Maggie's Farm

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

The Owner's Manual

July 16, 2005  A soldier readies for deployment north

I stay with small stories. The big ones - political matters, wars - are too large a canvas for me. Tolstoy I am not.

Today - after two soldiers killed and one kidnapped in Israel by Gaza, after several soldiers killed and two kidnapped in Israel by Lebanese, after rockets designed in Iran have landed in Haifa, Sfad, Carmiel, Naharya, and other places - I sit in Netanya in the down-at-the-heels Green Hotel lobby, the TV running with news of the eight killed in Haifa today to write.To tell about D.,a 21 year-old sergeant in Nachshon, a unit trained for close-combat urban warfare.

About how he prepares his nine men for deployment in the North. Saturday, D. approaches me in front of the Beit Kenesset after services. Wants to talk with me some time today, before he gets called back. He must check in hourly for status, but has been getting intermittent phone calls from his men.  Asks them to call only if it seems critical.  These newly trained recruits, trained by D., seem nervous, I think.  The other trainees consider D. too tough, to distant, too demanding. His men defend him.  I gather that D. is particularly good at training his men to stay alive.  For this they are grateful.  He knows that at the end of the training in a few weeks, he will "break distance": they will be able to call him by his first name, likely toss him into a pool and such.  For now, he keeps the distance he needs to keep them alert.  He does night guard duty with some of his men to make sure that they stay awake.  Tells them do push-ups, run to stay awake. When one fellow takes a jog to keepalert, he is almost clocked by a buddy; the night is no friend to "friendly fire."

He apologizes that he did not call me Friday when he returned: had an hour to spend with his main squeeze on the beach; apologizes for not being in shul this a.m.-- went with his little sister to see her friend at an another shul; wants to see me today for one of hour walks that last a few hours. He will be heading back at nightfall.
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Our Crocosmia is in full bloom, but a bit weighted down by their flowers, and by over-growth from all of the rain. The bulbs are fairly expensive (wrong - mine were $35 years ago, but cheap now), but they spread vigorously in a sunny spot and you soon have bulbs (I think they are technically "corms")  to give away. Hummingbirds love these. (lens had a little condensation from coming out of the A/C) Tropical-looking, they grow well in Yankee-land.

The Who to go on tour. The remaining two, that is. Townsend and Daltrey. Still, could be interesting. h/t, Basil

Dress for church? Quote from Anchoress piece:

But for heaven’s sake, people dress up go to work, they dress up to meet someone important…why would you not want to dress a little better when you’re going to greet the King? He may not care how you dress, but why not communicate your esteem, if you can, by dressing for Him as you would if you were going to meet…okay, a mayor.

Imagining a better world without Israel at Daily Kos. Anti-semitism just never quits. h/t, Small Dead Animals

Clinton terms going after Lieberman "nutty." He is right, unless...Kos is working for the CIA and Bush.  Tim Blair

Doug TenNapel (on our blogroll) has written a (comic) book. Apparently, that is what he does when he doesn't blog. Blogging is a major waste of time.

From Stratfor, re Israel and Iran : A Middle East Crisis: Backgrounder

Israel lives with three realities: geographic, demographic and cultural. Geographically, it is at a permanent disadvantage, lacking strategic depth. It does enjoy the advantage of interior lines -- the ability to move forces rapidly from one front to another. Demographically, it is on the whole outnumbered, although it can achieve local superiority in numbers by choosing the time and place of war. Its greatest advantage is cultural. It has a far greater mastery of the technology and culture of war than its neighbors.

Two of the realities cannot be changed. Nothing can be done about geography or demography. Culture can be changed. It is not inherently the case that Israel will have a technological or operational advantage over its neighbors. The great inherent fear of Israel is that the Arabs will equal or surpass Israeli prowess culturally and therefore militarily. If that were to happen, then all three realities would turn against Israel and Israel might well be at risk.

That is why the capture of Israeli troops, first one in the south, then two in the north, has galvanized Israel. The kidnappings represent a level of Arab tactical prowess that previously was the Israeli domain. They also represent a level of tactical slackness on the Israeli side that was previously the Arab domain. These events hardly represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power. Nevertheless, for a country that depends on its cultural superiority, any tremor in this variable reverberates dramatically. Hamas and Hezbollah have struck the core Israeli nerve. Israel cannot ignore it.

Read the rest of their report below, thanks to Gwynnie's subscription:

Re-posted from 7-5-05

Mark Helprin Update

Soldier of the Great War is my favorite of the four books of his I have read, but many know him only through his WSJ opinion pieces. An excellent interview, mini-bio, and update in Harvard Magazine. An excerpt from the piece:

No living authors influence his writing, Helprin says. Instead, his lodestars include Dante, Shakespeare, Melville, Mark Twain. There are indeed echoes of Twain in his new novel, Freddy and Fredericka, due out this summer. It narrates the journey of a wayward British royal couple rusticated to America, where they travel incognito and survive hilarious adventures that read, as the dust jacket has it, “as if de Tocqueville had been rewritten by Mark Twain (with a deep bow to Harpo Marx).”

