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.
Melissa Keith, also of KSU, continued the anti-West, anti-imperialist theme by recycling 1970s feminist theory in her paper titled, "Defining the Erotic Mystical Global Paradigm: From Inanna to the Bhagavad-Gita to Audre Lorde." The feminist discovery of the "wild" (thanks to Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Judy Grahn) dismantled the archetypical story of the West, that of the hero, with God as the patriarch. Lorde's rescuing of the "erotic" from its association with the "pornographic" and overturning--again--the old "dualities" of spirit over nature, was enthusiastically hailed. "Reclaiming" and "renaming" private body parts (this was soon after the Vagina Monologues season, after all) leads to staking out "intellectual space." As for implementation, Keith said teaching the explicit poetry of Judy Grahn in a small class of "mature" students provides "quite an amazing experience."
They seem to be betting that a decided shift in our political culture in the past decade has transformed class envy and save-government-spending demagoguery into a way to win a majority.
My old friend Bob Turner served in Vietnam in various capacities. He then went on to law school and teaches national security law at the University of Virginia, having also headed up that section for the American Bar Association. Want to be impressed? Read his bio at the link of his name above. Below, he writes about the last days of South Vietnam and what brought them about. This is slightly edited from another piece he recently wrote.
Congress did not totally cut off assistance to South Vietnam in 1975; but as a scholar who has been studying and writing about Vietnam for more than forty-five years (who was the last congressional staff member to leave Vietnam during the April 1975 final evacuation), I can assure you that the U.S. Congress was the most decisive factor in the Communist conquest of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975.
To keep things in context, it is important to note that in the post-war era, Hanoi has repeatedly admitted that its leaders made a decision on May 19, 1959, to open the Ho Chi Minh trail and send tens of thousands of soldiers and countless tons of equipment and supplies south to "liberate" South Vietnam by armed force. That was more than 5 years before the U.S. decided to send combat units to Vietnam, and our purpose was precisely the purpose for which we sent troops into South Korea in 1950 -- to uphold the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter and oppose the expansion of Communism by force.
Viet Cong defectors used to laugh and express shock at how successful their campaign to portray the "National Liberation Front" to the west as something other than a classic Leninist "front" organization had been. (Hanoi actually published an English-language translation of the proceedings of the Third Party Congress in 1960, including the resolution it approved calling for "our people" in south Vietnam to set up a front under Party leadership three months before the NLF was allegedly formed by non-Communist resistance leaders in Ben Tre.) American "scholars" who fell for this ruse should be ashamed of themselves.
We went downtown to the Fremont Street Experience. I won't show you the tacky details. Nor will I show you the insides of most of the hotels. Overdone. The street reproduction efforts at the New York, New York, Paris, Venetian are worth a brief stroll. The crowds were too large in front of the Mirage for its Volcano show and in front of Treasure Island for its Pirate show (worth seeing) for me to get any decent photos.
Caeser's Palace has grown and grown since its opening as the first over the top class hotel on the new Strip, as the classic hotels one-by-one were torn down for bigger ones. Here's two shots of inside Caesers. The Atlantis show sunk.
Before going on to the better sides of the Strip, across Las Vegas Blvd. from the Monte Carlo is a 4-story M&M store, filled with kitch, at high price tags. These cylindars are full of different varieties of M&Ms @ $10/lb. Free samples? Yes, just two M&Ms per person!
There were so many grossly obese persons walking the Strip, the boys started calling them M&M people.
I first went to Las Vegas in 1954. Somewhere in my garage are the black-and-white photos I took with my Kodak Brownie. We stayed at the TravelLodge on the Strip, where the Imperial Palace now stands. The Strip ended a short way south from there. Most hotels had a Western theme. Downtown, there was only the Golden Nugget and Fitzgeralds, now the Fremont Experience of lights and tacky. After 5PM, men wore suits or sport jackets, women wore cocktail dresses. Dinner and a show, with top headliners, was $10. All-you-can-eat Prime Rib was $1.99. Gorgeous women in skimpy outfits served free drinks to gamblers. Pit bosses gave free decks of used cards to kids. When my poor family in Detroit migrated to LA in the 1930s, my trusting great-uncle Sam was suckered out of a week's wages, a few dollars, for a tiny parcel of desert land. In the mid-'60s, he got twenty-thousand dollars for it, equal then to two-years of middle-class salary, where the Luxor now stands. For twenty-years I stayed at the Desert Inn, until it was the last of traditional, classy Las Vegas, and haven't returned for 17-years.
