anita Brookner? I ask because she is a writer who has mused, beautifully and quite unfashionably, about contemporary feminism. It’s not what you think, and it’s not what her critics think, either. Well, that’s my thesis.

She’s a writer that tends to get a bit of an eye-roll because of her sensibilities, but, she has that Booker and all those, one senses, reluctantly positive, Kakutani reviews.

I had a hard time with this: choices are plentiful, and then you make them, and they are less plentiful. Men do this, too, we just don’t tend to make such a poetic fuss over it, I suppose.

And, to your original thesis, no, I don’t agree, entirely. Any happy, healthy, successful conservative seems to get strange reaction from certain quarters. I don’t think what President Bush got in terms of criticism was any less harsh than Palin.

I think my working mother, who had a hot dinner on the table every day, and kept a beautiful house, and worked hard at her job, was a SUPER woman. I often feel I don’t measure up. She’s amazing.