Phoebe Maltz compares Chicago's Hyde Park to Columbia's Morningside Heights and finds Hyde Park-- unsurprisingly-- sorely lacking (She doesn't mention that this is even more true now that CocoRico has closed, and she doesn't try to argue that Columbia's bookstores trump Powells and the Seminary Co-op):

If a GAP were to open on 55th Street, goes the argument, people would forget about Hegel and Aristotle and spend weeks on end trying to decide which jeans best flatter their asses. This is absurd--as much as they hate to admit it, Chicago students, like mere mortals, buy new clothing and accessories from time to time. It would actually leave more time for important scholarly business if Chicago folk didn't have to sneak up to Michigan Avenue every time they wanted to buy pants.

What makes Hyde Park worth living in is not the amenities. There are far better urban neighborhoods for those who like city life and far preferable suburban and rural universities for those who don't. No, it is the culture of the University that brings faculty, that brings them in and holds them at prices below what they could command elsewhere.

In a rare moment of insight, Slate's Prudie correctly nailed the answer to an etiquette question:

Dear Prudie,
I recently attended a bridal shower ... When we were all there, the hostess handed out envelopes to all of the guests and asked each person to address the envelope to herself, in order to receive her thank you note. As I had received my invitation in the mail, I could only assume that she already had my address. I was shocked at this rude gesture, which said to me that the bride couldn't be bothered to write a thank you note after I had found the time to attend her event and purchase a gift. Is this a normal event at bridal showers, or am I just being picky?
—Wondering

Dear Won,
Wow, can you say gauche, boys and girls? ... you are not picky. She is tacky.

"Why didn't we do that?" was all I could think.

Because thank-you notes are not valuable goods in and of themselves-- they are valuable to the extent that they show that the writer of them appreciates you enough to invest time or energy into them. As an economist, Cowen should recognize them here as a "costly signal". When one tries to reduce the cost of writing them (by enlisting one's guests for the work) one reduces their value proportionately.

We're not talking about the manufacture of widgets or shotgun shells, where the goal is to produce the most product for the lowest cost; we're talking about a socially constructed product, which is valuable here only because of its cost. Indeed, if Cowen favors applying the Coase Theorem to thank-you-note-writing, surely he should also apply it to gift-giving itself and probably quit the practice. Perhaps he does--but if one's willing to engage in gift-giving or thank-you-note-writing at all, one should realize that the value of those gifts and notes rests on one's seeming to have gone to some trouble to get and write them.

UPDATE: Spencer at Mediocrity's Co-Pilot raises a good point. Obviously costly signals shouldn't be made prohibitively costly. Furthermore, manners-- rightly or wrongly-- asks that we follow certain conventions in making them costly. Thus, we address our thank-you envelopes ourselves (since, in this case at least, we already have our guest's addresses; that is how we sent them the invitations). But we are under no obligation to deliver them by hand, or even by FedEx.

This really digs at the intriguing underpinnings of etiquette. It can't just be the costliness of the signal that is relevant, but somehow the combination of its costliness and its comformity. (This, too, is why we give costly gifts on special occasions-- weddings, holidays, etc.-- but rarely festoon our friends with an occasional free blender as a signal of our affection when no occasion suggests it.)

I just don't have a very good answer to why it is important to combine cost-signalling with convention (other than the fact that most people would think you pretty nutty if you made them address their own envelopes, then drove them all over town yourself to deliver them). Indeed, I have been known to be lax about honoring every event that I ought to with the exchange of trade goods, since I think the pleasant surprise of a truly unexpected gift is greater. But Eric Posner lays out a very interesting and thorough argument in his Law and Social Norms which-- while I don't agree with every step of it-- is the place to go if one really wishes to proceed further.

Wow. Crescatters, crescatters, everywhere! Amanda, Sudeep, the elusive Heidi Bond and Jeremy Reff all in under an hour.

