Sara Davis conceives of the still life and the artistic portrayal of zombies as two forms of memento mori – a symbol of death’s inevitability:
For the 17th century Dutch merchant class, a still life was a shrine to the beauty and pleasure that money can buy: luxuries, delicacies, fine things that could be held in the hand or captured in oils, a small and fine possession in itself. But for contemporary society, the ultimate shrine and symbol of prosperity is the well-kept body — that is, a body that falls into a fairly narrow category of healthy, beautiful, and athletic. Despite all the goods and brands and tech toys, so much more of our collective wealth is sunk into sculpting or tightening, brightening or darkening, coloring and trimming, running, counting calories, and swallowing gallons of “smart” water.
It makes sense, then, that today’s bogeyman and morality tale is a decaying body, a walking (or running) death’s head that all the cardio and training in the world can’t outrace. Zombies mock us, like the half-eaten fruits of the Dutch golden age and the weary speaker of Ecclesiastes, that though we may define ourselves by what and how we consume, it is all a pretty distraction from how we will be consumed.
Speaking of zombies, A.J. Kandathil draws lessons for writers from The Walking Dead.
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there’s more enterprise in walking naked.
Alexis Coe marvels at the tumultuous relationship Virginia Woolf had with her servant of 18 years, Nellie Boxall:
Boxall was hired as the Woolf’s live-in servant at 52 Tavistrock Square, where the writer would draft Mrs Dalloway and launch Hogarth Press. All the while, Nellie was hard at work in the background, pumping the water, lighting the lamps, making the beds, and emptying the chamber pots — more than her title of “cook” suggests, though she did that as well, serving multiple courses three times a day.
Few scholars have parsed Woolf’s diaries without commenting on her frequent, detailed, and often vitriolic accounts of Boxall. Their brand of melee was firmly mired in a cycle, each arguing her points with the tools available to them. Boxall howled and cried, and then threatened to leave, which she would not, but the threat greatly destabilized and embarrassed Woolf. For her part, Woolf recognized, if not predicted, the attraction, writing, “If I were reading this dairy…I should seize with greed upon the portrait of Nelly & make a story — perhaps make the whole story revolve around that.”
More details of their toxic dynamic:
Boxall certainly facilitated optimal writing conditions at times, and greatly hindered them at others. Her complaints were not unfathomable, given her substantial work load. Swollen ankles and a bad back might have been tolerated in relative silence if, she seemed to tell Woolf, her efforts were appreciated. “Nellie Boxall was one of the majority throughout history who had made their presence felt through surliness or tears, downright disobedience, petty acts of revenge (like spitting up on soup) or vicious talk,” wrote [Alison Light, author of Mrs. Woolf and Servants]. Nellie communicated her grievances through dramatic scenes, which Woolf found distracting and “degrading,” but nonetheless chose to obsess over them for nearly two decades.
Woolf recounted and appraised “the famous scene” at Tavistock Square in London over and over again in her diary. After a particularly bad argument, Boxall ordered Woolf out of her room, one she inhabited but technically belonged to her masters. “In her closest relationships — with Vanessa, Leonard, Nellie, Vita, and Ethel — Virginia knew she wanted mothering and protection but she also distrusted ‘the maternal passion,’” explained Light. This was not weak moment for Woolf, and she did not need to be reminded of instances in which Boxall had played the stern but kind parental figure. She could not decide if Boxall, by ordering her out of the room, had treated her like a child or a servant; in the end, it did not matter, for Woolf was resolute. This time, Boxall would go. She spent the following weeks rapt with expectation, engrossed in preparation for any possible scenario. She copied out and practiced reading aloud various replies to what she expected Boxall to say. “I am sick of the timid spiteful servant mind,” wrote Woolf, the very same woman who had railed against men’s use of ‘the female mind.’”
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to contest@andrewsullivan.com (the old address still works as well). Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.
Jordan Weissmann points out that, if the government slashed aid to private colleges, it could “cover the tuition bill at every public college in the country”:
With the money that’s either going to private colleges, or or being paid to the public sector in a roundabout way via tax breaks, we could probably make tuition at public institutions — which educate about 76 percent of American undergrads — either free, or ridiculously cheap.
Any attempt to move all federal aid directly into state universities would result in a vast and angry outrage (and lobbying efforts) from America’s private universities (not to mention for-profit companies that offer higher education).
“You’re cutting off aid to poor students,” they’d complain. And they’d be right. The reality is that while Princeton or Amherst could continue to exist fairly well without federal financial aid, University of Phoenix would go bankrupt. Also destroyed under this plan would be a huge swath of small private colleges that educate many middle and working class Americans.
