I watched London burning on the BBC news last night.

To me London isn\’t just a place I have read about in books or seen on television or in movies. London is a city I feel homesick for though I have never truly lived there. I loved visiting London. I spent weeks venturing out every day from our small tent to forage through bookstores for used (or remaindered) treasures. I spent weeks walking each day from our tiny room at the B&B to the tube station and heading off museums, art galleries and, of course, bookstores. I have sat for hours in London\’s parks reading books and feeding pigeons.

I know London well enough that I could follow the reports of riots, fires and looting and think, \”now they are near that lovely little shop,\” \”I remember walking along that road,\” and \”oh, no they are near where [a friend] lives.\”

The experience of watching London burn was not only coloured by the fact that I knew the city well enough to worry about, to mourn for and to empathize with the people who lived there. Watching disasters in \”real time\” is quite different from hearing about them even a few minutes after the fact. Once something is over you can be sorry, you can try to understand and you can feel angry. Watching something unfold before you on the television or computer screen is much more like watching a tragedy unfold outside your front window. You may not be personally in danger but you do feel that you should do something. You feel that if you don\’t you are either condoning it–or you are a coward.

So I watched London burning and I felt impelled to do something and yet there was nothing I could do except meditate on the exact nature of the social contract that kept every city, town and village from burning along with London.

When I was a child my mother would recite poetry to entertain me or to pass the time. One of her favourite poems was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow\’s The Song of Hiawatha[1]
Whenever my mother got to these verses:

a chill would run up my spine. Imagine, I would think, not knowing which grave was that of your grandmother? Imagine knowing only that you grandfather was somewhere in that field.

As I grew older and read about archeology I loved to read about tomb excavations and the recovery of mummies. It was years before I connected archeology to that passage of Longfellow\’s poem. I can\’t remember whose lament it was that moved me to understand that one culture\’s science was another culture\’s grave robbing. Now instead of imagining that I didn\’t know which headstone marked the grave of my grandfather or grandmother I imagined if I didn\’t even know where their bodies were. Worse, I imagined that I knew that their bodies had been dug up and examined by strangers without my permission. I imagined that pictures of their corpses were published in journals for all to read. I imagine that tourists in some far off country were paying to walk by the bodies of my grandparents.

Which is, of course, what happened. People from western, industrialized countries, swept down on the peoples of the countries they had colonized or invaded and stole from them the bodies of their ancestors just as they stole from them their other treasures.

In time (although it took far longer than it should have) the practice of scientifically sanctioned grave robbing came to a halt. Now the institutions that held the stolen remains were left with a conundrum. What should they do with the bones and corpses they had plundered from around the world? The task was relatively easy if there was a solid record about where the remains had been taken from. But there were many remains for which there were no paper trail. What should be done with those?

Today I found out that the Government of Saskatchewan had been, for some years, been providing a way for the remains of First Nations individuals to be, in a sense, repatriated:

The government set aside the four-hectare parcel of Crown land in 1998 to re-inter remains that had no where else to go — bones lying on museum and university shelves, unearthed during construction or discovered due to land erosion.

They find their final resting place at the sacred site if there\’s no way to determine if the dead belonged to a certain tribe or there\’s no way to return them to the places where they were found. . . . \”elders representing eight different linguistic groups hold burial ceremonies and pray for the bodies to rest in peace.\” [Saskatchewan Government Running Sacred First Nations Burial Ground]

Why am I, an atheist, so moved by this story? Not because I think that the souls of the dead demand decent burial–after all I don\’t think that such a thing as \’a soul\’ exists. I am moved because I agree with Immanuel Kant that we should:

Act so that you treat humanity, both in your own person and in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.[The Categorical Imperative]

By the very act of treating these remains as we believe those people (and their descendents) would wish them to be treated we ceasing to treat them as means.
I buried my mother according to her wishes because she was not a means for me to demonstrate my atheism to the world but rather someone who had her own desired ends.

Of course, it is easier to treat ones family as ends in themselves and the rest of the world as means. Yet every person who ever lived is a relative of mine. Every person alive today is a relative of mine. I might have to go far back in my family tree but if we but had the records to do so we could construct a family tree that connected each one of us to everyone else. To paraphrase Longfellow:

[1] Each of my parents had different favourite portions of the poem and thus when I read it to myself the voice in my head is sometimes my mother\’s and sometimes my father\’s.&#8617

[2] I tell myself to understand \”our fathers\” as \”our forebears\” just as I tell myself that mankind means humanity and manpower means staff.&#8617

My \”blog plan\” for today was to trim and update the list on my \”to read\” page. Trimming isn\’t much of an issue since I merely needed to go through and check that I had removed from me \”to read\” those books that I had recently reviewed.

