Maggie's Farm

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.

We posted a Pirate Hunting Cruise a few months ago. It came to us over the transom, and we had no idea about the source.

Turns out the source was the esteemable Doug Ross Journal (which we link regularly) which had produced the full version. I have also noted that on the link, which occasionally gets some attention because it is good sadistic gun fun.

We do not wish to be pirates. Not by accident, anyway. Arrrrghhh.

An outdoor souk (the Arabic word for the Turkish "bazaar" - "marketplace" in English) in old Tunis (the new Tunis surrounds the old Tunis):

Lots more below -

Well, slap me with a mackeral and call me Edna. Up to 2 million march in DC to protest growing federal power. This puts the anti-Vietnam War protests to shame.

Power to the people! We Americans aren't dead yet.

Why did we schlepp all the way down to Agrigento last week? To see the Valley of the Temples (and to get a good lunch).

Why they call it "valley" I do not know, because this assembly of Doric Greek temples were built along a ridge - an acropolis, as always - within view of the busy harbor. It must have been quite a sight.

These were built before the Parthenon, around 460 BC - by Carthaginian slaves. The Temple of Zeus was five times the size of the Parthenon. The old Greek-era town was large (200,000 in 500 BC) and prosperous. Empedocles (the four elements, etc) lived there.

Most of the temples are in ruins either from earthquakes or use of the stones for other building purposes. The so-called Temple of Concord is in good shape, and was in use as a Christian church until the 1700s:

That's limestone. No marble around. You cannot really make good sculptures with limestone. To make the temples white, they were covered with a layer of plaster - some of which remains. The proscenia were painted bright colors, as the Greeks always did.

More about Agrigento, and lunch, below:

Cædmon’s Hymn, Anglo-Saxon 737 AD

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc
uerc uuldurfadur sue he uundra gihuaes
eci dryctin or astelidæ
he aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe haleg scepen.
tha middungeard moncynnæs uard
eci dryctin æfter tiadæ
firum foldu frea allmectig

Cædmon’s Hymn, Modern English

Now let me praise the keeper of Heaven’s kingdom,
the might of the Creator, and his thought,
the work of the Father of glory, how each of wonders
the Eternal Lord established in the beginning.
He first created for the sons of men
Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator,
then Middle-earth the keeper of mankind,
the Eternal Lord, afterwards made,
the earth for men, the Almighty Lord.

(from Right Wing Prof's post we linked yesterday)

Somewhere around 450 AD (according to the Venerable Bede), the Celtic warlord Vortigern, embattled by the northern Picts, made a decision that would change the world: He invited the Frisian brothers Horsa and Hengest to bring their warriors across the sea as mercenaries and help him defeat the Picts. After the fierce northern Germanic warriors ensured Vortigern’s victory, he tried to cheat them out of their payment, and they responded by founding a kingdom in southern England. Thus began the Anglo-Saxon migration, and soon, conquest.

The world went crazy after the fall of Rome. Read the rest. It's about the Olde.Anglosphere. As far as I know, basic English is still Frisian (except for the added Viking, Frenchy, Greek and Latinate stuff).

We spend it because we make it. We spend more on medical care because we can. It's why 75 year-old American men expect to play tennis and ski and climb mountains and chase girls while Euro men that age are hobbling around on canes - if they are still alive.

It's not just medical care than we spend more on. We spend more on charity, churches, furniture, research, houses and vacation houses, food, gyms, bass boats, trips, lawn care, gardening, psychotherapy, marriage counseling, cars and F-150s, recreation, clothes, tools, guns, lawyers, starting new businesses, electric guitars, magic crystals, massage, booze, laser-vision, hair transplants, new knees, hips, shoulders and heart valves, sports, education - everything, including rockets to the moon.

We are a prosperous nation, but it is not because of good luck. It's because of a culture of work ethic, freedom, the value of free choice, and personal independence. Each person pursuing his own vision of what this brief life ought to be, while constantly contending with hard realities and tough choices.

Via Shrinkwrapped, if Italy, France or Germany joined the US, they would be the poorest states in the country.

(I always remind myself that, in Europe, it's the mega-wealthy and the fishermen who own boats. In the US, it seems like every cop and fireman has a more expensive one than I do. Well, actually, I managed to sell all of our darn boats last year. What a relief.)

Barrister addendum: If we just spent as much on health care as Mexico, think how happy we would be.

Dylanologist addendum: The average, middle class person in Europe lives at about the material level of an American on welfare, if not slightly below. I know: I have lived over there.

This came in over the transom. Curiously, most schools hadn't opened yet at the time of the O's nagging nanny speech to schoolkids: "Work hard, stay in school, don't chew gum you don't wanta be a bum, stay outta jail, eat your spinach, become President, bla bla bla."

Who needs another Mom?

It's easier to BS adults than kids.

If and when you visit Tunis, you will go to the Bardo Museum. The buildings themselves are a 13th Century Ottoman (technically, Husseinite) palace which has been a museum since 1888. It contains the world's largest collection of Roman mosaics, but the buildings are wonderful too.

This Mom and daughter were boat friends.

 More Bardo photos below -