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July 12, 2005
City Of Love, City Of Lights
I hope you've enjoyed "Rose Wilder Lane Week" these past few days. Her refreshingly direct love of country struck me as being perfectly suited, thematically, to the Fourth of July holiday. Nevertheless, "all good things," eh? I have to say, it was harder for me than I expected, moderating the amount of her work that I posted here. The temptation to overindulge was ever present, let me assure you. I must have reluctantly discarded more than half the wordage that I originally transcribed, all of it seeming worthy of your attention. What with her being a popular novelist, journalist, ghost-writer, etc., she knew how to get and keep the reader's attention, all the while making it look easy. I imagine she would have been a wonderful blogger. I had thought I'd conclude with something light-hearted. The saga of purchasing a car (Zenobia, perhaps?) in post-war Paris looked like a winner, but I had a last minute change of heart. Instead, we're going to wrap up with thread. Perhaps not so humorously, but a little more on topic... Suppose that during the Armistice you bought a spool of thread in a French department store. Not that it is a spool; the thread is wound on a scrap of paper, for the thrifty French do not waste wood. Amazing. The past really is a foreign country. Mrs. Lane was of the firm opinion that government regulation was much more adept at smothering and impeding economic development than it was at increasing it. Many corroborating anecdotes might occur to the modern reader, but back in 1943 such sentiments ran against the popular wisdom. All this enforced unemployment made it impossible to do anything quickly. European life was leisurely; it had to be. This charmed the Americans gaily passing by, all the tedious waiting for them, all the red tape untied, all the police stamps got onto their papers by Cook’s or Amexco or their bankers or hotel porters. How serene, how cultured was European life, they said. No one hurrying, everyone with time for meditation and enjoyment, walking through the parks, sitting at café tables under the plane trees. How harassed, how hurried and rude and crude was American life in comparison, they said. Being as it's still Fourth of July (in spirit), the following display of unabashed pride in America strikes me as fitting and appropriate. You recognized an American as far as you could see him, by the way he walked. Chin up, head high, briskly going somewhere, with an unconscious mastery of the earth he trod. No European moved like that. Europeans walked prudently, slowly. Their every gesture consumed time in merely letting time pass. That made their lives and their countries seem so restful, to Americans. And you can see precisely that same way of walking, that same sense of useless time, in the prisoners in any American prison-yard. posted by Justin on 07.12.05 at 10:04 PM |
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Rose Wilder Lane was a very good writer. I'm glad you chose her, and thank you for her wisdom about America's freedom. I can understand, too well, wanting to put all the words of a favorite writer on your blog. There's just so much to quote.