Maggie's Farm

Surber. Rightly so. It's about time this was officially recognized.

Now let's separate church and state.

To speak, in contemporary society, of art and beauty in the same sentence, much less as realities integrally involved with one another, is to risk being laughed at. Perhaps Hans-Georg Gadamer was the first to theorize systematically how we must understand the aesthetic as a category of being or a mode of analysis independent of any talk of the beautiful, but his argument was founded on, and in redress of, the suspicion popular since the eighteenth century that beauty is a mere matter of subjective feeling or opinion; and so also were the fine arts believed to be, but they belonged to a different class of subjective phenomena. As such, chatter about beauty could be cast off as either manipulative rhetoric for the seduction of women or the expression of vain, vague, nostalgic longings for rustic landscapes, while talk of the aesthetic could remain serious—indeed, humorless—even as it grew impermeable to rational explanation and debate. We could trace a historical graph of the past couple of centuries showing that the falling fortunes of the idea of beauty bear an inverse relation to the ever more lofty or “professionalized” reputation of art and aesthetics: a yawning separation so great that the advent of cultural studies has made possible serious formal discussion, subsidized by extensive bureaucratic institutions, of some very unserious “art,” during which any reference to the standards or reality of beauty would be, at best, a cause of embarrassment and, at worst, occasion for an intricately formulated debunking of one more “bourgeois ideology.”

Read the whole good, thoughtful thing when you can find the time. It isn't a quick read. Links above.

Paul Mirengoff poses this one:

I have suggested, in connection with President Obama's dealings with Russia, that to call him a fool is to give him the benefit of the doubt. For Obama's hat-in-hand approach to Russia assumes that the thuggish, autocratic, expansionist Russian regime is more sinned against than sinning in its relations with the U.S. If Obama believes this, he is anti-American; If he doesn't believe this but elects to act as if it were so, then he is a fool.

Several views of the Bob Dylan Christmas album at Walking. I think Bob just does what he feels like doing, with a healthily quirky, inner-directed take it or leave it attitude. But I might be wrong.

Toon via S,C&A:

Our friend Right Wing Prof is now blogging about his cancer diagnosis - and even about where he might want to be buried - at his other site: Central Pennsylvania Orthodox.

God bless him for doing that.

Yesterday:

Roxbury (pop. 2300) in southern Litchfield County is one of the most pleasant exurban towns (among many) in CT. It's far enough north to be beyond NYC commuting distance, but it's a good distance for a weekend home - and every wealthy American urban Lefty deserves his dacha.

Roxbury has plenty of old farmhouses, barns, and well-maintained horsey estates with white-painted fences, but even it has been contaminated by some grandiose new construction over the past 20 years. Marilyn Monroe lived there during her hook-up with Arthur Miller. He may have suited her for a little while, but I doubt that Roxbury, or the Roxbury Congregational Church, were her cup of tea. Not that she ever knew what she needed...

The 1850 farmhouse pictured above on 4.5 acres is asking 1.9 million. (I would be inclined to get rid of that big old Norway Spruce on the front corner. People always planted those gloomy trees too close to their houses.) 

More Roxbury listings here.

Revelation 21:1-6a

21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

21:2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them;

21:4 he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away."

21:5 And the one who was seated on the throne said, "See, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true."

21:6a Then he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry. Dylan's great song performed by Jerry Garcia, 1985:

Dede Scozzafava releases her voters! She is essentially dropping out.

This should give Hoffman an edge since she is, nominally, a Repub and (was) the pick of the County Repub Chair.

Our blog pal Right Wing Prof just got bad medical news. I don't even know his real name, but God does.

He emailed me the serious details, but I won't post them. Please include him in a prayer today.

Send him a few bucks today, if you like him. Every little bit helps, and it looks to be tight. Plus the race has become nationalized: The O did a fund-raiser in NYC for the Dem in the race, and the RNC finally took down their ads against Hoffman.

We would like to see this modest, non-pol, Reagan-Conservative Republican guy elected.

From Sexy Witch:

The Englishman has, as have many of our friends.

Tell us what hunting you have done this fall (not including pen-raised birds or half-trained farm Mallards - that isn't hunting - that is shooting. Not that there is anything wrong with it.)

Halloween witch above courtesy of Theo

High-end home stagers.

The sad strange life of Bobby Fischer

"Sustainability" Wars on campus.

A new housing bubble? Your government is working on it.

The guy who filmed the world's last hunter-gatherers

Story begins like this:

Last week it was announced that George Soros (the man who helped bring us Obama) had pledged $1.1 billion to fund “Climate Change initiatives”.

“Soros will establish the Climate Policy Initiative, an organization that will work with the US, China, India, Brazil and Europe and ensure that public interests are represented as new issues that affect climate change are established. According to Thomas Holler, who will lead the initiative, “It will be part advisory service, part policy developer and part watchdog.”

What a coincidence !!

That will tie in nicely with this: Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty, Claims British Lord (see video and red text below) – in December President Obama will fly off to Copenhagen again, this time to put his signature onto a document which effectively establishes a New World Government, based on “Climate Change” – formerly known as “global warming”.

Imus was never too impressed, but now he is getting a bit rough on Obama:

Because the President is a whiny little titty baby and a girly man and doesn't have enough guts to figure out what to do in Afghanistan, he's going to take on, what — Fox News and get his ass kicked there?

It's fun to check in with HawkCount and to explore their site to see what people are seeing during our wonderful raptor migration season.

Image is one of my favorites: The rugged, late-migrating Rough-Legged Hawk.