What rattled me was the fact that in the time since I first posted my \”to read\” list my meatworld \”to read\” list has at least doubled in size despite the fact that I have been steadily working away on it every day.

How could that happen?

Some of the reasons are obvious:

1. People who respond to my reviews give me wonderful suggestions of other books that I might find interesting.
2. People who respond to my reviews ask me questions about the book/author in relationship to another book/author which fuel my interest in those books/authors.
3. Authors I follow publish new books (yeah!!!!)
4. I find out that authors I already liked had written books I hadn\’t known of (sometimes writing under another name.)
5. I read book reviews which lead me to read the book reviewed, works discussed/referenced in the reviews and sometimes books written by the reviewer.
6. I read the LibraryThing recommendations (which based on the books in my library.)
7. I read books that are rated highly by LibraryThing friends
8. I read books that are rated highly by LibraryThing reviewers whose past reviews led me to books are ( now value

People to blame for the fact that my \”to read\” list just keeps getting longer:

1. John Scalzi, who not only writes books and stories I have enjoyed, he uses his own website, Whatever, as a platform to allow writers to introduce Scalzi\’s community to one of their books. The Big Idea posts are written by these authors (not Scalzi himself) and usually include a description of the book, an explanation of \”why the book was written\”/\”how the author got the idea\” and a link to a free-sample of several chapters of the book in question.
2. Jo Walton (directly) has introduced me to many wonderful books through her reviews at Tor.com.
3. Jo Walton (indirectly) has added to my \”to read\” list by changing the way in which I read and the way I write reviews of the books I read. I can\’t claim to write as well as Walton nor to have as much insight as zie does–but I do try to make the effort to do both. Therefore I can\’t always simply sit down and quickly type a review of a book I read years ago without any conscious intention of reviewing it.

   I may have well remember a book that I first read several decades ago, however, in the intervening years I have read many books as well as many book reviews. I have had life experiences and academic training. To do the book justice and to do the book review justice I have to sit and read the book again. So many books on my \”to read\” list are actually on my \”to reread\” list. Indeed many of the books on my \”to read\” list move immediately, once read, onto the \”to reread\” list because I feel they need repeated readings before I can write a good review.

I have already reached the point of realizing that even were I to live as long as my parents (mom to her mid-nineties and dad working on his late nineties) and even if I, like my father, never go a week without reading at least four books I will never finish the \”to read\” list.

And that is a thing of joy for it means that reading a book (and crossing it off my list) does not diminish the number of books left to read. I need never fear that the day will come that I will run out of things I want to read.

[Trigger Warning: child starvation, suffering, and death]

Most of us have seen the picture–children crowded around the back of a relief truck as aid workers spoon out gruel into cups, bowls and outstretched hands. Today I read something that made me realize that if I had been ever been one of those children it would be unlikely that I would have lived to write this blog. If my father had been one of the starving people in the refugee camp he would probably not have survived.

Celiac/coeliac (both spellings are common) disease is, to quote the article The Global Burden of Childhood Coeliac Disease: A Neglected Component of Diarrhoeal Mortality?:

a systemic autoimmune syndrome involving a gluten-induced chronic inflammation of the small bowel mucosa, with extensive short- and long term negative health consequences if untreated. Symptomatology can vary for an individual over time, and often mimics other diseases, which, combined with low global awareness of the disease, results in many cases remaining undiagnosed or being ineffectively treated. Examples of signs and symptoms are malabsorption with diarrhoea and consequent under-nutrition, short stature, anaemia, stomach pain, and increased incidence of many infectious diseases.

For someone like me (middle class, educated in the appropriate diet and living in an area where gluten-free foods are affordable and available) celiac disease can be, for the most part[1] controlled through diet. It is sometimes challenging (and occassionally dangerous) to eat at restaurants and at the homes of friends but you can stay healthy as long as one buys, cooks and eats only food that is gluten-free.

The symptoms of celiac disease are sufficiently like those of a number of other conditions that it is often misdiagnosed and someone living where most food is relatively gluten-free might be a celiac and not even realize why they never felt quite well. Now imagine a famine hits that area and aid organizations fly in food from around the world. Much of that food has gluten in it. Now the adults and children who were \”never quite well\” become very, very ill as the amount of gluten (in proportion to their overall diet) becomes greater and greater. Soon they are having violent, painful and unending diarrhoea. The normal medical interventions do not work to alleviate the problem and indeed some of them make it worse.

Now that picture of the children has become personal nightmare fuel for me. I imagine I am one of those hungry children desperate for food. I imagine I fight to the front of the pack and hold my hands out for a handful of gruel. I imagine burying my face in my hands almost inhaling the first food I have had in days.

Then I imagine myself lying on the ground having lost everything that I ate and more curled in agony surrounded by pools of my own vomit and diarrhoea.

Somewhere today that happened to a child we thought we were helping.

[1] I don\’t know of anyone who has been a celiac for years who does not have \”mysterious\” attacks of violent symptoms when they know of nothing they have ingested that could have caused the problem. People who don\’t live with you always assume that you have simply \”forgotten\” about that off-diet item one ate. People who live with you and see everything you eat soon come to realize that it is indeed true. You ate nothing that should have made you ill and yet there you are curled up 0n the floor of the bathroom…..well, I won\’t detail all the symptoms.

 

You come across them in books written in the 1900s and the first half of the last century. People who were not, perhaps, technically rich and yet, in some ways, were rich beyond the wildest imaginings of most people in the western/industrialized world today.

In book after book we meet characters who \”live off a modest competence,\” who \”inherited a tidy sum\” from a maiden aunt or bachelor uncle, men who retired in the prime of life from some branch of the services and live comfortably on their pension plus the money left them by an elderly relative and the women who can just manage to sustain appearances if they pool the dividends from the money they inherited from their father\’s small estate together with their mother (who has a life-interest in her deceased husband\’s pension.)

Seldom would any of them do what would be recognized today as work. The women might work as a secretary to a \”great man\” of letters or even as a companion but to work in shop or as a secretary to a businessman was out of the question. The men might work as agents on the estate of a monied landowner. All of them resented the idea of jobs and all seemed to fear (quite justifiably) that by working for a living they might lose some of their class status.

They would be invited to dine with those who were truly wealthy for although they belonged to a different monetary class they were members of the same social class. The conversation around the table would often turn to the ruinous effect of taxation, the frightening drop in dividends and the almost extortionate insistence of members of the working class of being paid wages that reflected both their work and the cost of living.

Almost inevitably at some point in the conversation one of the characters would state that these changes were going to destroy their way of life.

They were right.

We certainly have millionaires today. Indeed we have billionaires. But we do not have a substantially large class of people who maintain what we would consider a middle class lifestyle without holding down a job. Changes in the economic system wiped them out.

For the last half a century we have continued to have a middle class but this group of people depended on income generated from jobs rather than from dividends. These were people who worked all their life, saved assiduously and if they were lucky could look forward to living in retirement much the way that vanished long ago middle class did.

I wonder if in another fifty years the literate public will look back on our job dependent middle class much as we do on the rentier middle class of England before and between the World Wars. Perhaps in fifty years there will simply be the rich and poor and very little in between.

Viewing in my household breaks down into four categories: sports, entertainment, news and guilty pleasures. The entertainment category is the thinnest. We watch TV series and movies on DVD or streaming. The hours spent watching sports can be light or heavy depending on the year and the time of the year. News can expand to fill hours of time if there is a major event or ongoing crisis.

And then there are the guilty pleasures. The shows that rivet my attention for reasons I don\’t always wish to explore. The shows that make me feel good about my life by showing me the way other people live. I always feel vaguely uncomfortable as I watch (I am, after all using these people instrumentally) and yet I find myself continuing to do so.

One of those shows has very much been on my mind in recent days is Til Debt Do Us Part a Canadian show which features Gail Vaz-Oxlade, a financial planner, who responds to the pleas of couples who are drowning in debt by putting them on a strict budget and subjecting them through a series of challenges that are designed to help them to understand better how they got so badly in debt, how to get out of debt and how to stay out of debt. The (usually) couples can earn up to five thousand dollars in cash from Gail if over a four week period they stay on the budget she gives them and successfully complete the challenges while having what Gail refers to as \”the right attitude.\” Over the many years of the show I have seen participants receive as little as a thousand dollars for their efforts.

