I hope it is not sexist to note that men’s and women’s minds operate in different ways. We all approach topics and conversations in different ways, but as a group I find women literally think and associate ideas differently than men. Which is part of what makes it such a tragedy that there aren’t enough women in government; they would think about problems in new and different ways.

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During Covid I am keeping in touch with lots of men and women, some of whom I didn’t talk to regularly before. My conversations with men are OK and interesting. My conversations with women are fascinating. But then as most of you know I’ve always enjoyed the company of smart women.

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I was particularly fascinated by a discussion of shame, and the fact that it can be good or bad. There are behaviors I’ve given up because I am ashamed of the previous results they elicited. Good kind of shame, as opposed to the kind that merely makes you feel bad and reduces your self-esteem.

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Readers with long memories (October 2020) will recall the Worst Review Ever, which I used to carry it in my wallet. I just ran across an H.L. Mencken comment that seems almost as scathing: I was at the job of reading it for days and days, endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness, its flatulent fatuity, its almost fabulous inconsequentiality.

―H.L. Mencken on H. G. Wells' Joan and Peter