Maggie's Farm

It is probably a measure of the comfort - or decadence - of our soft, safe, self-worshipping and easy civilization that the above question could even be asked.

Esolen at Touchstone has written a wonderful piece on the risk that is involved in manliness - the willingness to take risks unto death to do what is needed. One quote:

The humility of risk is perfected in Christ and is, even when marred or hidden by the swagger, essential to natural manhood. The men of all really thriving cultures know that their lives, if truly lived, are not their own. The samurai was taught to relish each day as one won from death, an unexpected boon: For the moment he swears allegiance to his lord, he must consider his life as already forfeit. Thus, he can lay that life down at a nod, whenever the sacrifice should be required.

Men who went down to the sea in ships, Viking marauders or Nantucket whalers, knew well they might never return, yet they did go; and the man on the mizzen in the midst of a storm knew that his life literally hung by a thread, and that many of his fellows in just his situation never saw land again, but without him and his obedience there could be no voyage beyond the calm of a bay. The crewmen on the Titanic held it as their duty, once the iceberg’s devastation had been reckoned, to assume that their lives were lost. Only so could they tax their muscles and their broken hearts to the last stretched fiber, to save as many other souls as they could, particularly women and children.

The lad who carried the flag in the old fields of war was unarmed and most conspicuous, but most necessary for the rallying and ordering of his comrades. He was indispensable in his choosing the honor of being the single man least likely to survive the battle. The man first up the ladder to scale the walls of a besieged city would likely also be the first man dead beneath; but if he does not go, no one goes.

The Spartans at Thermopylae knew they could not hold that pass forever against a Persian army many times their strength, but they held long enough for the Athenians to prepare for the onslaught. And you hold a pass by understanding that your life is not your life. You block the opening. The foe must break through over your dead body.

Read the whole inspiring, true thing. And let me know what you think: Should a man be willing to risk his life in defense of home, hearth, tribe or nation?

Image: Missing Man formation of Air Force F-15s

Not a good place to fall off your water skis. They got some hungry gators there, and they'll really make a mess outta you.

 

 

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

Shakespeare 

"Very modest woods. Not oaky in the sense of how I think of grand trunks and full leaves. These are rather like the dwarf relatives.  In their shade grow diminutive tulips (brought by the crusaders to Holland, and made famous and larger by the Dutch). These tulips are perhaps the length of your finger, with flowers the breadth of your thumb. Also, one of the national flowers, kaloniot (I don't know the scientific name). These are also perhaps 6 cm high, with delicate red petals and a necklace of yellow inside the flower. Fields of them ruffle in the wind."

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

Abraham Lincoln

Preach the Gospel always, using words if necessary.

St. Francis of Assisi, to his followers (If I had been his editor - God forbid - I would have had him say "using words, only if necessary")

This great lady, now dying, is profiled here in The New Yorker. H/T, Hewitt

The names of warblers have been changed like crazy over the past few years. This little guy with his raccoon-eyes is now the Common Yellowthroat - not to be confused with the Yellow-throated Warbler, which is rare.

We are now at the end of the warbler migration, as these tiny jewels illegally migrate from Central and South America to their breeding grounds in the north. This common warbler loves to skulk in thick underbrush, especially near water, but his loud, penetrating song gives him away.

Song, and info, here at CLO.

The new DVD of The Producers is selling like hotcakes... I wish it was selling like DVDs.

Mel Brooks, heard on a radio interview on Saturday with Mark Simone.

^{1 John 5: 9-13}

⁹If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his Son.

¹⁰Those who believe in the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. ¹¹And this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. ¹²Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. ¹³I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

Booze is healthful for men, but not for women. Call it "medicine." We do.

Review of the R. Crumb Handbook in NY Review of Books. Hey, Mr. Natural - we miss ya, dude.

Galloway claims it's OK to kill Tony Blair. Or at least understandable. No wonder that this jerk likes Fidelito and Chavez: he is a latent fascist murdering thug himself. Who elects this guy? And also - Blair himself is Left, just not totally loony Left. But close enough for government work.

Why the "hockey stick" is a new low in climate science.

Bow-fishing. The Indians did it, but I did not know people were doing this for sport. I do not like the idea of "snap back". And I wonder how the refraction of the water's surface effects one's view of the target.

Age Warfare? In Britain, as in the US, it's the older folks who have the wealth. So what? Wealth is wasted on the young.

It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

Mark Twain, with a slick hair-do

She told me we couldn't afford beer anymore and I'd have to quit.
Then I learned she had spent $175.00 on make-up.
And I asked how come I had to give up stuff and she didn't.
She said she needed the make-up to look pretty for me.
I told her that was what the beer was for.

Pinkerton has written at TCS today about nationalism vs. universalism. His piece, which is excellent, left out the one bit that is most important to me: in a no-border, one world universalist dream, who runs it?

Isn't "universalism" a giant empire, in effect?

Who runs it, and what do I have to say about how they run it? What is right for me in CT just might not be right for Mohammed in Somalia, or Moishe in Israel, or Swen in Sweden.

Already, in the mini- and already-failed experiment of the EU, distant bureaucrats put out edicts faster than Democrats hand out street money in Newark. The leftist universalist dream is a totalitarian nightmare.

Any one-world dream would be a nightmare of oppression, and then a nightmare of local rebellion - Star Wars. People are tribal and the best governments are the most local, where people have some control over their destiny according to their own ideas, for better or worse. I'm a State's Rights person, too. Give me flawed, messy, non-utopian ideas, any time.

Pinkerton points out that Einstein was famous for deriding nationalism, but, without nationalism, where would he have fled from the Nazis?

From the beginning of Pinkerton's piece:

Here's a question: Why do Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have such similar views on immigration?

The answer is that all four of the above -- Mahony, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Journal -- have chosen universalism over nationalism.

Yeah, read the whole thing. Good stuff.

From WTFV: MEXICO CITY - A Varig airlines cargo plane from Brazil sits parked at the Mexico City airport with its nose up in the air after the cargo was unevenly distributed. Brazil's troubled flagship airline, Varig, is
reeling under an estimated US$3.3 billion (euro2.7 billion) in debt and
is currently in the restructuring phase of bankruptcy proceedings and,
last April 12, some 300 Varig employees boarded a chartered jet to
Brasilia, the nation's capital, to call on the federal government to
bail out the company, which employs 11,000 people. Rest of story: (04/17/06 AP photo)

 

From a fine piece in The New York Sun:

By the early 1950s, Mr. Domino had perfected the basic beat of New Orleans rock 'n' roll: repetitious 16th notes in an insistent triplet pattern.Virtually everything he played, fast or slow, conformed to that motif, which made ballads and rockers alike irresistibly danceable. It was the big beat. Mr. Domino's best music was harmonically simple too. "My Girl Josephine," for example, essentially consists of three chords (B flat, D sharp, and F) over and over in the I-IV-V pattern of the blues.

Read the whole thing.

I yam what I yam.

Popeye

Ford Foundation supports anti-Israel causes and organizations. I still do not quite get why the Left does things like this.

More on Bill Cosby's "Call-outs." This man is speaking truth to power. USA Today. The professor's critique at the end is revealing of a certain kind of condescending and un-American mind-set.

Dr. Thomas McGlashan's career of treating schizophrenia. He's done it all. Science Times

Is Bush losing Hispanic support? Probably, but for no good reason. Calif. Yank

Birth of a nation: Montenegro. Get out your atlases and coloring pencils.

Roger Sandall became curious about the domestication of the horse, but he found out that modern prehistorians have no interest in such grand topics, but instead are interested in guinea pigs and mammoth droppings.

A wonderful piece, including rodeos and Vergil.

Image: Alexander on Bucephalus, from the piece.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

G.K. Chesterton 

When the state is most corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.

Tacitus

Lab rescues child from drowning.

Not hysterical enviros: Can the world's marine fishery be saved?

Sisu tells us about Garlic Mustard - yes, I have that weed all over the place. Fortunately, it is easy to yank out. Will show you my invasive weed soon - much more evil than Garlic Mustard.

Another good one from our friend Sisu: Time Magazine admits its "advocacy." Is journalism dead?

Going home: Mexico has the world's 9th largest economy, and it is a tropical paradise. Why not go home, asks VDARE

"If Cheney were a Dem, he'd be a folk hero to gays and lesbians." That's what Gay Patriot says, and he is right. Republophobia is a disease.

Evangelical Christians: numbers at Harvard on the increase. Probably everywhere else, too. It's about time - and Harvard did have its beginnings as a Congregational divinity school, after all.

Moslem gang rape growing rapidly in Europe. They like white girls, for this purpose. If they tried it on Moslem girls, they'd be killed by the families the next day. But, with white girls, they know they can get away with it. If you don't wear a burkha, you're a ho, in multicultural Euristan. At Atlas.

DaVinci Code Again: Michael Novak quote, from here:

I think I have never for two-and-a-half hours felt so surrounded by decadence and hostility toward Christ. Yet I must admit that the film was glitzy with the art of the makers of thrillers. One could never be sure when one scene, then another, then another, then another, would be cut short by a murderous lunge, a shot ricocheting around a closed space, a door slamming, a car screeching. From one shock to another, one's stomach absorbed punch after punch.

Afterwards, I sure felt like a strong double bourbon. And I felt eager to forget as soon as I can the sheer malicious hatred that swirls up from this film.

I am thinking "Do I need this stuff in my head?" Which is how I felt after ten minutes of "Goodfellas." The wrold provides so much ugliness, we always have to wonder, and decide, how much we chose to add to the net ugliness stored in our brains. I guess I tend towards the "truth and beauty" end of the spectrum, but like everyone I am not immune to the siren call of ugliness, evil, and depravity. I decided to take a pass: the rest of the family can go today - they love movies and they love Ron Howard.

Image: The family church in Alford, MA

^{Psalm 33}

¹Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous. Praise befits the upright.
²Praise the Lord with the lyre; make melody to him with the harp of ten strings.
³Sing to him a new song; play skillfully on the strings, with loud shouts.
⁴For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness.
⁵He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
⁶By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.
⁷He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle; he put the deeps in storehouses.
⁸Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.
⁹For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.
¹⁰The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples.
¹¹The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.
¹²Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage.
¹³The Lord looks down from heaven; he sees all humankind.
¹⁴From where he sits enthroned he watches all the inhabitants of the earth—
¹⁵he who fashions the hearts of them all, and observes all their deeds.
¹⁶A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
¹⁷The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.
¹⁸Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love,
¹⁹to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.
²⁰Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield.
²¹Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.
²²Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.