I was thinking a lot of Gail as I watched American political figures argue about how to deal with the debt. What, I wondered, would she say to them if they were on her show.

First, she would tell them to stop with the attitude and quit making excuses. It may be emotionally enjoyable to assign blame but placing blame doesn\’t help to solve the problem.

Second, she would tell them to stop playing games and start communicating honestly.

Third, and most important, she would assign them one of her \”budget booster\” challenges. In many an episode she sits down and tells the people who are in debt that she simply cannot make their budget balance. Their challenge will be figuring out how to bring in more money on a sustainable basis. The people to whom she directs this challenge often protest that it is impossible. A surprisingly large percentage of them do find a way to increase their income. She will not let people use funds that should be set aside for long-term savings and ongoing maintenance to pay for current expenses.

I find this relevant right now because of the continued reiteration in Washington of statements to the effect \”the national budget should be run the way the household budget is run.\” At least one household budget specialist would, if looking at the national budget/debt demand that the adults in the household get off their duffs and bring in more money.

If they want to have an argument down the line about whether the fixed costs could be lowered by selling the house and downsizing they are welcome to do so–but only after raising enough money to pay the debts they currently owe without taking any funds out of the children\’s milk money.

For some of the couples Gail counsels making more money means working a second job, working overtime or even delivering papers. The politicians in Washington have it much easier since they don\’t have to go out and pound the pavement to chase down possible jobs.

They just have to raise taxes.

I am an atheist but I was brought up among people of deep and convincing faith. By \”convincing faith\” I do not mean that they were convinced of their own faith but that I was convinced that they truly believed. I was convinced of their faith because they lived that faith every day of their lives.

I learned the 23rd Psalm by heart sitting on my grandmother\’s knee. I learned not that we should go to church on Sunday but that we were enjoined not to make others work on Sunday:

But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates (Exodus 20:10)[1]

My mother liked to remind people that one of the greatest statements of love and devotion in the Bible was made by one woman to another:

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. (Ruth 1:16-17)[1]

My mother is dead but I still have the Bible that she was given when she was a child. Her favourite passages are marked and as I reread them I imagine her marching into Congress and standing on the floor of the House declaiming them:

Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee. (Exodus 24: 14-15)[1]

*********

Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow\’s raiment to pledge:
But thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing.
When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.
When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shalt not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.(Exodus 24:17-22)[1]

*********

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
Naked, and ye clothed me:
I was sick, and ye visited me:
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat:
I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not,
Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment:
but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25: 34-46)[1]

I don\’t know what book the politicians in Washington are referring to when they speak about The Bible but I do know that it isn\’t the one my mother read and cherished. I know it isn\’t the one my father reads from every day. I know it isn\’t the one my great-aunt preached from. I know it isn\’t the one my uncle wrote sermons about. I know it isn\’t the one my grandmother loved.

My mother\’s greatest statement of condemnation for anyone was I wouldn\’t give him a cup of tea if he was thirsty. It was a threat that I never saw her carry out. She fed people whose politics she abhorred and she often made the bread that she broke with people who many of those politicians would call sinners.

If my mother was alive right now I think she might not be willing to give a cup of tea to the politicians in Washington who are threatening to take away the widow\’s mite and denying the poor the right to glean the once-harvested fields.

[1] All quotations are from my mother\’s copy of the King James Version of The Holy Bible.

Paying Guests by E. F. Benson (1929)

Those who are familiar with E. F. Benson only through his Lucia and Mapp books may initially find this book disappointing since it is set in a different location both geographically and socially. None of the characters rise to the magnificence of Emmeline Lucas or Miss Mapp and the social circle of the residents of Wentworth is neither as wealthy as that in Riseholme nor as settled in its hierarchical patterns as that of Tilling. This reviewer encourages the reader (whether familiar with Benson or not) to read on. Paying Guests is a wonderful examination of a particular subsection of the English gentry that would be squeezed out of existence by the falling returns on dividends, the dismantling of the British Empire and the next World War. It is also a magnificent picture of the gender dynamics in England between the two World Wars. Finally it is a wonderful exploration of a recurrent theme in Benson in the last half of his writing life–the problem of how one fills up the minutes and hours of one’s life if one has no real interests, no real passions and no real work.

Beyond here there be spoilers…….

