Cement Rendering Quotes

A CEMENT WALL A few years ago, two patients found themselves sharing a room in the palliative care unit of a hospital. Luis, in the bed next to the window, would talk to Daniel. Every day he would tell him, in luxuriant detail, what happened in the street. Mostly he narrated the adventures—seen from the window—of a family who lived near the hospital. The mother would often play with her children in the garden. He spoke naturally and with grace, although his voice was slurred from the chemotherapy. For Daniel, the last months of his life were rendered entertaining by his roommate. On those days when they were alone, without family or friends, Luis would say, “Shall I tell you what I see?” Daniel’s eyes would light up. And a recital would begin that might last hours. Months later, Luis passed away, and within a few days his bed was occupied by another patient. Daniel, excited by the thought that he would once again be able to hear the stories his friend had told him, asked his new companion to inform him about the children in their garden. The response stunned him: “There’s no garden here, just a cement wall.” Luis had used his imagination—his one remaining resource—to make up stories that would entertain Daniel. Using empathy, Luis had been capable of putting himself in his comrade’s shoes and successfully got him excited about something, helping him to overcome the suffering caused by his illness.

For example, George J. Romanes, a leading evolutionary biologist and physiologist of the time, went on to say this: “Seeing that the average brain-weight of women is about five ounces less than that of men, on merely anatomical ground we should be prepared to expect a marked inferiority of intellectual power in the former.” These assumptions were by no means unique, as most intellectuals back then were perfectly comfortable embracing an interpretation that suited the status quo. Those “missing five ounces” of women’s brains were thus used to justify the difference in the social status between men and women, cementing the denial of women’s access to higher education or to other rights that might have rendered them independent

All of this was overtaken in 1848, when the Illustrated London News published an engraving of Victoria and Albert beside a tabletop tree at Windsor. The accompanying text explained that this was the children’s tree, while the queen, the prince consort, the Duchess of Kent, and ‘the royal household’ all had their own, as well as additional trees in the dining-room.4 This single image cemented the Christmas tree in the popular consciousness, so much so that by 1861, the year of Albert’s death, it was firmly believed that this German prince had transplanted the custom to England with him when he married. In the USA, the engraving was rendered more democratic when Godey’s Lady’s Book, the bestselling monthly magazine in the country, reprinted it in 1850, merely removing Victoria’s jewellery and Albert’s sash and medals (as well as his moustache), and reducing the number of presents under the tree. The illustration was retitled ‘The Christmas Tree’, with no reference to royalty

She had never forgotten that moment, the way it rendered her both disposable and desperate, a stock whose value had plummeted to zero. She ran from it as fast as she could, remedied first with wine and tears, then, more successfully, with work. She would never put herself in a position to be at someone else’s mercy again. She would provide for Beth and protect herself. It wasn’t about status or vanity. It was about survival. Lana scrapped her way into real estate and kept building skyward, gladly sacrificing her softest parts to make herself hard, building a reputation as someone who never trusted but always delivered. Every deal cemented her safety. Every fallen adversary buttressed her strength. She kept herself impeccably tailored and toned, relentless in battle against the forces that turned other women invisible as they aged, stepped on and stepped over.

This is the story of the motorcar, and it has not much longer to run. The tide of taste and tolerance has turned, since TV, to make the hot-car medium increasingly tiresome. Witness the portent of the crosswalk, where the small child has power to stop a cement truck. The same change has rendered the big city unbearable to many who would no more have felt that way ten years ago than they could have enjoyed reading MAD.