naughty victorians

The Atlantic is featuring an interesting article/review about a prominent Victorian family that might be described as sexually avant garde.

Edward Benson, the family’s patriarch, eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1883. He also married his cousin Minnie, whom he kissed and proposed marriage when he was 23 and she was 12, sitting on his knee (they did not marry, however, until six years later).

In hindsight, Minnie was a lesbian, notwithstanding she bore Edward five children, and had long romantic involvements with women both during her marriage and later when she was widowed.

None of the children ever married and some or all seem to have been sexually ambiguous in their own right. Some of the children became accomplished writers and clerics, and some were likely mentally ill -- and those two groups were not mutually exclusive.

The article included one detail I did not realize: sex between men was a criminal offense while "lesbianism was invisible before the law."

Why was male homosexuality unacceptable but female homosexuality was not? The article does not say, and I don't know if I have to read the book to find out.

Perhaps it had something to do with the idea that a man involved with another man "took him out of the market" for reproduction purposes. Yet, per the article, the existence of male/male sexual relationships, while illegal, did not automatically render someone as "that way."

So apparently a bit of early gay sex was okay for Victorian gents, but not too much. The women were free to do as they wished because, as Minnie proved, you could be a full-tilt dyke but still bear children.

Or maybe it had something to do with a literal reading of Leviticus, which is said to condemn male but not female homosexuality. If that's the answer, it's interesting they did not equate lesbianism with male homosexuality as some modern puritans have done when interpreting Bible passages.

Whatever the answer, when I read things like this, I'm thankful I'm not a Victorian. Not that I'm interested in becoming a lesbian, but I wouldn't want to live in a sexually repressed era.

a heart made of spinach

This is a pretty amazing story -- Massachusetts scientists converted modified spinach leaves into human heart tissue.

Most astounding, the creation started to beat after five days and kept going for more than two weeks.

With research like this, scientists hope they'll find ways in the future to create artificial organs for human heart transplants. Every year, some people die before a suitable donor is ever found.

I know some people would say this kind of thing is "playing God," but who says God wouldn't be happy with humans finding ways to keep others from suffering? Why are some medical innovations not "playing God" while others are? If God didn't want this to happen, wouldn't he/she step in to stop it?

When you think about it, anything that has a deadly effect on other people is "playing God." Making war on a country or a people, for instance, is "playing God" because you're ending people's lives early.

woodward & bernstein

Like many people, I've seen the movie All the President's Men but never read the book. I decided to remedy that and checked out the book last week at the library.

I finished it last night and, good lord, what an eye-opener it was. I had no idea the White House in the Nixon years was so corrupt and that the scandal was so widespread.

Cover-up on top of cover-up, bribery, extortion, buggings, wiretaps out the wazoo, thousands of people spied on, dozens of crooked politicians, and more. With the exceptions of murder, the key characters were every bit as wicked as characters on The House of Cards.

My grandfather told me about Watergate when I was young, but I was a child then and I only remembered the broadest details. I had always thought the Watergate scandal was limited to the break-in and cover-up of that crime but obviously I was wrong.

Now I want to read more about Watergate. While the Woodward and Bernstein book is excellent and a real page turner, they wrote it from the close perspective of reporters uncovering a conspiracy, so you never really get a big picture of the scandal from a broader, more detached perspective. There's a new Nixon biography about to be published, so maybe that will do the trick.

One takeaway for me from the book forty-some years after it happened was this: politicians should be prevented from running for re-election while in office. Otherwise, they spend so much of their time and effort after their election trying to get re-elected, and that quest invites and breeds corruption and crowds out their actual duties.

This wouldn't be a lifetime term limit, just a limit on running for re-election. If you really are terrific in office, then you can wait out a term and return if voted back into office. Think of it as the Grover Cleveland solution.

My other takeaway from reading was how easily another Watergate -- or worse -- could happen again at any point in the future. A President is still fairly immune from any kind of oversight until he (or she) goes seriously off the rails.

Some things have improved since the Nixon years but others have deteriorated, so a scandal of equal depth or even worse might very easily happen with, say, the current White House occupant.

cyclone debbie

A reader emailed to ask if Severe Tropical Cyclone Debbie was anywhere near us. The answer is no.

Debbie hit above Brisbane in Queensland, about 1,100 miles from where we live. That's as far from us as New York City is from Tampa, Florida.

We are due to get wet weather down here at the end of the week, which may include part of Debbie's remains. March is the rainiest month in metro Sydney anyway, so this will be a nonevent for us.

A cyclone is the same thing as a hurricane, and both are the same thing as a typhoon. The name difference is due to where the storm happens -- cyclones only occur in the southern Pacific and Indian Ocean.

Cyclones are not uncommon in Queensland, just like hurricanes are not uncommon in the Southeastern United States. So fortunately people up there are fairly well prepared and acclimated to this kind of storm.

Down here, cyclones are extremely rare. Fires, on the other hand, are not.

the wurst picture

I stumbled on this photo somewhere on the Internet last week and immediately burst out laughing. And every time I've looked at it again, I laugh once more.

It looks like an outtake from some TV show (enlargement). I tried using Google's image search to find out what's up, but that wasn't successful.

Whatever the answer, she looks supremely pissed off to me.

perfectly pointless

This viral YouTube video is called "The Most Unsatisfying Video in the World Ever Made," but there's something nonetheless wonderfully entrancing about this. Maybe it's the mellow downtempo music but somehow it actually works.

The pending screw-ups are so obvious when they're coming but you can't help laugh at them when they happen. The user comments show that some people find the video frustrating but others find it wonderfully cathartic.

spectacular failure

I've kept to my promise to write only occasionally about Donald Trump, and this will be one of those occasional commentaries.

Maybe it's not nice to gloat, but I'm gonna gloat anyway. I cannot help but smile at the spectacular failure yesterday of Trump's disastrous health insurance "reform" measure.

As recently as January of this year, Trump promised about his health plan: "We're going to have insurance for everybody. There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can't pay for it, you don't get it. That's not going to happen with us."

When the plan was actually unveiled a few weeks later, however, as many as 25 million currently insured people would lose coverage.

Trump made many other promises during the campaign about fabulous insurance. "Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now," he promised at one point.

His actual plan, drafted in conjunction with Capitol Hill Republicans, was a still-birthed mess of higher costs, worse coverage, and severe service cutbacks.

Many people besides me warned during the campaign that Trump was a bullshit artist who promised the moon but would never deliver. We saw yesterday how true that was.

Pundits are now saying this defeat has dealt a severe and possibly mortal blow to much of his agenda. I certainly hope it has.

There's nothing more satisfying than witnessing the brutal take-down of a smug and arrogant huckster.

I love the smell of humiliation in the morning.

gump tattoo

The pectoral tattoo on the guy here made me laugh (enlargement). It's the overly cited quote from Forrest Gump that's now become a cliché:

"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

That movie came out in 1994, and the man in the picture doesn't look old enough to have gotten this tattoo back then. So that suggests he had this thing slapped on his chest after the movie line had already become overused and trite.

Some of his other tattoos look pretty kitchy, too, like the women's lips on his collarbone and the saying with highlighted red type.

He's what I call a tattoo junkie, someone who abuses tattoos with no regard for what they do to his body. He has good muscle definition and washboard abs, but you don't even notice that because of the tattooed mess all over his skin.

Nothing says "white trash" quite like indiscriminate tattooing.

colin dexter

The brilliant British writer Colin Dexter died earlier this week. If you've ever watched Inspector Morse or the two spinoff series, then you know his work -- he wrote the novels that became the source for the three series and also wrote some of the television episodes.

The Morse of the books is every bit the crusty old fart he is on the TV show. Dexter's brilliant writing is what made an initially unappealing character work so well. He populated his books with people who have so many more layers and nuances than most crime writers' work.

Dexter only wrote thirteen novels in a relatively long career. I've always wondered why so few when so many crime novelists can generate dozens and dozens of books over a long life.

He could've been one of those writers for whom writing did not come easily or quickly. Whatever the answer, far better to have a baker's dozen of really great books than six dozen of mediocre pulp.

the decline of men

The New York Times had an interesting column last week -- "The Increasing Significance of the Decline of Men." That title is a bit unwieldy but the item is an interesting read.

The takeaway is this: while men are still mostly at the top of the financial and power hierarchy, among ordinary folks, women are outpacing men in workforce participation, education, and in resisting opioid abuse.

