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.
13:31 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;
13:32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches."
13:33 He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
13:44 "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
13:45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls;
13:46 on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
13:47 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind;
13:48 when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.
13:49 So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous
13:50 and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
13:51 "Have you understood all this?" They answered, "Yes."
13:52 And he said to them, "Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old."
At the family compound in the Sierras where the snow is still slowly melting, the trout in the stream are tiny appetizers, my grandkids and nieces and nephews are all bright, cute, and well-behaved, and all is right with the world in the moutains.
Anna's mostly, I believe.
In a few months, there will be over 10' of snow here.
But who are "the poor"? How can you "help the poor" unless you know who they are?
Some are probably mentally-disabled, some are college or grad students, some are young people starting out, some are Maine Guides, some are hippies, some are single moms in rural or urban areas, some are lazy or feckless bums or addicts, some are ambitious new immigrants (legal or otherwise), some are retirees, some have low income but have assets, many get paid off the books, some may be quite content, some are temporarily down on their luck, some are struggling artists, some are ill, etc., etc. "The poor" is not a unitary category. I used to be poor, and probably most Maggie's readers have been poor at some point in their lives.
That 92 year-old in Florida, now a WalMart greeter, had 10 million with Madoff. Poor, now.
How come nobody ever talks about who they are, and whether it's a temporary situation, or a life-style choice, or whatnot? And how come the value of government and charitable benefits are never included in figuring poverty in the USA?
From the article:
At the left-leaning think tank Demos, Matt Bruenig crunches the numbers of the Census Bureau’s 2012 social and economic supplement to its annual population survey and identifies the “officially poor” as “35 percent children, 8 percent elderly, 9 percent disabled, 8 percent student, 18 percent working, and 21 percent everyone else.” He concludes: “The adult, able-bodied, non-student poor who lack personal market income comprise 3 percent of the population.” It’s just a snapshot, but it tells us there aren’t many Americans who need the intense paternalism recommended by Ryan and others.
I doubt Ryan, a fine fellow I am sure, ever perused such data. He just wants to care but caring for others requires a discernment and art. Money is not everybody's life goal although perhaps only a noble few have the conscience to refuse free money from their neighbors.
Plain emotional "caring" doesn't deserve any moral credit, and when governments go parental they are the worst parents in the world.
The year's at the spring And day's at the morn; Morning's at seven; The hill-side's dew-pearled The lark's on the wing; The snail's on the thorn; God's in his Heaven - All's right with the world!
Those famous lines are from Browning's 1841Pippa Passes. It's Pippa's song. Pippa is a silk mill worker in Asolo, and has three holidays per year. The poem goes through the morning, noon, evening and night of Pippa's day off. She treasures her precious free time. This is from "Morning":
Oh, Day, if I squander a wavelet of thee, A mite of my twelve-hours treasure, The least of thy gazes or glances, (Be they grants thou art bound to, or gifts above measure) One of thy choices, or one of thy chances, (Be they tasks God imposed thee, or freaks at thy pleasure) My Day, if I squander such labour or leisure, Then shame fall on Asolo, mischief on me! Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing, Whence earth, we feel, gets steady help and good Thy fitful sunshine-minutes, coming, going, As if earth turned from work in gamesome mood All shall be mine! But thou must treat me not As the prosperous are treated, these who live At hand here, and enjoy the higher lot, In readiness to take what thou wilt give, And free to let alone what thou refusest; For, Day, my holiday, if thou ill-usest Me, who am only Pippa, old-year's sorrow, Cast off last night, will come again to-morrow Whereas, if thou prove gentle, I shall borrow Sufficient strength of thee for new-year's sorrow. All other men and women that this earth Belongs to, who all days alike possess, Make general plenty cure particular dearth, Get more joy, one way, if another, less: Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven, Sole light that helps me through the year thy suns! Try, now! Take Asolo's Four Happiest Ones And let thy morning rain on that superb Great haughty Ottima; can rain disturb Her Sebald's homage? All the while thy rain Beats fiercest on her shrub-house window-pane, He will but press the closer, breathe more warm Against her cheek; how should she mind the storm? And, morning past, if mid-day shed a gloom O
O'er Jules and Phene, what care bride and groom Save for their dear selves? Tis their marriage-day; And while they leave church, and go home their way, Hand clasping hand, within each breast would be Sunbeams and pleasant weather spite of thee! Then, for another trial, obscure thy eve With mist, will Luigi and his mother grieve? The Lady and her child, unmatched, forsooth, She in her age, as Luigi in his youth, For true content? The cheerful town, warm, close, And safe, the sooner that thou art morose, Receives them! And yet once again, out-break In storm at night on Monsignor, they make Such stir about, whom they expect from Rome To visit Asolo, his brother's home, And say here masses proper to release A soul from pain, what storm dares hurt his peace? Calm would he pray, with his own thoughts to ward Thy thunder off, nor want the angels' guard! But Pippa just one such mischance would spoil Her day that lightens the next twelve-month's toil At wearisome silk-winding, coil on coil! And here I let time slip for nought! Aha, you foolhardy sunbeam caught With a single splash from my ewer! You that would mock the best pursuer, Was my basin over-deep? One splash of water ruins you asleep, And up, up fleet your brilliant bits Wheeling and counterwheeling, Reeling, broken beyond healing Now grow together on the ceiling! That will task your wits! Whoever quenched fire first, hoped to see Morsel after morsel flee As merrily, as giddily . . . Meantime, what lights my sunbeam on, Where settles by degrees the radiant cripple? Oh, is it surely blown, my martagon? New-blown and ruddy as St. Agnes' nipple, Plump as the flesh-bunch on some Turk bird's poll! Be sure if corals, branching 'neath the ripple Of ocean, bud there, fairies watch unroll Such turban-flowers; I say, such lamps disperse Thick red flame through that dusk green universe! I am queen of thee, floweret; And each fleshy blossom Preserve I not (safer Than leaves that enbower it, Or shells that embosom) From weevil and chafer? Laugh through my pane, then; solicit the bee; Gibe him, be sure; and, in midst of thy glee, Love thy queen, worship me!
