Maggie's Farm

Another reminiscence from our buddy Nathan (now a prominent Psychoanalyst living and working in Israel) from his years working for the Indian Health Service -

A crushed chest, bolo tie and porcupine quill earrings marked my exit from Eagle Butte, Lakota Sioux Reservation.  Only tie and earrings were planned; the crushed chest was almost preordained, however. Mrs. Alpren was the organizer, the mover of my goodbye bash. A sheet cake smeared heavily with white frosting, a Sioux warrior astride his horse dressed the top.  The regular docs were covering the floor and E.R. so that I and La femme de ma vie - of the moment (LFDMV) were feted.  The nurses filled the doctors’ lounge, as did former patients and their family members. I recognized some of the women who had snaked around my first clinic, waiting quietly, somberly, with some embarrassment for their first Birth Control Prescriptions, the plastic rings marking each day of the cycle. John Running Horse, still limping, but without a cast.  Before many words were spoken, before I had to face that awkwardness of how to say goodbye, mean sincerely how moved I was by these  people, yet leaving them, the call came.

Being flown in by Tim, the cropduster, was John Captured Alive (how these names endured, I never learned), who was found after being run over by a truck. He had fallen asleep beneath the truck after a heavy drunk.  John was known for the heavy drunks, but this was his first doze beneath a truck. He arrived with his chest flailing, both sides: he had a crushed chest. This flailing is a desperate movement, like the mad fluttering of a damaged moth, while the person strains to get air into his chest: it won’t expand.  For this, I recalled, one needs to “inflate” the chest, stabilize the fractured ribs, by negative pressure. Then, he could be evacuated to a bigger hospital, perhaps Mobridge. But, Mrs. Alpern said that there was no modern vacuum to reinflate. I knew he would not survive without this. I remembered my old professor of anesthesiology once taught us to care for the patient before worrying about the respirator. He also told us of the “old days” when they had to make do. When babies in Africa were dying of cholera and it was too difficult to place IV’s in their veins, he would sluice fluids subcutaneously under the skin of their backs; most revived within hours and many survived. And for crushed chests, old vacuum bottles. Big, gallon-sized, thick-walled vessels whose wavey glass revealed its faults and heftiness. Such bottles my mother had used to brew sweet wine in the kitchen, lined up along the wall, rags stuffed in their mouths, emitting a sweet, almost vinegary fragrance.

Mrs. Alpren remembered these; had used them years back; got two and hooked them together with heavy rubber tubes, one in, one out between the bottles. From the first bottle a tube went to the patient; from the second, to a vacuum in the O.R. wall. While she assembled, I quickly draped and prepped the chest with Betadine.  As I swiveled left to repeat, the hospital priest, truly named Father Casper, had tip-toed behind and to my right: while giving last rights, sprinkled water on my sterile site. I said, a bit too sharply, “He’s not yours yet,” and re-prepped.  A sharp incision between the ribs, a tube inserted, a few stitches to make a tight skin seal, the vacuum turned on, Captured Alive’s chest stopped flailing and rose, and filled.  The O2 into his nose now could flow into his lungs.

We called Mobridge; an ambulance arrived with a diminutive electric-powered pump to take over our bottle-array. Dr. L. agreed to ride shot-gun with Captured Alive and I returned to my goodbye party.  LFDMV was styling the porcupine quilled pierced earrings. Mrs. A. explained that the needles were flattened by the artist’s teeth.  LFDMV slipped the noose of the beaded bolo tie over my head. The knot itself was beaded and she slid that snugly to my throat. I felt a bit hybrid: cowboyish and Indianer.

I try to say something felt: how warmly I was received by the Sioux, how they trusted me with their children’s well-being, how appreciative they were. But, when I say that it would be hard to leave, Mrs. Alpern – reliably honest Mrs. Alpern – asks, “So, why are you leaving?”  To this, I am speechless.

