Maggie's Farm

Worrying about saving the planet, from Carlin. h/t, Dino

Thanks, Reader.

Our own new metal signs will say "Warning: You are entering the MF Assault Rifle Range at your own risk" That ought to work for everybody but the deer hunters who are half in the bag at 4 AM and do not give a damn. We considered having "You are being monitored by video camera," but that did not seem country style. Too much like England - and a lie, too.

I don't want to ruin it by understanding it. Hmm. Music. Gardening. Love.

Sipp

It looks like our Dylanologist will be moving back north to Yankeeland - to New Haven, of all places. One of his great-grandfathers grew up in Woodbridge, and one of his gramps is a retired Yale prof. 

With a new bride, too. Hope he will be able to find time to write more for us.

(Between law school, building stone walls and rebuilding kitchens, he has been truant here at Maggie's. If he doesn't get back on the job, that large monthly check, which is his share of the overly generous RTC donation we receive for mindlessly echoing Repub talking points, will stop coming to him.)

Ya gotta go South to find them high-quality brides. But everybody knows that.

Photo: Got dimples? The Dyl on a water taxi on Lago Maggiore last summer.

Andrew Lloyd Webber on the UK's new taxes. Related: Envy and social behavior 

Dear Greens: Why not start here?

Quel horreur. Swine Flu hysteria. Must be a slow news week. Not worth linking.

Support your local Islamophobe

This is what I call an exciting cruise

How to solve MA's deficit: Jules

Why the Law is foreign to Justice Ginsberg. Am Thinker

A shortage of primary care docs?

MADD is mad, but they have some power now. At Maggie's, we say "Don't drink and drive: you might hit a bump and spill your drink."

More on the Ricci case. Ricci may be the rock upon which America's racial spoils system finally founders.

Al Gore: Raging Capitalist

Prince Charles gets it: It's about conspicuous virtue, not reality

Judd Gregg: Elections have consequences. A quote:

...while the aspiration for universal coverage may be noble, the practical realities of getting there may prove harder for the American public to swallow. "There's no question," the senator says, "that this is a debate about rationing to a large degree. All your single-payer systems are rationing systems. It's also a debate about technology and innovation. Because you will not have capital pursuing technology, innovation and science if it's health-care related, because the return on capital won't be there. And these things are so expensive, especially on the pharmaceutical side and the biologic side, that you'll dramatically slow improvements in the quality of health care through science with a single-payer plan." Mr. Gregg thinks that critique will resonate with the public.

Even so, given the balance of power in Washington, Mr. Gregg gives the Democrats good chances of success in nationalizing our health-insurance market. "I think the odds are pretty good that it's going to happen -- that you'll have a major health-care reform bill pass." As he says, "Elections have consequences."

Via Driscoll:

Judith Klinghoffer’s article, “Obama’s Polls Trail Those of W.; Gallup Covers it Up,” notes that Bush’s approval rating taken by Gallup stood at 62 percent after his first 100 days, while Obama’s currently stands at 56 percent.

A few minutes later, moderator John Scott returned to the subject:

JON SCOTT: And in the first term, George Bush had a 60 percent approval rating after his first 100 days-

PINKERTON: And Bush 41 as well, who I worked for way back when. And Laura Bush has a higher rating than Michelle Obama.

SCOTT: Is that going to get mentioned in the press?

PINKERTON: You just wouldn’t know it from reading the mainstream media.

Story at Rug Rag

Terrific stuff. Cheap, too. We have had Crab Cake recipe wars here recently, but here are some more simple recipes. I put no flavorings in the cakes, because I like the main taste to be the tender, succulent, subtle crabmeat, which is why my favorite food in the world is sauteed soft-shelled crab.

Except maybe Halibut with capers, or Shad Roe with bacon, or Bluefin Tuna belly just seared on the grill, or rare roast beef with horseradish and Yorkshire pudding, or Shepherd's Pie, or barbecued short ribs with cornbread, or Chicken Pot Pie, or black bean soup with jalapenos and mashed potatoes, or plain mashed potatoes, or a real Gumbo made by my Louisiana pal, or a Woodcock dumpling with gibier sauce, black truffle, and Porcini mushrooms, or ...

100th Daygasm: Michelle

What's going on with Mr. Sun?

What happened to the H-word?

Good brief summary of Frederic Bastiat and the negative railroad

From the UK: Obama is confused about who the enemies are. I know other people who think that way.

