It was a star-studded night when 50 of the Very Smart Gals dressed in vintage cocktail congregated to eat fab food provided by Nicole Davenport Executive Chef/Owner of Sugar & Smoke Restaurant, Fredericksburg; sway to the coolest Jazz from the Jeff Lofton Trio; hear about the Nobelity Project’s Building Hope; and gawk at the Austin cityscape from the 32nd floor of the Four Seasons Residences. Click On Read More Below To See The List of Attendees:
Sunday, February 5, 2012
One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 81
#81 – “Have a good cry. That’s why women live longer than men, because they cry.”
In 1988 when I read Larry McMurtry’s pivotal novel, Lonesome Dove, it really pissed me off. “Cowboys, guns, horses and whores,” I ranted to my husband, “And all the women are a bunch of bawl-babies.” After crying my eyes out for ten years between 1978 and 1988 (another story, another day), not only was my reservoir of tears depleted, I was also really tired of crying. Then I went into my bitter, defensive phase, and felt that when women cried it made them seem weak. Like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind who swore, “I’ll never be hungry again,” I was determined to never cry again, and let me tell you that can make you hard.
In fact, it made me so hard that I pretty much built a wall around my heart, and the only people allowed in were my children and a few close friends. It took me 10 years to let my husband in, and another 10 years to let myself feel emotionally free to cry.
Of course I had to consult my KOAT (knower-of-all-things: Wiki) to get to the bottom of this crying thing, and found some pretty interesting information. Click on Read More Below...
Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
I was immediately captivated by Amor Towles’ book Rules of Civility when in the forward, main character Katey Kontent (accent on tent), at a 1966 art show at the Manhattan Museum of Modern Art, spots a photograph of a long-ago unrequited love. In that moment a flood of memories and emotions send her heart and mind tumbling. Hasn’t that happened to you? You catch a glimpse of someone in a crowd who only vaguely resembles a paramour from your past who warped your world, or hear a song that reminds you of them, and you are momentarily transported to a parallel universe as adrenalin pops like little bubbles on the surface of your skin.
The photograph Katey saw was that of Tinker Grey, and the time was 1937. Katey and her best friend Eve Ross, both farm-grown gals from the midwest living in and on the excitement of Manhattan and little else, meet wealthy banker Tinker Grey and their lifestyles take a dramatic turn towards that of the rich and unaccountable.
Eve, unlike Katey, is from wealth that offers no allure and makes her a recklessly attractive gal who gets it all and doesn’t want it. Katey is a low-income, high-intelligence, Thoreau-ish gal torn between principal and high society. Tinker is a man of humble origins who compromises just about everything to canoodle with the upper crust. These make up the main characters of the book. But there is one more character I found intriguing, Anne Grandyn, a wealthy doyenne who helps exceptionally bright Katey get a coveted position as a reporter at Conde Nast, and who also unapologetically buys young, ambitious men, including Tinker Grey.
I found myself enamored with the way Towles portrayed the 30s women characters. They were clearly still considered intellectual subordinates by the masculine-dominated society, and yet they cleverly and covertly manipulated control. And the promiscuity! Guess what? Our generation didn’t invent it. No seriously, we didn't. Click on Read More Below
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