If this trend continues, will women become the dominant gender in business and academia? Will they eventually hold most of the power and wealth slots atop the pyramid?

I could see how women might become the dominant gender in business and education, but I think it will be quite a while before the hold the power and money reins. Money can be inherited, and with money comes power.

Would that be a bad thing if women eventually were the dominant gender in society? I don't think so. Women are stronger at working together and achieving solutions through consensus and negotiation.

Men, for their part, at least the men in charge, can be hampered by posturing, wanting to look tough, and being afraid to back down.

What would the world be like if nearly all the G20 heads of nations were women? I have to think they wouldn't do any worse then when it's mostly men and probably a good deal better.

Maybe sometime in the not-too-far future we will see this in action.

poo paranoia

Somehow I ended up on this webpage where a new product called V.I.Poo is described.

In a nutshell, you spray the stuff inside the toilet bowl before you crap. V.I.Poo is designed to eliminate the poop smell while you're doing your doody.

That sent me Googling around and I landed on this article which describes V.I.Poo and various products for naughty bits.

My first impression was that V.I.Poo probably isn't very foolproof. If you're taking a particularly stenchy dump, the odors will waft out of the toilet anyway, spray or no spray.

My second thought was: who cares if your poop smells when you're pinching a loaf? If you're in a public toilet, stink will not be a complete surprise to anybody in there.

And my third impression was the cost. I Googled the price and this stuff isn't cheap. I'm too frugal to be wasting my money hiding my poop smell.

If people are offended by others pooping in a public bathroom, then they should stay out of the bathroom. The rest of us shouldn't be spending money to pamper poo-paranoid people.

mayor meth

This is a pretty interesting story: the mayor of an affluent American suburb is arrested for and pleads guilty in a meth-for-sex sting.

The mayor was buying and selling various drugs, including meth, and then using those drugs to pay for group sexual encounters. He succeeded in doing this at least twice before he was busted.

The now ex-mayor could be sentenced to between seven and fourteen months but, as a first offense, it's more likely he would receive probation.

My first instinct was to wonder if his punishment was too light, but after reading the article and a few others, I have second thoughts. The guy sounds like he's been in a really bad place in his life and engaged in self-destructive behavior in response.

After his arrest and resignation, he found a job working in a hardware store where he was well liked and respected. It sounds like he's on the road to turning himself around and, IMHO, incarceration wouldn't be productive towards that end.

There's an old adage that when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. He could use this situation as the foundation for a new start -- a book, a non-profit, a speaking tour, or something similar.

Arguably the only thing better than a story about someone in power having a mighty fall is a story about someone who had a mighty fall but then used that to turn over a new leaf.

Sometimes you have to fail miserably before you can succeed at your true destiny.

father-in-law update

It's been a while since I wrote about my father-in-law. His neurologist and oncologist are now all but certain that the lesion in his skull is not malignant.

The original plan, as of the last time I wrote about it here, was for him to have a CT-guided needle biopsy to test the lesion itself. However, after a second MRI, the radiologist ultimately advised against that plan out of fear the needle could puncture the brain during the procedure if the lesion proved fragile.

So now the revised plan is for him to have another MRI about May 1 to compare it with the one he had on February 1. If the lesion remains unchanged, then they'll do nothing other than a follow-up MRI every three months.

If the May 1 MRI reveals the lesion is larger, then they will try either a sonogram-guided needle biopsy or an outpatient surgery where they make a small incision in the scalp, peel it away, and scrape the bone for biopsy material.

The fact that they're all but certain it isn't malignant was the best news of all. Their best guess at this point is the lesion is some kind of benign bone cyst that's not metastatic.

My father-in-law has a dark sense of humor about things. He said when the doctor calls to tell him "all clear," that would be when he fell down the steps rushing for the phone and break his neck.

don't be lonely

I was reading an article on The Boston Globe webpage when I saw a link for another one with the title "The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness."

My husband is a long way from Boston but he is middle-aged, so I emailed the link to him. Unlike some of his friends' wives, I encourage him to go out and have boy time with "his mates," as he calls them.

As a mother now, I rarely have alone time. If I'm not with the kids, I'm either with my husband or, much less commonly, out with girlfriends. When I am doing something social out of the house, it's usually with the children and my husband.