I post only to note that Donald-- who guest-blogged with us last week (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.) has now resurrected his old blog, All Deliberate Speed, at alldeliberatespeed.typedpad.com. If you enjoyed his Crescat posts here be sure to wander over there.

[Oh, and one note on Heidi's post. I'm always glad to have her on my side of an argument (rare though that is) and I just wish to stress that I emphatically don't join the legions of those who think that people should "stick it out" in unhappy marriages. Life is indeed too short to miserable, and divorce is generally an appropriate solution to the unfortunate error of marrying wrongly-- little would be gained and much would be lost by compounding error with error.]

"Are you willing to sacrifice for your country?" That was the question asked last night (7 July), as I sat around with a group of volunteers and a few of the directors of Peace Corps training.

We were relaxing with cups of chai -- herbal tea, a slice of lemon, a spoonful and a little extra of the absolutely delicious local honey. You cannot sit on the ground in this country. Male or female, sitting on the ground will make you infertile (and I donХt think the locals would understand if I said that at my age and situation, the thought doesnХt strike exactly fear into my heart, especially since returning to America will magically restore me). Something must be between you and the ground. Rugs inside; little stools or milk crates with small cushions outside. In our case last night, it was sheets and towels that protected us from sacrificing our fertility to the marble slabs underneath at the famed banya in Almaty.

ItХs all relative, but after coming out of that place, I wasnХt sure when I last felt so good. My back finally relaxed, after having been killing me since I arrived in country (though to be honest, my back had been killing me for some long time before that). I could roll my head around my neck silently: no pops, no cracks. I was back to normal: I could bend down, tuck my hands under my toes, and touch my head to my knees. And I was clean! Bucket baths and outdoor showers had kept me in an acceptable state. [In hot weather, I like the freedom of showering in an outhouse-size wooden outdoor structure from the water in a barrel overhead, open to the breezes and sounds, but it doesnХt produce the same feeling of a banya.]

So what is it like? If I were to translate the Russian "banya" into English, it would come out as sauna, but itХs not like any sauna that exists in the States. For one, I think our Puritanism would prohibit it, citing the name of public health, even though men and women are separated. The towels and sheets are for sitting and lying on the marble. ItХs acceptable to be naked in the gym shower, but heaven forbid women hang around naked, bathing slowly, and chatting. If I lived in Almaty, I could become a banya addict, coming every fortnight or month. It would probably become a bribe for myself: if I go running three times a week for two weeks, then I can banya. Within the Almaty banya, there are Turkish (only for women), Russian, and I believe Finnish banyas. I went to the Turkish banya. ItХs a calm banya, not one of the ones with an extremely hot room, an icy pool, and birch branches to whip yourself with.

The main room of the Turkish banya features a marble platform about 25 feet in diameter and raised two feet above the ground. In the banya, whatever is not marble is brightly colored tile, though thereХs not much it it; just enough for colorful designs around the top of the walls, but not enough to detract from the pale serenity of the marble. The room itself is domed, as high as a cathedral, with skylights in the top. Soviet engineering built an awful lot of drab gray apartments and government offices, but it also built some beauties, like the Almaty banya.

Circling the marble platform are a row of marble benches on which are plastic buckets of water and hot and cold water taps. Along the outside of the main room are several showers with good water pressure and all the hot water you could want. Several smaller nook rooms are connected to the main room. A few are for massages. One is a warm sauna with heated marble. Once IХd laid down there for a while to warm up, I moved into the hot sauna. ItХs almost too hot to walk on barefoot. When I talked to the woman from Almaty who was lying next to me, she said that some people were complaining that this room wasnХt as hot as it usually is: they like at 70 degrees Celsius, and it was only 50 C today. 50 was good for me. I lay on my towel on the marble until I was comfortably wet with sweat all over -- 10 or 15 minutes -- and then left for the first hot shower IХve had since coming here. Afterwards, tea in the center of the circular platform. That room is warm enough that occasional dousings with a bucket o љf cold water feel good. The entire experience is simply wonderful. If youХre ever in Almaty (such an "if"), it would be a shame to miss it.