This was the tribe Erik Erikson had studied in the 1930’s, this German-Jewish refuge to America, learning about childhoods. He described the quiet despair of the Sioux versus the robust resilience of the Yurok after the White man arrived. The despair I still saw. The people I left. The bolo? Gone with the earrings and the LFDMV.

But, not the memories. Not gone.

A re-post -

In a comment on our piece about clear-cutting, a reader let us know about this book: 1491: New Revelations about the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles Mann.

Human fantasies about the Garden of Eden, like human utopian fantasies, just never give up. You might almost think we all wish we were back in the womb.

I ordered the book, but here's a quote from Charles Mann's 2002 essay in The Atlantic on the subject:

Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact.

It's a fascinating subject to me. Here's the whole essay.

Image: An early version of Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom

Via View from 1776:

Confined recently to nights in a hotel room in a foreign city I had the luck to find the most exhilarating piece of popular history I had read in a long time. The book is How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It—a title which doubles as a summary. It is the latest by Arthur Herman, an American who is establishing a niche for himself as a gutsy revisionist and prime mover of the Western Heritage Programme within the Smithsonian in Washington DC. His book is “Scotch” as we would say in Canada by which we mean solid and not kidding. (Well a little droll but so is single malt.) ??The book unfolds the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century for the intelligent general reader—which for all its significance to the world we now inhabit is little studied or appreciated. It is almost the opposite of intellectually sexy, all achievement and no tragic pause. For the truth is wherever you look into “modernity” you find Scottish antecedents. From 1745 on they were Scots who altered our whole view of education and law who invented our modern economics and social studies; our medicine and engineering too; who shook down conceited practices in everything from history to theology—in each turning an inherited essentially mediaeval amalgam of prejudice and guesswork into a systematic study whose new focus would be the welfare of mankind.

The paradox is that this achievement was made in a thinly-populated country that had lost its political independence in the Act of Union of 1707 and which was a squalid backwater removed from the elegant royal courts of Europe.

Read the whole post. We have always been interested in the Scottish Enlightenment. See this old post,

If my teeth were not half-rotten, I would still be a regular Lifesaver consumer.

Regarding the 5-flavor packs, I always appreciated the person who observed that "The orange ones don't taste like oranges -they taste like orange color." That guy understood the magic of Lifesavers.

Here's one fact you don't know about them: The candy was invented in 1912 by the poet Hart Crane's father, Clarence Crane of Garrettsville, Ohio. He was a chocolate manufacturer who, in the resourceful American way, was looking to invent a summertime candy - one which wouldn't get soft or melt in the heat.

Here's another factoid: Their first flavor was Pep-O-Mint. 

From 1920-1985, Lifesavers were manufactured in the handsome Lifesaver Building below on Main St. in Port Chester, NY. Now condos, it is still known as the Lifesaver Building. For a few generations, anyone riding the New Haven Line would see those giant, cheerful, colorful Lifesaver models on the grass in front of the copper-green trimmed building.

He tells some of the tricks he uses. He is permitted to lie to you. Talk to him, and you are screwed - even if you are as pure as driven snow (which nobody is).

One great line: "If I follow you in my car long enough, eventually you will do something to give me legitimate reason to pull you over." Another: "Let's talk off the record." (There is no such thing as "off the record.")

I am convinced. The correct response to cops of all sorts is "With all respect, I wish to consult with an attorney."

Via Retriever via Neuroanthropology, an essay on The Adaptive Function of Literature. A quote:

Consider the reality of our experience. We live in the imagination. For us, humans, no action or event is ever just itself. It is always a component in mental representations of the natural and social order, extending over time. All our actions take place within imaginative structures that include our vision of the world and our place in the world—our internal conflicts and concerns, our relations to other people, our relations to nature, and our relations to whatever spiritual forces we imagine might exist. We live in communities that consist not just of the people with whom we come directly into contact but with memories of the dead, traditions of our ancestors, our sense of connection with generations yet unborn, and with every person, living or dead, who joins with us in imaginative structures—social, ideological, religious, or philosophical—that subordinate our individual selves to some collective body. Our sense of our selves derives from our myths and artistic traditions, from the stories we tell, the songs we sing, and the visual images that surround us.

