Time to Turn the Page?

The upcoming retirement of Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) ushers in a Kennedy-less era in Congress for the first time since 1963. That year, the congressman's father filled the congressional void left by JFK when he left the Senate for the White House, in 1961.

Of course, ever since 1963 to 1968, when American history seemed to take a series of unexpected and unpleasant turns, many of us have been wishing we could set the caravan of this democratic experience back on what once seemed an expansive and generous direction.

But maybe that's folly. Certainly, the current crop of Kennedys old enough to be in public life don't measure up to their fathers -- even the tawdry Edward M. -- or their mothers.

Maybe it's time to give up on the Kennedy-Johnson era dreams, just as perhaps it's time to set its nightmares to rest, without abandoning the bigger, broader notions on which they rested.

The central aspiration is to see the United States become a just society with compassion for its weakest members, with fairness for all its citizens and with the willingness to lead the world by generous example, rather than the force of arms.

We don't need to close the book. Just let's turn this one page.

The Burqa and the Thong

It's popped up yet again. These days you can't look at any news medium without finding an instance of the Western obsession with what Muslim women wear, whether they are coerced and how do we, in the West, handle the notion of veiled women.

The real question, of course, is what any veil means as a symbol, and to whom. Symbols are cultural expressions of social conventions. As such, they do not have fixed and absolute meanings or values.

There is no greater reason than custom and historical happenstance that a blue, white and red cloth should represent France; one could represent France with a boar's head on a stick or a bottle of Beaujolais or a photo of Brigitte Bardot.

So what is a burqa, other than a dress that covers the wearer from head to toe? Why is it more demeaning to women than, say, the miniskirt or the thong?

Just as some people argue that the burqa shows women's submission to men, others argue that the miniskirt and thong show the objectification of women as bodies made to please men.

As for the in-between costume, a veil or headscarf, the cri de guerre in French schools, I am told that it is an teenage girls' fashion. Daughters of immigrants rebel against assimilation, or simply to shock or break a rule.

Apparently, in France one can see girls with expensive, fashionable clothes, makeup, and a veil that is also as luxurious.

Isn't the headscarf a reverse miniskirt, just like the reverse of a burqa is a thong?

Snowing ... again!

Having spent my youth in Montreal, I never thought I would get tired of snow in what is usually snow-starved Washington, D.C. But, honestly, as I write it's coming down like nobody's business.

So, in lieu of one coherent post, here go a few ideas:

• The storm and its closing down of the city reminds me of the very fragility of life as we know it in what one school principal called "urban cities" (as opposed to the rural ones, I imagine). I blogged about that fragility in my very first post, before I knew about blogger, when I decided to post essays on a free website I had. Read In Isabel's Wake, still current by my lights.
• Which reminds me ... this storm has no name! What's with that, Weather Service?
• Of course, people in normally snowbound areas are writing to thank me for taking their snow and even sending me pictures of snowblowers. Funny, funny, funnn-ee! I'm not going out until spring.

Nonstorm Items:

• Here I was happy as a clam that the dollar was dropping, making our exports cheaper than theirs and wham ... there goes the euro!
• Are we all terrible slimy people, or is it that as you become aware, the human, fallible condition becomes unavoidably obvious? (Just a general, philosophizing comment based on nothing.)

And, oh, OK, I'll turn comments back on. But moderated.