Although I can easily go into extrovert mode, I am an introvert by nature, so I have never minded being by myself in the past. Then again, I have not reached middle age nor am I male, so that might alter the perspective.

Even before reading the linked article, I have noticed more older men seem to be by themselves than older women. Women seem to do things more as a group while men do not.

Our neighborhood has more than a few middle-aged and older men living alone. I've always assumed they were divorced. Some are ex-pat Brits and Americans. They do seem to spend a lot of time doing things on their own.

I wrote not long ago about an older single male neighbor living alone who committed suicide. I never found out why, but perhaps that was the result of loneliness.

After reading this article, I'm tempted to do the good neighbor thing and host a barbecue with my husband for the various single older men I see in our neighborhood. Maybe they would make some friendships that way.

But then again they might think I'm weird and up to something. I guess that's a commentary on our times, that one always has to be careful about misunderstood motives.

spider monkey sleeves

The two photos below are from Vera Wang's spring 2017 collection. You probably can't help notice that the sleeves are ridiculous, impractically long, so over-long that you couldn't use your hands while wearing such an outfit.

Wang is not the only one pushing this look, and she's also done this in more than one season's collection. Some of the clothes in her fall 2017 line have the same absurd sleeves.

This style is so impractical and silly, that I can't imagine anyone other than Manhattan style slaves wasting money on such preposterous frivolity. And, of course, the prices ain't cheap -- both outfits seen below sell for several thousand each.

I used to like Vera Wang when she was younger and making a name for herself. Now, however, she's embracing the absurd like so many top designers.

Spider monkeys have absurdly long arms. Maybe Vera should start designing clothes for them.

great barrier reef

Today, the scientific journal Nature will publish a disturbing scholarly article about how Australia's Great Barrier Reef is now heading into another severe die-off caused by bleaching, expected to be much worse than any previously recorded. The New York Times published an overview yesterday about the new findings.

The culprit, not surprisingly, is climate change. As the planet warms, the oceans warm, and the warming water causes bleaching, which is often deadly for the coral.

This destruction affects more than just the coral itself because it is a critically important habitat for many underwater species necessary to maintain the food chain.

The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest structure built by living organisms, stretching 1,400 miles at its point of greatest measurement. It dwarfs any structure created by humans.

I have never seen the reef with the exception of one glimpse from an airplane. My husband has seen it a number of times close-hand on dives.

I am pessimistic that the reef can ultimately be saved. Unless climate change is arrested, it will be doomed.

I don't think the human race will be moved enough to halt climate change until things get much worse with catastrophes like widescale flooding and civil unrest. By then, at the eleventh hour, help for the Great Barrier Reef will be far too late.

bitter memory

My husband and I were talking last night about early childhood memories. This came up when we were speculating about what our oldest son might remember from his earliest childhood.

My husband distinctly remembers certain important events from when he was three years old. He also has a memory of one thing that happened before he turned three.

My early memory period is about the same. I remember when my older brother found a dog which then became part of our family.

That happened a few months before I turned three. I distinctly remember when he brought the dog into our fenced back yard after he found it in the street.

I remember running up to the dog, and my father shouting at my brother to keep it away from me. Nevertheless, I reached the dog before he could stop me, but pooch made a fuss over me, so disaster was averted.

I also have a very early memory of a family visit to an aunt when my older sisters were compelled to babysit me while playing with my female cousins. The older girls came up with the idea we should all play hide and seek with one of my older sisters being "it" first.

My other older sister, who wasn't "it," offered to help me find a really good hiding place. She then lifted me up to an empty shelf in a linen closet and closed the door.

For about an hour or so, I hid in the cupboard, waiting to be found. Nothing happened. I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had to go to the bathroom. I couldn't get the door open. So I started to scream. My brother found me and rescued me.

Needless to say, my brother was able to determine there was never any plan to play hide and seek. My two older sisters hatched the idea to stick me someplace out of the way and trick me into thinking we were all hiding while they went off to play something else with my cousins.

This has always stuck in my memory, I imagine, because that was the first time I was exposed to cruelty. My sisters never really seemed to like me when I was growing up, likely due to the age gap and personality differences. We are largely estranged as adults.