On the surface Paying Guests is a series of scenes and incidents from the lives of the owners and lodgers of Wentworth boarding house at Bolton Spa. It is also about the ways in which people “of a certain class\” fill their time and elude boredom. Many of the lodgers at Wentworth have come to take the waters in hopes of relieving, if not curing, their bodily ills but that is not the case for all the guests. In fact the two, Miss Howard and Colonel Chase, around whom most of the regular life of the house revolves, are quite healthy.

Colonel Chase is known at Wentworth for what he clearly considers to be prodigiously long bicycle rides and country walks. These activities play an important part in the Colonel passing the hours of the day. He rises, has tea and toast in bed, comes down to breakfast, reads the morning papers, rides his bike, lunches, goes for walk, has tea and plays bridge. He does not make the meals he eats any more than he makes the bed in which he sleeps every night. Colonel Chase spends his time in activities that allow him to avoid empty moments but he contributes nothing to the comfort and ease in which he lives. The (widowed) Mrs. Oxney and her sister (and fellow widow) Mrs. Bertram, hire the staff and do some of the practical work around the house themselves. Colonel Chase spends his time spending his time. He does not work at an income generating job and the reader may wonder if even the things with which he passes his time are enjoyable in and of themselves. He does the crossword puzzle but it seems that he gets more joy out of defeating others at Wentworth in the time it takes to complete it than he does in the actual completion. His extreme anger at losing his walking pedometer and in the failure of his bicycling pedometer suggests that much of the enjoyment he derives from walking and cycling lies in telling others about his records. He enjoys playing bridge but apparently enjoys the chance to instruct and correct those around him more than actually playing the game.

The two things that Colonel Chase does seem to enjoy wholeheartedly are having his comfort and having others arrange for that comfort. Thus his mind turns to the idea of marriage not because of love, monetary need or the desire for companionship but because he hoped for, in the case of one possible Mrs. Chase, an increase in his wealth and prestige and in the case of the other the guaranteed continuation of the comfort and ease to which he had become accustomed.

Miss Howard, unlike Colonel Chase, cannot look forward to a life that would always assure that her physical wants and emotional needs would be the central concern of the people with whom she lived. As the book opens Miss Howard had managed to hold on to her internal girlhood:

She had been an extremely pretty girl, lively and intelligent and facile, but by some backhanded stroke of fate she had never married, and now at the age of forty, though she had parted with her youth, she had relinquished no atom of her girlishness. She hardly ever walked, but tripped, she warbled little snatches of song when she thought that anyone might be within hearing in order to refresh them with her maidenly brightness, and sat on the hearth-rug in front of the fire, even though there was a far more comfortable seat ready. It was not that she felt any profound passion for tripping, warbling and squatting, but from constantly telling herself that she was barely out of her teens she had got to believe in her girlishness and behaved accordingly.(21)[1]

It is questionable how much longer Miss Howard could continue to be treated like a young woman and how soon she would pass into the sad world of the spinster–the woman who had failed to land herself a husband and the consequent gravitas accorded to the married woman.

Paying Guests is also the story of a very ordinary young woman who, like Miss Howard, was financially secure and unlike Miss Howard seemed never likely to marry. Miss Kemp’s role in life up until the point the reader meets her, was to listen to her father’s stories, to fetch and carry for him and to center every moment of her life around the man’s arthritic and rheumatic aches and pains. Mr. Kemp does not appreciate his daughter efforts to please him. In fact Mr. Kemp does not seem to appreciate anyone’s efforts to make his life comfortable. He has given over the last years of his life to ministering to his every ache, twinge, need and want. He resents that his late wife left half of her fortune to their daughter leaving him only with a life-time interest in the other half of the estate. Up until the the books open the Mrs. Kemps bequest has made no material difference in his life since Miss Kemp has not lived in the London flat left to her by her mother but instead devoted all her time and money to the care of her entirely unappreciative father.

Benson doesn’t take the easy route of presenting the reader with characters who have found themselves in dire and tragic circumstances. Miss Howard is somewhat self-deluding and has found herself trapped by small exaggerations and misleading statements that have led others to presume that she is wealthier and with more aristocratic connections that was the case. Miss Kemp is trapped in a life of boredom and stagnation by filial pressures. Neither is facing ruination although both are facing a long emotionally starved life. Colonel Chase is faced with the problem of insuring that he can live out the rest of his life in the self-centered ease to which he has become accustomed. Mr. Kemp worries that his physical and emotional concerns will always be catered to.

