J.K. Rowling gave Harvard’s Commencement address.  My favorite bits:

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

And:

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all — in which case, you fail by default.

Please read it all.

Hubbard posted this at 5:52 PM EDT on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 as Grace, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, The Right Words

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I have, on occasion, gone shopping with various girlfriends.  Once, I wound up consoling one who discovered that she had moved from size 4 to size 6.  I tried (unsuccessfully) to tell her that her boyfriend wouldn’t care about small changes in her waist size.  Men are tolerant like that; it’s other women who get catty over a few pounds.  Why should she care about the insignificant hen pecking ritual so long as the significant other still loved her?

Further proof of my contention about male tolerance comes from a msn.match.com article, where a variety of guys talk about the varied women they love, who resemble Greek goddesses as much as a bassets and whippets resemble labradors.  But if women really wanted to know the power they have over men, perhaps they should dig into Slate’s archives and read Herbert Stein’s Watching the Couples Go By.  (This piece is on my mind today because, if I’m reading him correctly, I ate at this particular restaurant today.)  A sample:

I . . . eat from time to time at an outdoor table in front of a small restaurant on the street leading to the Kennedy Center. . . . I watch the passers-by.

I am not concentrating on the girls. I am concentrating on the married couples. How do I know that those men and women walking two-by-two up to the Kennedy Center are married to each other? Well, 75 percent of all men between the ages of 30 and 75 are married, so if you see a man in that age group walking with a woman to the Kennedy Center—which is not exactly Club Med—it’s a good bet that the two are married, and almost certainly to each other.

I look particularly at the women in those couples. They are not glamorous. There are no Marlene Dietrichs, Marilyn Monroes, or Vivien Leighs among them. (It is a sign of my age that I can’t think of the name of a single living glamorous movie actress.) Some of them are pretty, but many would be considered plain. Since they are on their way to the Kennedy Center, presumably to attend a play, an opera, or a concert, one may assume that they are somewhat above average in cultural literacy. But in other respects one must assume that they are, like most people, average.

But to the man whose hand or arm she is holding, she is not “average.” She is the whole world to him. They may argue occasionally, or even frequently. He may have an eye for the cute intern in his office. But that is superficial. Fundamentally, she is the most valuable thing in his life.

Genesis says, “And the Lord God said: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a help meet for him.’ ” And so, “made He a woman.” It doesn’t say that He made a pretty woman, or a witty woman, or an any-kind-of-adjective woman. He made the basic woman.

Why is this basic woman so valuable to the man whose hand or arm she is holding as I see them making their way up to the Kennedy Center?

I’ll let you read the whole thing to find Mr. Stein’s answer.  Watching couples go by is a good way to spend a lunch break. 

Hubbard posted this at 12:34 PM EDT on Friday, June 6th, 2008 as Grace, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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Ronald Reagan died four years ago today.  He was elected three days before I was born, and the only memory I have of him as president was when the Challenger crashed, he was the man who told us that it would be okay.  My memories of him aren’t much.

Patti Davis, his sometimes estranged daughter, has more memories.  She spent years rebelling against him, but has now outgrown the silliness and has a wonderful assessment of him:

A friend who recently lost her mother said to me, “Death distills everything.” It’s true. I, like many people, live with regrets that will never lessen—the times I lashed out at my father, refused to appreciate him or consider his feelings, his point of view. I envy those who can say after a parent’s death that they don’t have remorse—I just don’t know too many people like that. But regrets can lead you to a profound awareness of what’s important, what’s meaningful. Since I do share my father with America and with the world, how he lived his life—not just as a politician, but as a man—has resonance for all of us.

He believed that words can wound, that even in the harsh, muckraking world of politics, it simply isn’t right to insult another person. He believed that this country’s greatness came from its collective heart, from its history of being a “melting pot” and that the dark passages of our history came when we lost sight of our own heart. He had no tolerance for racism. He was raised in a home where people were never judged by the color of their skin. He was raised in a home where everyone was considered a child of God, and he carried that belief with him throughout his life.

From her lips to the world’s ears.

Hubbard posted this at 8:14 AM EDT on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 as The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past, Grace

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Five years ago today, Michael Kelly died (H/T).  He wrote brilliant profiles of Ted Kennedy and David Gergen, but I think, since it’s Friday, we could use something lighter:

There is too much disputation around Christmas anyway. One growing issue is the white vs. colored lights debate. Like all matters of taste, this is also a matter of class. White lights are high-class; colored lights are somewhat less so.

White lights make the statement that one is a refined sort who appreciates that less is more and who celebrates Christmas (and life in general) in such a fashion that one would not be absolutely mortified if Martha Stewart dropped by unexpectedly for tea. Colored lights make the statement that one is the sort of person who believes that Christmas is not Christmas without an electric sled and reindeer on the lawn, an electric Santa on the roof, an electric Frosty by the front gate and an electric Very Special Person in a manger on the porch.

Most of the houses in my neighborhood are white-light houses, and I have to admit they are lovely, but I was raised in a colored-light family, and I am raising Tom and Jack to be colored-light men too. They do not take a lot of convincing on this. Boys are naturally colored-lighters.

Hm.  I feel like stringing up colored lights would beat the heck out of the projects I’m supposed to be doing. 

Hubbard posted this at 9:47 AM EDT on Friday, April 4th, 2008 as Grace, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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NRO has published some of Buckley’s greatest hits; my favorite:

PLAYBOY: Don’t most dogmas, theological as well as ideological, crumble sooner or later?

BUCKLEY: Most, but not all.

PLAYBOY: How can you be so sure?

BUCKLEY: I know that my Redeemer liveth.

Only a false dogma constricts; because true dogma is the truth, it liberates.  Buckley understood this. 

I’ll have to root around online to find the rest of that Playboy interview.  Not many people go searching for a Playboy looking for the interview (let alone the Buckley interview) but then, I’ve always done things differently.

Hubbard posted this at 2:03 PM EST on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 as Grace, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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Chesterton on dogs:

But there is something deeper in the matter than all that, only the hour is late, and both the dog and I are too drowsy to interpret it. He lies in front of me curled up before the fire, as so many dogs must have lain before so many fires. I sit on one side of that hearth, as so many men must have sat by so many hearths. Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection. But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul.

It may be written in a book that my dog is canine; and from this it may be deduced that he must hunt with a pack, since all canines hunt with a pack. Hence it may be argued (in the book) that if I have one Aberdeen terrier I ought to have twenty-five Aberdeen terriers. But my dog knows that I do not ask him to hunt with a pack; he knows that I do not care a curse whether he is canine or not so long as he is my dog. That is the real secret of the matter which the superficial evolutionists cannot be got to see. If traceable history be the test, civilization is much older than the savagery of evolution. The civilized dog is older than the wild dog of science. The civilized man is older than the primitive man of science. We feel it in our bones that we are the antiquities, and that the visions of biology are the fancies and the fads. The books do not matter; the night is closing in, and it is too dark to read books. Faintly against the fading firelight can be traced the prehistoric outlines of the man and the dog.

Something a bit lighter for a Friday.

Hubbard posted this at 3:13 PM EST on Friday, February 1st, 2008 as Grace, Animal Kingdom Strikes Back

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