Maggie's Farm

From the NYT:

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

Toon via Ace:

I happen to be the sort of person who wants to be free to buy - or not to buy - whatever insurance I want of whatever type I want - whether medical, homeowner's, flood, car or whatever.

I think of insurance as just one more free market product, like tomatoes or mattresses. All I ask for is a genuine free market, without government rules and regs (like the banning of interstate sales).

I had never spend any time in Ohio, except passing through to other places like most people do, but I just spent a few days banging around Knox and Holmes counties, and found it to be like a larger-scale New England - but the New England of three generations ago. This area is thoroughly agricultural; most of the places are very well-maintained and the farms are well-manicured and appear prosperous; it's hillier than I expected; the autumn foliage matches that of Vermont and New Hampshire, and the towns resemble New England towns minus the old mills.

But that figures: most of the settlers of Ohio came from back east for better farming land - and found it.

It's the kind of place that feels like the real heartland of America. We were there for Parent's Weekend at Kenyon College (about which more, later) in Gambier, which is a few miles outside the fine town of Mount Vernon, Ohio and a little more than an hour or so from Columbus, if you drive 80 mph on 71 - which everybody does.

Yes, this area is Amish Country to a degree. Plenty of them moved to central Ohio and up in Holmes County they do a lot of funiture business and wood-working, along with horse-breeding, farming, and the making of jams, preserves, baskets, etc.

Most of America is appealing in its own way, but the feel of central Ohio is strong for me in the comfortable, undramatic hominess of the towns and landscapes.

I will post lots more snapshots over the next few days, as I find the time.

From scholar Richard Rubenstein's The Religion of Sacrifice and Abraham, Isaac and Jesus:

Judaism never entirely rejected the idea that God demands the sacrifice of the first-born son. However we evaluate the existence of child sacrifice in ancient Judah, Israel, Canaan, and the colonies of Canaan-Phoenicia, it is evident that we are dealing with a God who demands the death of children. In reflecting on the issue of child sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, Levenson comments, “…the mythic-ritual complex that I have been calling ‘child sacrifice’ was never eradicated; it was only transformed."

A prime example of that transformation is the pidyon ha-ben ritual in fulfillment of the commandment already noted: “You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.” (Exodus 34:20) In this ceremony, the father presents his first-born son to a cohen or hereditary priest on the thirtieth day after his birth whereupon the priest asks the father, "Which do you prefer, your son or your money?" The father declares that he prefers his son and presents the cohen with five silver dollars, the symbolic equivalent of five biblical shekels, in order to "redeem" his son. The priest accepts the coins with the ritual formula, "This (the coins) in place of that (the child). This in exchange for that."

Read the whole thing. We Christians often refer to Christ as "the lamb of God;" "Lamb" because a "spotless lamb" was one of the ritual Jewish sacrifices of the time, used as a symbolic substitute for human sacrifice like Abraham's ram in the thicket.

Christians view the sacrifice of Christ - God's "son" - as the final and essential sacrifice needed to redeem a fallen mankind. Thus the ancient themes of blood and human sacrifice endure and give deadly serious substance to our worship today.

My August photo of the stone urns in Carthage which contained the ashes of firstborns sacrificed to Baal:

Genesis 22: 1-19

¹ Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"
      "Here I am," he replied.

 ² Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."

 ³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. ⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. ⁵ He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."

 ⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, ⁷ Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?"
      "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
      "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

 ⁸ Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together.

 ⁹ When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
      "Here I am," he replied.

 ¹² "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son."

 ¹³ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."

 ¹⁵ The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time ¹⁶ and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, ¹⁸ and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."

 ¹⁹ Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Recorded live in the Schauspielhaus on Christmas Day, 1989, this Choral Symphony celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And it’s some of the last work Bernstein did – he died in November the following year.

An ‘Ode to Freedom’, rather than the usual ‘Ode to Joy’, Bernstein felt authorised ‘by the power of the moment’ to change the word ‘Freude’ to ‘Freiheit’ (which may be closer to Schiller’s original intention). So this is very much the record of an occasion.

