Why are pansies associated with unmanliness and deviation from heteronormativity? They are some of the hardiest flowers there are. When I took this picture the temperature in Washington D.C. had risen to a high of 34F (1C) and they have been blooming for some time, as opposed to the cherry blossoms, which have not shown up yet. They and daffodils in fact dare to appear during what is really the last stage of winter, before spring really breaks out. See my post from last year on “Daffodil season” in Michigan, which is also pansy season, and is, it seems, about a month later in southern Michigan than here in the Capital.
Culture
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On Baptists: Some Thoughts
Even though I am not a Baptist, Baptists remind us that we must all claim Jesus Christ for ourselves. But the tendency to base salvation on one’s ‘conversion experience’ has its limits. It focuses on one’s past life, rather than […]
If You Don’t Like Evangelicals, Don’t Blame the South
The South may be the one part of the country where ‘evangelicals’ actually have some cultural dominance. But ‘evangelicalism’ has had its power centers all around the country. This is especially so in the Philadelphia-Princeton belt, the halo around Lake […]
The Fall and Rise of the Cigar, and the Two Gilded Ages
During the mid-20th century the image of the cigar was a rather tacky one. Its high class image flourished in the First Gilded Age, 1865-1917, and again in the Second Gilded Age, approximately 1975 to the present day. In the […]