It also was a lesson about how some people are inherently kind, like my brother, while others are not.

suffragettes

Time magazine published two dozen period photographs last week from the early 20th century featuring suffragettes marching for the right to vote. These are accompanied by colorized versions of the pictures which really brings them to life.

My grandfather used to tell me stories about how his mother (my great-grandmother) and his grandmother marched for women's right to vote. My great-great grandmother was never a leader in the movement but simply one of the foot soldiers who marched and handed out literature, with the help of my great-grandmother, who was a teenager at the time.

My great-grandmother lived to a few months short of 100 and I remember her some. She had a stroke when I was seven and could not speak thereafter, although she never suffered any cognitive damage.

I'd like to think that if I was a woman living in the early 20th century, I too would've marched for the right to vote. I also wonder if I would've been a hell raiser back then, not content to be a passive virgin until her wedding night.

On a related note, this companion article about the 19th Amendment is of interest, which also has a slideshow of thirteen leading American suffragettes. Nearly every woman featured lived into her eighties or nineties.

Did their quest for equality contribute to their long lives? Does having a longevity gene suggest you also have an activist gene, too?

altered states

While looking for something else, I happened on this interesting article published in The Guardian last September about a new book from a German writer chronicling how Nazi leaders abused cocaine, heroin, morphine and, in particular, methamphetamines during World War II.

The author examines both how they misused drugs and also how such abuse may have affected their actions large and small.

I've written here before about how I'm not pro-drug legalization, other than maybe marijuana (which I've never tried, just like I've not tried any drugs). I certainly believe that drug laws should be reformed so that abusers are treated and not just punished, but at the same time I don't believe in the "make it all legal" philosophy.

While certain drugs may be illegal, they are nonetheless pharmaceuticals. They can both have short-term and permanent effects that can significantly alter behavior and self-control, not to mention cause long-term damage and later health problems.

If you look at societies and subcultures where widespread drug use is rampant, you'll see they usually have serious social problems. Many drugs are addictive and destructive, and that can affect both users and their innocent loved ones.

So by all means reform criminal justice, but don't legalize everything, either. Mass legalization probably would not lead to a new Third Reich, but it could result in a wastrel, parasitic class that drags down all of society, if not something much worse.

mirage

The scariest movie I saw as a child wasn't something with monsters or ghosts or the supernatural or horrific gore. No terrifying people popped out of closets or behind the hero and heroine while wielding a huge knife.

Instead, it was a garden-variety psychological thriller.

The film in question is Mirage, made in the mid-1960s, and starring Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau. Peck plays an accountant caught in a living nightmare as he becomes more and more frantic when he realizes his memories are mostly or entirely false.

I saw the movie on television when I was probably about six or seven, and the false memory elements terrified me. At one point Peck runs down the stairs in his building and into several sub-basements, but when he returns a few minutes later, there are no sub-basements.

At another point we see him leaving his office. When he returns, however, he discovers nothing but a blank wall where his office should be.

Sometimes a woman character knows him and says she's his girlfriend. In other scenes, however, she seems terrified of him and says she has no idea who he is.

As a small child, I didn't really understand the plot but was terrified by the idea that reality could be all an illusion. How would you ever know if a memory was actually real?

Years later, I saw the film and found it somewhat dated and anodyne. I nonetheless enjoyed the movie and the plot twists, but I wasn't terrified in the least.

I still think about the movie on regular occasion. It reminds me that reality for an adult can be much different than reality for a small child.

walking the plank

If you haven't been following the news out of South Korea, here's a quick recap: for months their president has been ensnared in an escalating scandal and, as a result, she was removed from office on Thursday by the country's constitutional court, which decides such matters.

She will now face charges and trial for alleged corruption. If found not guilty, she will be returned to office. If found guilty, she will remain deposed.

As a regular reader of international news, I've noted two "camps," if you will, for how democracies deal with troubled leaders.

A variety of them, like the United States, have some kind of impeachment process where the leader remains in office throughout the trial and only is removed from office if found guilty/culpable. Others are like South Korea and Brazil -- once an impeachment is filed (aka an indictment), the head of state is immediately removed from office but can be returned if acquitted.

While the "immediate removal" process is certainly attractive, the approach that the United States uses is preferable IMHO -- removal if only found guilty.

