Women

[SeattleUte]

A great, albeit brief passage from Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient". Caravaggio is wandering around the ruined three hundred year old villa recently used by the Nazis as a stronghold, and then blown up and mined by the Nazis before they fled the Allies, and now shared by the English patient and Hana and Caravaggio as a fragile refuge:

"He sat down with the carafe of wine the monks from the monastery had given Hana. It was Hana’s house and he moved carefully, rearranging nothing. He noticed her civilisation in the small wildflowers, the small gifts to herself. Even in the overgrown garden he would come across a square foot of grass snipped down with her nurse’s scissors. If he had been a younger man he would have fallen in love with this."

Doesn't this brief passage sum up wonderfully what we love most about our best women? Some critics say Cormac McCarthy basically ignores the entire female gender in his works. Nothing could be further than the truth. Like Ondaatje his message is: remove women from the equation and what happens? Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Gulag archipelago, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

[creekster]

Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Gulag archipelago, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

DO you find theswe all equally reprehensible?

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

A great, albeit brief passage from Michael Ondaatje's "The English Patient". Caravaggio is wandering around the ruined three hundred year old villa recently used by the Nazis as a stronghold, and then blown up and mined by the Nazis before they fled the Allies, and now shared by the English patient and Hana and Caravaggio as a fragile refuge:

"He sat down with the carafe of wine the monks from the monastery had given Hana. It was Hana’s house and he moved carefully, rearranging nothing. He noticed her civilisation in the small wildflowers, the small gifts to herself. Even in the overgrown garden he would come across a square foot of grass snipped down with her nurse’s scissors. If he had been a younger man he would have fallen in love with this."

Doesn't this brief passage sum up wonderfully what we love most about our best women? Some critics say Cormac McCarthy basically ignores the entire female gender in his works. Nothing could be further than the truth. Like Ondaatje his message is: remove women from the equation and what happens? Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, Dresden, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, the Gulag archipelago, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2008.

Is this message true?

I wonder, not that I am seeking to rid the world of women, but is this belief correct?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by creekster

DO you find theswe all equally reprehensible?

NO.

[myboynoah]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Is this message true?

I wonder, not that I am seeking to rid the world of women, but is this belief correct?

I really don't understand including Iraq and Afghanistan in that list, unless it's from the local perspective.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Is this message true?

I wonder, not that I am seeking to rid the world of women, but is this belief correct?

yes.

Read Edward Gibbon sometime describe what happened in Europe in the late Roman Empire when the wheels started to come off of civilization. The whole continent became like warring cosa nostra, clear down to blood soaked banquets. We'd start killing each other too if, say, all the gas ran out all the sudden.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by myboynoah

I really don't understand including Iraq and Afghanistan in that list, unless it's from the local perspective.

It was a condemnation of the warring factions who are killing their own people, not America. Don't be so defensive.

[SeattleUte]

But my point isn't just the war part of it. It's women who attend to the details of civilization. I give women most the credit for Christianity, for better or worse.

[myboynoah]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

It was a condemnation of the warring factions who are killing their own people, not America. Don't be so defensive.

Defense wins championships.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

But my point isn't just the war part of it. It's women who attend to the details of civilization. I give women most the credit for Christianity, for better or worse.

Let me amend this to say women and gays. I think gays' purpose is they are God's imperfect effort to creat the perfect fusion of the two genders.