Sunday, May 2. 2010
Saw this tree in bloom today behind a very good fish store, growing out of a hole in the asphalt. Never seen this sort of tree before. The wisteria-colored, tubular 2" blooms hang down, and last year's nut-like seed pods are still on the branches. The trunk looks like the trunk of a fast-growing trash tree. Quite a wonderful small tree, with the elegant blooms before the leaves emerge:
Reader got the name for me on the first try. Thanks. I had no idea what it was: The Empress Tree, Paulownia tomentosa. AKA Foxglove Tree. The blossoms do resemble Digitalis.
For an "invasive" trash tree which will grow anywhere, it sure is mighty purty in early May. My other photos of it below -
Continue reading "Who am I?"
I wondered about them, anyway:
The history of the guitar in America. The six-string guitar was considered so easy to play that every stableboy could play it.
The history of the banjo. For me, the Banjo has an ominous, menacing sound. But maybe that is just me.
Photo is an 1840 French guitar from this restorer's website
"We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised." (KJV).
"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness." (1 Corinthians 3:19)
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." (1 Corinthians 1:18)
"For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (1 Corinthians 1:21)
Saturday, May 1. 2010
Adjusting one's insides is a lot tougher than changing one's outsides. A good post on psychotherapy: Change. One quote:
...why see a therapist? Because it is very difficult to see yourself clearly. Just as a camera cannot photograph itself except in reflection, the kinds of changes that are the heart of therapy need someone to serve as a mirror, as someone who can see and hear you without having an agenda about or for you, someone who can be caring and brutal. I can't think of anyone I know who has done that without help, including myself.
Therapy isn't about being happy, it's about honestly knowing who you are, and then picking a suitable life.
Also, a Psychiatric Manifesto via blue to blue
We are admirers of Steyn. His writing on any topic rivals that of PJ O'Rourke, and that is saying something. Furthermore, he is able to talk just like he writes.
Have you read Steyn's Wiki bio?
 Noonan: The Big Alienation. A quote:
This is not the old, conservative and long-lampooned "I don't trust gummint" attitude of the 1950s, '60s and '70s. It's something new, or rather something so much more broadly and fully evolved that it constitutes something new. The right never trusted the government, but now the middle doesn't.
Goldberg: States' Rights and Wrongs
Do not hack into peoples' emails
Karl Rove still driving people crazy
The notion of offering Medicare to businesses
Oil spill as Obama's Katrina?
They ran crying to the Dean. Pathetic.
Via Dino:
As of 2008, the average federal salary was $119,982, compared with $59,909 for the average private sector employee. In other words, the average federal bureaucrat makes twice as much as the average working taxpayer. Add the value of benefits like health care and pensions, and the gap grows even bigger. The average federal employee’s benefits add $40,785 to his annual total compensation, whereas the average working taxpayer’s benefits increase his total compensation by only $9,881. In other words, federal workers are paid on average salaries that are twice as generous as those in the private sector, and they receive benefits that are four times greater.
In defence of Glenn Beck
On immigration at NRO:
Linda (Chavez) criticizes the “slow, steady harassment” of illegal aliens. “Slow, steady harassment” is a pretty good working definition of about 80 percent of American law enforcement. It mostly works. You want to change the law, then change the law. But people who believe the way Linda believes about immigration have had ample opportunity to change the law through the democratic process. They have lost. They will continue to lose.
We have generous legal immigration laws now. They can always be changed. A nation without borders, though, is not a nation. A nation is a community of law. As we often say, the whole world wants to come here for freedom and opportunity, and would if they would only have to ignore our laws and wade through the Rio Grande. One thing that ticks me off is that the illegals have taken the jobs high school kids like I used to get: laborers on construction, landscaping work, electrician helpers, etc. They pay the illegals cash and the high school kids get fat and lazy playing video games. I began working summers and part-time during the school year when I was 13. Can kids do that now? I enjoyed working, learned a lot about life, got in good physical shape, and made money too.
Lepanto (1915)
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
(Read the rest on continuation page below. Image of the second-most famous naval battle in history (1571), familiar to every schoolchild, is by an unknown artist.)