Without this, I could see how removal/impeachment could be abused. Opposition parties would spend their entire time looking for and drumming up "scandals" that might be anything but. Every president could be impeached and several times over.

As much as I would love to see the bilious buffoon currently occupying the White House impeached and removed from office, I still think the "wait and see" approach we have is the better method.

moral versus immoral

Because I post a quote every day on my Tumblr, I put this one up yesterday from Ernest Hemingway: "What is moral is what you feel good after, and what is immoral is what you feel bad after."

On first glance, this might seem like a wise observation. But on a second examination, I don't think it is.

Let's say Fred is a rapacious venture capitalist. He takes over a company that holds the patent on a moderately inexpensive drug used in cancer treatment -- let's call that Zxylothol.

Once he has control of the company, Fred increases the Zxylothol price tenfold. The public is outraged. The news and airwaves are filled with reports about how people struggle to pay for Zxylothol and go without other necessities of life.

Nonetheless, Fred feels good after yanking up the price when he sees the profits pouring in. Yeah, some people will die because of the price spike, but Fred doesn't know them so he doesn't think about them.

So, using Hemingway's definition, Fred is not acting immorally because he feels good about what he's done. Greed is good and all that.

Now many of us would argue that what Fred has done is, in fact, immoral. He is thoughtlessly exploiting others in dire need entirely for his own benefit.

Conclusion: Hemingway wrote some amazing masterpieces of literature, but his moral barometer needed servicing.

smiley returns

I was really pleased to read yesterday that John Le Carre -- one of my favorite novelists -- will have a new book out this fall. The cherry on top of this sundae is the news that it will also be a George Smiley book, the ninth in the saga to close out the story.

The new novel will be narrated by a Smiley protege, Peter Guillam, who has retired to his farm in France. I'm guessing that Smiley will only appear in flashbacks if the story is told in the present day, because he'd have to be well over 100 if still alive, given he was supposed to be at university in the 1920s.

I first saw this news as a little blip without any details and was fearful this was some old manuscript on Le Carre's shelf that he decided to dust off and publish. Later news reports proved that to be unfounded, as the writer is reported to have started the book within the last year.

After Le Carre published his autobiography of sorts last year, I thought that was his swan song, given he's now in his mid-80s. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

In the best of all worlds, Le Carre will continue to write new novels even after the one this year. Some writers keep going to age 100, so why not him? He's always been outdoorsy and athletic, so here's to many more years of good health.

a woman of no importance

We have a neighbor who makes me cringe every time I run into her. She's not nasty in any way, but the woman is the worst windbag I have ever met in my life.

I usually take a walk every day with my children and sometimes with James. Mrs. Windbag sometimes also walks in the neighborhood, and I dread running into her.

I have devised various strategies for avoiding her. If I see her in the distance, I will pretend not to notice her and turn onto a side street. If that doesn't work, I call someone on my mobile and engage in an important-sounding conversation when passing her so I can get away with only a wave.

Yesterday I was in the supermarket and the checkout lines were very long for unknown reasons. So I parked in one and waited.

I nearly died when I saw, too late, Mrs. Windbag happened to be looking for a checkout line, too. She spotted me just as I was turning away and rushed up to trap me. I had no choice but to stand there and hear the most banal chatter about nothing.

I told my husband later I finally figured out who she reminded me of: a character played by the British actress Patricia Routledge. She did an excellent one-woman one-off performance in an hour-long television play called "A Woman of No Importance" that has run with a collection of similar monologue television plays under several anthology titles, including Talking Heads and Objects of Affection.

In the piece, Routledge talks breathlessly for an hour about utterly nothing of importance, hence the title. I think every time I see neighbor Mrs. Windbag hereafter, I will see her as Routledge yammering away about nothing without stop. (If you're familiar with the popular British series Keeping Up Appearances, Routledge played Hyacinth Bucket.)

A coda with an interesting bit of Australian trivia: one of most common and popular supermarket chains here down under is Woolworths. Although named after the once-famous American variety stores, it otherwise has no connection.

forgiveness or not

Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger have generated considerable press in recent days in the English language media because of their new book. She is from Iceland, and he is from Australia.

Elva was raped by Stranger in the mid-1990s. Roughly a decade ago, she contacted him, and the two began an email dialog that lasted for a number of years.

Then they arranged for a face-to-face meeting in a neutral place to continue their dialog. (It should be noted that he fully admits to being her rapist.)

She wrote a book about the entire experience of re-contact and, ultimately, her forgiveness of him. He collaborated in part on the project.

Their effort has already been published in Iceland and elsewhere and will be released in English-language editions in May of this year. The two have also appeared together in public forums to discuss their history, including at a TED talk that has since had millions of hits on YouTube.

Not surprisingly, the matter has generated considerable attention from activists and abuse survivors.

"Why should we hear what a rapist has to say?" a newspaper article here in Australia quoted women. "Why should he be applauded for simply acknowledging his crime?"

I have never, thank God, been the victim of sexual assault or rape. However, I had a past relationship where I suffered psychological abuse and even physical abuse at times, so I do have some sense of what it feels like to be a victim, albeit one that is considerably removed from rape.

My first impression upon reading about this book and project was that it humanizes the rapist. Sometimes first impressions are best impressions.

Of course rapists are human, but do they deserve to be treated with respect because they have admitted to and apologized for their crime?

If the answer is yes, when does the answer become "no" for crimes arguably even more serious than rape? Should relatives of murder victims and the murderer of their loved one do books and talks together?

Ultimately I imagine it all depends on what the victim (or victim's family) wants to do. But if you do come forward like this, I think you need to bend over backwards to be careful you aren't making the rapist into a sympathetic victim, too.

I am aware of the Christian concept of forgiveness, but I don't think that means you have to do books and public talks with people who commit violent crimes on your person or your family. You can forgive them in your mind but you're certainly not required to meet them and try for some sort of detente. You are no less a person for refusing to do so.

I have no interest in ever seeing or hearing from the abusive man with whom I was in a relationship. I have forgiven him privately because I realize he was seriously fucked up and a substance abuser.

Forgiving him doesn't mean embracing him, however, or even re-aquainting myself with him. That past stays in the past.

Your mileage may vary.

the poison flower

Yesterday I read this fascinating article about yet another enemy of Vladimir Putin dying in a mysterious case outside of Russia where a rare poison was involved.

How many Putin foes need to die in highly unusual circumstances for it to go beyond "mere coincidence." I'd argue we long ago passed that point.

Somebody falling down stairs might seem suspicious, but that actually happens to lots of ordinary people who are nobody's enemy.

It's a rare case, however, when someone dies of a poisoning by a highly unusual substance not easily obtained by regular people on the open market.

So while these poisonings are often elaborately planned and carefully executed, the very unusualness of them make them all the more suspect.

Which makes me wonder how smart Putin and his people really are -- and let's be honest, only a naif doesn't believe they're involved -- when they kill someone by such unusual means and methods.

Because when someone kills a person using a weapon only known to spies of countries that poison people, such an act narrows down the list of suspects considerably.

Or maybe that's the point: Putin is bragging to his enemies every time he does this, because it tells them he can kill with impunity by a most obvious but equally deniable method. And he can get you no matter where.

family ethics

My favorite uncle sent me an email a few days ago telling me that he had recently found, among my grandfather's voluminous personal papers, a journal/memoir of considerable length that apparently he had written over the course of several years.

The document covers much of his life and is written entirely in longhand in an old bookkeeping ledger. There are no personal notes or instructions in the item as to what should be done with it after his death.

My grandfather died nearly ten years ago and left a big house chock full of all sorts of personal possessions, family heirlooms, and all the records from his medical practice.

My grandmother is still alive but living in an elderly care facility, so the house has sat unoccupied since nearly the time of my grandfather's death. My uncle lives within walking distance and checks on the house every few days.

In anticipation that my grandmother will not live too many more years -- she's in her later nineties and physically sound but mentally incapacitated -- my uncle and my cousins decided to clean the junk out of the house so that the property and contents can be disposed of when the time comes.

My uncle now has an ethical dilemma of sorts: what to do with my grandfather's document. He has read through parts of it and said he doesn't think it has any publication potential, but he doesn't know whether or not to share it with any family members who wish to read it.

It's a simple question but not with a simple answer: does it violate my now-deceased grandfather's privacy to share it? Apparently there are some very personal passages with some interesting revelations.

