It was a usefully archetypal tale, but it had little to do with the reality of the Hughes-Plath marriage.
This is a usefully loose term, however.
Most usefully, it is a vital reminder of the key element of conservation, so often neglected: You cannot save what you do not love.
4. Hare's prescriptivism is not of course Williams' only target; but it is a paradigm target, so I can usefully save space by focusing on it.
"More than just being a barrier which [a wall] can usefully be, it is a message to a government south of us that does not recognize that border as a legitimate impediment to free passage," Lundgren told me.
The "historic value of our old materials cannot be usefully calculated, but it is a very sad loss," she said in a later e-mail.
It was also a usefully public summer holiday, with a visit to his 83-year-old grandmother, Sally Hussein Obama, who fed her grandson porridge and chicken at her homestead.Predictably, Kenyan politicians jostled to bathe in Mr Obama's light.
But it was also a usefully frank reminder - beyond Mr Bush's ritual call for freedom of assembly, speech and worship - of important issues that must not be overlooked as the US and the world in general adjust to the reality of "peacefully rising" China, with its double-digit growth, ravenous hunger for oil and other resources, and mesmerising market potential.
It's an intriguing subject, and it usefully reminds us of David Frost's real entrepreneurial courage in creating this TV moment: gambling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his own pocket before any sponsorship or network sales were guaranteed.
It's an antic collage, with a daub or two that might usefully have been suppressed.