Sovet: 8 July 2003

I realize itХs been a while since I've written. IХve been tired, I havenХt been in the mood, IХve been busy. IХve learned how to shock locals, which is fun. You start explaining the price of raspberries in Chicago, even in the summertime at my local cheaper place (Hyde Park Produce). It helps them understand why volunteers devour them. Then you move onto American table manners. If drinking some of another personХs drink, Americans go to great lengths to avoid sharing straws; they lift the lid and sip from the cup. If thereХs no lid, they carefully turn the cup so as to sip from the other side. They speak about backwash. Double-dipping is a social sin, and people ask if they can dip the untouched end of a chip into the salsa. And they never dip their teaspoons into the communal jam bowl, put some on the bread, lick the remaining jam off the teaspoons, lay the cleaned spoons down on the tablecloth, then pick it up again and dip it into the jam to steal a strawberry out. Granted, American jam isnХt as good, but really, what kill-joys. Eating a strawberry or two out of the jam is the best part. There are limits to how local IХll go, though. When host-mom seasons raw meat for filling dumplings, she licks a bit of the raw beef to see if itХs properly done. When she asked me to check today, I told her that if it were good to her, it was good to me.

Kazakhstani humor: A translation of a local joke. "'How did this idea come into your head,' they asked the inventor of toilet paper." As far as I can understand it, the point is that itХs ridiculous to make people pay for little squares of paper wrapped around a roll. Why bother? After one fellowХs host mom emptied his trashcan from his room, he found that sheХd gone through it to salvage out the looseleaf paper. His scrap notes were cut to squares and left hanging in the outhouse. I buy my own toilet paper. Newspapers are common. Some families use books. Once again, not all of my American, English major sensibilities have left me.

The first holiday of my time here passed quietly. For the Fourth, I simply met up some of the other volunteers at Cafe Ardak, one of the two local cafes, though itХs perhaps a stretch to call it that. ItХs the room next to the store, also called Ardak, where we often go for snacks during our breaks. The girls there know us well by now, and are patient with us. The cafe room has two tables, Kazakh pop music on the stereo, and a disco ball light. Whatever you buy at the store can be taken there. I think they also have a little bit of hot food, but I donХt know how to ask about it, and I havenХt felt like it.

When I arrived on the Fourth, I was the first American, so I had to put up with the young Russian-speaking men who were hanging around outside (well, one in particular). "Hey, /devushka/, blah blah blah, I love you, blah blah." To which I replied in Kazakh over and over, "I donХt speak Russian. I donХt understand you," as I walked to the sit by the girls who work at the store.* When I left my stoop seat to meet the next Volunteer to arrive, another woman, the Russian guy returned to hang out at my shoulder as we talked in English, pointedly ignoring him in a way that would have made an American man leave. He only left when T-- arrived and I could break out my smile of, "You see that guy there? ThatХs my friend. And notice that he, like all the American guys in our town, is taller than you and quite likely stronger, so get lost."

Fortunately, thatХs not how most of my conversations with random local men go. Not abnormal, not the most common. After we went into the cafe, the locals at the other table chatted with us for a bit -- why are you here, and how do you like Kazakhstan? They left, and were replaced with another pair, one of whom had driven two of the volunteers and their host families to Sovet from the sanatorium where we had our initial training. We talked with them until our useful language ran dry. My vocabulary includes a lot of numbers and foods, and the ability to ask where people live and who is in their family, but I generally only pull out the last two questions on the children on the street. I can complain about the weather, though, and it was 41 C (104 F) in Sovet that day. Conversations like this are the daily test for me. If I chat with people at the bazaar, IХm more likely to get a reduced price from the list price. IХm still not quite comfortable with some of the phrases that are proper and polite to use: "Expensive. Please give it to me cheaper."**

Otherwise... [rant ahead]

