Sunday, October 31. 2010
Luke 19:1-10
19:1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it.
19:2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich.
19:3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.
19:4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.
19:5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."
19:6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him.
19:7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."
19:8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."
19:9 Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.
19:10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."
Saturday, October 30. 2010
At NRO.
Here's another of my Ohio pics from last weekend. Large, lovely fields. No pheasants to be seen anywhere, and more Turkey Vultures than wild turkeys.
I Sing the Body Electric
1
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
2
The love of the Body of man or woman balks account—the body itself balks account;
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account;
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face;
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists;
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees—dress does
not hide him;
The strong, sweet, supple quality he has, strikes through the cotton and flannel;
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more;
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress,
their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent
green-shine, or lies with his face up, and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the
water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats—the horseman in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives
waiting,
The female soothing a child—the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hoeing corn—the sleigh-driver guiding his six horses through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured,
native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown, after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and the under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through
clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the
listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes—the bent head, the curv’d neck, and the
counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the
little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause,
listen, and count.
3
I know a man, a common farmer—the father of five sons;
And in them were the fathers of sons—and in them were the fathers of sons.
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: Walt Whitman (1819-1892)"
Friday, October 29. 2010
Readers might doubt me, but last Saturday was my first visit to a WalMart. It was the "Supercenter" in Mt. Vernon, Ohio.
What a place! Open 24 hrs/day. Humongous.
I realized one thing about this place: Sam Walton did not really have a new idea. He just took the old country General Store, expanded the hell out of it, and got big enough to control the prices of his suppliers.
I may be the last person on earth to learn these things. Why didn't Woolworth's do what Sam did?
People today are still living off the table scraps of the sixties. They are still being passed around - the music and the ideas.
Bob Dylan
 Pic is Middle Path at Kenyon College, last weekend.
Rhymin' Simon reviews a new book by Sondheim
The new threat: plastic water bottles
Nobody taught me to regard women as sex objects. I always did.
Is that breaking news? (Good comment on the topic in our comments below)
I am quitting buying medical insurance for my employees.
How the White House Bungled the Politics of Health Care
No. They bungled the substance of it.
College for Those Who Can't Learn
It's about time. I could have used one of them.
Dogging OK in UK parks
Just do not mock the doggee: public dogging is legal, mocking is not.
Democrat Civil War Already Underway
It's called a circular firing squad
Jerk du Jour: Matthews: How Long Before We See Tea Partiers Start Showing Up in Uniform, 1930s Style?
He is nuts - and stupid. Tea Partiers would have been the first to be sent to the camps. (For those who do not recall, the camps were first set up to hold political prisoners - troublemakers.)
Related: AFL-CIO: Limited government activists hold “cultish beliefs"
The Constitution is the most dangerous threat to America. How did that happen?
Radical in the White House - Stanley Kurtz didn’t have to go to Kenya to figure out who Barack Obama really is.
Sick: Joe Sestak Smears Dog Sh*t on Toomey in Attack Ad (Video)
Those wacky, extreme, ill-informed, violent, dishonest Democrat politicians *UPDATED*
Juan Williams: Fox Bosses are 'Much More Enlightened' Than NPR or CNN, Fox Viewers Aren't Dumb
You aren't allowed to say that, Juan.
VDH: Things you are not supposed to say
Michael Bloomberg’s astroturf group
It's a group of one.
Tea Party values are hippie values.
Wish I had thought of that. There is truth to it.
Tom Paine via Sissy:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. – Common Sense, Thomas Paine 1776
Thursday, October 28. 2010
 I didn't think it could be done, but maybe it can:
I have never understood the appeal of Barney to the people of MA 4, but perhaps this year might be the time to retire him. He's done enough damage.
Sean Bielat is an impressive candidate, and the not-Barney in every possible way.
From a distance, I figured this was a flock of turkeys in an Ohio hayfield outside Mount Vernon last Saturday.
Nope. Vultures. Since I could not see any red on their heads, and because of their apparent sociable habit, they might have been Black Vultures. Or Maybe Turkey Vultures assembling around a corpse. Did not have my binoculars.
