(Illustrated)
“The communication
of the dead is tongued with fire
beyond the language of the living.”
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Photo by Mark J. Terrill / AP
Above: Christina Aguilera performs “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” in tribute to the late James Brown during the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday, February 11, 2007.
This morning’s New York Times:
Coming of Age in a Changed World
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 11– Recalling her coming of age as the only girl in a privileged, tradition-bound family in Virginia horse country, Drew Gilpin Faust, 59, has often spoken of her “continued confrontations” with her mother “about the requirements of what she usually called femininity.” Her mother, Catharine, she has said, told her repeatedly, “It’s a man’s world, sweetie, and the sooner you learn that the better off you’ll be.”….
… Asked Sunday whether her appointment signified the end of sex inequities at the university, Dr. Faust said: “Of course not. There is a lot of work still to be done, especially in the sciences.”
What would her mother, who never went to college and died in 1966, have to say about her appointment? “I’ve often thought about that,” she said. “I’ve had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died.”
Then she added with a rueful smile, “I think in many ways that comment– ‘It’s a man’s world, sweetie’– was a bitter comment from a woman of a generation who didn’t have the kind of choices my generation of women had.”
“But it wouldn’t mean
nothin’ … nothin’ …
without a woman or a girl.”
— James Brown,
who died last year
on Christmas Day
