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.
Good video with an IHop owner in Ohio, at Q and O.
He says, interestingly, that his restaurant business profits an average of $3000 per year per employee. Obamacare would put him to -$4000 per employee. Out of business.
In the 20 years to 2010, he gave 2,045 concerts, according to the fan site ExpectingRain.com, where you can study the setlist for every one of those nights. In April he will play in Singapore, Australasia and—if Beijing lets him in, after rebuffing him last year—China. In the summer he is expected in Europe. Not for nothing are his wanderings known as the Never Ending Tour.
and
His predicament raises the opposite question: how does it feel to be so known? Dylan gives an answer in “Chronicles”. “The big bugs in the press kept promoting me as the mouthpiece, spokesman, or even conscience of a generation. That was funny...I was more a cowpuncher than a Pied Piper...I really was never any more than what I was—a folk musician who gazed into the grey mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze...I wasn’t a preacher performing miracles. It would have driven anybody mad.” Maybe that is his achievement: to have stayed sane.
Bob's Where are you tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat) from the under-rated and garage-recorded Street Legal (1978):
There's a long-distance train rolling through the rain, tears on the letter I write. There's a woman I long to touch and I miss her so much but she's drifting like a satellite. There's a neon light ablaze in this green smoky haze, laughter down on Elizabeth Street And a lonesome bell tone in that valley of stone where she bathed in a stream of pure heat. Her father would emphasize you got to be more than street-wise but he practiced what he preached from the heart. A full-blooded Cherokee, he predicted to me the time and the place that we'd part.
There's a babe in the arms of a woman in a rage And a longtime golden-haired stripper onstage And she winds back the clock and she turns back the page Of a book that no one can write. Oh, where are you tonight?
Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start - and no one seems to have noticed.
On April 8, a group he's funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros's goal for such an event is to "establish new international rules" and "reform the currency system." It's all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order."
We don't know what we are doing. We only know that we have moral support for it on paper, from an international organization that is utterly corrupt, wherein members who do not wish us well are pleased to grant us permission to blunder.
In 2000, Elizabeth Taylor was recognized by Queen Elizabeth as a “Dame”, the equivalent of knighthood.Like a good Dame, she lived her life fully, with gusto and passions. Today, at 79, her heart gave out. Before then, it stood firmly with Israel.
In 1959, Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism. Some said at the time it was because of her marriage to famous Jewish entertainer Eddie Fisher.Elizabeth Taylor denied that, saying she had been long attracted to Judaism. During and following her marriage to Fisher, Elizabeth Taylor was unwavering in her support for Israel.
The Zionist Organization of America issued this eulogy:
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) mourns the passing of legendary American actress and ardent Zionist, Elizabeth Taylor, who has passed away, aged 79. Ms. Taylor, who enjoyed a long and hugely successful career in Hollywood, was converted to Judaism in 1959 by the Rabbi Max Nussbaum, who served as National President of the ZOA from 1964 to 1966.
Among Elizabeth Taylor’s outstanding work on behalf of Israel and Jewish causes was her participating in raising $840,000 for Israel in a 1967 London gala and purchasing personally $100,000 in Israel Bonds in 1959. The same year, she cancelled a visit to Moscow after the Soviet Union lashed out at Israel after the June 1967 Six Day War. In 1975, she was one of 60 prominent women to sign a statement to then-U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, condemning the U.N. General Assembly’s infamous Zionism-is-Racism resolution. Taylor offered herself as a hostage when 104 hostages aboard an Air France airbus were hijacked by PLO terrorists and held at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport, from which they rescued in a spectacular Israeli commando mission on July 4, 1976, America’s 200th birthday. Taylor frequently visited Israel and met with its leadership, including Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1983. In 1987, she signed a petition seeking the release from Soviet incarceration of leading refusenik, Ida Nudel.
...there is also a school of philosophers — in fact, perhaps the majority school — who consider free will compatible with their definition of determinism. These compatibilists believe that we do make choices, even though these choices are determined by previous events and influences. In the words of Arthur Schopenhauer, “Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”
A friend who recently moved to New England from Texas asked me for a few good long-weekend getaway spots (to get away from their kids for romance, with good food and good hiking, regardless of season). It's important to couples to get away from it all - daily life routine, internet, rug rats, dogs, - to refresh the relationship.
