And “world-class,” with or without hyphen, is just tacky, tacky, tacky. One of those phrases that contain within themselves their own refutation. 

“Wrapped around, or, as it appears, straddling, the phallus is the bottom half of a woman’s body, with heavy thighs and bent knees that taper at the ankle.”

I wonder how it affects one’s gait when one’s knees have ankles. 

... where we keep the love when it’s not on the $599 sofa, well, wonder no more. It’s in a parking lot in South San Francisco.

MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER
TWELVE HEART-TO-HEART TALKS OF A MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER
IN THREE PARTS

Copyright by Franciscan Herald Press, 1952
1434 West Fifty-First Street
Chicago 9, Ill.

Nihil Obstat: Rev. John J. Clifford, S.J., Censor Dept.
July 29, 1952
Imprimatur: + Samuel Cardinal Stritch, Archbishop of Chicago
July 30, 1952

NOTICE
This booklet is not to be placed in any book rack, nor to be sold
indiscriminately to the general public. Parents or other mature persons
desiring copies should apply to their pastor or write to the
publishers.

You’d think it contained instructions on building a nuclear device. I suppose that’s how we Daughters of Eve were supposed to think of our bodies, come to think of it.

From the intro:

It may seem to some that the information imparted in this little
booklet, and especially in Part One of it, is inadequate, and that the
girl of thirteen or fourteen might just as well be told the whole truth
with all details. Those who hold that opinion are probably unaware that
even in these days of enlightenment girls can get along very well with
very little knowledge about sex, as numerous examples prove.

And:

The chief reason, however, why so little biological information was
included in this work is that it seemed desirable to keep the subject
on as high a plane as possible; and that could not be done by ap-
proaching the subject from a biological or botanical angle,

“Botanical”???!

as if man were merely a somewhat more perfect animal and not rather just a little
below the angels. Only by constantly referring to the fact that man is
the work of God, and that every detail of his origin and development
has been ordained by God’s infinite wisdom,

Including his menstrual periods.

can one succeed in making the child realize that God alone is the author and master of life and
therefore that all the processes of life are as sacred as they are
mysterious and admirable.

There is, further along, an encomium to the saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.”

The Three Sections are to be read, respectively, to girls from ages 9 to 13, 13 to 15, and 16 to 18.

By way of observing Fair Use customs, I’m including just one longer excerpt. You can read the rest online at this precious resource. I must say, the whole thing taught me a lot about editing, way back then, when even I thought I was learning something else entirely.

Here’s part of the lowdown on menstruation, for your edification:

When these organs do begin to function and to produce that precious
substance, since God does not always make use of it for the formation
of a child and nature supplies it in abundance, the unused portion,
together with a quantity of blood, passes from the body at regular
intervals. This is what is known as menstruation; and once it has
begun, it usually occurs every four weeks, or thirteen times in the
course of a whole year.

As menstruation is a perfectly natural function, which all normal women
experience from the dawn of womanhood until they are about forty-five
years of age, it is important for you to understand right from the
start what to think of it and how to act in regard to it. Understand
well, then, my child, that menstruation is not a sickness or a
disorder, but the natural effect of the activity of those organs, which
are common to all women. If those organs are inactive, it is impossible
for a woman to become a mother. So if it is a little disagreeable at
times, do not be put out about it; but think it is a necessary
requirement for the dignity of motherhood, and that if all other women
have to put up with it, you will gladly endure it too.

Therefore make no attempt to stop the flow, because you cannot stop it
anyhow; and if you could succeed in stopping it, it would only do you
harm. But while you cannot stop it, you may and you should do all that
is necessary for the sake of health and cleanliness while it lasts.
Your body being a temple of the Holy Ghost, not only due regard for
health, but even proper reverence for God’s temple requires that you
try to keep it sweet and clean. For this reason you should bathe your
entire body quite regularly, washing even those parts about which you
feel the greatest delicacy and reserve in the same matter-of-fact way
as your face and hands. The latter precaution is especially necessary
at the time of your monthly periods. At that time, lukewarm water is
recommended as best for washing the parts mentioned, although at other
times moderately cold water is to be preferred. At no time, however
should really hot water be used for that purpose.