Now? Don't ask. OK, I'll tell you anyway. The hotels are humongous and glitzy and expensive. Almost everyone is in jeans and shorts and T-shirts. Has-been shows cost a small fortune. Buffets are $15-$30. There are half as many cocktail waitresses and, really, most are 40-70 years old. One moved so slow, we looked around for her walker. (The pretty young things are off-Strip, like at the Rio.) Used decks of cards have to be bought for $5 or more. Corporate Las Vegas squeezes every penny of costs and dollars out of tourists. Fortunately, always being with my pesky, wandering boys, and my eagle-eyed wife, probably saved several thousand dollars, as I never escaped to the tables.
Early morning and late afternoon is the best time to see and appreciate the desert, as the angles of the sun make colors clearer and shadows more dramatic. This morning we went just west of Las Vegas to Red Rock Canyon. The greater Las Vegas basin once was under an inland ocean, so you can see the strata of sediments on the exposed sides of the hills. Unfortunately, I have an old camera, making the distinctions less clear than from the new fangled digitals, but look closely anyway.
Along the road, we met a friendly burro. I told the boys that is what burritos are made from, and they believed me, for a while anyway.
While I was away last week searching for golden eggs in Las Vegas, my piece about the California Association of Scholars report on the left-leaning eggheads laid by the University of California was widely linked.
About an hour's scenic drive north of Hoover Dam along Lake Mead is the Valley of Fire. In the early morning or late afternoon, the sun really brings out the rock's colorations. There's fascinating rock formations formed by thousands, millions, of years of winds. Like this one: looks like a face.
Or this one, an arch. Weaker sandstone is eroded away, and eventually so will the crest of the arch be and fall.
The family and I spent the past week in Las Vegas. Most visitors don't get far from the Strip, but if they did they'd see some knockout scenery.
Before leaving, Gavin blew away the track at his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.
On the drive to Las Vegas, we stopped in a great '50s diner, Penny's in Barstow, then went over to the Railroad Museum showing some of the trains from Barstow's rail hub history.
On the way back to the highway, we stopped for this memorial to the New York Fire Department heroes who perished in 9-11.
It's still chilly up here in Yankeeland. 30s (F) at night, low 50s at midday. An Irish coffee is good way to begin - or end (or both) a celebratory day.
- 1 or 2 shots of Irish whisky - 1 or 2 tsp brown sugar (I like that crystallized brown sugar called "Sugar in the Raw") - strong, hot fresh coffee - lightly whipped or shaken cream - not fully-whipped cream
Put brown sugar and Irish whisky into a coffee glass, or a wine glass with thick walls. Add hot, strong coffee up to 1 cm (1/3 inch) from the glass rim. (If you are cautious and don't want to risk cracking the glass, leave the spoon in the glass to absorb some of the heat.) Carefully add the lightly whipped cream over the back of a tablespoon.
Alternatively, you can make it the way some Irishmen I knew in NYC did it: Pour 1/3 of your cup of deli take-out coffee into the gutter, and splash some Seagram's 7 into it to fill the cup. Tastes disgusting, but it is warming and the right combo of upper and downer.
Now to marinate our leg of lamb (7 lbs., bone in) overnight. Sounds like Easter dinner, not brunch. Roasting it medium-rare is always a trick, even with the meat thermometer. 130-135 is about right, but the dang thing always keeps cooking after you take it out. Nobody likes brown lamb except the dog.
Professionals use Milorganite for their lawn fertilizing. It is also a good deer-repellant to put on things like Hostas.
It doesn't smell good for a day or two, but it is slow-release (8 weeks), organic, and it cannot burn a lawn. Milwaukee has been producing it since 1925. It is, basically, made from the pee and poo of the population of the great city of Milwaukee. Big eaters and, one might suppose, big poopers.
People from there say they are from "Mwawkee" like people from NYC say they're from "Nyork" or, if from the boroughs, "Nyawk."
Several years ago, my wife purchased a gift card as a Christmas present for my parents. It was for a meal at Rat's Restaurant on the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. My parents used the card 2 years ago, they have since returned twice. Their third visit was two weekends ago, and we joined them. Unfortunately, some personal issues limited our time on the grounds prior to dinner, but for 45 minutes we wandered among the artwork. What we saw was impressive and enjoyable.
The Grounds for Sculpture opened in 1992, the vision of J. Seward Johnson (of the Johnson & Johnson family). He took 42 acres, formerly the NJ State Fairgrounds, and transformed it into part botanical garden and part sculpture garden and museum. Johnson creates some of the work, though most is provided by other artists. It is an eclectic mix of styles, designed to fit within the existing environment, although at times the environment is altered slightly to work with the art.
