Maggie's Farm

Matthew 4:1-11 (King James)

1Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

 2And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.

 3And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.

 4But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

 5Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,

 6And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.

 7Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

 8Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;

 9And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

 10Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

 11Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

We dedicate this piece to all of those who are still seething about McCain. This will soothe the injured heart: Anderson and Roe piano duo with Saint-Saens' The Swan. (h/t, Classical Virtuoso)

Re-posted from our archives:

There seem to be Bellow fans and Nabokov fans. I'd have to place myself among the Nabokov, but only because I've read more of his. Lolita's fame - more the fame of shock value than the literary - is probably undeserved. Are older guys attracted to younger women sometimes? Indeed. Historically, it was not uncommon for girls/women to be married at Lolita's age. From the NYT:

Legal considerations aside, not everyone took to the book. Edmund Wilson was repulsed; like many, he had trouble untangling author and narrator. Evelyn Waugh thought the novel without merit, except as smut. (On which count it was "highly exciting." To E. M. Forster those same pages were "rather a bore.") Rebecca West found the novel labored and ugly, a diluted blend of Peter de Vries and S. J. Perelman. Worse, she found in "Lolita" a great deal of Dostoyevsky, whom Nabokov abhorred.

Hmmm. I'd tend to take the Rebecca West comment as a compliment. Anyway, read entire Lolita update in the NYT.

"At bottom, the ordinary is not ordinary; it is extraordinary."

Martin Heidegger

Poet and critic Adam Kirsch discusses the metaphysics of modern poetry in an essay titled The Taste of Silence. A quote:

...Heidegger, more than any other philosopher, looked to poetry as a model of what thinking should be. He used individual poems, especially the hymns of Hölderlin, to help explicate his own ideas about nature, technology, art, and history. He constantly dwelled on the mysteries of language and translation, how the way we name things can reveal and conceal their essence. And he himself approached writing in a poetic spirit. We usually think of philosophy, especially German philosophy, as being written in dry, awkward jargon. But Heidegger's writing, though difficult, is deeply creative: he uses nouns as verbs and verbs as nouns, puns on etymologies, and even plays with spelling, all in an effort to jar the reader out of conventional ways of reading and thinking.

All this makes it natural that writers and theorists of language look to Heidegger. But in "The Origin of the Work of Art," he issues a particular invitation to poets, arguing that poetry is in some way the model for all other art forms, and the exemplary activity of human beings. The poet, he writes, "uses the word—not, however, like ordinary speakers and writers who have to use them up, but rather in such a way that the word only now becomes and remains truly a word." Like Emerson, that is, Heidegger regards poetry as the truest form of language, and most language as merely defective poetry. "The nature of poetry," he goes so far as to declare, "is the founding of truth." 

Read the whole thing in Poetry 

From Building a Shed (h/t, Theo). It begins:

This week I have been mostly engaged in helping my old mate Colin build a shed. I'm enjoying it immensely; it's honest, manly toil with cement mixer and saw in pursuit of erecting an honest, manly structure wherein honest and manly things may be done.

The tale brought to mind the interview with Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson:

Francisco Barrera, 1643. I would like this painting hanging over my dining room mantle.

Some good Maggie's Farm pals, last week.

We recently mentioned that the Three Basic Food-groups consist of Chips, Dip, and Beer. Mr. Free Market reminds us of the competing paradigm: Alcohol, Nicotine, and Coffee.

"Pick your poison," says I. And If I followed the Federal government's Food Pyramid (image), I would weigh 300 lbs. 

"6-11 servings of bread, cereal, wheat, rice or pasta"? Sheesh.

His new record, Dirt Farmer, is up for a Grammy. If you are in the neighborhood, his band (with Larry Campbell) will be performing in Woodstock, NY, tonight. This video from a recent performance on the Don Imus radio show.

Here are some good and bad ideas.

Of course, roses and nice diamonds are never wrong, but if the evil greedy bank is in process of repossessing your trailer or your houseboat, you should consider a Gift Subscription to Maggie's Farm Online Edition!

The price is right, and we offer year-long mental, spiritual, and physical stimulation rather than the ephemeral pleasure of a rose. And we are sexy, too.

[T]he general welfare--the common good--requires that government be limited. Government's responsibility is primary when the questions involve defending the nation from attack and subversion, protecting people from physical assaults and various other forms of depredation, and maintain public order. In other ways, however, its role is subsidiary: to support the work of families, religious communities, and other civil institutions of civil society that shoulder the primary burden of forming upright and decent citizens, caring for those in need, encouraging people to meet their responsibilities to one another while also discouraging them from harming themselves or others

Governmental respect for individual freedom and the autonomy of nongovernmental spheres of authority is, then, a requirement of political morality. Government must not try to run people's lives or usurp the roles and responsibilities of families, religious beliefs, and other character-and-culture-forming authoritative communities. The usurpation of the just authority of families, religious communities, and other institutions is unjust in principle, often seriously so, and the record of big government in the twentieth century--even when it has not degenerated into vicious totalitarianism--shows that it does little good in the long run and frequently harms those it seeks to help.

Robert P. George in "Law and Moral Purpose" at First Things (h/t, Evangelical Outpost)

Retiring from the field with dignity. What Mitt could have done differently:  Halprin. A good man. By the way, McCain's CPAC speech today was good, whether you believe him or not, he said all the right things.

Moslem tennis star in trouble. They don't like her legs, but they look fine to me.

Archbishop Moonbat:  "..Dr Williams says the argument that "there's one law for everybody… I think that's a bit of a danger". Blue Crab. Where do churches find such spineless wimps who will only stand up for suicide? The Archbishop should refresh his memory on Sharia.

Bobby the Jew? Look at the names of these goombas.

Warming is good. Coyote.

Speaking of Moslem women, the CharmingBurkha breaks no Koranic rules

Will pharmaceuticals make a more-authentic you?

LaShawn takes a look at Bartlett's Wrong on Race

Exxon's taxes. Exxon paid more taxes than the bottom 50% of American taxpayers. Of course, that tax $ they paid came out of my 401K, didn't it? So, really, I paid Exxon's taxes because it's a public company.

"What is it about business success that turns so many retired executives into socialists?" View from 1776

Tim Blair's recovery update

Even the NYT is beginning to print some global warming hysteria doubts

What's the future of AOL? Does anyone care?

Is there a human right not to be offended? The very notion offends me, deeply.

"How I learned to stop worrying and to love John McCain" Sissy

The silly issue of whether the Indians had butter for their baked winter squash (and their corn on the cob) brought to mind one of the best scenes ever seen on the silver screen, from Mr. William Claude Fields, in the Yukon film parody The Fatal Glass of Beer:

More from that film here at YouTube

"Any time you give power to government, it will be abused, it will be enlarged, it will be used in ways you never intended."

Harry Browne on The Drudge Report 7-31-99

Dalrymple doesn't want to live in a world without Falstaffs, criminals, fatty foods, messiness, alcohol, smokers, and trailer trash - a too-sterile world of "rational tyranny" and perfect post-Puritan morality. I agree. One quote:

When I read the medical journals these days, I feel I am reading the medical equivalent of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. They speak only the best of good sense (one doesn’t argue with a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox). They tell us how we, or rather they, that is to say the general public, ought to live. Not too fat, a certain amount of exercise, no smoking, drinking in moderation of the right kind of wine taken purely as a medicine to ward of heart attacks and strokes, in short, every activity and comestible to be treated as a medicine to be taken in the correct dose.

It is not easy to argue against this rationalistic tyranny, just as it is not easy to answer a puritan without sounding as if you are positively in favour of sin, the more of it the better. No doubt properly conducted studies have shown precisely how much alcohol one should take to achieve the greatest possible longevity; or if they have not been conducted yet, they will be conducted in the very near future. Science will establish precisely how much butter one is allowed per week. Epidemiology will hunt down all the dangers lurking in our habits. From this, prohibitions and imperative duties will inevitably follow. It is only natural, after all, that doctors should advocate whatever saves and prolongs life.

Read the whole excellent thing.

Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf put this grimly humorous book together. My copy of the book is dated 1993, but it is more relevant today than it was back then as this self-parodying stuff has permeated the language - some as jokes, eg "vertically-challenged," and some seriously, eg "special child" and "partner."