The open chapters of Paying Guests hint that some change is about to happen among these residents of Wentworth and that is indeed what will happen. This is, in its own way, a love story. That the love in question is between two adult women is of no consequence at all to the story, save for the fact that as women past the age of marriage (past their twenties) neither had much hope for any form of marriage except to an older man who was looking for passable looking women with some capital who would look after his house and create a buffer between him and a world that did not cater to his every whim. It is only with another woman that a life of service to a husband, father or other father member could be avoided.

By the end of the book all of the major characters have moved closer to their physical and emotional goals. The route this took may have surprised them just as modern reader may be surprised by the ease and skill with which Benson wrote about what we now tend to think would have been a taboo subject.

In short–a book to read, to reread and to place on the shelf next to the rest of Benson’s best.

Rating: 4-1/2 stars

Benson, E. F. Paying guests. London: Hogarth Press, 1984.

While I am not a particular fan of magazines, networks and TV shows that focus almost obsessively on \”true life\” crime I am aware of the major stories that saturate their pages and time. Indeed, for someone who researches popular culture it would have been difficult in the last few weeks not to be aware that Casey Anthony was on trial (in Orlando, Florida) for the murder of her daughter Caylee. And it would have been, if anything, even more difficult to remain ignorant of the outcome of that trial and the angry public response to that verdict.

At another time I may address both the verdict and the responses. Here and now I want to write about the framing of tragedy itself. In comment after comment on television, in article after article in newspapers and magazines and in post after post on the internet we are told (and reminded) that Caylee Anthony was a beautiful child. For example:

the tragedy surrounding the loss of this beautiful little girl cuts to the heart of everyone [The Casey Anthony case and abortion: a tragic disconnect]

The alleged murderer of Caylee Marie, a beautiful little girl.[Casey Anthony Jury Selecton Under the Big Top]

From the start, her mother Casey willfully lied to the police about what happened to the beautiful little girl [Why Is Casey Anthony Smiling In Court]

I have never had any doubt that Casey killed her daughter. Her beautiful little girl with the big brown eyes.[Casey Anthony could take a lesson from Charlene Spierer]

a beautiful little girl\’s life was cut oh so short, and there\’s no doubt in my mind who did it.[Caylee Anthony: A beautiful life cut short]

This emphasis on the beauty of the victim is not unique to the Anthony Case. For example, consider the case of Natalee Holloway of whom one can read:

How did this beautiful, sweet girl end up murdered?…..[comment to the post Natalee Holloway: Jaw Bone Found in Aruba, Sent for tests at the NFI Forensic Institute in The Hague.

Dave and Jug, both busily trolling the Internet in their search for donated funds to enable on-island search efforts to resume, surely can have no excuse for their continued absence from Aruba, where Natalee Holloway, the beautiful missing-from-Aruba Alabama honours student, disappeared in the last days of May. [Natalee Holloway Is Missing From The Missing Persons Lists]

Or JonBenet Ramsey:

JonBenet Ramsey. The beautiful little girl who wowed crowds at beauty pageants [New DNA Clue Found in JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case]

A beautiful little girl with a dazzling smile lives a wonderful life with her family in their Colorado mansion.[The Truth About JonBenet Ramsey]

Or Elizabeth Smart:

Before June 5th of last year, the Smarts led the kind of life most people would consider blessed: a happy marriage and six beautiful children.[Elizabeth\’s Road Home]

Ed Smart and his beautiful daughter, Elizabeth[Transpcript: NANCY GRACE
Interview With Elizabeth Smart, Aired July 18, 2006 – 20:00:00 ET]

Reading the typical newspaper coverage of crime, listening to the news and watching news magazines one wonders–do they only cover the abductions and/or murder of females who could be described as beautiful or or does the description \”beautiful\” simply mean \”a life that we value\”? Has beauty become synonymous to \”worthy to live?\” Do we only empathize with the parents who have lost a beautiful child? Do we only sympathize with the husband who has lost of beautiful wife? Are females who are not beautiful invisible? Are children who are not beautiful disposable?

The reader might argue that \”obviously\” I am exaggerating. They might argue that even the worst of the worst don\’t pick which child or woman to value on the basis of their beauty but ask yourself this question–why is it so important for writer and speaker to tell their audience over and over again that the victim of choice is beautiful?

The reader might also meditate on the glaring and painful disparity between the demographics of the country (and the demographics of the missing and murdered) and the demographics of those who are described as \”beautiful.\”