Hattie's Web

The menopause industry

From the NYT
Dr. Minkin, L, who takes hormones herself, is the face and voice of the new "soft sell" hormone provider. Notice how she kind of looks young, but not really.
"Three years ago, the message was, 'You're going to die if you don't stop taking this,' " said Dr. Minkin, who takes estrogen and is a paid speaker for drug companies that make the estrogen products she prescribes. At the meeting last fall, she said, the feeling was: "Gee, estrogen is pretty good stuff. If you need it for relief, you shouldn't be afraid to take it."

After you, lady.

Throw the bums out

We need to throw the bums out, and I don't mean the Republicans. Rolling over for Bush and his crowd is despicable.

A new godly pastime

I've found a web site where you can generate your own church sign!  Thanks for the tip, Finn. And here is my  godly thought for the week.

Righteous prayer

My mother always said the hardest thing in her life was to see her parents' abjection before their Lord. She brought me up without religion, and I do not miss it. It always has seemed to me that religion makes life harder for people and lets them down when they need consolation most. Even Jesus said as much.

It's Sunday, so pray almighty.

All yer taste is in yer mouth

I can't help drooling over this interior. Even though I'm a peasant, I can recognize the first class stuff.

From the N.Y. Times:

Mr. [Jean] Denoyer also collects superb Art Deco furniture, in particular pieces designed by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, the master of the early 20th-century style in France.

It's snobbery, of course, to favor this sort of thing over the rich homes and interiors of parvenus, but there is the matter of taste and quality. A clod like me would probably add a plant in a brass pot to give this interior a homey touch. Or maybe an orchid for elegance. But that would be wrong, a misstep.
Looking around my office, I note my true lack of understanding of how to create a beautiful interior setting for myself. Papers scattered everywhere, the empty coffee cup, the remains of breakfast on the plate, the functional electronics and cluttered bulletin board vying with my feeble attempts at decor, the open clothes closet.
I have, however, managed to keep my living room clutter free, and with a wonderful painting by Jessie Lawson, it looks good.  The hardwood floors, shabby orientals and really good Kelim would pass muster with the cognoscenti. But any person with style would curl his or her lip at my powder blue laz-i-boy lounger and the cheap dark green Chinese leather couches.
So much of this is matter of aesthetic education. Moneyed people don't necessarily have that. But it's part of being civilized, I think. I can't imagine doing anything but behaving myself beautifully in a room full of Ruhlmann pieces.

Kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it?

From Mad Cow Productions:

“There’s a secret world all   around us,” a legendary CIA agent informs a young recruit in “Overworld,”   L.J.. Kolb’s eye-opening account of growing up as the son of an American spy.   “You just don’t see it unless you know where to look.”

Read this in its entirety and ask yourself if it isn't time to impeach Bush and run all his henchmen to the ground.

Canadian Bush clone wins mandate

Oh lucky, lucky Canada:

On Monday, Mr. [Stephen]Harper's Conservatives knocked off the Liberals, taking a plurality with 124 of the country's 308 seats. The Liberals won in 103 ridings, while the Bloc Québécois took 51 and the NDP took 29. One independent MP — shock jock André Arthur — was elected in Quebec.

Analysts say the split in the vote — the Conservatives were shut out of Canada's three biggest cities — suggests that Mr. Harper and the leaders of the other parties will have to remain open to compromise in order to govern effectively.

Yeah, right, the way Bush has.

 

Look at that smirk. Oh you lucky, lucky Canadians.
Peace, money, and stuff to you all. Hope you will still be able to have the perks you take for granted as your social safety net unravels.
Anyway, claims of moral superiority to us barbarians to the south will be a thing of the past, and for that I'm grateful. You're just another me first society now.  You'll  end up like Australia and New Zealand, being exploited to the max for your  resources. Your majority whites, especially your guys,  will do well while others struggle. Long live the patriarchy!

 

We need more white folks!

Breed, breed, breed!!!!

I want you to drop dead of envy

Check out this cruise ship passing by, as viewed from my deck over Hilo Bay. Pretty cool, eh? Jealous? Read below.

This piece from the N.Y. Times about Susan Orlean and John Gillespie, a power couple, aroused a lot of hostility in the blogosphere. Here are some choice quotes from the article:

... Mr. Gillespie, the chief financial officer of the Mentor Network, a health care organization in Boston, was in the Salt Lake City airport, scanning a magazine rack, when he saw a spectacular house of stone, wood and glass on the cover of Sunset magazine. He returned home to Boston, where the pair live, and showed the magazine to his wife. She took one look, picked up the phone, and called the architects, Cutler Anderson of Bainbridge Island in Washington.

"I said we'd like to buy the plans for the house," Ms. Orlean said. "That was so naïve. The plans belong to the owner." They did not know at the time that the firm had built Bill Gates's house in Medina, Wash., with Peter Bohlin. They met James Cutler, a principal of the firm, for dinner in Boston two weeks later. "It was like a great blind date," Ms. Orlean said.

Little me, she said, laughing charmingly, how could I have known? Bill Gates' architect? I had no idea.

The view is south toward Stissing Mountain, which towers over the rolling hills of the Taconic range. A meadow falls gently away from the house, opening up the vista, and the sky looks immense, as if you were in New Mexico.

"I made the entrance darker, denser, so the view explodes," Mr. Cutler said. Ms. Orlean spoke admiringly of the experience of entering the house: "The modesty of the entrance, the small, beautiful door - and then, gasp!"

Reminds me of one of my favorite Jewish jokes: A woman is consulting with her interior decorator. He says, "What do you want your living room to look like?  She replies, "I want for it to look like when they walk in the  door they should drop dead!" This seems like Ms. Orlean's spirit. I'm sure her new little trophy baby arouses gasps of admiration, too, as well as her flaming red hair, both acquisitions remarkable in a woman over 50. It's hard not to envy this stuff, even though it is so reprehensible. But I don't need a fancy entrance for people to go oh wow over my (usually non-incendiary) view! Which can be enjoyed outdoors year round, by the way.
That's why I'm glad I get to live on Hilo Bay! Bill Gates' architect did not design my house, but it's hard to top its location.
I think my house is charming, too, actually. So I'll struggle on without ever knowing the glamor of being a fancy rich person.