I had an immediate reaction: if my grandfather did not leave any instructions to destroy the document or to not share it, then he had no objections to the family reading it.

To date, my uncle has only surveyed his children, my brother, and me about what to do. We have all unanimously agreed independent of each other that it's okay to share.

He will now query his other siblings and their children about their feelings. He's not in close contact with any of them and in fact has barely spoken to some of them since my grandfather died.

I'm interested to hear what they have to say. I think some of them may say "no" just to be contrarian.

I, for one, absolutely want to read it. I loved my grandfather dearly and he was arguably my most important and influential relative when I was a child.

I think it would be a way to know him better that was not possible before. I hope I have that opportunity.

a love letter to hate

When I first heard that the FX cable channel was making a series about the infamous feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, my reaction was it could never last very long.

But it turns out the first press reports were misleading: the Davis/Joan bitchfest will only be one eight-episode season of a new anthology series about legendary battles, hence the title Feud with the subtitle changing each season. In a sense, the program will be an anthology of various miniseries about epic battles.

That left the big question remaining: would it be exploitative trash like the recent Liz Taylor/Richard Burton biopic or would it actually be watchable?

Reviews are starting to roll in -- the series premieres tomorrow -- and they've been quite positive. Both The New York Times gave it a good thumbs up (including the line I used as a title to this entry) as did The Guardian's review of the show.

One reason is obvious why the program likely succeeds: the acting powerhouse talents of Susan Sarandon as Bette Davis, Jessica Lange as Joan Crawford, Judy Davis as Hedda Hopper, Stanley Tucci as Jack Warner, Kathy Bates as Joan Blondell, and more.

With a cast like that, it would be pretty hard to go wrong.

is he sexy?

An Australian female friend of mine and I had a conversation the other day about whether Casey Affleck was hot or not. We both ended up having the same opinions.

When he was younger, he was somehow too creepy. He was like one of those weird man-child creatures who often seems emotionally stunted and just weird.

More recently, however, there's something about him that's particularly attractive and endearing. I thought he was exceptionally good in Manchester by the Sea, but he also looked really fuckable sometimes, too, although not in a conventional handsome leading man movie star way.

He nonetheless has a smoldering sexiness that's hard to define. By comparison, I've never found his older brother Ben Affleck to be particularly sexy. He's a nice-looking man and very fit, but he's just too groomed and pretty boy for my taste.

I suspect part of the reason I find Casey alluring is there's something about him that reminds me of my husband. Maybe it's the dark, sometimes brooding, sometimes intense Irish genes thing. Casey is much different than my husband in many ways, but there's some commonality, like they could be third cousins.

gold in them thar fields

I thought this true story was fascinating and might even make a good movie some day.

In a nutshell, two friends long ago gave up metal detecting in British fields because they never found anything of value. Twenty years later, they decided to give their hobby another try and stumbled on four pieces of ancient gold jewelry about 2400 years old in a field they searched fruitlessly years ago. It's the earliest ever find of Iron Age jewelry.

I remember seeing older men on California beaches waving around metal detectors but what of value could they possibly find -- loose change? I've read several articles about 18th century shipwrecks filled with treasure off the California coast, but those would've gone down out to sea, not on the beach itself.

I occasionally see such men here on the Australian beaches and have wondered the same thing -- what do they possibly think they'll find of any value?

People have lived in Australia for at least 40,000 years and possibly as long as 75,000 years but did not have a metallurgy culture before Europeans arrived in the eighteenth century, so the chances of finding a valuable ancient artifact here is zero.

life is not fair

Life is not fair. You know it. I know it.

Sometimes good people get a really raw deal. Sometimes really shitty people get away scot free. Sometimes loathsome people reap undeserved rewards. Sometimes the least deserving gets the biggest prize.

I think accepting that life is not fair is the threshold we traverse between childhood and adulthood. Children are frequently heard to say "that's not fair."

Sometimes adults say this, too. But most of us realize life is a series of random events and sometimes you draw the really lousy hand.

That's not to say you shouldn't fight against injustice or that you shouldn't always stand up for what is right. These are noble and necessary endeavors.

But the sooner you accept that life is not fair, I'd say the happier you'll be. You can fight unfairness, and knock it back for a time, but you'll never defeat it.