Matthew Power profiles the urban explorer movement known as Urbex, whose followers “over several years had infiltrated an astonishing array of off-limits sites above and below London and across Europe: abandoned Tube stations, uncompleted skyscrapers, World War II bomb shelters, derelict submarines, and half-built Olympic stadiums”:
They had commandeered (and accidentally derailed) an underground train of the now defunct Mail Rail, which once delivered the Royal Mail along a 23-mile circuit beneath London. They had pried open the blast doors of the Burlington bunker, a disused 35-acre subterranean Cold War-era complex that was to house the British government in the event of nuclear Armageddon. The London crew’s objective, as much as any of them could agree on one, was to rediscover, reappropriate, and reimagine the urban landscape in what is perhaps the most highly surveilled and tightly controlled city on earth.
Power tagged along with some of them to scale Notre Dame Cathedral in the middle of the night:
I passed so closely by a carved gargoyle I could see the furrows of its brow, could almost smell its breath. Atop the first roof we found ourselves in a long gallery of flying buttresses, which spanned outward like the landing struts of some alien spacecraft. Each buttress framed a fifty-foot arched stained-glass window, darkened from within, and as we climbed to the next level, I pulled myself up next to one. I spun slowly on the rope, and for a heart-stopping instant my shoulder rested gently against the glass. I was so close I could see the seams of lead that connected the thousands of pieces of colored glass, the end result of centuries of labor at the hands of nameless artisans. I felt in that moment I would rather fall than damage it.
In 2008, Katie Arnoldi volunteered for a team in charge of cleaning up emptied marijuana sites on public lands in California. On one single operation, they “pulled out 27 miles of irrigation pipes, and over 2,000 pounds of fertilizer, pesticides, rodenticides and hundreds of bags of trash.” In the first of a five-part series, she describes what she saw:
When I got into the active grow-sites, I was struck by the fact that there was absolutely nothing alive. No bugs. No animals. No snakes or lizards. Every single site was a dead zone except for the thriving, chemically drenched plants. And the thing is, all these chemicals leach into the soil. And then when the rains come they’re washed into the drainages where they pollute the waterways and kill the fish. Ultimately it all ends up in the ocean. These pot farms are permanently destroying our protected wilderness.
Even more disturbing, we are inhaling the results:
According to a 2010 HIDTA report, California supplied three-quarters of all marijuana to the US market. Most of the pot was coming directly from the huge cartel grows. People are smoking these terrible chemicals and they don’t even know it. When I worked on the Growsite Reclamation Team, I helped collect samples of the fertilizers, pesticides and rodenticides so that they could be analyzed by a lab. The results were scary. For instance, the lab determined that a quarter teaspoon of one of the Mexican pesticides, found out in the foothills of the Sierras near Sequoia, was so toxic that it in its undiluted form it could kill a 200-pound man. The growers will take a big scoop of this stuff, mix it with water, and spray their crops on a regular basis. That’s what people are smoking. Who knows what the long-term consequences will be?
Probably worse that the munchies. Previous Dish on the environmental impacts of prohibition here and here.
Evan Soltas points out that Americans are retiring later and later in life:
The Gallup Organization, a polling firm, asks working Americans when they expect to retire. In 1996, the average answer was 60; in 2012, it was 67.
Why is it happening? For two reasons. First, some Americans work longer because they want to. This applies especially to those who’ve made higher-than-average earnings during their working lives or have white-collar jobs. Their health allows it — their life expectancy has increased significantly.
But some are retiring later because they have no choice. The wage stagnation of the past decade and loss of savings (including housing equity) during the recession are forcing them to delay retirement.
Rebecca J. Rosen encourages men to angle their support for professional women in line with Lean In:
For too long, achieving equality has been seen as women’s burden. People (myself included) were disappointed by Marissa Mayer’s shirking of the feminist label, but few ever ask America’s male CEOs whether they consider themselves feminists. A recent “pop-up book club” from The Guardian asked “women of the internet, [to] gather around” to re-read Betty Friedan’s classic The Feminine Mystique. Again and again, we leave men out of the conversation about gender equality — a conversation whose success depends on their participation. …
[Sheryl Sandberg’s] book is laced with examples of men who have made a conscious effort to make their workplaces more equal, such as the case of a Goldman Sachs executive who instituted a universal “breakfast or lunch only policy” so that he could meet equally with male and female junior staff with no hint of impropriety stemming from a late-night dinner with a young woman. There’s also a Johns Hopkins medical school professor who, after watching Sandberg’s viral TED talk, got rid of hand-raising (women are less likely to keep their hands up) and just called on people randomly.
