The news that’s more than fit to print

This year’s Pulitzer Prize winners (announced today) are, as I suppose is typically the case, from a number of better and lesser known papers. I am curious about the stories, in the same way that one becomes curious about movies that win Oscars, so I google a number of them and spend a fascinating half-hour reading articles that are not only well written but have such breadth and vision (on such topics as the medically dismissed condition of aortic aneurysms to the examination of death and injury among American workers) that it makes your daily CNN.com story seem like a first grader’s chapter from a story book. (Though a very useful chapter. For instance, for the Pulitzer Prize story, look here.)

The Pulitzer for political cartoons was awarded to Matt Davies. My googling brought up wonderful examples of Davies work, among them, the above.

A steady dose of Nina

I was nineteen, coming from Poland to work as an au paire in the States, reading the NYT for the first time in my life on a regular basis (one might say I had to: the knife that buttered my bread was the NYT) when I was told of the Ninas in Hirschfeld’s drawings. But it wasn’t until much later that I learned that the number next to the artist’s name at the bottom gave you the Nina count for a given illustration.

Today the Times has a short little story about the Nina phenomenon in Hirschfeld’s work (here).

It’s odd what we sometimes get ourselves into. Hirschfeld had originally placed the name in a picture in recognition of the birth of his daughter. Eventually he wanted to stop the practice (hey, was Nina consulted on this?) but the public was outraged and so he was ‘forced’ to continue.

Is there comfort in this ritualistic search for a Nina? I always looked for the Ninas, but you’d think that I would be the one person who had an excuse to do this on a regular basis. Or, is the act of Nina-searching a dumb-person’s version of doing the NYT’s crossword puzzle? Or is it some mystical associations that we have with the name, the state of the world, art, death and all living things? Oh, but of course.

The greatest asset in your house may very well be your chair

After reading yesterday’s WashPost article on the merits (or lack thereof) of renting movies online, I decided that there is virtually no reason to ever get up and move your feet again. A friend recently discovered the joys of even ordering groceries online. She has good reasons to do this, but in time, others will buy into these services as well, even if they haven’t her movement limitations.

We talk through our computers, we acquire things, we send greetings – basically we do all that a cave person once had to venture out into the world for. We put ourselves right back into our caves, the boulders are rolling down the mountain and closing off entrances and exits, shutting out air and light, and we’re happy as anything with our great sophistication and brilliant mastery of life. To me, sometimes we seem dumber than the (computer-illiterate) apes who came before us.

And now come the divorces…

A WashPost article this morning describes a gay union between two men, entered into back in the 70s, dissolved several years later.

The article is a good reminder of the obvious: that the legal aspects of marriage are most salient at the time of break-up, not during the marriage itself. If you ask someone what legal protections they are seeking in marriage, maybe they’ll mention health insurance and hospital visits. Effectively, for most couples, the law does not permeate daily married life.

But the law is the great regulator of dissolution. It is no surprise that in my Family Law class we spend 25% of the semester on marriage and 75% on dissolution and non-marriage, and even then I think I am too generous toward marriage.

Couples (gay or straight) who break up without the legal protection of divorce proceedings (because they never married) have very real problems, ones that are hardly considered at the time of moving in together. Property, custody of children, pension rights, support benefits – none of these can have the oversight of family court (flawed as that oversight may be) if there isn’t a marriage. In fact, even in Wisconsin – a state whose highest court wrote the law on third party rights to visits with children –it’s very difficult to gain access to your partner’s children unless you can demonstrate (a legal certificate sure would help here) that you were indeed acting in a parent-like relationship toward the child.

Perhaps, then, in this great discussion of gay marriages we should be really concentrating on gay divorces. Maybe I could suggest to GWB that he should amend the proposed constitutional amendment so that it realistically states what it is we are asking the constitution to do: “marriage may only be entered into and dissolved if it is between a man and a woman.” Phrased this way, maybe it would wake opponents to gay marriage up to the absurdity of this kind of legal limitation: the vast majority of couples who are splitting up needs the protection of the law – most can’t get to a fair result without it. The point is so obvious, yet so negelcted (by those on both sides of the issue) in current discussions of the merits of gay legal unions.