Notes & Asides

Dear Mr. Buckley: Regarding your delightful piece on the mean-spirited Argument for Alternative Use (Nov. 7), the Bible provides perhaps the earliest example of this argument. As a woman washes Jesus’feet with expensive perfume, Judas, always the moral compass, protests that the oil should have been sold to feed the poor. Jesus’ response, conveniently ignored by social gospelists who co-opted Jesus as merely a fine social worker: “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” Jesus was not denigrating the plight of the poor, but pointing to a far greater evil: spiritual poverty. When we remove opportunity to create, to strive, to see with eternal eyes, we become little more than a cosseted hamster, ever spinning in its dreary little wheel. Cordially, Marilyn Stolz Hermiston, Ore.

Dear Mr. Buckley: In your column “Escaping Catastrophe” (Oct. 24), you use the term “extravasation” to describe nature’s cunning ability to bypass blood-supply blockages with alternate routes. (You also say “blocked impasse.”) However, “extravasation” means blood seeping outside of the vascular tree, such as may occur in a bruise or other hemorrhage.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Dear Mr. Buckley: Regarding your delightful piece on the mean-spirited Argument for Alternative Use (Nov. 7), the Bible provides perhaps the earliest example of this argument. As a woman washes Jesus’feet with expensive perfume, Judas, always the moral compass, protests that the oil should have been sold to feed the poor. Jesus’ response, conveniently ignored by social gospelists who co-opted Jesus as merely a fine social worker: “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me.” Jesus was not denigrating the plight of the poor, but pointing to a far greater evil: spiritual poverty. When we remove opportunity to create, to strive, to see with eternal eyes, we become little more than a cosseted hamster, ever spinning in its dreary little wheel. Cordially, Marilyn Stolz Hermiston, Ore.

Dear Mr. Buckley: In your column “Escaping Catastrophe” (Oct. 24), you use the term “extravasation” to describe nature’s cunning ability to bypass blood-supply blockages with alternate routes. (You also say “blocked impasse.”) However, “extravasation” means blood seeping outside of the vascular tree, such as may occur in a bruise or other hemorrhage.