In 1984, J. Seward Johnson, sculptor and philanthropist, envisioned a public sculpture garden and museum in Hamilton, NJ. His desire was to make contemporary sculpture as an art form more accessible and to offer people from all backgrounds the opportunity to become comfortable with contemporary art. Grounds For Sculpture was conceived as a place where audiences could experience sculpture in a familiar, accessible, and informal setting.
Shelby Steele: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin - The absurdity of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton is that they want to make a movement out of an anomaly. Black teenagers today are afraid of other black teenagers, not whites
Jewish suffering has been universalized into multicultural pablum that has nothing to do with Jews anymore. The hijacking of Jewish history has been so comprehensive that Jews have become the new Nazis in the mythology of multiculturalism. They wear uniforms, don't they. They have a state that they're proud of. And they're fighting against all the Mohammed Merahs who only kill because they haven't gotten their fill of tolerance. Clearly Jews are the new Nazis.
"...for the assembled "news" hounds — the most vaunted gathering of news executives from across the country — it was all very serious swooning. They were like a bunch of dogs in heat." (h/t, Am Digest)
"Central to the Pesach seder is the recounting of the ten plagues. As moderns educated in natural science, the story strikes us as childish, as primitive, as mythological. Yet we may be missing the point of these extraordinary events if we understand it as an ancient superstition. Instead the miracle is a symbol of the spontaneity in history, a faith in the changeability of oppressive regimes. What appears as a historical necessity, a small people subject to a great empire, is revealed as an illusion. God's miraculous intervention in Egypt presents history as an open-textured drama. There is an unpredictable Power present in the universe, the God of surprise.
"Belief in miracle is the basis of the "hope model" of Judaism. Exodus becomes a call to revolutionary hope regardless of the conditions of history. Out of this memory of redemption, they can defy the given conditions. The act of protest against their environment can occur because the Jews possess a memory of the impossible that became possible. The order that people observe in the cosmos and in history, is not irreversible. Tomorrow will not necessarily be like today."
So we repeat:
"In every generation one is obligated to see oneself as one who personally went out from Egypt. Just as it says, 'You shall tell your child on that very day, It's because of this that God did for me when I went out from Egypt.' " (Exodus 13:8)
I've seen some migrating Ospreys in the past couple of days. Heading up along the lakes, rivers, and coasts to their summer cottages.
Ospreys are Fish Hawks. They can handle a big fish once they get to carrying it aerodynamically, but they have been known to be drowned by latching onto really big ones.
Thus (obviously) if you are 20 lbs. overweight, your knees experience it as equivalent to an 80 lb. backpack - plus the normal effect of the rest of your ideal weight. Knees were not designed for 80-lb. backpacks 24 hrs./day. Over years, the damage increases of course until, one sad day, you finally begin to feel the accumulated damage.
...individuals who lost 10 lbs. would be subject to a total of 48,000 less pounds of pressure for every mile walked.
Walking when overweight is brutal to knees and, from the knee point of view, probably is to be minimized until losing weight. Driving is kinder. Being carried by slaves in a litter is even better because it is kinder to Gaia.
Besides trauma (eg accidents, athletic injuries, athletic overuse and related overuse as in dance), extra weight is the main cause or exacerbation of knee arthritis. It's all about gravity and the pounding your knees take with every step.
Unless the idea of knee replacement appeals to you, the kindest thing you can do for your knees (or your hips, for that matter), is to lose weight - or to be carried around town. Or, like you see in WalMart, maybe Medicare will buy you a $25,000 electric wheelchair.
Americans eat too much, and far too many carbs than is good for them. (Soon, I'll repost the Dr. Bliss diet which I follow diligently to stay under 130 - plus lots of athletics. It is essentially carb-free, except at Birthday Parties and special occasions. Absolutely no fruit allowed - fruit is sugar and a sugary dessert, and there is nothing "healthy" about it.) Here are some links about weight and arthritis.
One of the highly developed talents of President Barack Obama is the ability to say things that are demonstrably false, and make them sound not only plausible but inspiring.
Our Dicentra is beginning to bloom right now. Early, this year. The plants begin to bloom as soon as they are out of the ground. No plant shoots up as quickly, and it's almost too early to enjoy their brief period of glory. Not counting the early bulbs, Dicentra is our first bloomer.
By August, the plant will wither up into nothing. Early-bloomers do that.
More about Bleeding Hearts here. The wild, native woodland version is white.
While Bird Dog searches for eggs on his lawn today, here’s a few he may miss:
Sometimes It Takes Money to Make Money (From Insurance Fraud)
Allan Bloom
Andrew McCarthy: 
Tonight is the first night of Passover, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 also began on Passover.
Each 
How Do We Fall Asleep?