Maggie's Farm

"You think I'm over the hill?
Think I'm past my prime?
Let me see what you got,
We could have a whompin' good time."

From the AP
From CNN/Entertainment Weekly
From Rolling Stone
From Prefix Mag.
From Reuters

And, of course, Expecting Rain links every review to date.

The Rolling Stone piece is interesting in explaining the provenance of some of the songs (Dylan is at least as much of a thief as any other songster or artist, and he steals plenty from himself too), but most of the reviews I looked at miss the point. Bob has nothing "to say," in the socio-political sense, and hasn't wanted to have anything "to say" since he wrote My Back Pages (and some of his preachy re-born songs in the 70s). His songs are more like dreams. Some people still want him to tell them about life. Heck, all of our lives are more normal than his is: we could teach him about normal life. He's been wealthy, and covered with girls, fame, and adulation since his early 20s.

No, it's about the song. If a song - or any music - is effective, and has any staying power, it carries us, or invites us, into its own world, which is the world of the imagination, and, if it contains truth, the world of the heart and the soul. For me, that is what gives a song, or a piece of music or art, its quality of inevitability - not predictability - but the feeling that it was more discovered than constructed. "We live, and we die, we know not why, but I'll be with ya when the deal goes down."

Thunder on the Mountain, and Spirit on the Water, have that. I am not saying that they are immortal art, but they sure are up there with Muddy Waters and Stephen Foster. Dylan's road band can play anything, and I like him on piano.

But a critique of the American economy?!?!?!  Gimme a break. Or a commentary on Katrina? Idiotic. Some reviewers seem to expect Bob to be a musical blogger. This is a guy who has been writing about floods and weather almost since the time of Noah, like all the old blues guys do and did, and this is a guy who liked Barry Goldwater, who loves Teddy Roosevelt; a guy who wrote "I become my own enemy in the instant that I preach," and who very much enjoys making money doing what he does.)

It is a delight and a fascination to hear the latest Bob has offered us, for a pittance.  But to hear him live, amongst the yuppies, college students, and the grey-haired pony-tails with their pot smoke, and the kids, and the regular folk, is to really see how much he wants to give for as long as he can. Me? I am partial to his mean and nasty blues.

He is a troubadour.

I doubt that even cat-lovers consider "pussification" to be a compliment.

Being "a man" isn't the same thing as being male. Manhood must be practiced and learned. Responsibility, courage, strength, honor, honesty, dignity, dependability, emotional restraint, physical competence, risk-taking, determination, independence, handling failures, self-discipline,  endurance, not complaining, pitching in, doing the hard thing, doing the right thing, sacrifice, the willingness to kill or die to protect things you treasure - none of these virtues is an automatic gift of the Y chromosome, even if the genetic foundation is there.

They are difficult skills to learn, and most guys have to learn them the hard way - through their failures and disappointments - even if they have good role models. They are at least as difficult to learn as it is to learn how to be a good mother, or how to be a good citizen. I do suspect that they are more difficult to master, but those skills, and others, are the foundations of male self-respect. Guys have to have a code to live by, and it isn't "their feelings." Animals can live by their "feelings." And it goes for women, too.

A "feminized" culture (I use quotes because it's the term people use, but I don't think that strong, pioneer-minded women need to be weak or childish at all) which values emotional gratification, and gratification in general, over sturdy, adult, and demanding virtues, is lame and decadent.  I do not even need to bring religion into the discussion to say that life is not about our gratification. That's for little kids, social workers, Californians, and many of our lost-in-the-wilderness European and Canadian cousins (who seem to still want Kings to take care of them while they lounge in cafes and complain about their "benefits," for which better men and women are paying ...but being taxed to death for your achievements doesn't exactly inspire effort and risk, or any other admirable qualities. It just inspires a pathetic, and profoundly un-American and infantile "gimme mine" attitude).

Who could imagine Atticus Finch protesting about his benefits? Or wanting to get paid for his aching back?

 Classical Values reminded us of an archival and classic Kim du Toit piece, "The Pussification of the Western Male."

We have become a nation of women.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. There was a time when men put their signatures to a document, knowing full well that this single act would result in their execution if captured, and in the forfeiture of their property to the State. Their wives and children would be turned out by the soldiers, and their farms and businesses most probably given to someone who didn’t sign the document.

There was a time when men went to their certain death, with expressions like “You all can go to hell. I’m going to Texas.” (Davy Crockett, to the House of Representatives, before going to the Alamo.)

There was a time when men went to war, sometimes against their own families, so that other men could be free. And there was a time when men went to war because we recognized evil when we saw it, and knew that it had to be stamped out.

There was even a time when a President of the United States threatened to punch a man in the face and kick him in the balls, because the man had the temerity to say bad things about the President’s daughter’s singing.

We’re not like that anymore.

Read it all, and enjoy it.

Sissy might know more about this type of sunflower, which is in bloom right now at Maggie's. I don't know whether they are a wildflower, or escapes.

More Bob stuff, including the video of When the Deal Goes Down.

I have heard the new record but I am not going to write a comment other than to say that it has an old-timey feel. 

On the week of the release of Dylan's new record, a review of his career, and a book on Bob's (largely uninformative) interviews, by Menand in the New Yorker. A quote:

Dylan’s words—he has said as much—are often placeholders, devices to fit the melody and fill out the line, which is why dutiful efforts to extract a message or a meaning are largely beside the point. If you want a message, buy a newspaper. “Songs are songs,” Dylan says in one of his early interviews. “I don’t believe in expecting too much out of any one thing.”

Sloppy or not, Dylan is astonishingly prolific; he has written more than five hundred songs. Most of them are lovely (or angry or joyous or wickedly sly or all of those things together). Many of them are unforgettable. (A new album, Dylan’s forty-fourth, called “Modern Times,” is being released this month. The songs are simple riffs, with laid-back arrangements, and all feature prominently Dylan’s gorgeous late-period croak. It sounds a little the way “Buena Vista Social Club” might have sounded if Cuba had been the birthplace of the blues.) The only comparable pop songbook from the era is Lennon-McCartney—and there were two of them. Dylan is also, despite the silly things people said about his voice when he started out, one of pop music’s greatest vocalists. His chief weakness is a tendency to shout, particularly in performance (and he is, let us say, an inconsistent performer); but, when he is in control of the instrument, no one’s voice, with that kind of music, is more textured or more beautiful.

Ninety per cent of musicianship is phrasing, and the easiest way to appreciate Dylan’s genius for phrasing is to listen to him, on bootlegs or on the late albums of traditional songs, perform songs that he didn’t write—“Folsom Prison Blues,” or “People Get Ready,” or “Froggie Went A-Courtin’.” He gets it all. When my children were little, we used to have a cassette around the house of songs for kids by pop stars, on which Dylan did “This Old Man” (“With a knick-knack paddywhack, give the dog a bone”). That performance had the weight of the whole world in it. I listened to it a hundred times and never got tired of it. You can refute Hegel, Yeats said, but not the Song of Sixpence.

Jeff Goldstein, commenting on a Steele piece - one quote:

Specifically, a medievalist, pre-modern mindset like the one animating the Islamofascist movement is, ironically, quite adept at using postmodern observations about the nature of truth to sustain a rhetorical advantage over the West.  And it does so by playing to the West’s arrogance—its idea that, because it has embraced the tenet of multiculturalism, it is somehow showing itself to be tolerant and nuanced in its dealings with the Other.

But recent history has shown us that all this Western “understanding” is a ruse.  Instead, it is a mindset that pretends to an understanding by deferring to the Other, a maneuver that serves only to undermine Enlightenment principles and ideas of universal rights while simultaneously giving control of the identity narrative to groups it purports to “understand”, who are then able to use that control to affect victim status, define and shame their enemies, and bracket out unfriendly criticisms. 

But this only works because the premises have been accepted by many in the western intelligensia, and have, from there, made their way into public and social policy....

I am not certain that those premises have been truly accepted. Some of that might be a ruse, and a pose, too. Good piece. Read entire.

Nathan sent us this piece from Israel:

A Father's Ode to His Lost Son

Sunday, August 27, 2006; B01
David Grossman, a leading Israeli novelist and peace activist, lost his soldier-son, Uri, earlier this month. Uri was serving on the front lines in Lebanon and was killed two days before the U.N.-brokered cease-fire. He died two weeks before his 21st birthday. His father delivered these remarks at his funeral on Aug. 16.

