Golden State

"In 1949, Carey McWilliams, the state’s greatest journalist, called California “the great exception” among states: no textbook or precedent existed to explain its monstrous growth, its powerful labor movement, its superb education system, or its abundance-creating, super-exploitative farm system." - Nikil Saval, "Golden State"

STTA. It really was not all that long ago when California seemed to represent the best of our country's future--the land of milk and honey, figuratively speaking, we were all heading. Now, as Saval's article suggests, it may represent our future in another, less pleasant way: the financial decay and decline in the quality of life gripping the country as a whole. Your thoughts: Is it really that bad?

The Femme Fatale

"She’s in trouble, she says, and needs his help. He hesitates a second while his brain tries to work. Whatever her problem is — something about her husband working her over, the sick bastard — she can take care of herself, from the looks of her. But hello, the looks of her: those long legs, those tremulous lips, those wounded eyes. This dame isn’t in trouble, she is trouble, his brain shouts — but those eyes, those eyes. He’s way past listening to his brain. The only sound he can hear is her voice, whispering that she needs him, wants him, can’t live without him. And if his brain turns out to be right, if she ends up dragging him down into depravity, madness and murder, well, tough. If there was ever a thing worth going straight to hell for, she’s it." -- Kevin Nance

STTA. Nance's point is straightforward: That the character-type of the femme fatale (or dangerous woman) that flourished in the detective films of the 1940s has now largely disappeared. What do you think: Can you think of films or TV shows that feature an attractive woman that systematically doom the men they attract?

The End of Privacy

"Every so often, when I'm in Amsterdam, I visit the Rijksmuseum to remind myself about the history of privacy. I go there to gaze at a picture called The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, which was painted by Jan Vermeer in 1663. It is of an unidentified Dutch woman avidly reading a letter. Vermeer's picture, to borrow a phrase from privacy advocates Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren, is a celebration of the "sacred precincts of private and domestic life". It's as if the artist had kept his distance in order to capture the young woman, cocooned in her private world, at her least socially visible." - Andrew Keen, "Your Life Torn Open"

STTA. Keen's article raises so many pressing issues about the value of personal privacy and threats to it, including Facebook. One thing we can focus on here is a remembrance of the sanctity, the specialness of a private moment. Yes, there really may be a way to share it in writing without spoiling it.

‘Whoa, that is so wow!’

"I recently watched a television program in which a woman described a baby squirrel that she had found in her yard. “And he was like, you know, ‘Helloooo, what are you looking at?’ and stuff, and I’m like, you know, ‘Can I, like, pick you up?,’ and he goes, like, ‘Brrrp brrrp brrrp,’ and I’m like, you know, ‘Whoa, that is so wow!’ ” She rambled on, speaking in self-quotations, sound effects, and other vocabulary substitutes, punctuating her sentences with facial tics and lateral eye shifts. All the while, however, she never said anything specific about her encounter with the squirrel." -- "What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness" - Clark Whelton

STTA. Are things as bad as Whelton suggests? Do we really live in an age that seems allergic to concrete, specific expression? 

Stuttering

"The stutterer's voice is the central focus of The King's Speech and a good part of the reason, I suspect, the movie has achieved its outsize resonance. This is because the stutterer's voice points toward a paradox of verbal culture: Language was born of a need to communicate orally and in the moment, and yet, at its most influential, language is so little dependent on spontaneous speech that even someone permanently stymied on that front—a stutterer—can eke out a message that commands a nation." - Nathan Heller


STTA. Stuttering is one of any number of disabilities that is not immediately visible. Reflect on the different ways we react to disabilities that are clearly visible and those that are partly or largely hidden.

Manning Up

"Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men." -- Kay S. Hymowitz

STTA: It's a truly fascinating article, with lots of pop culture images, of typically "lost" 20-something men. So what's with this "pre-adulthood": Do you think it really exists, and, if so, do you agree it's mainly a a guy thing?