Worship whom else? For am I not, this day, Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? My morning, noon, eve, night how spend my day? To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk, The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk: But, this one day, I have leave to go, And play out my fancy's fullest games; I may fancy all day and it shall be so
The entire piece is here. Yes, Browning specialized in the dramatic monologue. I can easily imagine Pippa as a one-person stage performance. Off topic, but I always got a kick out of the name of Pippa Passes, KY, aka Caney Creek.
Funny or Die posted a video today in support of a minimum wage increase, starring Kristin Bell. It parodied Mary Poppins, and was humorous enough, even if its economics are not well thought out.
Reason TV didn't wait for this to go viral before they provided a smackdown to both Kristin and Funny or Die:
It's doubtful Remy's exposure of the hypocrisy of Kristin's work will get as much exposure.
While Funny or Die, or Kristin Bell, may start lobbying to make other people do what they want via government diktat, it would behoove them to start living up to their own sense of moral superiority. Minimum Wage Laws are a primary reason so many teens are unemployed, as are the vast array of other restrictions preventing them from working. I held my first job at 13. Today, you can't get a job at 13 and it's just as difficult to find one at 15. Neither of my sons worked before the age of 16, not for lack of trying.
More importantly, studies have shown very few people actually 'live' on a minimum wage. Most minimum wage earners are under the age of 25 and are the second or third wage earner in a home.
What happens when automation pushes all these low wage earners out the door? I don't know. Perhaps we should ask the blacksmiths, since they all lost their jobs with the advent of the automobile. Why wasn't their union looking out for them so we could all be riding horses today? To be honest, I have a friend who is blacksmith. He does quite well for himself today, since there are few people with his skill set. Maybe Mike Rowe is on to something.
Feeling old? Not Dark Yet (1997). It's some sort of personal hymn or prayer, I think. Just another Dylan masterpiece, hauntingly-rendered, and it can bring a tear if you aren't careful.
The American founders knew that government needed a short leash. So much for that plan.
This essay by Williamson is almost too good to post on a summer Friday afternoon: Property and Peace - The irreplaceable basis for a prosperous and decent society is property. One quote:
The founding ideal of this republic is that we are the who and government is the whom, a necessary evil that is to some degree necessarily evil. On the right scale and in its proper place, that necessary evil is bearable. But when it oversteps, we are under no obligation to bear it — in fact, we are morally obliged by our particular American patrimony to resist. That is why the usual progressive taunt, “If you don’t like it, why don’t you move to Somalia?” is foolish and shallow: The American government exists at our sufferance — we do not exist at its sufferance. George W. Bush was mocked for talking about an “ownership society,” but if you want peace, that’s precisely what you should be trying to build. The alternative is to have 50 percent + 1 arbitrating the uncomfortable question of who in effect owns whom.
You want a less polarized politics? Consider that the God of the Old Testament asked only for 10 percent, and had Ten Commandments, not ten thousand.
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
For special kink, I will spend this weekend hunting strippers stripers off Block Island. Bleed the fish, cut a chunk out, a little wasabi, and eat the chunks raw at sea temperature with a slug of cold Pacifico. This will excite any normal girlfriend, I promise. Soy sauce interferes with the flavor imo.
If you are in the northeast USA, and not on the water this weekend, you have a bigger problem than Planned Parenthood can solve.
Absent legitimacy it's a sprint to whatever irreducible power center presents itself. As in any other no-rules fight, the violent prevail over the peaceful and the homicidal prevail over the violent. This isn't mere looting, major assets, even national assets, are in play. Mexico for example, one of the most violent countries on earth, is conquering—not merging with, conquering—the southwestern US. National borders are always under control, the only question is by whom, and events are answering that question. We forfeited this essential element of sovereignty by getting wrapped around our own prissy little axle while Mexico and its domestic enablers adapted.
The middle class is the designated prey in all this.
...this time around has been the bleating of moral illiteracy from most of Europe. No European country would countenance a neighboring territory being used as a launch pad to murder its citizens, and every single one of them would make haste to silence the source of fire, whatever it reasonably took. And yet every time Israel does the same, the post-bellicist crowd bows down to the altar of proportionality, accusing Israel of dissing that sacred principle. But would the Eurosheeple really like it any better if Israel responded to Hamas attacks with exact proportionality, by, say, deliberately targeting Palestinian kindergartens and school busses?
