Granted, she's not brilliant or especially beautiful, but she's a cheerful little thing, and very diligent about her work.
Notes per FragranceNet: Acacia, Casablanca Lily, Gold Pollen, White Clove, Golden Balsams, Fluid Amber Patchoul, Jasmine Templar
Woman Weighing Gold, Jan Sanders van Hemessen (c.1500-1556)
12 comments:
Ha! My advisor in college once wrote almost exactly the same sentence about me in a letter of recommendation: "Though not brilliant, Jaime is a solid, capable student ..." Ouch! What he didn't realize is that I am brilliant (No, really, I am! I won't hear anyone say otherwise), just unmotivated. I did all of that "solid, capable" work 20 minutes before class.
Wow, that would sting. What a jerk. I suppose I have no business condemning snarkiness in others, but at least my snark is directed at perfumes, not people. I wonder what you would have had to do to get a "brilliant" out of that professor...
I came to comment on the post, but am shocked to read what your professor wrote, Jaime. A jerk? No - an ass!
I forgot what I was going to write, Maria, but that painting is a gem (which I've never seen). What great fun.
I had a bad DK sniffing experience and I can't stand the smell of any of them since. Maybe that was all.
Heh, now I feel the need to defend my prof. He was actually a very nice guy, one of the nicer at my college, and also one of the most open-minded (remember, I went to Jesus school, where most of my female classmates were just looking to get an "MRS Degree"). My theory is that he was/is just kind of socially clueless (ironic, as his specialty was Sociology), and didn't realize that what he was writing could be construed as negative. Hyperbole from my first posting aside, I'm not a genius (no, that's not self-depraciation, just the truth. I do happen to think I'm probably well above average in the intelligence department). I think he was just making what he saw as an honest assessment, without realizing that a letter of recommendation isn't really the place for that kind of honesty.
Yeah, academics are often socially clueless--also, they seem to recognize only one kind of brilliance. BTW, what Jesus school was it, if you don't mind my asking?
Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA. As far as Jesus schools go, I actually got a really good education at that one, though I did come within a hairsbreadth of getting expelled two months before graduation. Something about me breaking the "sexual purity code" *flutterrs eyelashes innocently* ;o)
I checked out the website--gee, Jaime, that is some hardcore Christian education you had. We have a number of church-affiliated colleges hereabouts, some of them quite conservative, and I guarantee you that the word "sin" does not appear on their websites nearly as often as it does on Geneva's. I won't ask what you did to break the sexual purity code, but it seems as if it wouldn't have taken much effort to run afoul of the morals police at Geneva.
Wow, I havne't looked at their Web site in a while. You're right ... sin sin sin! It wasn't like that in the classroom, though. The students were generally way more uptight than the faculty (professors, not student life staff who wanted to boot me). They do teach evolution in the Biology classes (much to the chagrin of some of my classmates), and the required three-semester Humanities curriculum was really thorough and engaging (to me, again, most of my clasmates wanted to know why we had to learn about all of this sinful art and culture, or were just bored shitless). I enjoyed it so mcuh, I got to be a TA for that course for a year. I did have to take three units of Bible. I used to argue, heatedly, about theology with my Bible prof. He was a literalist Calvinist, and by then I was into Christian existentialism (Paul Tillich, "ground of our being, God can't be defined, only experienced, and anything you believe about God misses the point" kind of stuff), as well as Liberation Theology (I read that article of yours, where you interviewed the Jewish New Testament scholar. She was interesting, but I think she misses the point of Liberation Theology. It's not critical of Judaism at all, the way I understood). Anyway, he gave me an A, because I knew my shit.
It doesn't surprise me that the classroom experience is more enlightened than the mission statement. I know some very smart people who have taught at Christian schools. The minister I grew up with was devoted to Nazarene theology--very grim stuff--but at heart he was a gentle and intelligent person.
About A-J Levine, her criticism of liberation theology was more to do with its portrait of Jesus' place within the Jewish traditions of his own time, rather than any present-day intolerance. LT's negative portrayal of Judaism is an inadvertent consequence of the whole "Jesus as revolutionary" narrative. Levine thinks liberation theology misrepresents the historical Jesus for its own rhetorical purposes. They want to put him forward as a political and theological radical, while she maintains that he was nothing of the kind.
Very interesting discussion you have going here...I'm going to resist jumping in.
Just popped by to say -- whoah! I have a very different experience of Gold. You make her sound so...respectable. I think of her as flamboyant, borderline trashy. But, then, maybe those are just my personal feelings about lilies in general. Show offs!
I see what you mean, Alyssa. Lilies can be very sexy, and Gold is more that type than the virginal lilies in, say, NM Intimate Lily. But I think it's a lot more modest than Un Lys, for instance. Have you ever smelled Penhaligon's Lily & Spice? For the product of such a fusty old house, it's very slutty.
What's this, turning a perfectly good theological discussion into a chat about perfume ... oh, wait, never mind ...
Heh heh, I love the word "slutty."
And I'll let you have the last word on A.J. Levine, BG. I'd actually like to read her book, and should hold my peace at least until then. Besides, I haven't subscribed to Liberation Theology in a decade or more(though I do still find it to be one of the more palatable forms of Christianity).
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