IХm ever so slightly annoyed at my host family for how theyХre feeding me. Plans to send me to Kazakhstan so that some local mama could put some meat on me have not be fulfilled. Breakfast is tea, jam, and bread, which I often fix for myself (I donХt mind that part at all; I can heat water with the heating coil, though IХd like to learn how to use the ancient gas stove so I can do it there. From the electrocution device to the exploding gas). ThereХs a lot of stale bread in this country, but I think IХm going to have to introduce my host family to French toast. Then for lunch, recently itХs been tea, jam, bread, cucumbers, a tomato, and boiled potatoes. Occasionally boiled eggs are thrown into this mix, but I canХt eat them, since theyХre so undercooked that even the whites arenХt set (I eat cookie dough with raw eggs in the States, but not here). Then for dinner, I get bread served with soup made from cabbage, potato, carrot, and onion, and also more tea. Some days I havenХt gotten any protein from them, and even the good jam isnХt making the thought of bread more appetizing. ThereХs no fresh fruit, either, even though itХs cheap at the bazaar.

On days when thereХs training for all volunteers at the hub site and I bring a sack lunch, this hasnХt been a terrible problem, since most peopleХs families are still giving them twice or thrice as much as they can eat. I came home today grumpy about the food situation, only to find host mom making dumplings (manty) with lots of meat inside. I am going to talk to my LCF (language and cultural facilitator: Kazakh teacher and general great helper) about how to at least get some cheese, yogurt, and cooke d eggs. Our host families are paid enough that they shouldnХt be feeding meat-eaters fairly vegan diets.

[rant over] On a more cheerful note...

Today was a rainy day, and cold for the summer clothes IХve been wearing. As I walked from the training site in Issyk to the bus site to go home to Sovet, I passed the cafe where IХd had shashlik (meat on a stick) and beer with a few friends last night. We had been the only customers at the time, and had talked to the man cooking shashlik and his young (15?) helper before we left. The man was an Uzbek. In Kazakhstan, both Russians and Kazakhs look down on the Uzbeks, so I try to be extra polite to them (that, and a returned volunteer from Uzbekistan would probably never forgive me if I did otherwise). Today as I passed the shashlik guy, he called me over with a "Hey, /devushka." /Devushka/ is Russian for girl. As I learned last night, itХs actually a polite way to get someoneХs attention. It seems that women pass directly from the devushka stage to the babushka stage, so IХm fine with IХm being called. When I said hello back in Uzbek***, he invited me over and handed me a cup of tea as we went through the pleasantries. I feel a bit guilty about getting free things for being an American, but on the other hand, niceties like this are what makes this place feel more like something IХll soon call home.

* Not speaking Russian is a great advantage at times like this, so I often downplay the bit I do know. People do not guess that an American (or a German, for which IХm often mistaken) speaks Kazakh and no Russian, but even those who speak Russian only arenХt offended by a f ‚oreigner in their midst who just speaks Kazakh. Some Kazakh speaker has almost always been glad to jump in to translate. I do need to learn to bargain in Russian. Today, I was buying what tasted like Colby cheese at the bazaar, and I tried to use my Kazakh bargaining on the Russian woman. She gave me my own reply: "Sorry, I donХt understand." ItХs a bluff that canХt be called.

** Kazakh has subjunctive mood, and some other moods besides, though indicative and optative (I want...) are the only ones IХve used so far. The verb for ТgiveУ takes the indicative in times when the English construction is "Would you please give...?" ThereХs also not a word equivalent to "please." Instead, the ending "-shi" tacked onto the end of a word accomplishes the same. Non-fluent English speakers here often use "Give me please," and "please" appears at the tail end of most sentences in which it Хs included. ThereХs also only one word in Kazakh for "I'm sorry" and "Excuse me," so again, an oddly placed "I'm sorry" fulfills that role.

*** My friends last night were all men, and it was one of them who asked how to say hello in Uzbek. The Uzbek said it was "A salaam alei-kum" for the first person to speak, and "Wa-lei-kum a salaam" for the second. ItХs the same in Kazakh, where the younger should be the first to speak, but this greeting is only used between men. I asked the him if I could also use the "A salaam" greeting, and he said yes, but IХm not sure he entirely understood my question or thought he could explain the negative.

