Thursday, April 8. 2010
 My Mom recently mailed me a stack of letters, postcards, etc that my Grandpa had mailed to his kid sister from a June-August 1940 trip he had taken his two kids on - my Mom and my late uncle. (My Grandpa's lovely wife died after giving birth to my Mom, and he never remarried. Not sure he ever got over that loss.) A single parent.
He wrote about three letters or postcards per week to his dear Sis in Bridgeport, CT. It's a delight to read these travelogues. Seems like the fellow (who was a good pal to me when I was young), a great yachtsman (also a fine horseman, polo player, and shooter), spent much of his time on the bridge with the officers during the cruise part of their trip. He reported all the warships he admired en route - Sis' husband was a naval officer in the Pacific at the time. Probably spent the rest of the time in the bar playing poker, which he reported was pleasantly air-conditioned.
He also reported that my Mom, as usual, won the shipboard trap shooting contests (she has always been good with a horse and a shotgun, but now all she does is tennis and gardening). At the time, my Mom was in high school on the riding team and my Uncle at Dartmouth on the drinking team.
Their cruise took them from NYC to San Francisco via Baltimore, Havana, Cristobal, Balboa, Acapulco, Los Angeles on the Panama Pacific Line's City of San Francisco. From his letters, they also stopped in Colon and Panama City.
As I do, my Grandpa loved the shipboard life, especially the coasting up from Panama to California. Then they spent a few days at the Hotel Empire in SF, then variously trained and drove to the Yosemite Lodge, the Grand Canyon, spent a couple of weeks at the still-wonderful old Eaton's Ranch in WY, thence to the New Lawrence Hotel in Chicago and then train back to NYC.
Nice summer trip.
Christmas, mid-1950s, in Grandpa's parlor I think. My cuz added some color to the B&W. My Grandpa with pipe in hand on left next to Sis, and other relatives:
A bit more about this one of my two fine Grandpas on continuation page below. One day soon, we will do a post inviting readers' Grandpa reminiscences. Not today.
Continue reading "A bit of the past for my kids: "Dear Sis""
Don't Buy It. Damn good advice these days. "It's not real, and it's not perfect."
Sipp has got himself a bright little rug rat there to support him in his old age. Or two. I like totally agree with that little chipmunk...except when something really sings to me. Like a new shotgun...or an S&W .357 Airweight...or a trip to Budapest.
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
Thomas ŕ Kempis, Imitation of Christ, c.1420
Wednesday, April 7. 2010
You cannot not love June Carter who, I am sure almost all of our readers know, was Mrs. Cash.
At Powerline, in praise of Merle with a great tune.
Tuesday, April 6. 2010
 Story here.
Up here in Yankeeland, many people read Town & Country to keep up with what's going on socio-culturally.
Garden & Gun may become the Southern version of T&C, but we enjoy it very much also.
Our friend Anchoress emailed me this piece from a Lutheran, The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear. It begins:
The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.
Found these at the Bass Pro Shop in Nashville a couple of years ago. In my case, their message happens to be true. Yes, there are still some Farmalls in New England, and my Grandpa's is still running fine even though he stopped running long ago.
The ones with the close-together front tires creep me out on Massachusetts hills, though. I prefer a "wide stance" on the hills.
Monday, April 5. 2010
 California Voters Support ObamaCare. They eat Unicorn meat out there (image via Surber).
An atheist: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity
Outsourcing grading
Dr. Helen: Is Control over Porn Really about Control over Men’s Sexuality?
From Back to the 1970s: Let’s Get Small!
Whatever the new problem—resource depletion, air pollution, acid rain, the ozone hole, or global warming—we always end up back at the same old “solutions”: stop population growth, stop economic growth, stop consuming things, redistribute wealth, go back to small village living, and we’ll all sing Kumbaya. No matter how many times green gloom is discredited (i.e., the Simon-Ehrlich wager), lapsing into the old eco-fundamentalism is just too irresistible.
Can Christie save New Jersey?
Wilkinson: Glen Whitman and the Rise of the New Paternalism
Insurers not demons, just messengers
Containing Mexico
Switzerland as an example for the world
From Mead's Liberal Internationalism: The Twilight of a Dream:
These days, liberal internationalism is a solution in search of a problem: it is an idea whose time has passed. Liberal Wilsonians must take a long hard look at a world that is not moving toward global governance in any serious way and think about how the values at the heart of the Wilsonian vision can be advanced in a new century.
AVI: America is a Pacifist nation
Is the O eloquent no more? Related: What do some Democrats say in private to each other?
Powerline: Why can't they just forgive and forget?
Rahe: Global warming, RIP
Guy at the NYT thinks he understands me:
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.
Hence their anger and frustration...
Plain cruel: The O's sissy pitch
Classical liberals should support open borders. It is a debate.
Juan Williams gets quite a few facts wrong but he is beginning to get it.
AP’s Fournier: Relax, it’s just a Tea Party
Whoa… 4 in 10 Tea Party Protesters Are Democrats or Independent
Rep. Cleaver backs away from spitting claim
Neoneo: It is difficult to demonize tea partiers.
Indeed it is, neo. My pup's scarey violent Tea Partay (with potentially lethal croquet) a couple of years ago:
Sunday, April 4. 2010
Alfie's Theme (1973). A saxophone is so much like a singing human voice...that it is one.
- Deacon Kevin McCormack, on Religion on the Line (radio): "If there were no Easter, there would be no Christmas."
- My Pastor in church this morning (paraphrased): "If we cannot believe that Christ rose from the dead, or are on the path to believing it, then we're wasting our time here." (I think that is debatable, but I like totally get his point. - the illumination comes from stepping into the light. Many things in life are like that. Maybe most things.)
Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
Saturday, April 3. 2010
From Steyn:
Lenin famously said the west would "sell us the rope by which we will hang them". He was underestimating our suicidal stupidity: We're happy to give it away.
From Dr. Clouthier: 10 ways to keep your relationship (by being realistic).
Dried salt Cod from the Grand Banks became popular in Italy, Spain and Portugal during the 1500s and 1600s, and naturally became incorporated into meatless fast days like Christmas Eve and Good Friday - and Fridays in general.
I stumbled onto some baccala at the market the other day as I was hunting for fresh mint, and, even though it is not a fast day, I will make a pile of these as an Easter appetizer.
Photo is Pew & Son Flake Yard, Gloucester, MA, 1899, from this site of old fishing photos. "Flakes" are codfish drying racks. That Atlantic Cod is, alas, being overfished to extinction. Mankind will be sorry. I remember when you could drop a hook with a clam on it into the Gulf of Maine and come up with a big Cod or Haddock for supper in about two minutes.
Friday, April 2. 2010
Thanks, BL. More Depression toons here.
"Self-respect requires fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues; self-esteem encourages emotional incontinence that, while not actually itself a cardinal sin, is certainly a vice, and a very unattractive one. Self-respect and self-esteem are as different as depth and shallowness."
Ted Dalrymple, via Dr. Sanity's BAD ROMANCE
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Fungus kills off 