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: G.K. Chesterton"
Friday, April 30. 2010
"Cold and lonesome" is the gritty low-down heart of the blues. (That is not Jimmy Reed in the photo. I don't know who that guy is, but the music is Reed.)
I hope y'all have enjoyed hearing Jimmy this week.
Last week I was at a Memorial Service where the song “Wind Beneath My Wings” was very fittingly sung about the lessons she transmitted to her family with her life.
Since, it has been running about my mind, what song would I want sung at my Memorial Service (besides “Hit The Road Jack”).
Yesterday, while driving I was listening to a local AM station that has classic songs of the ‘40s and ‘50s. I was struck by the rendition of “We’ll Meet Again”, sung by Anne Murray. As an older father, I try to communicate to my sons the optimism, positive thinking and perseverance that I have lived and believe will be central to their futures, and hope that will guide them and serve as their remembrance.
The words seem to ably sum it up:
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
and Til the blue skies
Drive the dark clouds far away.
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I know.
Tell 'em I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go,
I was singin' this song.
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I love.
Tell 'em I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go,
I was singin' this song.
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again some
sunny day.
I know we'll meet again some sunny
day.
Research has it that the song was one of the most popular in Britain during its dark days during World War II. The songstress, Vera Lynn, “The Forces Sweetheart”, recorded the Ross Parker/Hughie Charles song in 1942 while making the film of the same name. It became one of the emblematic songs during the war.
Since, many have recorded the song. My selections below the fold -
Continue reading "We’ll Meet Again"
A couple of birder friends and I took an early morning trip down to the Jamaica Bay Refuge in Queens, NYC, for some early warbler-watching last Saturday.
Since we had already had a wave of warblers passing through further north, it seemed like a good time to get a head start on the May warbler-watching before all the leaves came out. Wrong. Not a single one. As with hunting or fishing, it is so often "You shoulda been here yesterday."
Our birds have not bought into the global warming hysteria. The Spring migrants were absent, and the winter birds had left already. I did not even see the usual flock of breeding Ruddy Ducks.
The Jamaica Bay Refuge is a unique oasis. Behind you is JFK with planes constantly overhead, out to the ocean side is Far Rockaway, and in front is Brooklyn with Manhattan rising in the distance. It's a special green and watery stopping-place for migrants on the Atlantic Flyway, but the refuge hosts plenty of breeding birds too. Mixed habitat: beaches, woods, vast bayberry fields, salt- and fresh-water marshes.
Plenty of Tree Swallows. Here's my pal walking up to one of them while fumbling with his fancy camera, Far Rockaway in the distance:
More photos etc below the fold -
Continue reading "Jamaica Bay: A Warbler-free zone in late April"
Gwynnie is going boar hunting in California again, this time with friend Chester, for whom it is a first time. We’re after Sus scrofa, the descendants of European boars imported for a “game farm”.
We’ll actually use rifles in the .270-.308 range, but we told Chester that there were archers too, and he’s really excited.
My men's study/confessional group has been reading the Letter to the Hebrews for a couple of months. One of the topics we stumbled into this week was a discussion of obedience to God, and dutifulness. (Here's a recent post on obedience via Vanderleun.)
While we guys all seem to acknowledge the need for discipline for spiritual growth, many of us confessed our tendency to lazily and self-congratulatingly replace a life in the spirit with "Christian" dutifulness and "doing good." We more or less ended up thinking of moral and religious dutifulness, if lacking the Holy Spirit and the direction of God, as clanging cymbals - empty noise. Of course, that was one of Christ's teachings.
From a Christian standpoint, pride in one's Christian dutifulness and righteousness is a devil's snare - as is pride in one's humility. From Screwtape's Letter #14 with his advice to his apprentice Wormwood:
Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please.
“In this election… we have got to realize there is no longer any such thing as a conservative Democrat. It doesn’t exist. I used to be one of them. When I worked for Bill Clinton, that’s what I was. Now I’m extinct. There are no more of me. I’m a dodo bird. Now you are either a Reid-Pelosi Democrat or you are a Republican.”
Dick Morris
Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. h/t, Washington Reb
Shawcross: Britain's humiliation
Legally, what's an "offended observer"? I am one, all day long.
Pew: More trouble for Democrats
If the government runs medical care, they will own your body. Bought and sold.