From the 1984 Is Not A Handbook Department: In the UK Every Phone Call, Email, and Website Visit will be Monitored. Who are these people?

The political and economic consequences of dangerous CO2

What is truth? A quote from Dr. Bob:

Ideas have consequences, philosophies have predicates, and the rejection of absolutes absolutely dehumanizes us, for we devolve from a species of high principles and moral light to denizens of a depravity far lower than the animals. For animals have rational restraints on behavior, brutish though it may be, while there is no end to evil for the human mind unleashed from absolutes.

 1 John 3:1-7

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,^[a]we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

 ⁴Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. ⁵But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. ⁶No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

 ⁷Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Ain't Spring wonderful?

The youngest BD pupette is away, visiting a pal at Brown. I had a 3-mile walk with Mrs. BD and the puppy early this morning, then I played 1 1/2 hours of singles tennis outdoors (for the first time this year. Warm-up time with my best old tennis buddy, with plenty of bloopers.). He also explained to me why commercial real estate will drop 35%. The math is quite simple, really. It's a lagging indicator. He says give it two years, barring strange commie political surprises.

Since then I have been shampooing the carpets, because it's the first day of the year when I can open all doors and window. That chore requires a few semi-cold beers.

After that, I have been assigned a number of planting chores. With a bit of luck, it may get dark first.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness....

New Canaan, CT, is known for the residential architecture of "the Harvard 5." Video.

Photo: The Bridge House

Hermion's little-known verse was discovered buried in many feet of rubble beneath the ruins of the Alexandria Library in 1872 by a team of British archeologists sponsored by Chauncey, Lord Wizzingham. The singed Greek papyrus fragments were difficult to decipher without modern techniques. They appear to be a poetry instructional text, with a series of samples of the basic forms of ancient Greek lyric poetry. Most of the text has been lost.

His samples are considered to be derivative and unoriginal, cliche-ridden, and thus perhaps a collection of traditional songs and thus of little more literary interest than "The Happy Birthday Song" and "For he's a jolly good fellow." My own translations from the ancient Greek, with my labels for the lyrical types:

Skolion (a song of gratitude to a host)

Praise to our host, who provides the best of wine
and the finest oils from his orchards and herbs from his fields.
Hail to our host who provides us with the finest fishes and meats.
We will remember this feast, and may the Gods bless it.
May the Gods bless it well. Today our host is our Lord.
Today our host is our Lord. Praise to our generous host today.

Erotikon (a love song)

I open your flower like a lily, and the lily
opens for me. Anointed with the scented oils
you smell so sweet my tongue must taste your sweetness,
sweet maid of Paros.
If you only let me, I will be with the Gods.
I will be like the Gods in their heavens, if you let me come close.
I will even unsheath my nimble sword for you, dear lady,
if you show me the kindness I long for.
Show me kindness. Show me kindness.

Enkomion (a praise poem for a person)

Dear Heraklon, your arm is strong in battle,
your judgement wise in council,
your children lovely and compliant, your wife
an excellent and dutiful mate. Your concubines
are the most lovely and affectionate; your slaves
gracious and attentive to every need.
There is gold and wheat and oil in your storerooms.
How can I, a humble man,
find the words to praise your virtues?

Hymenaios (wedding song)

We sing the joyful nuptial song for you.
We sing the joyful nuptial song for you.
May be you blessed by the Gods with strong sons.
May you be blessed by the Gods with lovely daughters.
May you prosper. May you prosper. 
May the Gods take delight in this occasion.
May the Gods take delight in this occasion.

Hymn (a praise song to the gods)

Let us praise the Gods who dwell among the clouds,
The Gods of the high peaks, the Gods among the clouds.
Olympians, smile on our actions. Olympians, smile on our actions.
When we seek the good, you smile on our actions.
When we please your wishes, you smile on our actions.
Strengthen our hands and arms, and smile on our actions.
Fatten our animals, and enrich our harvests.
Infect our enemies with disease, and enrich our harvests.
Defeat our enemies, and smile on our harsh actions.
We will forever praise you. We will forever praise you.

Dithyramb (a song for Dionysus)

Lord of the dance, Lord of the wines,
Lord of the pure wines, Lord of the scented wines,
Lord of the wild hills, Lord of the high thyme-scented hills,
Lord who rides the snarling panther to our festivities.
Join us in our festivities, Dionysus.
Join us in our festivities, Dionysus.
You are the horned bull, the young women hunger for your presence.
The old women are made jubilant and youthful by your presence.
Drink the wine we bring, the wine we made, the fragrant wine we offer,
the wine which makes us dance,
the wine which makes us amorous,
the wine which makes us run and dance.