Fascinating and thoughtful essay on a complex topic. Humankind's hypertrophied cortex is a blessing and a curse.

The leap from the genetics of adaptation to the arts is too large a leap for my pay grade, but the fact that humans exist in their imaginations is entirely clear to me. It's clear to my imagination too.

Mysterious 1922 photo via Dr. X

"I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money...."

Sherlock Holmes

"If you need to foresee the future, you are doing something badly wrong."

From Stumbing and Mumbling in a piece on the inability of economists and other social scientists to make predictions.

From our high veranda.

A couple more Napoli photos below -

Stella By Starlight. Keith Jarett (h/t, Little Green a while ago):

James 1:17-27

1:17 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

1:18 In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

1:19 You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger;

1:20 for your anger does not produce God's righteousness.

1:21 Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

1:22 But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.

1:23 For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;

1:24 for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.

1:25 But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act--they will be blessed in their doing.

1:26 If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless.

1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

The apple comes in towards the end:

A college lit prof at Temple begins:

Last semester, in an unguarded moment, I did what literature teachers should never do. I told a student her interpretation of a poem was wrong. From that moment I was regarded as an enemy to freedom.

Whole thing here.

When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer (from Leaves of Grass, 1892)

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

A re-post from 2007 -

No living author does black humor and devilish satire as well as Carl Hiassen. For a look into the dark side of south Florida, give him a try. His novels are populated with brutal sociopaths, daffy idealists, the lost and deranged, corrupt politicians, and saints.

He is now an editor at the Miami Herald, but his books will cause you to consider staying far away from south Florida. I think that must have been partly intentional because he has a deep love for the unspoiled and undeveloped Florida.

I just finished Lucky You so I am up to date with all of his stuff. Here's his website. Here's his Amazon listing.

The photo is from this interview.

I had an appetizer plate of top-flight local Gorgonzola Dolce Gran Riserva in Italy last summer, up north in Piedmont where they make the stuff.

It had little in common with the supermarket stuff we get here in the USA. It was creamy, not crumbly, and it was tasty as heck but without any sharpness. It was not meant to be thrown in a salad or on top of a burger, but to be eaten reverently (or irreverently) with a fork in thin slices, with some slices of fruit on the side. Which I did.

It was expensive, too.

A re-post from June 2008 -

One day last week we took the ferry up Lake Maggiore to the impeccably preserved medieval village of Cannobio, just south of the Swiss border.

Cannobio (dig the poor English in that link) is one of those towns that I call "Disney Italy," or sometimes "The Italian Holodeck." It's so quaint and charming that it doesn't seem quite real. Mrs. BD likes to try to remind me that it is real, but I can't shake the feeling that I'm on a stage set.

Like most ancient Italian villages, the streets and general layout show their medieval origins, but most of the structures are Renaissance era stone, masonry and stucco.

The cars were mostly Mercedes and Audis, and the clothing shops decidedly upscale and high fashion. Mrs. BD observed that an elegant lady we passed had a $3000 handbag, so we figured that Cannobio must be a quiet escape for the prosperous of Milan. Their weekend dwellings, however, seem to be simple and 600 years old.

Our goal was a tiny restaurant we had read about, behind a church up in the mountains behind Connobio. We hiked about 3 or 4 km in intermittent rain up the Val Cannobino through the hamlet of Traffiume (all walking in northern Italy is uphill - there is no downhill. It's like an endlessly uphill Escher.), only to arrive after they had closed their lunchtime service.

Later that day, we foolishly missed the last ferry back and had to improvise by bus and cab to get back to the hotel in the dark, wet, tired - and not well-fed. 

