Dec 29 2008
Introspection, sí. Inspecting others, no.
On St. Stephen’s Day, I tend toward introspection. It’s natural; nearly everyone has gone home, and there’s a relaxed (some might say exhausted) atmosphere. I imagine that between Christmas and December 30th, many people write their New Year’s resolutions.
And then the end-of-year bank statements and tax documents come… There’s some miserable introspection, right there.
But the one thing that can be counted on, at least in my family, is that people are civil enough not to write each other’s resolutions. So Uncle Luigi won’t be handing a copy of The Midwestern Beach Eating Regimen to Aunt Vanna. And Cousin Vita won’t be giving her daughter Lucia the phone number of a very good divorce attorney.
So I understand the bee in the Anchoress’s bonnet over a column by Jamie Lee Curtis. The American actress writes that the current financial crisis will “bring us into financial alignment. Families may have to live together again! What a concept. (…) Neighbors are going to meal share and carpool and child care for each other and maybe even rent out parts of homes to other families. Less meat, more beans. Might be better for you anyway.”
I don’t know what is worse: that Ms. Curtis wrote a column with three references to fiction and very little about economic reality, or that 30% of the piece was written by John Steinbeck. (What a hard-working dead man!)