Mexico acknowledges migrant abuse, pledges changes. Yeah, sure.
Immigration: New third rail in American politics announced
Market-Based Membership Approach to Healthcare At the Same Monthly Cost As a Cell Phone Plan
Obama to Wall Street: “I Do Think at Certain Point You’ve Made Enough Money”. He made 5.5 million last year. Plus he gets free room and board from the government with a free chopper to the golf course. More from Driscoll
"Where's our money?" The SEIU protest (h/t, Theo):
Thursday, April 29. 2010
 Neither an imminent 10-meter ocean level rise nor the prospect of a flooded basement deters the Fearless Al from this waterfront purchase.
So does anybody still think he really believes his nonsense? Yes, he is making ark-loads of $ from it but, even so, he is so on board that it would be too late for him to change his mind regardless of facts.
Like Al Sharpton and Tawana Brawley.
But "facts" and "evidence" are just patriarchal and racist tools of oppression anyway, aren't they? In this brave new world, we all get to pick our own facts, depending on how we feel or on which side our bread is buttered, and reality is a politico-socio-emotional construct. Isn't it?
Remind me to post my bit on "Psycho-utopianism" some time soon.
Thirty-five years ago, South Vietnam fell to the communist North. Twenty-eight years ago, President Reagan addressed the British Parliament at Westminster in his famous “Ash Heap of History” speech, to where tyrants will be sent by those valiantly defending freedom.
Yesterday, I went to Orange County’s “Little Saigon”, Westminster, to attend a forum marking the 35th anniversary of the fall.
Before the forum, attendees went outside in the Sid Greenstein Freedom Park for a minute of silence before the war memorial there, the only one in the US honoring US and Vietnamese who fought together.
I knew three of the speakers well (and two others less from shared personal experiences, more as acquaintances, but major figures) from many years of collaboration and friendship to not let the Vietnamese and American sacrifices be in vain, to educate new generations in the lessons personally witnessed and learned...
Continue reading "A Tale Of Two Westminsters: 28 and 35 Years Later"
Re Goldman, from Cardinalpark at Tiger:
The one thing I thought the Goldman executives should have remarked, when questioned about their tactical short overlay to reduce their long exposure to the mortgage morket, would have been to add that, had they not gone net short, they very likely would have been in line testifying with Dick Fuld from Lehman Brothers. And I know which questioning, however ignorant, I would prefer to face.
Today, I am a proud Goldman alum.
Is Congress ignorant about how business works, or do they feign ignorance for populist, political purposes; boob bait for the bubbas? Hard to tell. For certain, the WH is ignorant, as Dino reminds us via this reposted IBD chart:
At Politico today: The Wall Street-Washington divide. My gut tells me it's all a big diversion.
From Smith's The Ghetto-ification of America at Pajamas:
What big government has done to the nation’s inner cities and poor blacks is nothing short of a moral crime. Unless the Democrats are stopped, a lesser though damaging crime will be committed against every other community. Ghetto-light may be your neighborhood all too soon.
It is reminiscent of Dalrymple's observations in the UK which I linked a week or so ago.
 A fun Costco prank. Goat balls?
From The Crushing Patriarchy, Episode 12:
The assumption of a ‘natural’ 1:1 gender ratio in all occupations is itself a prejudice, albeit a modish one. On what basis do we determine that there ought to be a particular ratio of male and female philosophers, or mathematicians, or engineers? At what point and on what basis do we determine that a particular gender is sufficiently “represented” in a given vocation?
Ambinder: The Democratic Message for 2010
Teach Social Justice - Or Else
Obamacare Requires You To "Show Your Papers"
Why reporters are down on the President. And no presser for 10 months! Shocking.
Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing
Stealth Statehood for Puerto Rico?
Astroturf to support the Cult of Personality
Why Obama is going negative
Adler at Volokh likes Cape Wind. I think it is insane. These costly bird-shredding eyesores will never make money without taxpayer subsidies, and will never amount to a hill of beans as far as energy sourcing goes. Tax-subsidized feel-good baloney.
 This feature back by popular demand. I will post the info later today, although our readers will figure it out first.
We seem to have some knowledgeable birders here. What a world!
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