I am sad to report that the book is out of print, but it still can be gotten via Amazon. Sample entries:

Vagrant.  Nonspecifically-destinationed individual; directionally-impoverished person.

Phallocentrism: The use, by white heterosexual males, of such discredited devices as reasoning and logic to maintain a position of sexual and political dominance.

First Baseperson.  The correct gender-inclusive term for first baseman, recommended by the Little League.

Prisoner. Client of the correctional system, guest in a correctional institution, incarcerated American.

Pro-abortion. Pro-choice.

Shoplifter. Nontraditional shopper.

Grammar. Defined by Lewis Lapham as "arbitrary rules of procedure subservient to a sexist political agenda."

Pet owner. The American Humane Society says the appropriate term is "human companion of a nonhuman companion."

Morally different. Dishonest, evil.

Jungle. Tropical Rainforest. The term "jungle" is ideologically unsuitable because of its use in such insensitive phrases as "It's a jungle out there."

Difficult-to-serve. Canadian educators' term for sociopathic. Example: "Professor McLaughlin was robbed at gunpoint by one of his difficult-to-serve students."

Smellism. Discrimination against, or stigmatization or oppression of a human or nonhuman being because his/her/its nondiscretionary body odor is deemed to be unpleasant.

Ableism.  The Smith College Office of Student Affairs defines this as "oppression of the differently abled by the temporarily able."

Every entry in the book has an academic citation.

Since it seems to be Mule Day at Maggie's, here's Dolly with Mule Skinner Blues. Merle after with the same song. (thanks, reader):

We must love one another, yes, yes, that's all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other.

Peter De Vries

It's been quite a while since we reminded our readers that they can read Samuel Pepys' Diary online. Here's Feb 4, 1664:

Lay long in bed discoursing with my wife about her mayds, which by Jane’s going away in discontent and against my opinion do make some trouble between my wife and me. But these are but foolish troubles and so not to be set to heart, yet it do disturb me mightily these things. To my office, and there all the morning. At noon being invited, I to the Sun behind the ‘Change, to dinner to my Lord Belasses, where a great deal of discourse with him, and some good, among others at table he told us a very handsome passage of the King’s sending him his message about holding out the town of Newarke, of which he was then governor for the King. This message he sent in a sluggbullet, being writ in cypher, and wrapped up in lead and swallowed. So the messenger come to my Lord and told him he had a message from the King, but it was yet in his belly; so they did give him some physique, and out it come. This was a month before the King’s flying to the Scotts; and therein he told him that at such a day, being the 3d or 6th of May, he should hear of his being come to the Scotts, being assured by the King of France that in coming to them he should be used with all the liberty, honour, and safety, that could be desired. And at the just day he did come to the Scotts. He told us another odd passage: how the King having newly put out Prince Rupert of his generallshipp, upon some miscarriage at Bristoll, and Sir Richard Willis¹ of his governorship of Newarke, at the entreaty of the gentry of the County, and put in my Lord Bellasses, the great officers of the King’s army mutinyed, and come in that manner with swords drawn, into the market-place of the towne where the King was; which the King hearing, says, “I must to horse.” And there himself personally, when every body expected they should have been opposed, the King come, and cried to the head of the mutineers, which was Prince Rupert, “Nephew, I command you to be gone.” So the Prince, in all his fury and discontent, withdrew, and his company scattered, which they say was the greatest piece of mutiny in the world. Thence after dinner home to my office, and in the evening was sent to by Jane that I would give her her wages. So I sent for my wife to my office, and told her that rather than be talked on I would give her all her wages for this Quarter coming on, though two months is behind, which vexed my wife, and we begun to be angry, but I took myself up and sent her away, but was cruelly vexed in my mind that all my trouble in this world almost should arise from my disorders in my family and the indiscretion of a wife that brings me nothing almost (besides a comely person) but only trouble and discontent. She gone I late at my business, and then home to supper and to bed.

Southeast Georgia, 1940s. For those who wouldn't know, them is mules, not hosses. The horse whip makes it obvious.

Believe it or not, your Editor has driven mules, but does not intend to do so in the future. A whip, or a 2X4 between the ears, is required or they will not listen. One must get a mule's attention.

From a piece at Mr. Free Market on the BBC: