We’re back! And a bit jet-lagged and generally confused. Further thoughts later — though perhaps not until Monday — but in the meantime, two amusing, vaguely Halloween-relevant links:

Animals in costume

Don & Betty Draper = Darrin & Samantha?

Have you been reading anything particularly noteworthy in the blogosphere (not necessarily seasonally relevant)? Add your link in comments.

Teabag tag says:

The only tool you need is kindness.

Robin says:

If kindness is all you have, you’re a tool.

For the history of the teabag-tag wars, go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Here’s a Halloween-themed post for you all. I’d gotten into a horror-fiction kick a while back, and noticed that every New England gothic that deals with the human or supernatural evil of some little farming town — it’s always about corn. From “The Lottery” to Children of the Corn to Harvest Home. Corn is the basis of the community, the source and/or excuse for the evil. So I figured, hey, I know someone who manages a farm, I wonder what Verena would say about this. I mean, get two women together, one of whom did a dissertation on literary genre and one of whom is a farmer, and surely we could figure out this “evil corn” thing, right? I had a few ideas of my own, so I shot them off to her. Here they are, and her responses:

1. Coincidence. Corn is a native crop to New England, which happens to be where America’s literary horror tradition got started. If the tradition had started in the midwest, it would have been “Children of the Wheat.”

Verena replied: That seems plausible. Corn’s native to the whole continent though (including Central America). Wheat was introduced from Europe, and doesn’t do well in the N.E. climate (fall rains come in just as the crop is ready). Wheat is also much shorter (not quite like lettuce, but still short). Wheat is romantic (“Days of Heaven”). You can’t really romp with your lover in the cornfields like you can in the wheat. Wheat is soft.

2. Structure. Cornfields are taller than people and make a scary rustling sound and you can hide in them, so you can set cool plot sequences in the cornfields that might not be possible in other agricultural settings. You pretty well have to be Peter Rabbit to get a lot of suspense going in a lettuce patch.

Verena replied: I think you’re totally right that big cornfields are easy to hide in and get lost in. That’s pretty scary. And unlike woods or mountains, there’s a man-made uniformity to a cornfield, so you can’t get your bearings. A corn field does have this weird human-like quality to it…hayfields are tall and uniform, and make rustling sounds, but you never feel like you’re standing in some kind of vegetable army.

Okay, doesn’t the phrase “vegetable army” just freak you out right there?

3. The Uncanny Valley. It is easy to make disturbingly human-looking poppets and fetishes out of corncobs and husks.

Verena replied: Yeah, kids love that! We always do husk doll making with little kids and it’s a blast. They all turn out so amazingly different.

That was pretty much all I knew about corn and why it might be scary, so I went on to ask her, “Is corn so important that in a given farming community it might not be just a crop, but the crop, much as potatoes were in Ireland? So that the needs of the corn become paramount and it’s treated in a sort of idolatrous fashion?

“Is corn so temperamental and hard to grow that a human sacrifice now and then might not seem like a bad idea? (I mean, do you sit around with your farmer friends and talk about ‘The Lottery’ and joke, ‘Well, of course it would be wrong, but don’t say you’ve never wondered if it would actually work …’)”

And that’s when it got really scary! (Okay, I’m cuing the music and holding the flashlight under my chin now.) She said corn isn’t really hard to grow, and that up until modern times there wasn’t an issue with monoculture that would lead to the kind of dependence I was wondering about … but then … she wrote …

sacrifice – here’s a thought – Blood has a lot of nitrogen in it (remember those school stories about how Native Americans planted a fish head at the base of every corn mound). Great fertilizer. You can buy “blood meal” as an organic fertilizer – it’s just dried blood and it’s the best thing you can get. A sacrifice that spilled blood all over your corn WOULD actually make it grow better.

So how about that!

The first one is for the ConductMom, because she likes pictures of laundry lines:

This is a big fancy palazzo:

This is a mosaic around the fountain of the big fancy palazzo. The mosaic went all the way around it and was made of long stones, which Mr. Improbable said (and I agree) is an impressive feat of engineering:

… can be found somewhere in the vicinity of here.

