HI, ladies!!
It is Thursday, October 30, 2008, today, and another hot day. With such changeable weather, we can't decide what kind of cloths we should wear, can we?
These days we can so easily go beyond space-time, owing to development of high technology such as the Internet, that I am seized by an illusion of permanent human being. Though more than 20 years have already gone by, I can clearly watch a nostalgic video tape of a favorite pop star through the Net, and at the same time, there’s his image in the present situation. Both the young and old same person is blending with each other, and I sometimes get confused…
There is a big difference between now and then, of course, but in a plane screen those image lost their own temperature or smell, and had similar faces. It’s a very odd experience for me.
On the other hand, I can be impressed by forever-young Hiromi Go, and also disappointed at overweight Kenji Sawada, even if the difference is caused by cosmetic surgery. Time does something cruel.
So, see you next, bye!!
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3 comments:
Dear Cherry and friends,
Hello. How are you?
Some actors and actresses got more and more attractive through developing their career. I would rather like to see more optimistic aspects of aging. Of course, like you say, Cherry, people who used to be famous sometimes disappoint us.
We recently got happy news. My former calligraphy teacher is my aunt as you might know. Her work was finally accepted for this year’s Nitten exhibition.
Knowing about the news, her former calligraphy teacher, who once declared that she would not forgive my aunt for her finding a new teacher several years ago, recently phoned her to say congratulation and “I forgive you.” This 90-year-old lady said to my aunt, “you can keep doing this (calligraphy) until my age,” encouraging her. My aunt felt confused and couldn’t understand what it meant. I guess she didn’t want to take her grudge into her grave. Or maybe she is expecting to get acknowledged as the former teacher of a Nitten prize winner. Whatever her intention is, I admire the dauntless old lady.
I started reading another book, Mary Poovey’s The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer.
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The Proper Lady is an idealized feminine figure which had evolved by the end of eighteenth century. She was expected to be a good and obedient companion for men and to have no image of their own. Mary Astell (1668-1731) argued that “women should not love before marriage” because she believed in female capacity to love hereafter and restrain passions by propriety. (p. 3)
Poovey’s literary analysis deals with works written by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austin. Poovey analyses their narratives to understand “both why the ideal of feminine propriety had” power to affect “the middle-class girls who grew into women from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century. (p. 4)
Women’s desire and assertiveness were feared by men for, first, it might contribute men’s “recognition of the limitations of the human condition, secondly, women might “pose a threat to a man’s upward mobility or even to the preservation of his current position,” and thirdly, men’s property was jeopardized. (p.5)
The ideal of feminine propriety served two functions to allay the fears, being naturalized as femininity and formulated as the stereotypes. First, it harnessed women’s desire to men’s “own more reliable wills.” Secondly, it protected “the property upon which the destiny of both individuals and an entire society depended. “ (p. 6)
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Good night.
Hi, ladies!!!
It is Friday, October 31, 2008, today, and it has been a bit cloudy and may rain at any time. But I do not mind this weather. I rather like it, since it is not too hot. How about you?
I got an email from Azalea a couple of days ago, saying that she was going to Guam for several days. So, she is at present enjoying the lovely weather and delightful nature in that area. I hope she will write about how she enjoyed her holidays in Guam after coming back to Japan.
Have you got the book An Introduction to Feminism written by Aiko Ogoshi, my dear friends? Which part did you enjoy most? Or is it too difficult to understand? The terminology is really hard, isn’t it? You do not have to understand everything written in it. Perhaps, 50% or 60 % is quite all right. Even 40 % is not so bad. But please try to familiarize yourselves with as many terms as possible. At the beginning stage, it is enough, I assume.
Tomorrow, my husband and I are going to take his distant relative, who is perhaps a little over seventy years of age and lives at a nursing home in northern Nagoya, to a psychosomatic doctor, as advised by the medical doctor in the home. She was a, sort of, career woman, and retired about ten years ago, but, now being single and an only child and her parents having passed away a long time ago, she is so lonely that she suffers from a psychosomatic disorder, weighing only 32 kilograms.
We are very aware that she does not need any medication but someone to talk with and listen to her. But unfortunately she does not know how to seek solace, and therefore no solace is endowed to her. It appears likely that she does not have any language to communicate with her fellow human beings. But that does not mean that she can have communications with dogs or cats or even birds. She is not an Alzheimer dementia patient and thus her mind is perfectly OK physically and well functioning cognitively but not OK psychologically at the same time. How cruel and torturing her life is!!! She lives in a silent world. Alas…
I hope all of you are having a fabulous afternoon and enjoying yourselves. Bye for now, my lovely friends.
Hi Cherry and dear friends,
Thank you, Plum. I felt relieved a little bit after reading your comments “You do not have to understand everything written in the book An introduction to Feminism". I have been struggling and thinking how difficult the contents were, though I have not finished reading it yet. I might as well confess that my brain did not work well even in Japanese. I was really upset. Now I realized it is important not to give up and to try to familiarize myself with as many terms as possible.
I feel very sorry for Plum’s husband’s relative. I think it is hard to get older and weaker. I think it is sometimes hard to accept the fate. I hope she will find some little pleasure or sweetness in her life.
Good night and have a nice weekend, my precious friends,
Reiko
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