Not sure whether Black Vultures are regular in central Ohio.
What sorts of petty vandalism did you engage in on Halloween?
 I got in trouble for chalking somebody's driveway with vulgar words one time.
As an adult, I also got in trouble with my wife one year when a neighbor and I escorted our young kids, and we ourselves trick-or-treated our friends and neighbors for cocktails and beers. We got too many. Not our fault for being overserved.
From the report:
The persecution of Egypt's Coptic minority is taking an ironic, and dangerous, turn: Islamist leaders are now projecting the worst traits of radical Islam onto Egypt's Christians. A psychological phenomenon first described by Sigmund Freud, "projection," is defined as "the attribution of one's own ideas, feelings, or attitudes to other people." As such, consider the following excerpt from this recent report:
In the last month various fundamentalist groups held ten demonstrations [in Egypt], each after coming out of mosques following Friday prayers, against the 86-year-old ailing Coptic Pontiff, in which he was accused of being a US agent, an abductor and torturer of female Muslim converts from Christianity, of stockpiling weapons in monasteries and churches to carry out war against Muslims, and of plans to divide Egypt to create a Coptic State.
All of these accusations are as inapplicable to the Coptic Church as they are applicable to Islamists...
 These misguided bozos want to control the weather: Prozac for the Planet
Fantasizing about a Global Climate Control Center
Improving men:
If women married men for who they actually were, there would be far fewer marriages.
Effusive praise for Jane Eyre
The elections:
Every Democratic president from here on out will have to reckon with the possibility that an ambitious liberal agenda in his/her first two years is apt to produce utterly crushing losses in the House.
They don't care. They got what they wanted.
Ariz. Law Requiring Voters Prove Citizenship Is Struck Down
Why not let everybody on the planet vote in our elections?
How they do elections in Illinois
How they do elections in Las Vegas
VDH: Obama is the Great Divider
Related, Post-Racial President Offering Up Racially-Charged Dog Whistles For Black, Hispanic Voters
Disgusting.
Robin tries to have a calm, rational discussion with a Lefty:
I read something a while back about the Dalai Lama, which I thought was fascinating. He was asked what he says to "his enemies," to persuade them; that is, those who disagree with him about Tibet. He said that he doesn't argue with his enemies. That surprised the interviewer, who asked why. The Dalai Lama answered that it was a waste of his time and his energy. He doesn't want to absorb their aggression. I thought this was a profound lesson, and one that I have tried my best to follow ever since.
The DL got that right.
Obamacare doomed to fail, by design
Correct. We've been saying that for over a year.
Who do Lefties hate most? Their fellow Americans.
Correct. We have also been saying that for years.
Democrats' game plan: fake tea party candidates.
There is hardball and there is sleazeball.
Voting Liberal is genetic?
Balderdash.
Coyote: Way Past Time to Open Up to Cuba
Driscoll on Nazis, via Fausta:
...we’ll linger in Hollywood just a bit for some comedy gold from Rob Reiner. Yes, the actor turned director turned anti-smoking obsessive quasi-government official gets his inner Garofalo on and has the Orwellian — and staggeringly clapped out — observation that the folks who want to shrink government and reduce its interference in our daily lives are secretly the folks who in the 1930s built one of the most massive welfare states of all — and I don’t mean FDR.
National Socialists is what they were. Why it's called "right" I do not understand. Nazi Germany was a socialist police state, and every bit as deserving of the Left's repect as Mao, Pol Pot, or Fidel.
Univision Set to Become Top U.S. Broadcast Network
The Globe goes to bat for Barney Frank
Of course.
WSJ: The EPA wants to take away 7% of U.S. power generation.
Climate Craziness of the Week: Save the planet, combine your emails into longer messages
Or why not just have the government charge 37 cents per email? That would be good for Gaia.
Roughly one-quarter of Americans say they receive some form of cash benefits from the government, and most are not willing to sacrifice any of that money to help cut the size of the federal budget.
The Amish breed Standardbreds, trotters and pacers, for transportation. They are longer and heavier than Thoroughbreds.