I had to set this up before I left, so I don’t have the exact link. Sorry! Anyway, in today’s column, I refer to one of my favorite quotes from Jewish texts. I write about this in Mind Over Manners, too:

When ethical matters are at stake, only the individual concerned can decide how serious the issue is, and whether conviction, compromise, or caving in is most appropriate. Those of us who are not saints cannot live out each ethical principle to its fullest in every moment of the day. Rather, because time and energy are finite, most people have a few pet values (virtues, ideals, causes) into which they pour their energy: sometimes you Save This Child, sometimes you turn the page. Calvin may be a superb father but a standoffish neighbor; Kathleen may devote time and money to animal rescue shelters, but do little for the environment, even though she believes it is important.

If other people’s ethical balance sheets aren’t quite the same as your own, it doesn’t necessarily mean they lack values, just that they are allocating their limited time, money, and energy in a different way. As the Pirkei Avot, an ancient text of Jewish wisdom, states, “It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to desist from it.” The task referred to is that of repairing, or perfecting, the world. I find this a helpful saying to meditate on: we must all do something, but no one needs, or can, do everything. Therefore, try to avoid quibbling with the ethical priorities of others, or laying guilt trips on them because their causes are not your own. They are tending to their gardens, and you to yours.

Don’t let all this online adoration give you a big head, Milo.

Tomorrow is Milo’s fourth “Gotcha Day” with us! I wrote a little essay about him on his second, and a poem for him on his third. Digging through some old computer files, recently, I found something I’d written a couple of months after we got him, that will suffice as this year’s celebratory post:

Much as I often type “teh” instead of “the,” I’ve discovered–since the arrival of Milo, our adorable mixed-breed rescue dog–that I usually type “god” when I mean “dog.” I always manage to notice this and correct it, usually with an obscure feeling of guilt. However, if I hadn’t, here are some of the things I would have written in various e-mails to friends in the past month:

• If you’re really not up for having a god in the house along with the new baby that’s perfectly okay.

• He is a great god, bra fetish notwithstanding.

• And we have a new god, who is a constant source of puzzlement and delight, and who appears to find us much the same.

• He’s a gentle god but “calm” is not a word I would use to describe him.

• We are working on “quiet god” right now.

• My husband and my god like each other.

• If anyone is afraid of or allergic to gods be assured that he will be crated and upstairs during our meeting. If anyone likes gods you can go meet him after we’ve concluded our business.

• The important question is how are you doing these days, and the really important question is when are you going to come admire my new god?

• And can I force you all to admire the attached picture of my new god, bravely defending us against an evil, scary bunch of bananas?

• He doesn’t feel the need to mark his territory as male gods often do.

• On the upside, I LOVE MY NEW GOD! He is the BEST god ever and we just signed the adoption papers today.

Happy Gotcha Day, little man. While your humans are cavorting in Italy, you are staying with a friend in the country, and I hope you are having a wonderful time. We are probably looking at all of the Italian dogs and saying to ourselves, and sometimes each other, “That dog’s not as cute as Milo.” You remain a source of puzzlement and delight to us, and it appears we remain so to you, as well.

And here, for anyone who cares to see it, is the picture of Milo the second night we had him, defending his new home against that sleeper cell of terrorist bananas (he’d been barking at them, so we put them on the floor and let him investigate):

Mr. Improbable and I are off on a much-needed trip to Italy. I will be very glad of this. The past few months have been a long haul for me of minor but debilitating health problems (allergies and back problems in addition to the “sick” I blogged about earlier) and work stresses. I feel I’ve been just managing to fulfill the barest of my responsibilities — getting the columns done, though never in advance, and the blogs kept more-or-less up to date, and my Harvard Business School job more-or-less under control.

Things will be better when we get back, I hope: I have reason to think my health problems won’t bother me so much for a while, and the Big Project at my Harvard job is almost entirely done, and I’ve made a few decisions that ought to lighten the load for me for a while.

