Maggie's Farm

It depends on your precise definition of crash blossoms, (presumably from the old headline "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms") but I did like some of these headlines offered in the comments:

Obama’s ad buys dwarf TV presence of McCain

British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

Prostitutes appeal to Pope

Marines beat off 500 Viet Cong

Reagan Nose Pimple Skin Cancer

Mrs. BD was determined to help me put Antoni Gaudi in perspective and to appreciate his work. That was her goal for our visit to Barcelona (my goal was some good tapas). She pretty much succeeded in hers, as did I in mine.

Her point is that Gaudi was very much in a Spanish tradition, and especially in a Spanish/Moorish Beaux Arts, Art Nouveau tradition. Just exaggerated in what I term a hallucinogenic manner. Barcelona has tons of unusual and exotic-looking architecture. My arm was twisted to take the tour of Gaudi's Casa Batllo (below) - but just check out the oddness of the townhouse next door which pre-existed the Gaudi house:

I guess Gaudi was a sort of half-crazy genius. He certainly got his math and engineering right. His Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) church, far from completion, is already - and rightly - one of the wonders of the world in its material evocation of the grandeur of God:

We did our exploring of Barcelona by buying a bus pass and a map. We probably walked 5 miles, which is fine with me. Love walking around places. Mrs. BD temperamentally doesn't mind getting lost at all, and we did. It's fun for her. I hate it. I have been lost in the Maine woods and other woods too, and it just does not agree with me. It's just one more of my numerous weaknesses.

More of my photos of Barcelona architecture, etc., below the fold -

Eze is a tiny medieval village perched on top of a 1400' rock overlooking the Med, between Nice and Monaco. The old castle on top that protected the town from invading Moors - not always successfully - was knocked down by the French in 1706 during the War of Spanish Succession. A shame that they did that, but it was a military decision and those guys were not thinking about my tourist interests.

From the small modern town of Eze, you have to walk up the old donkey roads to the village, which mostly consists of miniature shops tucked into the medieval houses. There is also the famous 5-Star 10-room hotel, Chateau Eza. I am told one must make reservations 1-2 years in advance.

Go for that reservation, readers! Carpe diem!

Nietszche and George Sand were big fans of Eze. Nothing not to like, except the prices: the fine-looking olive wood cutting boards and bread baskets were 200 E. I passed.

 More of my photos of Eze below -

Prehistoric sat-nav in England.

Gwynnie tells me that our western Indians did the same with petroglyphs, but I do not have the links.

Amost everybody likes to go places without getting lost. I got lost in Barcelona, but it's not like really being lost when there's a cafe and tapas joint nearby.

h/t, Bits and Pieces:

The pleasant village of Eze (tomorrow's photos) lies right between Nice and the strange, elegant, tax-dodging and mega-yacht haven of Monaco which, as I understand it, is supported by gambling. No taxes. I never went to the Casino. Not my cuppa tea. Not a Yankee sort of thing - except as a rare goof.

A few of my random shots of Monaco and Monte Carlo below -

I was fortunate to attend a private party at which New Orleans' Sonny Landreth played this weekend. A few guys wore their Rock and Bowl bowling shirts: you don't see those too often up here. Mr. Landreth performs at Rock and Bowl regularly.

I guess slide-guitarist Landreth can play anything, but he does like to rock the blues with a Louisiana twist. He's the kind of guy who is in the music, not the audience. Here's a Youtube, with the band he plays with now. He writes songs and sings too, but not on this piece in which he sings through his guitar. Turn your volume to max:

"Ask yourself as you start your day, "Are you incorporating God into your plan?".
And if you are, then why are you not incorporating yourself into God's plan?"

via Slower Pace

How did I get stuck with this link job this weekend? Oh well, there's no heavy-lifting, and I spent all day doing garden and yard work. 

The O goes for the Full Ginsberg. It has never worked before. It makes you look desperate.

Right-wingers killed the Kennedys? That's news to me. This is nuts. JFK was killed by a Cuba-linked Commie, and RFK by some sort of Moslem fanatic. No, it was not "you and me" despite the doubtless deep wisdom of Mick Jagger.

50 things that are getting killed by the internet

The Dark side of cooperation

 Update on the global fisheries. h/t, Jungleman

Unbelievable: Albright to Russians: The US wants to be weaker. What's up with that? Is weakness a way to try to get love?

Insty:

SO IF, AS MICHELLE OBAMA SAYS, women are “crushed” under our health care system, then how come they live longer than men?

A Canadian doc: I quit when they put doctors under state control.

Related: 56% now oppose Obamacare, whatever it is.

Race-bait as we say, not as we do. Jules

ACORN and the Catholic church: A legacy of big hearts and small brains

Did you see Chris Wallace's comment on his treatment by the WH? He is not amused.

Taxing the heck out of the poor and the middle class. And everybody else, too. We are supposed to want to slave for our wise masters in Washington. I am happy to work at any job at all - I can dig a ditch, cut down trees, carry rocks, push a wheelbarrow, or drive a tractor all day - but I do not like to work for those jokers. They are the Maggie's Farm we have trouble with.

Related: Medved on the two attitudes towards America. I think it's correct.

What Socialism will do for you: California's 12.2% unemployment. Why work?

Re Russia, Lowry with A Masterstroke of Weakness. Most nations only respect power, whether you like it or not.

The autumn hawk migration has begun around here. It's a wonderful phenomenon.

I had a Red-Shouldered (as in photo) high overhead this morning, but on the hills in September you can find "kettles" of Broad Wings - possibly our most commonly-seen fall migrant hawk on the Atlantic Flyway, circling as they ride the morning thermals up to catch a long free, coasting ride south until they reach the next thermal updraft.

The identification of raptors is difficult, and I have no skill at it but I have a couple of pals who are. Like so many things, you have to learn from an expert: a book is almost useless because hawks are almost always seen in flight and, during migration, usually at fairly high altitudes so you only have a profile and, perhaps, a flight style. Furthermore, many migrants are immature first-year birds without the mature plumage.

The species pass by in phases. In late October and November come the most interesting ones: rugged birds like eagles, Goshawks, and Rough Leggeds.

I easily identified my passing Red Shouldered because of the "windows" in his wings.

(Speaking of migration, I have seen almost no migrating Monarch butterflies this year. In fact, far fewer butterflies in the gardens all summer than usual. Missed them because, in my view, butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds are part of the vitality and fun of gardens.)

As you know, Irving Kristol died yesterday at 89.

Memorandum has a good selection of essays on Kristol's life this morning.

From a WSJ piece, this was from a 1975 Kristol WSJ commentary:

Symbolic Politics and Liberal Reform, Dec. 15, 1972

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," wrote Oscar Wilde, and I would like to suggest that the same can be said for bad politics. . . .

It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves. Indeed, the outstanding characteristic of what we call "the New Politics" is precisely its insistence on the overwhelming importance of revealing, in the public realm, one's intense feelings—we must "care," we must "be concerned," we must be "committed." Unsurprisingly, this goes along with an immense indifference to consequences, to positive results or the lack thereof.

Roger Kimball's piece yesterday quotes this bit from Kristol:

The truth is that ideas are all-important. The massive and seemingly solid institutions of any society — the economic institutions, the political institutions, the religious institutions — are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions. The leverage of ideas is so immense that a slight change in the intellectual climate can and will — perhaps slowly but nevertheless inexorably — twist a familiar institution into an unrecognizable shape.

Footsteps of Angels

When the hours of Day are numbered,
And the voices of the Night
Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
To a holy, calm delight;

Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And, like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful firelight
Dance upon the parlor wall;

Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved, the true-hearted,
Come to visit me once more;

He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell and perished,
Weary with the march of life!

They, the holy ones and weakly,
Who the cross of suffering bore,
Folded their pale hands so meekly,
Spake with us on earth no more!

And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.

With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes that messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine.

And she sits and gazes at me
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.

Uttered not, yet comprehended,
Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,
Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
Breathing from her lips of air.

Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
All my fears are laid aside,
If I but remember only
Such as these have lived and died!

It's a nice little village between Nice and Monaco. Might be painless to spend a few days there sometime. (We were on the lowest of the two or three mountain roads - the road Grace Kelly died on.)

Steaming past the Golf de Roses on the Costa Brava, at cocktail hour. I do not know what that UFO was.

In old Nice. Taxes are so high there, and incomes so low, everybody rides Organdonorcycles:

We buzzed through Nice on a round-about visit to Ese a couple of weeks ago. I bought a container of French framboises (smaller and less sweet than American supermarket raspberries, but possibly more intense flavor), and Mrs. BD bought some candied figs to snack on.

This is no cute Farmer's Market: it's the market. Meat and cheese and butter and breads and everything else you need to make a decent French meal. Here are the grapes and various varieties of figs:

A little more of beautiful Nice below:

I am still catching up on some of the abundance of Maggie's posts from the couple of weeks while I was away. Did you read Dr. Bliss' My School, Part 1 and Part 2?

I just did. Interesting - and inspiring. You have to spend big bucks to get this sort of exciting and demanding secondary education in America, because the unions now own the public schools, and people like her Headmaster would or could never get a public school teaching certificate.

Why anyone would need college after that is beyond me. (Well, I know...you supposedly need the piece of paper.) College used to be "higher education" for the most highly-motivated, serious scholars who were totally turned on by learning and ideas. Am I Rip Van Winkle?

What happened while I dozed?

Photo: Old little red schoolhouse in Westport, CT, where the kids learned more than they do today.

Breitbart's Big Government site sure launched with a bang. The ACORN team visits California. For those who have not been following the story, this is not satire.

The MSM doesn't want to touch this, because the O served as ACORN's legal counsel, as I understand it. And/or leadership trainer, etc. Beck says ACORN and SEIU are joined at the hip.

For more ACORN fun for you hungry squirrels, former ACORN employee Anita Moncrief discussed ACORN corruption. (fixed). This is an old tape.

Update: Now it appears that the lady may have been pulling their legs. That makes more sense, because her game was just as outrageous as Jim's.

Does anybody use these sorts of lens cleaning pens?

If not, what do you use?

The Pisa Mountains, on the road to Lucca in the Arno valley. It's too hazy to see Pisa in the distance.

Via Moonbattery:

The current left-wing position on death panels would appear to be: "Death Panels are a horrible, wonderful idea and you racist Republicans should be ashamed for claiming they were in the bill, which they should be." Which is actually more coherent than the usual leftist government in favor of government health care, which is "Republicans are racists."

Indeed, I see a serious Ageism problem at work here which has been neglected, even while I acknowledge Maureen Dowd's doubtless accurate view that any debate about any of the O's notions is nothing but covert racism. Man, she is so perceptive.

Does music get more dramatic than this? Via a piece at Right Wing Prof:

Managed to find my way to the delightful town of Lucca two weeks ago, the home of the beloved Jack Puccini and his illustrious musical ancestors. More than a tunesmith - but what a tunesmith. Here's his family church in which he first performed:

 and here's the house he grew up in (second one in from the right corner):

 More Lucca photos later...plus lunch, of course.