My Dearest Uri,
For the last three days, almost every thought has had a "won't" in it. He won't come home, we won't talk, we won't laugh. That boy with the ironic gaze and the awesome sense of humor won't be anymore. That young man with the wisdom so much more profound than his age won't be anymore. That warm smile and that healthy appetite won't be anymore, that uncommon combination of determination and tenderness won't be
anymore, his common sense and discernment won't be anymore. We won't have Uri's infinite gentleness, nor the calm that steadies every storm. We won't watch "The Simpsons" and "Seinfeld" together anymore, we won't listen to Johnny Cash with you, and we won't feel your strong, soothing embrace. We won't see you walking with your big brother, Yonatan, conversing with exuberant gestures, and we won't see you hug your little sister, Ruti, the love of your heart.

Uri, my beloved:
Throughout your brief life we all learned from you. From your strength and your determination to follow your own path. To follow it even if there is no chance at all of succeeding. We marveled at your battle to get accepted into tank commanders' course. You didn't give in to your officers because you knew that you could be a good commander, and you weren't prepared to make do with contributing less than you were able. And when you succeeded, I thought: Here's a man who knows his abilities in such a simple and sober way. Without conceit and without arrogance. Unaffected by what others say about him. Whose source of strength lies within.

You were like that from childhood. A boy who lives in harmony with himself and with those around him. A boy who knows his place, knows that he is loved, is aware of his limitations, and knows what's special about him. And, really, from the moment you bent the entire army to your will and became a commander, it was clear what kind of commander and human being you would be. Today, we hear from your comrades and soldiers about the sergeant and the friend, about the guy who gets up before everyone to organize everything, and who goes to sleep after everyone else has already dozed off.

And yesterday, at midnight, I looked around the house, which was a mess after the hundreds of people who had come to console us, and I said: Okay, now we need Uri, to help put things straight.

You were the left-winger in your battalion, and they respected you, because you held fast to your opinions without dodging a single one of
your military responsibilities. I remember you telling me about your roadblock policy -- you spent a lot of time manning roadblocks in the territories. You said that if there is a child in a car you pull over, you always begin by trying to calm the kid down, to make him laugh. That you always remind yourself that the kid is about Ruti's age. And you'd always remind yourself how frightened he is of you. And how much he hates you, and that he has reasons for that, and still, you will do all you can to make that terrifying moment easier for him, while doing your job, without fudging.

1. Do not hear
2. Do not open your mouth
3. Do not rebuke anyone
4. Make yourself foolish in this world

Cassian, from a piece at Middlebrow

Like many of our posts, this one came out of a dinner conversation. Thanks to N for putting this together for us:

In 2004 petroleum products contribute about 40.2 percent of the energy used in the United States. This is a larger share than any other energy source including natural gas with a 23 percent share, coal with about a 22 percent share, and the combination of nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal and other sources comprising the remaining 14 percent share.

Petroleum products fall into three major categories: fuels such as motor gasoline and distillate fuel oil (diesel fuel); finished nonfuel products such as solvents and lubricating oils; and feedstocks for the petrochemical industry such as naphtha and various refinery gases.

Petroleum products, especially motor gasoline, distillate (diesel) fuel, and jet fuel, provide virtually all of the energy consumed in the transportation sector. Transportation is the greatest single use of petroleum, accounting for an estimated 67 percent of all U.S. petroleum consumed in 2004. The industrial sector is the second largest petroleum consuming sector and accounts for about 23 percent of all petroleum consumption in the U.S. Residential/Commercial and the electric utility sectors account for the remaining 8 percent of petroleum consumption.

 Fuel products account for nearly 9 out of every 10 barrels of petroleum used in the United States. Demand for motor gasoline alone accounts for more than 44 percent of the total demand for petroleum products. Other petroleum fuels include distillate fuel oil (diesel fuel and heating oil), liquefied petroleum gases (LPG's) (including propane and butane), jet fuel, residual fuel oil, kerosene, aviation gasoline, and petroleum coke.

Liquefied petroleum gases (LPG's), such as Propane, Butane and Ethane rank third in usage among petroleum products. They are primarily used as inputs, or ‘feedstock’, for petrochemical production processes. LPG's are also used as fuel for domestic heating and cooking, farming operations, and as an alternative to gasoline for use in internal combustion engines.

Electric utilities use residual fuel to generate electricity and depend on petroleum for about 5 percent of its total energy requirements.

Nonfuel use of petroleum is small compared with fuel use, but petroleum products account for about 89 percent of the Nation's total energy consumption for nonfuel uses. Examples of these uses are: Solvents such as those used in paints, lacquers, and printing inks, Lubricating oils and greases for automobile engines and other machinery, petroleum (or paraffin) wax used in candy making, packaging, candles, matches, and polishes, petrolatum (petroleum jelly) sometimes blended with paraffin wax in medical products and toiletries, asphalt used to pave roads and airfields, to surface canals and reservoirs, and to make roofing materials and floor coverings, pettroleum coke used as a raw material for many carbon and graphite products, including furnace electrodes and liners, and the anodes used in the production of aluminum, petroleum "feedstocks" used as chemical feedstock derived from petroleum principally for the manufacture of chemicals, synthetic rubber, and a variety of plastics.

Industry data show that the chemical industry uses nearly 1.5 million barrels per day of natural gas liquids and liquefied refinery gases as petrochemical feedstocks and plant fuel.  Petrochemical feedstocks are converted to basic chemical building blocks and intermediates used to produce plastics, synthetic rubber, synthetic fibers, drugs, and detergents. Petrochemical feedstocks also include products recovered from natural gas, and refinery gases (ethane, propane, and butane). Still other feedstocks include ethylene, propylene, normal- and iso-butylenes, butadiene, and aromatics such as benzene, toluene, and xylene.

One of our old hayfields has been over-run with Goldenrod. It makes for a pretty sight in August, but there is no hay there anymore, and the upper part is all Milkweed, to the delight of the Monarch butterflies.

Rather than trying to rehabilitate it as a hayfield by deep-plowing, re-seeding for a couple of years with red clover, and plowing again and re-seeding with good hayseed, the current low-cost plan is just to mow it every two years, and to let the animals and birds enjoy it - which they do. Don't need more hay. Sparrows, snakes, and Wild turkey like it as is. And deer, of course, by the bushel. And I have noticed that the beaver come out of the marsh to eat stuff in the meadow at night.

I have planted junipers next to the rocks, because with high growth you cannot see the rocks when you mow. Also, putting Bluebird houses on each rock, which the Tree Swallows seem to take over. Last summer I stupidly drove a tractor right up on one rock, about a 3' item I forgot about, and not only did it scare the bejesus out of me, but it also took another tractor to pull it off. Picture the front wheels of a Farmall four feet in the air, and a boulder jammed under the crankcase. Three Stooges.

Mark the rocks before you mow. A good adage in rocky Yankeeland, where glacial boulders are one of our main crops. Like measure twice, cut once.

You can see how the dang White Pines had been invading that field about 15 years ago. That process has been halted by aggressive border patrol, but it's a big job to roll it back. Cannot get a logging truck over the bridge, so it's sweat and chain saw. One step at a time. It's an excellent work out.

Preparing for crime, from Alphecca:

You're awakened in the night by the sound of someone breaking into your home. Do you know what you would do first, second, etc. Does your spouse know what to do? Your kids?

Well, in my opinion the first thing you do is to get a loud dog. Second, either wire your house for security, or at least just get some security company stickers for the doors and windows. Third, be armed, because anyone who gets by those needs shooting. It's a guy's job - or a gal's, in some cases - to protect your castle. Anyway, read the whole thing.

Cold and wet today in Yankee-land, in August. Good day for the first fire in the fireplace, but we are still awaiting the chimney-sweep. Where is all of that warming we keep hearing about? Perfect weather for putting in all of the wierd new hostas that the Mrs. Bird Dog has been finding via the Hosta Society. (Never plant hostas in the sun.)

A few end-of summer, goin' back to school notes:

1. We have added (or are in process of adding, due to some technical glitches) a bunch of new sites to our blogroll - read 'em, if you don't. Here's just a sample of our additions:

Sister Toldjah
Solomonia
Jerusalem Post Blog Central
Dust My Broom

"Dust my broom," as our literate readers surely know, is a line from a Robert Johnson song.

2. Last chance for the Yankee Farmer: As soon as technically do-able, we are going to blend him into our archives.

3. Food and Drink: Considering a new Category. Dr. Bliss seems like she'd rather write about food than shrinkology: maybe she needs a break from deep thought. Our rule is this: Write about whatever you want.

4. News Junkie: Since so many of us all check at leat a number of blogs and new sites daily, we are urging the NJ to focus on obscure stuff. He won't, because he never does what he is told to do, but we assume everyone checks Drudge, Powerline, and Instapundit daily, without our help.

5. We wonder where blogging is headed. Maybe nowhere, but it's an interesting ride for us. Like magazines, there are too many interesting ones to have time to read, but I find the blog collectors, like Pajama's fine site, a bit dull to look at. I think we will stay independent, and maybe mediocre, and just a strange brew, for now. The eccentric, Yankee way: we do what we want, and if you don't like it, you can leave us alone.

None of us has the time for intense writing or reporting, but our readership is growing steadily, which is gratifying. Time, intelligence, and creativity are our limiting factors. For some reason, we don't have the commenting culture here that I would enjoy, but the handful we get are pretty intelligent - and we do not mind criticism, no matter how harsh - if it responds to points -  because we know we are far from perfect, and sometimes lazy.

Money? We do not want money from the internets, unless it's Big Money. Small money is of no interest to us. We all get that from our day jobs.

Why the cheesecake? Many email about that. The female, like a flower, is art. Period. We love art, with or without frames. We also love cold weather - the colder, the better, which is why we are happy to hear about the new global cooling data.

Do we love hydrangeas at Maggies Farm? Yes, we do. And the mini- version of Snow Queen, Wayside's patented Pee Wee, is the best darn plant. Even the leaves are good lookin'.

These guys need serious pruning, this winter. About 15' tall, but these are old-fashioned, and they bloom like crazy, with no care whatsoever.

These are very happy with full sun, but they do not require it. Half is enough, for most varieties. But some seem to desire sun, despite the labels, and others wilt.

I see a huge weed, though. A baby tree, pushing up through the bush. Missed it, somehow, but the photo makes it clear.

Its fate is sealed, at a time of our chosing. Gardening is war against wild nature. Nothing "green" about it. Most of gardening is plant-murder (aka "weeding").

Shamelessly right-clicked from Right Wing Howler:

Fishiest of all fishy paces was the Try Pots, which well deserves its name, for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for breakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, til you begin to look for fish bones coming through your clothes. The area before the house was paved with clamshells. Mrs. Hussey wore a necklace of polished codfish vertebrae and Hosea Hussey had his account books bound in superior old shark skin. There was a fish flavor to the milk, too, which I could not account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fisherman's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slipshod, I assure ye.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

From the mouth of Mr. Sunshine, via Reuters:

Bob Dylan says the quality of modern recordings is "atrocious," and even the songs on his new album sounded much better in the studio than on disc.

"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," the 65-year-old rocker said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

Dylan, who released eight studio albums in the past two decades, returns with his first recording in five years, "Modern Times," next Tuesday.

Noting the music industry's complaints that illegal downloading means people are getting their music for free, he said, "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway."

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them," he added. "There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like ... static."

Dylan said he does his best to fight technology, but it's a losing battle.

"Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."

The wild Autumn Clematis is in full bloom all around Maggie's Farm. The highly aggressive and fast-growing wild version lacks the fragrance of the cultivated variety, often called Sweet Autumn Clematis. This one, covering a fence, has a wild morning glory growing amongst it.

Wall Street has a knack for taking their experience and your money, and converting them into their money and your experience.

Anon.

James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense made plenty of sense to me: the notion that moral considerations are hard-wired parts of human nature. Harvard's Marc Hauser is working on the inborn "moral grammar," and he is interviewed here, in Am. Scientist. He even gets into the animal precursors of moral behavior:

In many ways, our understanding of animals is not even ripe for the picking, because almost all of the work that is relevant to morality entails studies of what animals do as opposed to how they judge what others do. Thus, we have beautiful accounts of how animals behave during cooperation and competition, including observations of how individuals respond to personal transgression, such as taking food in the presence of a more dominant animal. But what is missing are observations and experiments that systematically address what counts as a transgression or expectation for helping or harming, when the observer is not directly involved. In the same way that we can judge an act as gratuitously violent even when it doesn't concern us directly, we want to understand how animals perceive violations of social norms, including what they expect and what they consider anomalous.

The object of art is to give life a shape.

Shakespeare