In this month's (July's) issue of Harper's:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson has claimed that preparing for bioterrorism will enable the government to respond to influenza and other infectious diseases; in fact, the reverse is true. Bioterrorism is a remote threat and a massive attack is very unlikely, but it captures the imagination of weak-minded politicians and a populace raised on movies starring Bruce Willis.

Glasser, RJ. We Are Not Immune: Influenza, SARS, and the collapse of public health. Harper's, July 2004: 35-42.

I'd like to thank Will and the other Crescats for inviting me to join the fine group of scholars, malcontents, and aesthetes here at Crescat Sententia. This move was long in the making, although the narrative was anything but certain. After early flirtation, an up and down courtship, my abandonment of blogging altogether for a time, a brief suggestive dalliance with another unnamed blogger in the CFR/TNR mafia, and a job search whose seductions have proved sorely lacking, I feel like in some way I'm entering the Church. Has Crescat ever been compared to taking Benedictine orders before? It has now.

My site refference will soon be defunct, although I have a little house cleaning to do first, and I imagine it will always hold a small place in my heart, if only as a clearinghouse for much of my theoretical juvenalia.

For those of you Crescat readers who don't know me, I was graduated from Harvard this June with a degree in English Literature, although I'm too much of a generalist and dissociate to claim any particular academic fluency. I am very interested in theories of aesthetics, and particularly fecund crossings between aesthetic and political philosophy. (So if you have a fun Burke/Schiller observation to toss my way, please feel free.) My origin story, like so many of ours, begins by listening to Josh Chafetz in a cubicle in D.C. Then I was bitten by a radioactive Ada fan. Luckily my costume is generally just a penguin suit.

At any rate, many thanks again to the whole krewe. I hope I'm up to the challenge.

As Crescat's resident (can I call myself a resident, when I haven't posted here in months?) unilateral short-term divorcer, I must chime in on Will's posts about unilateral divorce versus marriage.

Let me assure any uniteral divorcees (in case you haven't picked up my semi-random terminology, divorcee is the one who gets dumped and divorcer is the one who dumps) that unilaterally divorcing someone is far more soul-destroying than merely leaving someone at the altar. Which is to say: I much rather wish I'd gone off before getting married, thank you.

But, you know. Suppose you make a mistake and get married. And suppose you weren't cavalier about marriage (leaving someone shortly after getting married does not imply that you're cavalier about marriage; there are many other options), but for whatever reason, you'd just never been happy in your life before, and didn't realize it was possible, and so didn't realize what a terrible mistake this marriage was going to be? And suppose that shortly after you get married, you start to be really happy for the first time in your life -- really really happy, except not when your now-husband is around?

What do you do? You leave. You don't take anything, and you don't argue, and you let him have all the stuff and the PlayStation and everything, everything except a few of your favorite CDs. But you leave. Because the alternative -- being unhappy all your life because you seriously fucked up -- is that much worse.

Except for the bits about the repainting and the woodshop and the second mortgage, my ex-husband could have written the reader comment. And trust me, it is an entirely soul-destoying experience. Because I think how rotten I made life for someone else, and think how truly selfish the decision was. And I made that conscious choice. I'd much preferred to have left him at the altar, too, but you know ... I didn't know then how much it was worth. And if you put me back there, right after I'd said "I do," I'd leave him again. And again. And again. Because it was worth it.

Yes, I broke a promise that I intended to keep all my life. And for a long time, I truly thought that I'd never trust myself to care about another person again. That I was such a miserable human being, that I didn't deserve to really have a great relationship or fall in love. But at some point, I realized that what I'd learned was not that I was a horrible promise-breaking idiot, but that I was a horrible idiot who acted on incomplete information at a time in my life when I was at a maximum point of hormonal fluctuation and miserable confusion. And I cut my losses -- and I suspect, in the long run, I cut his losses as well.

Life is too long to be miserable.