So have you folks heard the story of Patrick Bronte, the father of the Bronte sisters?
He was one of 10 children in a poor Irish family. Nobody in this family – or in any of the families of poor Irish people for miles and miles around – wanted anything better than working on a farm or, if one was very lucky, owning an ale house.
Patrick, however, did want a different life. He managed to get into Cambridge – and just imagine how much time and effort it took an Irish country boy to prepare for Cambridge – and graduated as one of the best students in his class.
He didn’t do anything special with his own life because these kinds of things need to accumulate for at least a generation in most cases. But Patrick’s brilliant daughters will be remembered for centuries. And their work was only possible because Patrick had decided to leave the farm and go study Ancient Greek and Euclid’s geometry all of a sudden.
This is the great mystery of life. Some people make a choice to smash life into pieces and then rearrange it according to their own liking. And others just keep talking about themselves in the passive voice while life smashes and rearranges them. Why and how these choices are made nobody knows. The great mystery of life.
Clarissa's Blog 
He was an interesting man and definitely seems to have been ambitious and upwardly-mobile when he was young. I suspect his ambitions were dampened by constant family tragedies.Have you seen the Bronte Parsonage website? https://www.bronte.org.uk/haworth-and-the-brontes/family-and-friends/rev-bronte
I live quite near it and have never been!
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I so agree! It’s such a strange mystery. What makes certain people take risks and leave their comfort zone? In my family, I’m the person who has done that. My family of origin think of me as a three-horned animal because of it. But I can’t imagine living the way they do — a life ruled by reality TV and church. Shudder.
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Had you heard of this? A Polish author advances the thesis that all the Bronte sisters’ books were written by Charlotte.
I remember seeing a story about this some months ago but now seems like a good time to mention it.
here’s a link in English
http://agnes-books.blogspot.com/2015/04/eryk-ostrowski-is-expert-in-literature.html#links
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Have you noticed how the webmistress at a certain popular feminist blog periodically goes into a screaming rage at the concept of “bootstraps,” at the very idea that any individual could actually accomplish something for him/herself in this evil, oppressive society that keeps crushing people like her down?
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I’m not sure which webmistress you have in mind because there are so many who are like this. 🙂
I’m very sad for people who explain their own lives in terms of oppressive societies and privilege, and all that kind of thing. They are dishonest with themselves, and that’s no way to live.
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“I’m not sure which webmistress you have in mind”
Rhymes with “Achesville”
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The website that always goes into hysterics at the specific code word “bootstraps” is Shakesville. The latest example was a Wednesday post attacking the “garbage bootstraps narrative.”
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I’m a little behind on my “Achesville” reading but yes, such posts are a regular feature.
I will never understand people who actually prefer to see themselves as helpless and doomed.
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“I will never understand people who actually prefer to see themselves as helpless and doomed.”
The “logic” behind such reasoning is that nothing can ever their fault, so they can’t be blamed for never accepting personal responsibility for their lives.
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I guess, but what’s the point of a life where you are always an observer and never an actor? I know there is no answer to this but I just never got the attraction of this worldview.
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“I will never understand people who actually prefer to see themselves as helpless and doomed.”
Did you see the post where she doesn’t want thin women to talk about their body issues with her? More fun than a barrel of monkeys (and by “barrel of monkeys” I mean “a boiling cauldron of seething rage and poison”)
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Yes, I saw that one. I’d think that if being overweight is so excruciatingly painful for her, she’d try to lose weight. Instead, she is just torturing herself about it for decades. I don’t get this at all.
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No, I haven’t. I get the impression from a lot of fat activists online that they feel that if it weren’t for their fat they’d get all they feel entitled to by virtue of their other characteristics, and that it’s the first or second thing that stops them from being MOTUs.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
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Ok, what’s MOTUs? Google is not helping.
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Does “MOTUs” stand for “Masters of the Universe”?
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He didn’t do anything special with his own life because these kinds of things need to accumulate for at least a generation in most cases.
I’ll agree that it isn’t genius level or fameworthy. However being the first in your family to go to college and an elite college no less, is special. It’s easy to forget this when you’re surrounded by brilliant educated people and people have been getting higher education in your family for generations.
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I meant his life after Cambridge. He became a country-side preacher.
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He was a good preacher, though. Once, he dedicated a whole year of his life to reversing a wrongful conviction of a boy from a poor family. The boy was accused of deserting from the army by a lazy recruiter who lied and said he’d signed the boy up when in reality he didn’t. Bronte went all the way to Lord Palmerston to get permission to present witnesses who would exculpate the boy. And after a lot of effort, it worked!
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“Ok, what’s MOTUs? Google is not helping.”
MOTU Master of the Universe (probably from Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities)
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Yes.
MOTU Master or Mistress of the Universe . :p
Also could refer to the original title of the 50 Shades of Grey fan fic(Master of the Universe) or He-Man(also current at the same time; magical prince with secret powers, contemporaneous with the Bonfire of the Vanities publication).
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Have you heard of Terry Callier?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Callier
“His colleagues at the University of Chicago did not know of Callier’s life as a musician, but after the award the news of his work as a musician became widely known and subsequently led to his dismissal by the University.”
He died back in 2012, but his music lives on with a lot more soul than the U of C ever had …
Here’s some music of his:
Terry Callier — “Ordinary Joe”:
Grand Tourism w/Terry Callier — “Les Courants d’Air”:
[the ultimate purpose of this reference may become clearer in time …]
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