Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Wednesday, April 29. 2009

Garden gnomes and Botticelli


About beauty and kitsch and Scruton's new book on Beauty. One quote:



...if nearly everyone likes it, how bad can it be? "Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations," said Harold Rosenberg, the great art critic. Milan Kundera argued, "No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition." And they were writing before the appearance of "reality" television, which repackages kitschy old conventions of popular drama as public competition, bringing to "real" people the humiliation and cruelty traditionally endured by imaginary losers in mass-culture fiction.



Photo: Flamingo decoys are still available, here.

Posted by Bird Dog in Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 11:13 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

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I set out those Flamingo decoys every spring but I've yet to attract a Flamingo.
#1 Santay on 2009-04-29 11:28 (Reply)
Y'might wanna try using a call. I'd recommend ukelele music, or Jimmy Buffet.
#2 doug l on 2009-04-29 13:00 (Reply)
1963. Navy A3-D. Buzz the Kenyan shore of Lake Victoria at about 2,000 feet. Half a million flamingos take to the air in waves.
#3 Roy Lofquist on 2009-04-29 22:54 (Reply)

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