A reader sounds off at length:
Why is this a “women’s issue”? Where are the men in all this?
I agree wholeheartedly that many women make choices that opt them out, slow them down, limit their career paths. I’m also in the class of women Sandberg is speaking to (in terms of my social relationships and background – I went to an Ivy League college, have a graduate degree, am economically well-off, and most of my friends are similar). At age 39, I am shocked by how many of my women friends (almost all of whom are married with children) have opted out or slow tracked themselves. The very, very few who haven’t tend to be strong individualists, have a strong sense of personal identity and ambition, and are good at creating their own paths without model or example. They just get shit done and aren’t very concerned about what other say they can or can’t do or are or aren’t supposed to do.
(Some more context on me: I’m single, childless, own a marketing agency in New York – started partly because I changed careers in my early 30s and saw that I’d either have to fight past all kinds of tired ideas of about age, career path change, etc., or just do it my own terms. And part of my reason for changing careers was about really understanding that I needed to be able to provide for myself and look for a career path that would let me have the income and flexibility to have a kid on my own.)
It’s true just getting started on this makes me realize I have plenty to say about the choices women make, but when I take a step back, I always come back to, what does this have to do with the “choices” of women? It has just as much – if not more to do – with the conventions of and expectations for men. Culturally, men are on the other side of this “choice” dichotomy. To use Sandberg’s language, if the convention for women is to “lean out”, then the convention for men is to “lean in”, and that has just as many – and really more – unaddressed consequences.
But where are the regular books and articles about that, particularly from male leaders? Where are the conversations about men growing some balls and fighting for their rights to “lean out”? Where are the men stepping up and fighting for their work/life balance? Why are all these men letting women fight their battles? All of the husbands of those above-mentioned women and friends (working in mainly in finance, media, tech) want more time with their families, feel stressed and overworked, hate feeling like they don’t have time with their families. Well, why they fuck aren’t they stepping up and fighting all these battles about choice, balance, etc.? Why is this a “women’s fight”?
The reality is all of this should be about personal choice, motivation levels, letting men and women decide within their relationships what their best working arrangements are – not letting those be driven by conventions of society (men are paid more, women sometimes get paid maternity leave, etc.) Sandberg talks about Google deciding more maternity leave was better than having women opt out and having to hire new employees. Men don’t even have this choice. Imagine, for example, if men and women were given the same leaves? How would that change the entire dynamic of opt-in/opt-out, lean-in/lean-out career choices, of family dynamics and relationships, for the lifetime of working and having children?
All of which is to say: the reason all of this is so tired is because it still comes back to the same thing: Women are fighting, struggling, working for change, for something that’s better for them, for their families, for children, while men complacently sit by and sort of just wait and see how it falls out. And, really, any men worth anything knows that working in companies where there’s gender balance across levels and roles is WAY more rewarding, so there are plenty of reasons for them to care about all of this. (I’ll reference that story on how Etsy’s work to attract female engineers actually helped them get better and more male applicants as evidence that men know working with women is good thing.)
Long email – sorry – but the feminizing of this conversation drives me insane. It’s just the same crap with a fresh coat of paint.
Previous Dish on the debate sparked by Sandberg’s book here, here and here.
Friday on the Dish, Andrew cheered Portman’s reversal on marriage equality as change accelerated, assessed the accuracy of House of Cards, and was wowed by Francis’ humility, which reflected the best of Catholicism. In political coverage, Portman blurred the line between the personal and the political on marriage equality, which put opponents in a tough spot. We criticized America for failing to adequately care for the troops as sequestration put defense spending on the chopping block. Hillary sprinted to an early lead in the 2016 polling, Nate Cohn shrugged at Obama’s ratings slip, CPAC’s diversity disappointed, and a tortured priest reconciled with the Pope.
In assorted news and views, readers jumped in to defend Amazon, clarified the details of the Veronica Mars Kickstarter campaign, and enlightened us on solar energy. As the slow decline of RSS continued, we wondered what Google product would jettison next, and Zachary Seward considered the effect on dissidents in Iran and China. Science shattered our hopes for a real-life Jurassic Park, psuedoscientific paleo diets still worked to shed pounds, Dr. Leslie Kernisan prescribed downloads, and we charted 20th century causes of death.
Meanwhile, Drezner explained international politics through Girls, Evan Soltas worked out the reasons people are working later in life and Americans multitasked on the road. Newspapers found their calling, Tom Vanderbilt picked apart the legend of the perfect lock, and even the CIA couldn’t train cats. Gotye got the Gollum treatment in the MHB while the US banned frequent contributor Pogo, we checked in on CPAC in the FOTD, and jumped across the pond in the VFYW.