I also sent around an e-mail to some of my friends who had really helped me out, or listened to me rant, or been gracious when I canceled plans on them for the third time in a row because of some health or work emergency. People really are there for you, you know. When they say, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do” — you can, if there is. We all want to be independent and self-sufficient, but sometimes it’s good to remember that other people will put up with your nonsense, because they love you.

Even when you’re covered in bees!

See you in November! I’ve got a couple of posts scheduled to go up while we’re gone, but posting will be light. If you leave a comment and you haven’t commented before, it won’t go through until I moderate it, which might not be until I get back.

I’ll be chatting today from noon to 1pm Eastern time here. If you can’t join us for the chat, you can read the transcript afterward.

More on ASP’s “The Taming of the Shrew” …

The big question with any production of “Shrew” is how to do Kate’s final scene, in which, at Petruchio’s command, she gives a speech about the obedience women owe to their husbands. I saw a brilliant all-female production of the play several years back (the women played the male characters as men, just as in Shakespeare’s time, female roles were played as women, by male actors) in which this monologue was very dramatic and clearly very difficult for Kate, and during which Petruchio’s attitude went from a macho boastfulness, to embarrassment, to complete shame and horror at what he had done to this woman and incredible gratitude and humility in the face of her extraordinary grace. It was a deeply Christian reading of the scene, reminding me of nothing so much as Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.

Melia Bensussen, who also directed last year’s wonderful “Merchant of Venice,” took a much simpler tack with it, and yet one that I’ve never seen or heard done before. The three husbands in the room — Petruchio, Lucentio, and Hortensio — have all agreed to wager on their wives’ obedience. They send the servant Grumio to call their wives from the other room, and Kate is the only one who comes. (Given that it is well established that Kate hates her sister Bianca, and has already been gratuitously insulted by the other woman, her eagerness to join her husband speaks less of obedience than a wholly rational desire to escape the Mean Girls.) Petruchio then tells her to go get the other women, bring them into the main room, and TELL THEM.*

And here is the brilliant, obvious, perfect thing that Ms. Bensussen does: she puts the money on the table. This is a wager. The audience sees the pile of money, lying right there, and so does Kate. She knows the score. Does she believe what she’s saying? Oh, probably, partly. It’s hard for anyone, even someone as verbally dextrous as Katharina Minola, to lie convincingly and on the spur of the moment for 40 lines. But she’s doing it for the money — the same reason Petruchio married her. The fact that she swoops down on that pile of bills like the hawk she’s often compared to makes that clear enough. She and her husband jam the cash into their pockets and beat a quick retreat! (I must blushingly confess that this scene charmed me enough that I actually wrote Shakespeare fan fiction this weekend, imagining Kate and Petruchio on the way home to Verona, laughing at having pulled a fast one on their friends and family and deciding what to do with their winnings.)

So often, in productions of Shakespeare, the money is treated like a metaphor. Seeing Ms. Bensussen’s take on two of his most difficult plays — “Taming of the Shrew” and that which is often called “Taming of the Jew” — has convinced me that this is a mistake. It’s not a metaphor. It’s money. And people will do a lot for money. My God, what won’t they do for money.

More subtly, the production, though set in a vaguely defined present-ish moment, is staged with recurrent images of Queen Elizabeth — on the stage floor, on the cover of the pub’s dart- and gameboard. Which reminds those of us who know our Bard that he, too, was doing it for the money. Shakespeare, that great artist, was also a great mercenary. And he wrote by the leave and at the pleasure of a woman — his Queen — just as Kate speaks by the leave and at the pleasure of her husband. The Queen protected and supported him, too, as Petruchio protects and supports Kate. Shakespeare was no more free than Kate, and no more oppressed.

We all make compromises, which sounds very mature. We are all compromised, which sounds very dirty. But both are true.

*I’m delighted to report that the creator of the “Oh Snap!” flowchart, originally found here, bears the wonderfully improbable name Sharif Kellogg, and is a friend of a friend of mine. Say what you will, the internet can be a fun playground sometimes.