A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves installing a pre-made replacement part.
So perhaps the time is ripe for reconsideration of an ideal that has fallen out of favor: manual competence, and the stance it entails toward the built, material world. Neither as workers nor as consumers are we much called upon to exercise such competence, most of us anyway, and merely to recommend its cultivation is to risk the scorn of those who take themselves to be the most hard-headed: the hard-headed economist will point out the opportunity costs of making what can be bought, and the hard-headed educator will say that it is irresponsible to educate the young for the trades, which are somehow identified as the jobs of the past. But we might pause to consider just how hard-headed these presumptions are, and whether they don’t, on the contrary, issue from a peculiar sort of idealism, one that insistently steers young people toward the most ghostly kinds of work.
hat tip: Mental Multivitamin
PARIS -- Spawned during the heady days of the country's 1968 student riots, France's iconic, Maoist-rooted Liberation newspaper faces an ignominious demise at the hands of the corporate bottom line.
The brainchild of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre, Liberation rose to become the leftist newspaper of record for tens of thousands of students, intellectuals and union firebrands in a country where much of the press has a political slant.
Today, its readership has plummeted, its debts are mounting and its chances of survival are dimming rapidly.
Last week, Liberation's boss, businessman Eduard Rothschild of the famed banking family, gave a special steering committee until Oct. 18 to find ways to reverse the paper's sliding fortunes, which include an estimated $16.5 million loss this year alone.
Liberation's staff members fear a drastic bloodletting as Mr. Rothschild, who bought a commanding 39 percent stake in the newspaper last year, tries to turn the struggling daily into a moneymaking enterprise...
In Germany, he [Marc Gruber, co-director of the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists] said, half of the country's reporters are freelancers, an indication of the growing precariousness of the profession...
Norman Thelwell, who has died aged 80, created some of the most recognisable images in equine art with his cartoons of freckled girls being bounced along on their recalcitrant spherical ponies.
His first of more than 25 cartoon books, Angels on Horseback, appeared in 1957 and has never been out of print. Like those of Giles, Thelwell's books had a place in the downstairs lavatory of almost every country house. Ponies of a certain shape and temper became known as "Thelwells".
Thelwell felt more pride at having once been the political cartoonist on the News Chronicle, and he drew many other animal and sporting subjects, but it was chiefly for his pony drawings that he was famous. Fans wrote even from overseas to tell him about things they had seen at horse shows.
Such gleanings were useful since he claimed to have no horse sense and to have ridden only once in his life. Horses, he declared, were "great windy things that'll grab your coat off your back as soon as look at you". As for humans, most "find life a bit of a problem and are pretty jumpy under the skin. It is this insecurity when dealing with other people or animals or inanimate objects that I find both comical and endearing."
[Thomas] Quasthoff’s early years demand a Dickens to do them justice. After an initial nine months at home, he spent a year and a half behind a glass wall of a hospital ward at the Annastift clinic in the West German city Hanover, where the doctors, baffled by this new species of birth defect [his mother had taken thalidomide], confined him for fear that his immune system could not fight off infection. His parents and his brother, Michael, who is two years older, would visit every Saturday and Sunday, but they were kept on the other side of the barrier. “We could give signs and laugh, but there was no possibility to speak to him,” says Michael, who is now a journalist. When Thomas was released to the family home in Hildesheim, a city near Hanover, he was accompanied by a large body cast in which he slept every night to correct the direction of his backward-facing feet. There was no expectation that he would ever be able to walk, but his parents refused to accept such a grim prognosis. Using pieces of milk chocolate as a lure, his mother enticed him to take a few steps, then a few more steps, until he was walking on his own. After a year, the plaster cast was no longer needed.
His parents were less successful in persuading one of the local schools to accept him. At 6, Thomas had to return to boarding school at the Annastift facility, where the mentally and physically handicapped were grouped together. His respites came on weekends, when his parents would faithfully bring him home. His other solace was in song. “In Annastift, the doctors said he was always singing,” Michael recalls. “And when he came home, he lay on the sofa or a chair and was singing at every time of day. When the radio played, he could sing all the songs from the beginning.” His parents sought a voice teacher as a way to boost his spirits. Singing was an activity in which he surpassed other children...
Full article here: Catholic Reality Television Star Seeks to Help Men Build a Strong Identity through New Apparel LineQ: Please tell our readers about Lionheart Apparel. How did the company get its start and what is your mission for Lionheart?
A: I have a close group of friends from college who are all athletic, intelligent, Catholic men, and one of the topics we inevitably discuss when we get together is the lack of strong masculine presence in the Church today. If you walk into most parishes, it's rare that you'll find a very large number of men. That hasn't always been the case. It's as though Catholic men have lost their identity, and for the men who are still vocal about their faith, they feel like they're one in a million...
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Q: I see that a portion of your proceeds go to charities. Could you tell us more about why you're doing this and about the charities you are supporting through Lionheart?
A: We donate ten percent of our profits to two Pro-life Charities - Human Life International and the Catholic Pro-life Committee. As I said earlier, the company is about more than just selling t-shirts and hats. We want to help create a picture of what manhood is all about. As the saying goes, "clothes don't make the man." We believe that's true. It's all about our actions, and we think we are setting a great example by taking a strong stand against abortion. Hopefully, if guys see that Lionheart Apparel will defend innocent life in lieu of sales and in spite of criticism, maybe they will be more courageous individually. As men, we are hardwired to defend innocent life at all costs, even at the risk of our own lives. It's what makes us men. Sadly, many have lost touch with reality.