In politics, Obama’s approval returned to pre-election levels, Noam Scheiber tired of Paul Ryan’s games, and Boehner risked Hannity’s wrath over Obamacare. Blackwater extended the CIA’s reach beyond the rule of law, IEDs migrated into Syria, Tik Root mourned teens executed in Yemen, and Ambers found drones to be the best of our bad options. On Pope Francis’ first full day, we corrected the record and struggled for clarity regarding his ties to the Junta, and hoped that his background would make a good recession Pope. While Garry Wills revealed that he might bring the clergy down to earth, readers threw in their views and the Daily Mail quarreled with his stance on the Falklands.
Elsewhere around the web, World’s Best Dad reprogrammed a Princess to be the Heroine, Google relegated Reader to the dustbin, new technologies paved the way for more solar power, and Bas Van Abel designed a conflict-free phone. The Onion spoiled the next episode of Girls and Kickstart got a producer credit in the Veronica Mars movie, but that may not have been a good thing. The Atlantic spouted management-speak, Christian Caryl shone a light on the worst parts of the Malaysian sponsored content scandal, and the library went underground.
Lydia DePillis worried about the future of NOLA’s 9th district, Dana Becker encouraged readers to release their stress, and Rhys Southan chose suffering over eternal sleep. Yglesias advised low-income students to aim high in their college applications, readers added another layer to the debate on racism and made the case against civil polygamy. The Pet Shop Boys gave us more than we deserve while Dr. Andy Hildebrand defended auto-tune. A Guatemalan peak filled the VFYW, Pogo remixed Kenya in the MHB, and a mustache froze in the FOTD.
By L’Osservatore Romano/Getty Images
Wednesday on the Dish, Andrew greeted the new Pope in real time, and looked forward to seeing his marriage equality learning curve. At home, he flunked Paul Ryan’s budget, called out Republicans for taking obstructionism too far, and knew hope for marijuana legalization as a result of the progress on marriage equality, which continued its advancement down under. Elsewhere, he drew parallels between anti-semitism and homophobia and protested comparisons to Stalin or Hitler.
In politics, we wearied of Paul Ryan’s schtick as Derek Thompson broke down his budget, Kevin McCarthy took points off for Obama’s professorial attitude, and Rand Paul hearkened back to the “big tent” days of the GOP. Max Fisher noted ambiguity in the UN report on a murdered Gaza child, the Falklands opted to stay British. As the Conclave ended, Philip Ball cleared up the Vatican’s smoke coloring as we pulled back the curtain on the seconds before the announcement and rounded up Twitter’s reactions. Meanwhile, Garry Wills looked forward to a Pope who was “ordinary and ignorable” and Massimo Gatto deconstructed the Pope Emeritus’ ruby slippers.
In assorted coverage, Anna Clarke uncovered USPS-enabled discrimination, Robin Hanson lost sleep over couples’ bed arrangements, and Rebecca Willis blacklisted Manet from being an Impressionist. Judy Stone disputed the rationale behind employer drug tests and the drug war slowed, while Ben Goldacre pulled back the curtain on publication bias in pharmaceutical studies. Dr. Suess sucked on the silver screen, Margaret Talbot found practical advice for the trans population on YouTube, and video sites tested out some new revenue models.
We deliberated over juror questions, readers fleshed out the debate on the origins of racism, the UFC fought homophobia, and the internet revealed its charitable side. SubPop held auditions to complete the Postal Service, the VFYW looked down on Hong Kong and we listened in on the Pope’s first address in the FOTD.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew pushed neocons to the fringes of the Republican party, expressed his ambivalence about the Rand-Rush alliance, grimaced at Beltway clubbiness, As the Conclave began, he held on to hope for the future of the Papacy despite the lack of diversity among the Curia and chuckled at news of the Vatican’s bathhouse. Meanwhile, he responded to more reader comments on the Iraq War and unpacked another fallacy in his own support.
In the political realm, the courts iced Bloomberg’s soda ban, we negotiated NIMBY-ism for nuclear waste, and a small minority actually watched partisan cable news. Overseas, North Korea rattled the saber, as the Chinese rushed to censor Weibo and subsidized the arts.
Elsewhere on the web, a reader ran down the arguments against our using Amazon’s Affiliate program, Bruce Bartlett explained why the gains at the top haven’t been trickling down, and companies hired robot surrogates. Palin took up arms for Christmas, SXSW jumped the shark, sanitation workers kept us healthy, and we dissected the history of heart surgery procedures. Patrick Kurp grew nostalgic with age, Ian Stansel distinguished between suburbia and the suburbs, and leisure activities went longform. The fan fiction audience held no surprises, author “Acknowledgments” were either displays of gratitude or gratuitousness, and Bob Woodward penned a tone-deaf biography of John Belushi.