Threnos (a funeral song)

Archemion, you have travelled from us.
Archemion, you have travelled from us.
With our funeral song, we will remember you.
With our funeral song, we will remember you.
With our funeral song, the Gods will remember you.
The Gods will watch your travels, and remember your good works.

Paean (a hymn to Apollo sung around the altar)

Lord Apollo, it is our joy to celebrate you.
Lord Apollo, it is our joy to celebrate you.
The source of our illumination and wisdom,
our lamp and our light, our lamp and our light,
our lamp in the evening and our light by day,
the Prince of Olympus, the Prince of Olympus.
Our joy is to bring our gifts to your altar.
Our joy is to bring our sacrifices to your sacred altar.

Image: A Bell-Krater (c. 440 BC), used for mixing wine with water and flavorings (which the Dionysians refused to do - they drank their wine unmixed to get their holy buzz on).

Our shrink friend Nathan, who has completed Aliyah in Israel, sends this reminiscence of his days working for the Indian Health Service, doing general practice including surgery and obstetrics - and anything else that was needed. Old-timey medicine.

Before replacing the sloughed skin on Mrs. R's arm, I had to find out why her forearm was raw to the muscle.  New here among the Sioux, I am surprised to learn that my colleagues (and one ancient Roman Catholic always fiddling with her rosary) hadn't checked this elderly, chunky widow's blood sugar: diabetic, sure enough, never diagnosed. So, first things first: stabilize her blood sugars, treat the diabetes, and give proper antibiotics (for anaerobes and aerobes -- they missed this too), then when you see the shiny, glimmer of healthy tissue margins, go for a skin flap transplant.

The pharmacist was my surgical assistant; he was the brightest of the bunch, from N'orlins, La before the Flood, he couldn't get into med school, he said, but he was smart, hard-working and pleased to assist. He also ordered special hickory chips from N'orlins, La. to barbecue and made his own roux. It was then that I learned I loathed ochra, that slimy matrix it exudes.

Then how to unskin a lady was not to be straightforward as it was at the University hospital where I studied.  The surgical suite -- well-endowed -- had not been used for years; surgery was sent eighty-miles up-road to Mobridge to the White hospital; none done here, except deliveries (which too often evolved into C-sections who had to be sent, ambulance screaming, up to Mobridge.  One trip, the eternally-soused obstetrician kept his fist in the mother's vagina to keep the baby from popping out.

To unskin a forearm means to find a donor site from the inner thigh. Anesthesia needed for this and there was no anestheiologist, no nurse-anesthetist, even in the 1970's. I do double duty. First, a lumbar block to numb the donor site; second, a brachial plexus block -- in the armpit -- to numb the recipient, the naked forearm.  Lumbars I had done many of: babies with possible meningitis; Southside Chicago girls in active labor, with no prenatal care and needing an urgent C-section.  But, brachial plexus block was a never-done for me; remembered the anatomy, the complex twistings and routings within that armpit, like some noodling of telephone wires beneath the city streets, but never stuck a needle there.  The night before surgery, I bone-up on my Netter's anatomy and hit the spot square-on the next day in the O.R. 

Before hitting the OR, I had done several days debriding of the sloughed wound: fresh it must be to transplant the sod of skin.  In the OR, flipped on her side, I slid into the vertebral space between L4 and 5; a bit lordotic pull by the nurses and I had a clear tunnel in.  Then, flapped on her back, Mrs R. was ready. The thigh well scrubbed, Betadined, aproned, an oval hole isolating the site. Instruments we had. The strange loopy-scalpel to slice just-thick-enough epidermis and a touch if dermis to both "take" to the new site, yet leaving some dermis to heal-over the thigh; something like a large cheese knife the instrument looked.  Forearm next. Her arm flung up like some lop-sided angel wing, I probed left-handed with two gloved fingers, then slid the massively long needle --- like from the cartoons -- in between the stretch of skin. Wait. Wait. Numbness without paralysis in the arm. First, a touch on the skin (for sensitive fibers); then a pinch with a forceps (for the pain C-fibers) and success. 