Regular and timely attention to cleanliness will go far towards
preventing itching in those delicate parts. But should you be troubled
with itching there nevertheless, you must know that there is nothing
wrong in touching yourself to stop the itching, just as you sometimes
rub even so delicate an organ as the ball of your eye. You should be
very careful, however, never to touch those parts for the sake of any
pleasure you might find in doing so, as that would not only be sinful,
but could even result in serious injury to the inner or outer organs.
Hence, if the itching is only slight, it is advisable simply to ignore
it, as it will probably disappear of itself.

Now that you know the meaning of menstruation, you will not be alarmed
when it occurs, but will realize that it has given you a new dignity--
the dignity of being able to be used by God for the creation of new
human beings. When you notice it for the first time, tell your mother
at once, and she will instruct you how to take care of yourself. In the
meantime, do not be anxious whether it will occur soon or only after
several more months or years; and until it happens, try to put all
curiosity concerning it out of your mind. Then when it does set in,
bear it patiently like a little woman. Do not be like some girls who
are vexed by what they call the mess of it, and who declare that they
wish they were boys. Rather be glad that you are what God made you. And
remember that whatever disagreeableness there may be about this
function is due to the sin of Mother Eve, and that you have to endure
only what St. Cecilia, St. Catherine, St. Elizabeth, St. Ann and all
other saintly women, including the Mother of God herself, had to endure
before you.

I’m trying to sift out the responses to the Ktroll who’s here humping PZ’s leg again and get to more interesting stuff, and Jack in #203 had one that struck me:

But in my short experience teaching (high school math), and longer experience married to an elementary school teacher, I found that the passion among elementary school teachers was for the kids. Many, many of them subscribe to “I am not in this profession to teach math or science or any other specific subject. I teach children.”

It’s unusual to have those passions--and talents--intersect in the same person, I guess, and there are plenty of malign or just crushingly-inert filters out there to further reduce the pool. Grade-school teachers, high-school teachers: they have to teach looking over their shoulders in a lot of schools, and that is exhausting. Class size, facilities, resources, surrounding microcultures, crazy school boards, insulting salaries, just plain social lunacies combine in various ways to wear teachers out. Having to worry about losing one’s job over assorted kinds of nonsense--how can they keep from being completely paralyzed, let alone be inspiring?

I’ve been lucky to have had some really talented teachers in my life, and IME they’ve combined teaching talent, a habit of actually looking at the people they teach (seriously, that bit of attentive, personal communication is a sort of exchange of trust that opens the learning mind), the freedom to teach as they wanted, and a passion for the subject. They don’t even have to be experts in the subject; they just have to know something I don’t and be excited about it.

“Teach children” isn’t quite a complete transitive-verb sentence. If you diagram it (hah) with the real world in mind you find an elided preposition, “to,” before “children.” So you still need an object, something to teach them. Something you yourself take visible pleasure in knowing.

I got a chance to co-teach a class in environmental journalism some years back, and found I had a couple of basic things to tell the youngsters there.
One: take science courses. Doesn’t much matter which; any subject there will give you a clue on how to research, and more important a sense of what’s likely and what isn’t, so you won’t be falling for the cranks.

Two, as I’d been telling aspiring writers for years before I made money at it myself: Yes, get your writing chops and keep practicing. But look around the great big world and find something you love more than you love writing or words. That’s what you write about.

Seems to me there’s something like that to apply to teaching. The example of joy and passion, that’s a great big deal. It doesn’t matter if your favorite thing isn’t something any particular student will glom onto; different things reach different people and seeing that it’s a pleasure to get into your subject is just as important as getting them past some standardized test. (More so, of course, but those damned tests, ugh, another bad filter.)

I’m creeping up on 60 and have lately met rather a lot of hot seniors. One of the first things you learn in the field when birding is to attach yourself like a limpet to the various heads of white hair you encounter; same applies to gardening, a passion Joe and I came to via birding and what we write about for most of our income now. What I find common to the most knowledgeable people, the people who find out new things for all of us, is passion.

Intelligence, IME, is not so much capability as it is appetite.

Communicating that appetite, now isn’t that an interesting problem we have to play with?

That “some” would be Joe.

Hey, it’s a honor not everyone can claim. 

I saw salmon at $23.99/lb today at the Berkeley Bowl market.

It’s really easier to find all you need in California.

Last night we got to meet and drink beer and attempt to converse with P.Z. Myers and a bunch of local pharyngulizers in a very-loud pub. P.Z. is pretty much what I expected: low-key, direct, funny, nimble, warm, and deeply courteous. I enjoyed the whole thing more than I had any right to expect, given that I’d just barely decided I had the moxie to walk over to Shattuck Avenue and stay upright for something that started at 9PM.

This was in the middle of spending two days covering a conference up at UC Davis, driving both ways both days, a bit over an hour each way depending on the day’s distribution of Highway Patrol radar cars on I-80. The conference was about climate change and horticulture, and a Davis person was kind enough to comp us as press; we couldn’t have afforded it otherwise. (Smart move: we have all manner of good things to say about the Davis Arboretum and its latest project, and I’ll do some of that right here real soon now.)

The other social joy happened in the middle of the second day of that, when Pica and Numenius took us out for a picnic lunch under a shadetree in the Arboretum. They’d picked up food from the Farmers’ Market and the Coop, and picked us up from the conference, and it was all good enough that we didn’t regret the nice lunch offered to conferees. Conferrers? (Anyway, let me insert my culinary kudos to the UC Davis student catering service.) Good chow, great company: every day should be this good.

It was interesting how parts of the days’ topics overlap, or maybe it’s just in my brain. P.Z. had just given the closing remarks at an evo-devo conference, and he said he’d carried on about how scientists should be more militant. When we got to talk a bit outside the pub, he said one other thing he’d leaned on in that talk was that scientists don’t talk enough about how much fun science is. Yeah!

After the Davis meet, I’m thinking that gardeners and our ilk (I’ve always wanted to have an ilk of my own. Haven’t you?) ought to be more militant too. And maybe, some of us, a bit embarrassed. (Invasive exotics, fertilizer runoff, that sort of thing at least.) I’ll dilate on that soon too, but I perked up my ears when the Arboretum director made a point, from the audience, about “willful ignorance.” People are being as ignorant as is convenient to them about climate change: whether it’s happening, whether it’s human-caused, whether humans can affect it, whether it’s too late, or too complicated, or “political” (and why), or just a myth. Speakers talked about “climate change skeptics” but it’s way too late for skepticism; it’s been shown pretty clearly. The phrase is “denialist.”

With all that implies.

A bunch of his songs can be heard here.

But first, I’m going to go listen to “Moose Turd Pie” and laugh my ass off in his honor. I recommend everybody do the same.

Last night, the penny dropped. I called my doc this morning and she squeezed me into the schedule and said I was right: I have shingles.

What the fuck? What the fuckin’ fuck? Shingles??

Well, at least all those annoyances were from one thing and I’m not actually turning to sludge. Yet. I got a ‘scrip for Valcyclovir and hope I caught the clue early enough. Knowledge is a funny thing, though. Somehow when I had a name for it I expected it all to hurt less (No.) and simultaneously I went for the Vicodin and did, in fact, feel better after taking some. Oh yeah, it’s real pain and therefore should respond to a real painkiller. I have to space doses of that out some, because I still have to drive now and then. And, you know, sit up in a chair and try not to drool in polite company.

By way of consolation: Someone in the Lapsed Catholics Flickr group has scanned and posted some of those awful illustrations from the Baltimore Catechism and they’re a special sort of hilarious. Like snorting nitrous oxide with a liberal splash of mustard gas. 

Struck down the gay-marriage ban today. Prepare for incoming rhetoric bombs.