Photo is Sant Anna Church, north of Cannobio. It's perched on the edge of a prodigious gorge. If you want to lunch in the little restaurant behind it, Ristorante Grotto Sant' Anna, get there on time.

More photos of Cannobio and environs on continuation page below.

Part 1 was posted yesterday morning. This is from Dr. Bliss.

The Headmaster also had a policy that all administrators had to teach something - from the Admissions officer to the Provost and the Dean - and coach a sport too (however badly - nobody there cared if you were a lousy coach as long as we all got 2 hours of strenuous sport and fresh air). That was wise. Everybody was a teacher first. Every kid had to take 4 years of an ancient language and 4 years of a modern language, and you had to take math at least up to pre-calc. Plenty of kids flunked out. They would say to the parents "Sally does not seem to want or to be ready to take what we have to offer her here."

One of the teachers (or masters, as they were called), with or without their spouse as they wished, presided over every (assigned) table at all meals except breakfast, which was a free-for-all. You could not miss a meal. We students rotated the table service duty, and also the dish-washing duty (in what we called the Wombatorium).

We had required, monitored study hall (in old, panelled study halls) every night after dinner except Saturdays, from 7-10. Except for seniors. No talking and no non-textbooks. There was a prayer before breakfast and dinner, which was rotated through the students regardless of their religion.

Yes, everybody had to be in a sport, every semester. And every teacher was "Sir" or Ma'am." No complicated "dress code" - just a school uniform which made school shopping very inexpensive. The beds were hard and the rooms were cold in the winter. The only TV was in the snack shop, which opened after sports and closed before evening chapel.

Everybody rotated through School Duties: Dinner serving, Sunday Faculty Tea serving, scullery duty, lawn care duty, janitorial duty in the halls and common rooms (dusting, vacuuming), etc. No excuses.

There was brief chapel every evening (announcements, a prayer, a Bible reading, a homily, a hymn), and Sunday church, all presided over by the Headmaster with all faculty (and with all spouses and families on Sunday) in attendance. All the features of a low-Anglican service. The Jewish, Protestant (which I am), Hindu, and atheist kids never were converted (as far as I know), but they did learn to appreciate the virtue of a daily rhythm of contemplation and worship. Plus they learned a lot about Christianity. It is worth knowing about.

Darn good organist, who was also a Music teacher.

My parents sacrificed quite a bit for me to go there: new cars, trips, etc. I am true to my school. I still miss it, in a way.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse.

Henry Ford

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

H. L. Mencken, quoted at Am Digest

"I could be unravelin'
Wherever I'm travelin'
even to foreign shores..."

From 1985's under-appreciated album Empire Burlesque. Tune here (embedding is disabled).

It's the time of year when Tree Swallows head for the coasts to assemble for their migrations. I have seen them flocking by the hundreds on Cape Cod in August (even saw an albino among them a couple of years ago), and by the thousands in places like Jamaica Bay NWP.

These fine birds bother me in the spring, when they successfully compete for the 25 Bluebird nest boxes I have gone to much trouble to clean etc.

Bugs and berries are their food, and they like to breed near water. More about them at the new, and less informative, CLO.

Photo is a male. The females are brown.

26 acres with barn, unusual 6-BR house, pool, paddocks, pastures, tennis court, etc. in the rolling Litchfield Hills. Listing details here. $2.3 million, proving that there are very good reasons to want to make money. One photo:

Also, this pleasant 300-acre farm, asking $6.9 million, and worth every penny. Details here.

The First Congregational Church, Litchfield (1760)

We posted a little while ago about Sociologists complaining about not being a major factor in the Obama administration. Now I see the Anthropologists seeking political "relevancy."

Oh man, that is so 60s. So silly. What's the problem? Do social scientists feel disempowered? I think they should just stick to their knitting and find out fun stuff. It's not supposed to be useful: it's supposed to be pursuit of knowledge.