Elsewhere recently: Scotch Tape Parenting, and the Women who Made Ancient History
Two essays
We took a lovely short family trip to Philadelphia in the second half of this past week! I really wanted to see the Mary Cassatt exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before it decamps to San Francisco, and it was so worth it! More thoughts about it to come in this week’s regular post, and I will probably write a more formal essay about it somewhere. But in this brief post, I’m just going to tell you about a couple of essays that came out while I was on vacation.
Scotch Tape
First, “It Takes a Lot of Tape to Raise Kids”—my latest for Front Porch Republic, where I am now pleased to be a Contributing Editor. A taste from this piece:
Raising kids—or, at least, I should specifically note, raising my kids—requires a lot of Scotch tape. Maybe yours too.
Add this to the ever-growing list of things no parenting books—or more seasoned parents—ever told me. Last month we bought a three-pack. This month, upon the mournful report from the five-year-old that she was all out, we got another one. In this economy! What are they doing to use up three 1,000-inch rolls of clear tape every few weeks?
There is a curly ribbon taped to a corner of a table downstairs. I’ve been informed that I am not to remove it. It is the start of an art installation of some sort. More tape will be required to complete the project. On one living room wall, pieces of paper of various sizes are taped, including a rotating menu of announcements, updated periodically. “Cannibal Diner Menu” was the theme last year, but thankfully the child fascinated with cannibalism outgrew that particular interest. Occasionally, Dan removes the taped-up décor when we have guests coming and he would rather they didn’t think we were too weird. The decorating team relents for an evening. By morning, though, a new lineup covers the wall again.
Anyway, you can read the full essay here. I argue with Plato a bit towards the end. Yes, I think bringing in Plato when talking about Scotch tape is quite relevant. I think you’ll agree.
Women in the Ancient World
And second, I was delighted to review for Fairer Disputations Daisy Dunn’s fascinating new book, whose official US publication date is coming at the end of this month (it’s out in the UK though already): The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World.
What I loved about Dunn’s book is not just that she is a meticulous researcher and a wonderful storyteller (and she is both of these things), but also that her project presents implications for how we all think not just about the past but also about our own lives. Who makes history? And who decides? A taste from my review:
Classicist Daisy Dunn has written The Missing Thread: A Women’s History of the Ancient World with two goals in mind: first, to introduce the public to many more women from antiquity; and second, to show that the actions of women, both named and unnamed, truly mattered—historically speaking.
I contend that Dunn’s approach offers a fruitful model not only for how we think about contributions of individuals and groups to ancient history, but also for how we think about own lives as women in the twenty-first century. We, too, ask ourselves: does our daily work matter?
If we’re honest, many of us care about our legacy; we dream of “making history.” But how do such grandiose dreams connect to the unglamorous reality of the activities that we spend much of our lives doing, whether we work outside the home or not—making meals, carrying babies within the womb and in our arms, caring for sick children and various other relatives, doing laundry and dishes? All of these activities weave the fabric of our daily lives no less intricately than the fabric so many women in this book literally wove as part of their own household duties.
You can read the complete review here, and maybe pick up a copy of the book for your final beach getaway of this summer.
Summer Books Week at Current!
Finally, I will note that this week is Summer Books Week at Current, a small magazine where I am Book Review Editor. I think of “Books Week” as a sort of “hard reset,” as we long for beauty and ideas in a world that is filled with turmoil and difficulty.
We had planned for this to be Books Week months ago, and the events of this weekend were a good reminder of why we need such a reset. So, come check us out this week, as we feature reviews of books on marriage, the beauty of children’s literature, CCM, ancient warfare, and the US Constitution.
This essay is hilarious, as I recently found myself buying yet another pack of Scotch tape (for projects, but also for patching up books ripped by the one year-old). It does indeed take SO MUCH TAPE.
My grandson and his slightly older sister loved building their own marble drop maze with tape and TP tubes plus the longer tubes from foil rolls.
And a shout out to Duct tape from the repetitious stories of my father-in-law. On the job site Duck tape saves time and money when most ‘normal’ people would just head to the emergency room for stitches.