Helprin is a classicist. He believes in history, tradition, and eternal verities. He values aesthetic symmetries and the literary forms the centuries have passed down to us. To Helprin, the principles of modernism are fatal to art, and he has no truck with the avant-garde. “The avant-garde are frauds,” he bluntly declares. “Modern literature is all cool and detached, even though a lot of modern writers are passionate about their politics. To me, passion should be for literature, and reason and detachment for politics.

“A lot of people hate heroes,” he continues. “I was criticized for portraying people who are brave, honest, loving, intelligent. That was called weak and sentimental. People who dismiss all real emotion as sentimentality are cowards. They’re afraid to commit themselves, and so they remain ‘cool’ for the rest of their lives, until they’re dead—then they’re really cool.”

Photo by Jim Harrison in Harvard Magazine

Update: Did read Freddy and Frederika this past winter. It would work for beach reading.

It's a beach and boat day! Carpe diem. Hope you meet no rogue waves; hope the gals meet plenty of handsome rogues. If you're single, Hey, Jude, don't be afraid: reach out and touch someone today! Summer is the time for luuuuuuv.

Rogue Waves.  Most of us were introduced to rogue waves in A Perfect Storm. Turns out they are more common than thought. NYT Science News.

Why do Jews tend to vote Dem? Kesler takes a look.

The Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a waste of $. No doubt. The Commons

Dems try to figure out how to manipulate religious people. RWN

Microsoft, the European Commission, anti-trust. The EU hates success: they want to be KING. Disturbed people love power.  Coyote

Ptown gay group goes terrorist against "breeders." That ain't smart.  Polipundit

From Bob, a happily rambling Bobistical, but not solipsitical, piece on the inner universe, the soul, Hopkins, the human face, and God. One Cosmos. His piece made me think of The Kingfisher, which is why it's today's Saturday Verse. A quote:

But one of the fundamental teachings of any spiritual view is that the universe has a within that is accessible to humans. In other words, the universe is not simply an exterior, made up of discrete parts that are external to one another. Rather, by looking at the parts in a certain way, we may discover a wholeness in the world that in turn reveals its interior dimension--and therefore its meaning. Parts show us only the exterior of the cosmos, while wholeness shows us the great within (and vice versa).

Read our Dr. Bliss' piece on Happiness posted on Thurs.

Self-defence is a basic human right, both for individuals and for nations - or for animals, for that matter. It is the most basic right of living creatures. An unprotected home is not a safe and secure home, and a handy gun is as essential as a shovel, duct tape, or a pair of pliers.

You cannot defend yourself and your family with a whistle and a phone call to 911 any more than Israel can defend herself with a phone call to the UN.

Guns are the best tools for self-defence by far, plus they are fun, too. And, thank God, we are still allowed to shoot when bad guys invade our space and our lives.

Looked at one of these yesterday at the gun shop. The Marines use them. I like it. Bad guys hate it, because it can turn their heads into instant pizza-topping, which is highly discouraging to those with evil intentions. The Benelli M4. One ugly-looking shotgun.

"Black Culture" blamed for Katrina woes. Synthstuff.

The battle for Harry Truman's ghost. Oxblog. Good piece.

Gentlemen's Sports: Martini-mixing, insulting foreigners, and hitting on ladies. FMFT

How complicated are things in Lebanon? Breibart

Krauthammer: It's about Israel's right to exist. Here. But if they got rid of Israel, who would they blame for their problems?

A Soccer comment from our Gwynnie:

In June 1812, Napoleon’s Grande Armée of over 600,000 men (mostly Germans pressed into service) crossed into Russia. Gwynnie thinks that the head-butting of Materazzi by Zizou (mostly Algerian) was the most aggressive and courageous action by a Frenchman in uniform since.

Please get rid of your log-ins for comments.

You would have triple the comments if you got rid of them. What's the point of creating an obstacle to comments? In my experience, the systems never work, and Blogger, for example, never lets me on, despite having signed up properly a year ago. If you want comments from our team of brainiacs, get rid of those dang nuisances.

Just delete obnoxious or unwanted comments or trolls - it's like vacuuming the house. No big deal.

Just reading the anti-spam letters is tough enough - I cannot even read my own - X and K and H are indistinguishable.

Who killed Fidel? Zidane. Video at Babalu

Another addition to the Maggie's Olde Blogrolle: A Slower Pace. His family is seeking a sane, wholesome life.

Why is John Calvin a "rhetorical negative"?  Middlebrow says "Blame the textbooks." We agree.

Many of us have shot tennis balls from backyard cannons towards the sea, but potato guns? Orange guns? New to me, but I like the idea. Alphecca.

Vanderleun - a quote from his recent confessional piece:

After some years had passed it surprised me to realize that I had not really thought of her for months. It was surprising to notice that my once nightly mantra of secret thoughts centered on all the wrongs done, and all the years of my child's life stolen from me, had retreated to a much more infrequent pattern. I was relieved that the thoughts that always spiraled down into the dark (where I would imagine the worst sort of things happening to the woman I once loved above all others) had faded to a sometime thing.

And there it stayed, a sometime thing. A steady state of hate.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author.

Mark Twain