I blame the teacher's unions and their resistance to change. I have never had an issue with math. My older son is not very good at it, however. My younger son may be much more proficient than I am. Why are they different?
A few reasons. First, my younger son loves sports and sports analysis. Statistics were something he followed from an early age. My older son did not. Secondly, my older son had different teachers and slightly different math programs. These programs mimicked the comedian's schtick:
The comedian Louis C.K. parodied his daughters’ homework in an appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman”: “It’s like, Bill has three goldfish. He buys two more. How many dogs live in London?”
I had an extremely difficult time helping him learn his math based on the program offered by his school. I was unable to learn the principles they were making him learn, how could I provide any assistance?
My younger son's experience, on the other hand, engaged a teaching method similar to that mentioned in the first four paragraphs of the article. He was using life experience and discussion with friends to learn the basics. The math program he was taught was significantly different from his brother's, the methods similar to those I from which I learned (I know the way I learned math was different from public school kids - my Catholic school was outperforming other local schools on standardized tests for years).
Ultimately, it's important to realize math is the basis of logic and reason. A deficiency in math skills may go a long way to explaining why so many Americans think they can get something for nothing from the government. Common Core may have fine intentions, but its implementation is a disaster, and is heavily politicized. It is unlikely to solve the issues it is designed to fix.
Confessionals like this one can sometimes help those people blessed with sunny dispositions to have some understanding of those unfortunates without such dispositions.
What’s driving the libertarian convergence of our two parties, as described by Edsall and Wehner? In a nutshell, the morality of capitalism has won. All of American life is being transformed by the imperatives of the 21st century global marketplace. The Koch brothers, we read, are “moderating” the Republican party by purging it of its concern with social issues, which are really just reactionary prejudices. Silicon Valley is “moderating” the progressivism of the Democratic party, purging it of policies that stifle growth and innovation by stripping members of the meritocracy of their honestly earned property and money. Impediments to globalization have fallen away, and the results are astonishing. More people than ever have access to the world past and present through what they can call up on their various screens, the average lifespan continues to get longer, and the realm of personal freedom or autonomy, as our Supreme Court explains, continues to grow. More than ever, America is defined by a meritocracy based on productivity. Race, class, gender, sexual orientation, even the imperatives of biology (such as birth and death), and so forth mean less than ever in constraining the opportunities for free and industrious individuals.
This libertarian convergence of opinion is clear in both parties...
Few kids would turn down an Ivy scholarship, but, after your first job out, you are on your own and nobody cares about it anymore except for you and your narcissistic needs. Done right, wonderfully life-enriching, speaking as an older Dartmouth fellow from the era when your Ivy BA meant something; many things, really. Lots of social signalling and networking, because everybody likes a Dartmouth lad (or lassie). Those were the good old days when elitism gave you a leg up in the sport of life. Clubs, jobs, friends, grad school, social acceptance, deals, etc. Of course, being a Col. or above in the US military offered similar perks. Respect.
It reminds me of the oldie, "Don't send my boy to Harvard, the dying mother said, Don't send my boy to Harvard, I'd rather see him dead, but send him to Columbia, or better yet Cornell, but as for Pennsylvan-i-ay I'll see him first in hell."
He begins, In the spring of 2008, I did a daylong stint on the Yale admissions committee...
Is there anything that I can do, a lot of young people have written to ask me, to avoid becoming an out-of-touch, entitled little shit? I don’t have a satisfying answer, short of telling them to transfer to a public university. You cannot cogitate your way to sympathy with people of different backgrounds, still less to knowledge of them. You need to interact with them directly, and it has to be on an equal footing: not in the context of “service,” and not in the spirit of “making an effort,” either—swooping down on a member of the college support staff and offering to “buy them a coffee,” as a former Yalie once suggested, in order to “ask them about themselves.”
The best book sale in New England begins this Friday in Southport, CT. It's good fun, and I have stumbled on some random life-enhancing goodies there.
See ya there. I'll be the goofy jerk with the Cape Cod t-shirt and the 16-gauge baseball cap, and I'll be carryin', of course, so don't try to take my precious book.
Everybody judges you by what you read: read Maggie's Farm.
NYC offers countless sights and countless sensory delights - many of them free (someday I may make a list of our favorites for those readers with vehement New York-ophobia - they just never did NYC right), but we have come to make strolls on the High Line an annual pleasure. This July, the perennial beds were wonderful to see. Why can't we make gardens this interesting at the farm?
Well, I thought the idea of making the High Line trail out of the old elevated railroad which was built to bring animals from the Hudson ferries to the slaughterhouses and meatpacking factories (the now-popular and fashionable Meatpacking District) was foolish was stupid (from the West 30s to Gansevoort St.), but I have been wrong a few times in the past. Only a few times.
10 Great Things About the Burqa,
Politicizing 
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
Chemistry Lessons
Thomas is what's happening today! 
One in 
The power of