In the choral finale, the performance really takes off, with choirs and soloists singing at full stretch. The first cry of ‘Freiheit!’ ('Freedom!') and the choral answer are completely thrilling, and must have galvanised the audience in what was still officially East Berlin.

 

Some Wiki info below the fold about Beethoven's most famous work -

You may have seen these photos of Hitler and the Nazi era when first published by LIFE.com, but I missed them.

I think seeing these photos in color makes them more ominously ordinary - the banality of evil and all that. In other ways, they look more like a WW2 movie. What's your view?

Here's the story of the photos, from LIFE:

Between 1936 and 1943, German photographer Hugo Jaeger was granted unprecedented access to Adolf Hitler, traveling and chronicling, in color, the Fuhrer and his confidants at small gatherings, public events, and, quite often, in private moments. Here, and in several other galleries on LIFE, we present never-before-published photographs from Jaeger's astonishing -- and chilling -- collection.

... in 1945, when the Allies were making their final push toward Munich, Jaeger found himself face to face with six American soldiers in a small town west of the city. During a search of the house where Jaeger was staying, the Americans found the leather suitcase in which Jaeger had hidden thousands of his color negatives. He knew he would be arrested (or worse) if the Americans discovered his film and his close connection to Hitler. But what happened next astonished him.

Inside the suitcase that held the Hitler images, Jaeger had also placed a bottle of cognac. Happy with their find, the soldiers proceeded to shared the bottle with Jaeger and the owner of the house. The suitcase was forgotten.

After the Americans left, Jaeger packed the slides into 12 glass jars and buried them on the outskirts of town. In the years following the war, Jaeger occasionally returned to his multiple caches, digging them up, repacking, and reburying them. He finally retrieved the colllection for good--2,000 transparencies, all of them, amazingly, still in good shape -- and in 1965 sold them to LIFE.

Many of the photos can be seen at LIFE.com. 

We have a few more below the fold - more of LIFE's stash can be found at various places online.

More fun ads from the wonderful but dangerous 1950's at Doug Ross.

Lines Inscribed upon A Cup Formed from a Skull, 1808                       

                  Start not - nor deem my spirit fled;
                             In me behold the only skull
                         From which, unlike a living head,
                             Whatever flows is never dull.

                         I lived, I loved, I quaffed, like thee:
                             I died:  let earth my bones resign;
                         Fill up - thou canst not injure me;
                             The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

                         Better to hold the sparkling grape,
                             Than nurse the earth-worm's slimy
                                 brood;
                         And circle in the goblet's shape
                             The drink of gods, than reptile's food.

                         Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
                             In aid of others' let me shine;
                         And when, alas!  our brains are gone,
                             What nobler substitute than wine?

                         Quaff while thou canst: another race,
                             When thou and thine, like me, are sped,
                         May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
                             And rhyme and revel with the dead.

                         Why not?  since through life's little day
                             Our heads such sad effects produce;
                         Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
                             This chance is theirs, to be of use. 
  
 
Mad, bad, and dangerous, he understood what women wanted.

Either the Emerald Ash Borer, or more likely Ash Yellows, killed a 100 year-old majestic White Ash which provided welcome shade to our place.

The wonderful Ash is under seige from diseases spreading across the country. It's a damn shame, because these shade trees were fairly good substitutes for the old Elms that succumbed to the Dutch Elm disease.

Photo is some sort of Ash, but I'm pretty sure it's not our Eastern White Ash from its shape.

A friend asked me where the most beautiful women were on my summer trip.

I had to think hard about it. I'd say Lucca first, Mallorca second, and Barcelona third. Or maybe Barcelona second...or maybe Nice second...

It's a blessing and a curse for guys that this world is so full of charming, posed poised and graceful females. (I'll bet they wish we ordinary guys could make ourselves so appealing, but we can not and will not.)

Anyway, the Ukraine girls really knock me out.

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. … Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the "new, wonderful good society" which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean "more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.) h/t, reader.