I don't really like to stay in an inn without a fireplace in the room, but off the top of my head, I offered these (with a range of luxuriousness), although I am sure readers have their own lists of favorites:
What is needed is a renewed humility. We are not the masters of the sources of happiness; they ever elude the appointments we make with them, springing up when we least expect them and fleeing when we would hold them close. The excessive ambition to expunge all that is weak or broken in body or mind, to control moods and states of soul, sadness, chagrin, moments of emptiness—all this runs up against our finitude, against the inertia of the human species, which we cannot manipulate like some raw material. We have the power to avoid or to heal certain evils, yes, but we cannot order happiness as if it were a meal in a restaurant.
The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.
Readers know that, much as I value whatever joy and contentment come my way, I find "happiness" difficult to define and, furthermore, do not view it as a particularly meaningful or important goal of life as if is often defined. For example, if performing painful or sacrificial duties is what is satisfying to you, then how can you construct a universal definition of "happiness" when the word may mean "ease and comfort" to another person?
Sometimes I think morality is purely culturally-defined, and sometimes I think there is "natural law." Most of the time I simply try to adhere to God via the Ten Commandments and Christ's teachings (Mark 12:28):
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
If you are a Christian, those are the revealed word of God. If not, they are cultural. I know when I have done wrong because I feel guilt and shame. Sometimes I feel guilt and shame even when I haven't transgressed in any meaningful way. That's me, not God.
Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Khadafy has "lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead." Such boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Khadafy lose his people's confidence? When did he have legitimacy?
All over the developed world, nations are coming to terms with the fact that the social-democratic welfare state is turning out to be untenable. The reason is partly institutional: The administrative state is dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety. The reason is also partly cultural and moral: The attempt to rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility has undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government. But, in practice, it is above all fiscal: The welfare state has turned out to be unaffordable, dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.
Sipp found this little ad for Whistler-Blackcomb, and I'm sure our kids and the friends we skiied with there will recognize the spots. Best skiing I've ever had, with fresh powder daily.
After a couple of days, we tended toward the Blackcomb side, but maybe partly because they had closed the very top of Whistler for dynamiting for avalanches. Cool. We did have fun skiing off a cliff and landing in powder over our heads. Sheesh. That was good for some giggles (later), trying to find one's poles and hats, etc.
Sipp correctly identified the video as "tilt-shift." That's new term to me.
I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. What a beauty of a bird feeder it was, I reflected as I filled it lovingly with seed. First came the chickadees and then within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food.
But then the birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the table, and next to the barbecue.
Then came the poop. It was everywhere: on the patio tile, the chairs, the table. Everywhere!
Then some of the birds turned mean. They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even though I had fed them out of my own pocket.
Other birds were boisterous and loud. They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed at all hours of the day and demanded that I fill it when it got low on food.
After a while, I couldn't even sit on my own back porch anymore. So I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio.
Soon, the back yard was like it used to be: quiet and serene.
Now let's see. Our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be an automatic citizen.
Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands. Suddenly, our taxes went up to pay for free services; small apartments are housing 5 families; and you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor. Your child's 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn't speak English.
Corn flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to 'press one' to hear my bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than 'Old Glory' are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more rights and free liberties.
Just my opinion, but maybe it's time for the government to take down the bird feeder.
Photo is from Best Nest, the official Maggie's Farm-endorsed source for bird houses and bird feeders
My Lenten discipline this year focuses on gratitude.
I am disappointed by my tendency to get exasperated whenever something goes wrong in life, while taking for granted the 99.9% of things that go OK. For example, car goes 125,000 miles and provides a good service. Needs a new transmission? "Sh-t. Dammit. What a pain." Unexpected problems are always cropping up.
It's as if I carry some implicit expectation, hidden in the back of my mind, that life is or should be smooth and go right all the time. A sort of infantile utopian assumption probably partly engendered by growing up safe and comfortable in America in the 20th Century. It's a flaw, and I plan on going to war against it with gratitude for everything that goes well. For example, the fact that my heart continues to beat steadily and miraculously while I accept - and expect - that it cannot do so indefinitely.