Laying the layers onto the site is much like laying sod; carefully, side by side, the edges trimmed to the wound shape. The "root" growing will take on its own, a pressure bandage holding the skin sod in place.  A fine lawn it will hopefully be; like sodding around a putting hole -- it should look good and cover the ground.  And after five  or six days of brief peeks, it looks darn good.

But, Mrs. R. wants a pass to leave early. There will be a Sundance ceremony with several initiants, including, I learn later, Russel Means, wanted by the FBI for shooting three men on Rosebed reservation, down south.  I explain, I plead in fact, that she can't rotate the arm; she must stay in hospital a week or so until we know healing has happened. Mrs. R. has donated two buffalo for eats at the ceremony and insists, politely, quietly, firmly, that she is going. Wakantanka, the Sioux god whose voice one hears shushing through the Black Hills, will protect her.  She invites me. 

Being invited was one thing; getting in another.  I and Debby were the only washichus, white men, attending. While this was a Lakota Sioux ceremony, it had become politicized; other tribes, mostly the more militant ones, as far away as the Navajo, had sent "guards": thick-armed toughs with long, greasy black hair and their image of mean on their faces. The fellow who greeted us -- we had the red Fiat 128 in South Dakota -- commanded us out. A face like a slab of steak with two eyes embedded, he frisked me; looking for drugs and guns, he said. His compatriots searched the tiny Fiat's baggage, checked under the carriage, beneath the seats, glove compartment. When he turned to frisk Debby, I told him firmly, no way: I would turn around and he could explain to Mrs. R. why I was not admitted. Her name was a key to the lock that was his harshness.  We were passed through. 

I did not expect to be the only Washichu; thought other docs would be invited; learned later that my do-gooder colleagues who come to save the Indians are not so welcome.  Already, I had dispensed with making morning rounds with them, as I tired and was irritated at the "religion" they spouted at bedside; told them I needed to round earlier.

We formed a large  circle. Formed is not quite right. A circle was somehow formed by the few hundred there, centered by the cottonwood from which leather strops hung. Each strop was anchored with a bone hook -- from what animal I don't recall, perhaps antelope.  The six piercees entered; I'm told by Mrs. R. that they had purified themselves in the wild for several days with fasting and water.  The hooks are pierced into the pectoral muscle, not the skin, to hold more firmly; one on each side.  as the men leaned back against the leather thongs, faces skyward, Cubist, uptilting tits were formed: this manly ceremony giving rise to a touch of woman.  A moaning or humming was emitted by them by these men; also those in the circle, as the men stomped sidewise about, a dance they called it, in a hypnotic slowness. A timeless quality it felt.

Near the end, several men appear with massive shallow wooden bowls, face us in the circle and pass around the dried buffalo donated by Mrs. R.

She is called to near the center. A peace pipe is to be given to her for her generosity. As some chiefly type raises the pipe, his arms extended, palms upward, I realize, a touch shocked, that she will now rotate her arms upward to receive the peace pipe with both hands. I feel a belly clutch: will she tear the stitches?

Mrs. R. looks back at me afterwards; tosses a smile of reassurance. Thanks to Wakantanka the skin is fine, she explains.

One weekend, we go to the Black Hills, find a cabin, rest outside beneath a sky filled with more stars than I have ever imagined. I feel a sense of annoyance as I hear the rush of what sounds like highway traffic just beyond the ridge.  Ridge top I look: no highway; it is Wakantanka speaking through the black pine. 

It was the only time He has ever spoken around me.

Top photo: Sioux war party, 1870s?
Middle photo: Sioux warrior
Lower photo: Sioux village

h/t, S,C&A:

How else to get truth out of them? This from Jules:

As the vengeful handwringing angels of the America-bashing left have always said about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, you can’t just go for the foot soldiers. The fish rots at the head. In this sorry business of abusive interrogations, let’s start with that body that serves as the conscience of the nation … Congress. You remember, the concerned American deliberative body that was apprised at the highest levels of the CIA’s practices and asked if there weren’t tougher methods that could be used against the enemies of our nation. Verdict in the dark days of 2002? Waterboarding OK!

Monotonic music mainly, with lyre, drum, trumpet and flute, with different "modes" to evoke different states of mind. The ancient Greeks considered their music and lyrics to be central to who they were as a civilization, and, of course, to be a gift from the gods. As best I can tell, poetry (the lyrics) was never offered without accompanying music.

The group Melpomen recreates the ancient sounds from surviving fragments. (Samples of the music at the Amazon site.)

Wiki has a fine summary of ancient Greek music. Interesting to read that Plato (c 400 BC) complained about the modern music which defied old forms.

Image: Music lesson, c.460 BC, from this site about ancient Greek music. 

This superb song was an outtake from his album Modern Times. I love it. Lyrics here:

Suppose gentlemen, you said to me, ‘Socrates, you shall be acquitted on this occasion, but only on one condition. That you give up spending your time on this quest and stop philosophising. If we catch you going on in the same way, you shall be put to death. Well, supposing, as I said, that you should offer to acquit me on these terms, I should reply:
"Men of Athens, I am your very grateful and devoted servant, but I owe a greater obedience to God than to you, and so long as I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting you and elucidating the truth for everyone that I meet. I shall go on saying, in my usual way, “My friend, you are an Athenian and belong to a city which is the greatest and famous in the world for its wisdom and strength. Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with honour and reputation, and care so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?" "

Plato on Socrates, The Apology

Our blog pal AVI noticed a fascinating piece at Steve Sailer about the relative popularity of art posters.

Is it all about color-coordination? Decor? An important artist whose posters do not sell, Max Ernst's Europe After the Rain (1940):

From the Rolling Stone review of Dylan's new record:

...as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the Great Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare strolls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door."

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

P.J. O'Rouke, 1993

"Ancient," to me, means before 1000 BC. After that, it's historic, more or less.

These are old pots. I stumbled on the Metropolitan Museum of Art's site with their collection of Athenian 6-4th Century BC red and black containers while searching for an illo for last Saturday's Saturday Verse. I am sure you have looked at their like before. These decorated containers were surely not for everyday use.

Here are a few of them:

Amphora, c. 530 BC

Amphora with chariot and soldiers, c. 540 BC

Bell-krater (wine mixing bowl) with three women, one playing lyre. c. 460 BC. I would assume that she is singing too.

Hydria (water jug), c. 500 BC

Ain't these intertubes cool?

There are things we can touch and perceive, or perceive with technology. Some things cannot be touched but can be easily perceived, such as the charming young lassies above. Or mental life: ideas, emotions, etc. And spiritual life.

For some reason, it's Greek Week at Maggie's and, while looking for something else, I found this bit somewhere at Wiki:

Socrates is contemptuous of people who think that something has to be graspable in the hands to be real. In the Theaetetus, he says such people are "eu a-mousoi", an expression that means literally, "happily without the muses" (Theaetetus 156a). In other words, such people live without the divine inspiration that gives him, and people like him, access to higher insights about reality.

Socrates's idea that reality is unavailable to those who use their senses is what puts him at odds with the common man, and with common sense. Socrates says that he who sees with his eyes is blind, and this idea is most famously captured in his allegory of the cave, and more explicitly in his description of the divided line. The allegory of the cave (begins Republic 7.514a) is a paradoxical analogy wherein Socrates argues that the invisible world is the most intelligible ("noeton") and that the visible world ("(h)oraton") is the least knowable, and the most obscure.

It is certain that many are indifferent to the invisible world - practical, earth-bound types who are happily without the muses' gift - or burden - of reflecting on the "higher realities" and the hidden realities which seem to try to connect the human heart with the cosmic. The meta-physical or trancendent realm of thought and experience which many of us seek to grasp and hold. More:

The word metaphysics derives from the fact that Aristotle's musings about divine reality came after ("meta") his lecture notes on his treatise on nature ("physics"). The term is in fact applied to Aristotle's own teacher, and Plato's "metaphysics" is understood as Socrates' division of reality into the warring and irreconcilable domains of the material and the spiritual. The theory has been of incalculable influence in the history of Western philosophy and religion.

Indeed we are all Greeks - especially those of us who are Christians (the Greek Paul thoroughly Greekified the Christ Cult, thus translating it into a world religion). "Psyche," the soul, was a combination of the psych-ological (mental) and the spiritual/divine aspects of reality as we experience it, until academics in modern times separated psychology out as a topic of study in the Aristotelian slicing-and-dicing way. Being sober sorts, they did not want to call Psychologists "soul students," nor did Psychiatrists want to call themselves "soul physicians." So they put it in Greek, same as most of the other -ologists and -iatrists.

Photo on top of a few untouchable Muses borrowed from Egotastic.
Image below: Bust of Socrates, Louvre