Ginny

Age: 77 Place: Originally Nebraska, now Texas Family: Husband, 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law, 3 grandchildren Occupation: Retired Education: BA, MA Nebraska; Ph.D. UT-Austin Work On hhe Double (1979-1992); taught: ta Austin, Blinn Jr. College (1993-20015), Kelly Girls intermittently.

The Apocalypse – the fear we always have – and Fogel – the cheer we might consider

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Well the apocalypse may be near. But our generation has been lucky. Maybe we’ve taken from the next – but time and space aren’t zero sum either – we can explore both, fill both.

I haven’t digested Robert William Fogel’s Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100 (his tables alone are beyond me besides much else). Still, reading him, I pause in delight and gratitude. The very concepts of “premature death,” “wasting,” and “stunting” open windows time becomes different much as Amerians in the mid-nineeenth century saw their horizons recede & enlarge. It stretched their limbs & imaginations: leaving from St. Louis, they knew some of that land would be theirs – earned by sweat as it never could be in the still feudal worlds some came from. Space liberated them. Fogel describes an enlargement of time – time for us, time with and for our children. He also describes productivity, consciousness – the energy to live fully in that time we’re given (the image of French peasants hibernating in the winters to save food doesn’t leave my mind).

Time is a recurrent literary theme, its fleeting nature the tension of carpe diem. Man’s time countered by redeemed time permeates Eliot’s Quartet, is a mystery in Wallace Stevens and an ache in Frost. Foolishly, we think we can endlessly revise, all is revocable – this permeates Prufrock’s rather inadequate approach. Franklin tells us time is the stuff life is made of – use it. Well, yes, but did he mean what we do? Is it that disconnect that leads us to fragmented training? Dalrymple notes a shallow approach to time (and history) creates a different art.

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Who Cares?

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In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt argues libertarians value liberty, liberals (American) value “caring” and to a lesser degree liberty/oppression, and conservatives care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation fairly equally.

Conservatives sense the world is complex & proportionality leads to better solutions; indeed, conservatives are often more pragmatic. Despite his occasional (leftist) tics, he fits the more skeptical study of human nature we see in Franklin & Adams, Hamilton & Madison. Neither he nor the readers here would be surprised by a story which should make those who profess “caring” a bit uncomfortable: Unemployment Rate Dropped In Every State That Elected A Republican Gov. In 2010

Update: Arthur Brooks uses Haidt and makes an argument about who cares.

Taylor – “Glory Forth May Flame”

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Edward Taylor (c 1642 1729) arrived in New England in 1668, finished his education at Harvard, and in 1671 was called to the frontier town of Westfield. Westfield’s obituary pays descriptive tribute: “And what a rich blessing GOD sent us in him, almost Fifty eight Years Experience has taught us.” He was not ordained for 8 years, for “the Town being till then greatly distress’d by the Indian War [King Philip’s War]; and to his Presence & Influence it was very much owing that the Settlement did not break up. He was eminently holy in his Life, and very painful and laborious in his Work till the Infirmities of great old Age disabled him” (I xx). And then that old inducement worked: he fell in love and married. For almost sixty years, his congregation remained loyal; his wife died; he mourned, he remarried; he sired 14 children, many dying in infancy. He exchanged letters and books with his college roommate, the energetic and ambitious Samuel Sewell.

As Grabo observes, “the social implications of Congregationalism, of the Covenant theology , and of the analogy between New Englanders and the Jewish nation provided little room for a recluse. Consequently, Taylor’s religious life forced him into the activities of his own community.” (Preface). Taylor was a Puritan who quite successfully lived in the world , but equally successfully kept a private & artistic life dedicated to his God.

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Chicagoboyz stats

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Make of it as you will: Chicagoboy Fogel says:

there were hardly a hundred economists employed by the federal government in 1931, even if one counted statistical clerks. By 1938, the middle of Roosevelt’s second administration, the number of economists employed by the government had risen to five thousand. Today that number stands at over twenty thousand. (130)