Given time, some things will always go wrong or not work out well. When I am forced to be honest with myself, many of the things that go wrong are at least partly my own damn fault anyway, due to laziness, stubborness, poor judgement, boneheaded or wrong impulses, lack of planning, character defects, stupidity, ignorance, etc.
It's the opposite of the Wild Turkey phenomenon. People tell me that Turkey hunting must be easy, because they see Turkeys all the time. I remind them of all the times they don't see Turkeys - and tell them that's what most Turkey hunting is like.
The only thing surprising to me is that the Islamists have been emboldened so fast. I thought they would be cautious a while longer in their pretense at being moderate and pro-democracy. But revolutionary Islamists quickly become arrogant when people make concessions to them and they conclude that they are strong and victorious.
One of my staunchly Conservative brethren at church today (all are my brethren, regardless of their politics) was adamantly opposed to American intervention in a Libyan civil war, or uprising, or whatever the heck it is.
Naturally, we Americans are being labeled "Crusaders." Not an insulting label in my view (because I view the Crusades as an effort to push back against the Moslem invasion and occupation of the Holy Land which closed it off to pilgrims), but I think it's a roll of the dice, maybe too late, partly designed to prove Obama's - or Hillary's - masculine bona fides.
War is always interesting, horror that it is. I do not know whether this all makes sense or not. Latest update: Allied Forces Attack Libya. That article leaves me confused about goals and purposes, but I am not too smart and have never claimed to be.
Our Commander in Chief is partying in Rio but he knows nothing about military matters so it doesn't make any difference. The Libs are having a fit, and the Arabs suddenly are not pleased either.
Now back to yard and farm chores. Spring is coming, and I see the feisty Redwings at my bird-feeder. Lots to get done here to fend off entropy and nature's relentless rebellion against man's efforts to make things his way.
Squaw Valley got 76 inches of new powder snow in the past seven days and snow is expected to continue all week. 190 inch base; 570 cumulative inches for the season.
"Another 14-18" overnight is going to make for an amazing day on the mountain. The season snowfall total has already surpassed 500" [now 570"] guaranteeing spectacular spring conditions and powder for this week.
Weather experts are predicting more snow for a Miracle March and abundant coverage into May." Current report here.
Sugar Bowl to the immediate north has a 287" base.
What's the catch? Interstate 80 is closed from Applegate (on the Western slope) to the Nevada state line due to zero visibility, and most of the lifts are closed due to wind and snow!
Many have already read George Will's fine essay, Pencils and Politics. It's a brief intro to Econ 101. A quote:
Producing this simple, mundane device is, Ruth says, "an achievement on the order of a jazz quartet improvising a tune when the band members are in separate cities." An unimpressed student says, "So a lot of people work on a pencil. What's the big deal?" Ruth responds: Who commands the millions of people involved in making a pencil? Who is in charge? Where is the pencil czar?
Her point is that markets allow order to emerge without anyone imposing it. The "poetry of the possible" is that things are organized without an organizer.
Yes, it's the miracle (or poetry, or spontaneous order) of markets and the free flow of goods and services. Read the whole thing. Another quote:
The spontaneous emergence of social cooperation the emergence of a system vastly more complex, responsive and efficient than any government could organize is not universally acknowledged or appreciated. It discomforts a certain political sensibility, the one that exaggerates the importance of government and the competence of the political class.
When I think of trade and markets, I think of the paleolithic (500,000 years ago) trade in amber (for jewelry) and flint (for tools). Scandinavian amber being found in Italy. Or obsidian from Idaho being found in Indian sites on Long Island.
But when I think of pencils, I think of the Thoreau Pencil which, in the 1830s, was the finest pencil made in America. Thoreau supported himself during most of his life by working at that Pencil Factory. There is no reason to think that he enjoyed a minute of that work, but everybody has to make money.
We have to give Henry David Thoreau credit for this, though: He was a practical Civil Engineer and inventor and not just a dreamy transcendentalist with a love for nature and a way with words.
Still sane? Dylan turns 70 in May, and is still on the road. From 
Prelutsky: 
Bruckner subtitles his essay in City Journal: 
I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it with seed. What a beauty of a bird feeder it was, I reflected as I filled it lovingly with seed. First came the chickadees and then within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food. 
My Lenten discipline this year focuses on gratitude. 
Many have already read George Will's fine essay,