Autumn Whitefield-Madrano took pride in her self-care, we were traumatized by Q-tips on Girls, and the EU sought gender equality through banning porn. As an adult film actress prepped for filming in the FOTD, we featured a Sacramento Stonehenge in the weekly VFYW contest, snow fell on Flagstaff in the VFYW, and penguins tripped their way through the MHB.
Monday on the Dish, Andrew contemplated sequestration’s effect on military spending, absolved Israeli forces in the death of a Gaza child, and criticized the worldwide governmental inaction on climate. Elsewhere, he disagreed with TNC on the provenance of racism, cheered Shafer’s take on advertorials while Orwell described them perfectly, solicited the next round of “Ask Andrew Anything” questions.
In political coverage, Paul Ryan selectively accounted for the cost of Obamacare as Justin Green predicted a missed opportunity and we balanced Social Security against Medicare. Kevin Bullis highlighted the greener side of fracking and troubles in the Chinese solar market threatened American installations. Pete Wehner assigned Reagan to the RINO camp, Peter Beinart declared the Bush 2016 campaign DOA, and Rand Paul’s influence rippled outward. While Obama obscured more from the public eye, Hamas and Morsi exasperated each other, and the Guardian traced the history of some haunting images out of Syria.
In assorted coverage, The Economist audited the internet, Frank Abagnale described how modern technology would make him harder to catch, Tim De Chant saw dark clouds on the horizon for US satellites, and Evgeny Morozov explored ethical designs. Nick Holdstock weighed the merging of games and the news, Gregory Ferenstein slimmed down by standing up, and SCOTUS dissected the property rights for GMO seeds. Rachel Kolb filled in the gaps on lip-reading, monsters were nowhere to be found on ancient maps, David Leventi found beauty in dark places, and David Sessions blamed the French’s poor English on Hollywood.
Meanwhile, readers contributed their thoughts on what’s in a name, and argued against polyamory with John Corvino piling on. Garance Franke-Ruta brought Columbia back into the spotlight, women watched from outside the Conclave. Hindus in Indonesia prepared for the Day of Silence in our FOTD, a dance lesson solved racism in the MHB, the SoCal sun peeked through the clouds in the VFYW.
Detail of Piero della Francesca’s “Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels”
Last weekend on the Dish, we provided our usual eclectic coverage of religious, books, and cultural coverage. In matter of faith, doubt, and philosophy, Conor Williams pondered the miracles that come from love, J.L. Wall examined an exception to the decline of the religious novel, and Kerry Howley imagined a conversation between Schopenhauer and Joel Osteen. Christian Wiman ruminated on the parables of Jesus, Jerry Saltz praised Piero della Francesca’s artistic vision, and Stefany Anne Golberg visited the Shaker Heritage Society in New York. Alan Jacobs remembered Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos, readers debated arguments against polygamy, Robert Zarestksy argued that Isaiah Berlin thought like a fox, and Kiley Hamlin asked why we judge each other.
In literary coverage, W.H. Auden critiqued the gluttony of reading, Amit Majmudar found that contemporary fiction fears sentimentality, and John Fram described writing a bad book for money. John Jeremiah Sullivan movingly recalled his father’s love, Jason Resnikoff traced the evolution of the word “indescribable,” and Carmel Lobello provided a Scrabble player’s dream. Claire Barliant highlighted a library of unborrowed books, Cynthia L. Haven explored how Polish-born poet Czesław Miłosz’s became a Californian, and Mark Levine mused on what former Poet Laureate Philip Levine was like in the seminar room. Mark Oppenheimer gave tips on freelancing in the digital age, Julian Baggini held that encyclopedias always were relics, and Simon Akam mourned the distinctly American transformation of a butchered pun. Read Saturday’s poem here and Sunday’s here.
In assorted news and views, Maggie Koerth-Baker compared gun violence to climate change, Marc Tracy showed where Moneyball is bankrupt, and Chip Scanlan emphasized the power of silence for journalists conducting interviews. There proved to be an app for STD diagnosis, Conner Habib critiqued Alain de Botton’s views on sex, and Rose Surnow detailed the market for paying for cuddling. Marina Galperina gazed at webcam performers who pose like they’re in a classic work of art, Niall Connolly delved into the history and enduring popularity of “voguing,” Tom Junod looked back at Dazed and Confused, and Megan Garber cast a light on moon towers.
The Dish 