It's a delight to see an Amish trotter weaving through the strip mall traffic in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, head held high, prancing along, and mostly keeping up with in-town traffic.
This one was tied to a lamppost while the couple shopped at GoodWill.
Another below the fold -
Continue reading "Standardbred"
Wednesday, October 27. 2010
 It's taken me many years to realize that I can really only take in one piece of art per day. One painting - not a gallery-full. One poem, not a collection of poetry. One dance, not a whole dance concert. One piece of classical music, not a whole concert. One Chippendale highboy, not a room full of Chippendale.
Maybe it's my limitation in what I am able to process. Maybe it's my ADD, or maybe I am slow, but to me a wonderful thing is like a found jewel, or like finding an ancient coin washed up on a beach.
I assume that the people who make these things put a lot into them, and they can demand the same of me.
Thus one very special thing per day is plenty for me. I do not like to linger in museums - I prefer to hit and run.
Correggio, Venus with Mercury and Cupid, c. 1520
My brother took this snap off his back porch in CT yesterday morning. His attached email suggested "Hope you all will host T'giving again this year."
Yes, we will. It's usually 20 or so people, meaning two turkeys. One in the oven, the other on the grill.
Pic is a Dunkin in LaGuardia Airport
Jacoby begins:
THE HILLS are alive with the sound of liberal Democratic contempt for the electorate.
ObamaCare: What’s Ailing Democrats
Jay Cost looks at the impending damage to the Dems
Dr. Helen is Where the boys are
How to go to college without losing your mind
The New Road to Serfdom, by one of our heroes, the Brit Daniel Hannan
Krauthammer on Obama: "...his self-regard is quite infinite here."
Insty on the O:
"This kind of inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous. I don’t think we’ve ever seen its like from a sitting President."
Prager: This Is a Referendum, Not an Election
Fighting the Tea Party is like fighting the Taliban - asymmetrical warfare
Good analogy
Black guy looks for racism, cannot find any. He's angry anyway,
Maybe he's angry because he couldn't find any...
Biden:
"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive...”
OK, Joe. Name three.
Tuesday, October 26. 2010
The new Queen Elizabeth. h/t, Theo.
She has the hull of a liner, but the superstructure of a Miami Beach hotel. Everything is quite elegant inside, but on ships like this you can too easily forget that you are on a ship at sea.
I prefer smaller ships, like many of the Holland-American line, that feel like big boats instead of like giant hotel-resorts.
Call me a snob if you want to. I like the Ryndam, below. I was looking at her because we need somewhere new to go to in 2011 - and I love ships 'n boats.
"What happens in the cornfield stays in the cornfield."
Anon.
Pic is beautiful central Ohio, on Sunday.
 More links later. Server problems...
Pajamas: Time for Heads to Roll Over New Black Panther Dismissal
Falling in Love Only Takes About a Fifth of a Second, Research Reveals
That ain't love. That's called desire.
UNMANNED: Boys, Neuters, Thugs and Other Faux Men
Repressed aggression. Very sad.
Powerline: Independents poised to deal hard blow to Democrats
Cons need to keep an eye on those indies. Don't overreach, Cons.
The Shibboleth of "Fixing" Income Inequality
Russia fixed it. It worked out very well indeed. Everybody pretended to work.
Yes, yet another "deep swimmer" of the Left. They tend towards non-profits, where their productivity cannot be measured.
A quote via Thompson on public spending:
See, whilst many… are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t. One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless, then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions. The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings? Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”
Monday, October 25. 2010
The Instyman posts something which might almost be considered a blog post instead of an Instyism. Good stuff, with some Heinlein for dessert. One quote:
The main problem with the “new elite” is that they’re not an elite at all. That is, they aren’t particularly smart, or competent. They are credentialed, but those credentials aren’t so much markers for smartness or competence, or even basic education, as they are admission tickets to the Gentry Class, based on good standardized test scores. That’s fine — ETS was berry, berry good to me — but it doesn’t have much to do with ability to succeed, or lead, in the real world. Worse yet, it seems to have fostered a sense of entitlement.
"Read the whole thing."
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