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.
I am glad the issue has been raised. In my wanderings around New England, I see white trash people with tatts and strange body rings lollygagging around all day, and entire black families getting in the way of the Mexican landscapers trying to mow the "lawns" of welfare housing projects on a sunny weekday. A strange sight. The blacks make fun of the Mexicans for working, and the Mexicans despise the blacks.
The Asian (I mean real Asian - Chinese, Koreans, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, etc) legal immigrants are middle-class or more. They tend to arrive with education, skills, and some assets. However, I am not sure that they know much, or care much, about American values or traditions.
What's going on? Around here, the illegals work. Not so in many other areas, I know. Gangs, drugs, welfare, etc. Sometimes, this doesn't feel like "my country" anymore, and I know I am not alone in this.
Steyn: "Trump, like other philosophically erratic politicians from Denmark to Greece, has tapped into a very basic strain of cultural conservatism: the question of how far First World peoples are willing to go in order to extinguish their futures on the altar of "diversity"'.
My Mom always put up tons of these pickled string beans from my Dad's garden. When you take some out, people eat them like popcorn. You can not can too many of these.
We wanted to make a ton of Rhubarb jam on Saturday but we ran out of sugar and Mrs. BD needed to control the kitchen for a double family birthday party. Poached salmon, etc. Anyway, people gnawed on my raw Rhubarb stalks. Delicious and stringy. The Rhubarb I salvaged from Mom's garden is going great guns and, racially, we are the Rhubarb People.
Our stream at the Farm, foggy and drizzly evening. iPhone pic.
Yes, we need a MA fishing license to fish on our own stream. You cannot "own" a stream. The government owns it. We have this stream, one creek, and two smallish marshes. I love them all. They are filled with life. Annoying beavers too which we must constantly kill - or do I mean "cull"?
We are in a better economic place today than we were during the Bush/Reagan debate. Yet, somehow, the conversation has devolved. There is a problem today - but it's the same problem it was 35 years ago. In fact, the question was about "the problem" of illegal immigration.
We don't need to just welcome them in, but a path to citizenship for those who work hard should be available.
I have been hearing lately about all of the iPhone photo contests. It's become a big deal. Your pics are not allowed to be cropped or manipulated. A friend of mine is entering one of his iPhone shots from duck hunting in Quebec last fall into a contest/show in New Haven. Too bad he wouldn't email me the pic.
Fancy machines are not necessary for interesting pictures (not that an iPhone is a comprehensible or un-fancy machine to me). Real cameras seem to be becoming seen as clunky, obsolete artifacts except for nature documentation, Japanese tourists, fashion photogs, and the press corps. Often, imperfect and flawed photos are good and fun to look at. Photos from 1900 are wonderful.
In general, I try to avoid taking photos. "Why would I want to do that?" I will never look at them again.
When everything was fine And the notion of sin had vanished And the earth was ready In universal peace To consume and rejoice Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons, Surrounded by the books Of prophets and theologians, Of philosophers, poets, Searched for an answer, Scowling, grimacing, Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much Was a bit shameful. Talking of it aloud Would show neither tact nor prudence. It might even seem an outrage Against the health of mankind.
Alas, my memory Does not want to leave me And in it, live beings Each with its own pain, Each with its own dying, Its own trepidation.
Why then innocence On paradisal beaches, An impeccable sky Over the church of hygiene? Is it because that Was long ago?
To a saintly man --So goes an Arab tale-- God said somewhat maliciously: "Had I revealed to people How great a sinner you are, They could not praise you."
"And I," answered the pious one, "Had I unveiled to them How merciful you are, They would not care for you."
To whom should I turn With that affair so dark Of pain and also guilt In the structure of the world, If either here below Or over there on high No power can abolish The cause and the effect?
Don't think, don't remember The death on the cross, Though everyday He dies, The only one, all-loving, Who without any need Consented and allowed To exist all that is, Including nails of torture.
Totally enigmatic. Impossibly intricate. Better to stop speech here. This language is not for people. Blessed be jubilation. Vintages and harvests. Even if not everyone Is granted serenity.
That men of the cloth, of all people, should be blind to what is really happening right now on the global economic scale is remarkable, ironic, and sad. Cure one or two people of blindness and you’re a saint; prevent blindness in millions and you’re Monsanto.
People of the cloth, like many academics, can be insulated from the realities of production and oblivious as to how or where their iPhones, cars, medicines, airplanes, and foods come from. Not from magic fairies or community activists.
Many of us are parasites, may hate to admit it, but it is important that we do so anyway. Including me, selling business services. Free market production is the engine which eliminates poverty and despair. Even Commie China realized that.
The rest of us are, sadly, parasites on that mechanism: doctors, lawyers, financiers, teachers, insurance salesmen, politicians, government employees, etc etc etc. Often useful and valuable, but still parasites on the producers. Over time, with technology, there are fewer producers and more service parasites to the point that we parasites can pretend that we have a functional economy of our own.
I have friends who make real things: sails for sailboats, parts for machines, tables, tires, oil wells, medical devices, artisanal goat cheese, and things like that. Also, harvest lobsters, harvest peaches, and blueberries. They are the foundation and we are the beneficiaries.
But Williamson's main point has to do with the Church's apparent faith in the State. What State, pray tell, run by whom? God? It's utopian lunacy or dystopian lunacy, take your pick.
I am grateful to our clergy, and if my criticism herein seems unduly uncharitable to these princes of the Church, it is only because their backward views on capitalism are doing real, material, irreversible damage to the world and especially to the lives of poor people, who are most in need of what only capitalism has to offer. His Eminence may not entirely understand it, but the banks and boardrooms are full of men and women doing more in real terms for the least of these than he is — more, in fact, than he would even understand how to do — and what he proposes mainly is to stand in their way. For God’s sake, stop it.
Me? Raised Roman Catholic, love the Church in the abstract, but an evangelical protestant at present. A long story of course, which I will never be able to find the words to explain, but wish the Church would focus on the blood of Christ instead of secular matters.
Now gone fishin' for the weekend. Block Island Sound. Maybe stop up by Cuttyhunk. Got beer, got girl, got boat, got gas, got bathing suit, got flip-flops. Will feed on Blues, Stripers, clams, and oysters. Life is good in New England. (Too bad the retarded government makes us throw back the small stripers and keep the big ones. As usual, government has it ass-backwards - kill the producer-breeders and throw back the useless small ones of whom 1/5000 will survive the Tuna, sharks, and Swordfish.)
Recipe tip: When you filet your Striper on the boat, cut out some thin slices, smear a little wasabi on them and maybe a splash of teriyaki. Then take a swig of Corona with lime in it to wash it down. That is heaven on earth.
There are many common words which, if you drill down into them, you just find turtles all the way down. What are those two things? Are they emotions, instincts, behaviors (ie adjectives turned into nouns), effortful behaviors, or just vague and ambiguous words?
We know that courage, for example, is a word for doing something we feel fearful or anxious about. But what is that?
Your thoughts, please. (And Gwynnie, please do not answer with a simple "Yes.")
We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of western European painting. Instead of making “cathedrals” out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.
My college sex education: In her first year, a student finds a campus obsessed with hooking up —
My Mom always put up tons of these pickled string beans from my Dad's garden. When you take some out, people eat them like popcorn. You can not can too many of these.
America's 10 biggest cities,
A masterful and wise piece from Williamson: