Maggie's Farm

It is 40 years since the silly and juvenile 1967 "Summer of Love." Cinnamon Stillwell remembers it. Quote: 

Among '60s disciples, it's an article of faith that everything that came out of that summer was a boon to American society. This has certainly been the impression conveyed through popular culture. Rarely are the more pernicious offshoots of the social and political experiment known as the Summer of Love referenced in the glowing and groovy portrayals seen on PBS and the History Channel.

But in its haste to dispense with all tradition that came before, the Summer of Love generation threw out much of the good along with the bad. The attempt to live in a manner that is essentially unsustainable led to a proliferation of divorce, drug use, promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, and all the perils and problems associated therewith. Too many people left their families, became addicts, and in some cases, lost their lives.

When all social boundaries are tossed aside and self-fulfillment becomes one's raison d'etre, society breaks down and, with it, all sense of morality. Seen in this light, the Summer of Love starts to seem more like the Summer of Folly.

Exactly. Read her whole piece.

h/t, Don Singleton

During the Republican debates, I hit my cocktail every time a candidate mentioned Reagan. Tonight, I’m going to take a nice-sized gulp whenever a YouTuber asks “What are you going to do for ME?” Or, any words to that effect. I might not make it through the entire debate. ...

Blogger Vodkapundit, live-blogging yesterday's Dem candidate debate. (h/t, Prof Bainbridge)

The Irrawaddy, you may recall, runs south through the center of the nation I still call Burma. Photos from the cruise here. Photo of the luxury cruise ship, calling at a port, below.

A re-post for book lovers

Book lovers (and book dealers) from New England and New York travel hundreds of miles on an annual pilgrimage to the Annual Pequot Library Book Sale, in elegant Southport, CT., on the last weekend of July. It's a gold mine of used books, arranged by categories, and the serendipitous finds can be wonderful. Two years ago I found the complete Pepys diaries. 

Their 120,000 books on sale come from estates, donations, and especially from other libraries. The money raised helps support the Pequot Library.

It goes on for 5 days beginning Friday, and prices go down each day, and everything is free on the last day. However, the place gets raked over carefully, so Saturday is maybe the best day to go. In a way, I hate to let more people know about this event, but it's my duty as a blogger.

I despise you for trashing the good names of words such as 'diversity', 'tolerance', 'respect', 'progress', 'charity' and 'community'. Words and concepts that have made this country such a magnet for others have now become little more than Orwellian IngSoc. '1984' was written as a warning, not a fucking instruction manual.

From a Grade A rant at Australia's A Western Heart, via Synthstuff

Another piece from the show at MOMA. This is by Brazilian Beatriz Milhazes, called Eggplants. I was certain that I had the camera level.

Here. h/t, Viking. A sample:

Made it to the MOMA "What is painting?" show yesterday. Their new building is excellent. As usual, the place was packed.

Do I love Modern Art? I dunno - I just like to look at stuff and to think about it.

I learned that "painting" is anything man-made (or man-altered), based on a flat surface which engages the eye when you stand and look at it. I could have thought of that, but it seems overly-broad: would not that definition apply to a Men's Room sign, when one is in need of one?

Anyway, it's a very eclectic show, with the predictable and silly all-white canvas which makes you wish you had a magic marker in your pocket. I liked this very large piece by George Baselitz, "Woodsmen."

We're in love! Let's drink!

Colossians 1:15-29

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; ¹⁶for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. ¹⁷He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. ²¹And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, ²²he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— ²³provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel. ²⁴I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church. ²⁵I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, ²⁶the mystery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. ²⁷To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. ²⁸It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. ²⁹For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.

Photo:  The Wellfleet MA First Congregational Church. Its clock chimes ship's bells instead of landlubber time. Photo from here.

Who knew there was a Voluntary Human Extinction Movement? As long as it's voluntary, I'm all for it. I like volunteerism.

From the piece at No Left Turns:

The VHEM position is “realistic: We know we’ll never see the day there are no human beings on the planet. . . . The Movement may be considered a success each time one more of us volunteers to breed no more.” The VHEM approach demographically guarantees that its hard task will only get harder. Those non-breeding volunteers will have no children to catechize, while the people who do breed will have set an anti-VHEM example for their children simply by virtue of having them.

Instead of stigmatizing people who drive SUVs and eat beef, let's just stigmatize anyone who has kids. Better yet, the members of this movement, to be morally consistent, should simply off themselves right now, in some sort of Gaia-friendly manner. After all, breathing and farting are major sources of CO2.

A country song by Rodney Carrington. Not OK for work, but cute - not porn. "If you love your country, then show them to me..."  It's a guy thing - some might say a bit adolescent. (h/t, Ace)

The music video, with many bare chests, here. 

Worm of the Week: Our Friend, Mr. Earthworm

Mr. Cool: Willis Haviland Carrier

Dane Geld, Appeasement, and the Danger of Being Innocent in a Dangerous World

Wheelbarrows and Wagons: The Lever

Good Spanking

Ships can weather far worse storms than this, but it's unusual to have a helo taking film at the same time. This is the cruise ship Voyager in cyclone Valentina in the Med on Valentine's Day, 2005. Not very romantic. (h/t, And rightly So)

Blackfish Creek is a tidal inlet which runs from the harbor through the town of Wellfleet, MA. Photo borrowed from this Wellfleet photo site.

Regular readers know that Maggie's Farm has a strong conservationist orientation, but if anyone tries to call us Greenies we will shoot you in both kneecaps with our Colt Python.

I know some readers are inclined to disagree with us about this, but we do believe in certain sorts of planning, and even certain sorts of government "taking," Kelo notwithstanding.

For two examples we like, JFK's Cape Cod National Seashore took the development rights to broad swaths of the Lower Cape (which is the upper Cape). This action not only preserved the feel and aesthetics of the Cape but preserved the unusual Cape environment - and ultimately raised land values through the roof. Without the National Seashore, there would no longer be anywhere on the Cape to hunt, the salt marshes would be filled in, and the place would look like the worst parts of the Jersey Shore. (Photo is a view of Wellfleet's Chequessett Neck).

Another example we like is Britain's Town and Country Planning Act of 1947. Without that act of Parliament, Britain would not be a tourist destination: it would look like Indianapolis. It protected the towns, and it protected their farmlands and open spaces. Yes, it essentially confiscated development rights - with the voters' approval. (Photo below: A view of English countryside, just outside of town.)

 So, while our pure Libertarian readers grouse and grumble, let's get to the point. The good Prof. Pat Deneen recently hosted Roger Scruton at Georgetown, which speech is now Scruton's most recent published essay, A Righter Shade of Green, in The American Conservative. Scruton isn't so much in favor of government taking - he is in favor of a local sense of trusteeship. That's the right idea, but I haven't seen it work in practice too often: local politics are not the highest form of human civic evolution or future-orientation.

As Prof Deneen notes, and as we have frequently noted here, poor stewardship of our precious land in the US is made possible by the "externalization of costs" to other people and to future generations. Example: highways. Example: development of good farmland for 1/2 acre zoning.

Read Pat Deneen's piece here. He quotes Scruton's conclusion:

What then is the conservative solution, if there is one? A revival of trusteeship is the only hope for the future, and this attitude is natural to human beings. They enter the world through no choice of their own, to be greeted, as a rule, by the love of parents and the security of home. The trustee is the one who recognizes that his home, and all that it means, are inherited things, things to be safeguarded and passed on. This attitude exercises itself at the local level in the voluntary associations and small institutions of civil society. It is the core component in that associational genius that Tocqueville discerned in the American people. It is the legacy of a political order that regards people, not rulers, as the source of authority and the fount of responsible decision-making.

Environmental movements on the Left seldom pause to consider the question of human motivation. It is so clear to them that something must be done that they leap to the conclusion that it must be done by state power and imposed by law. The problem with that approach is that it makes mistakes into permanent legacies and provides no incentive to ordinary citizens to do what they are told. Conservatives, on the whole, are more respectful of human nature and will recognize in the attitude of trusteeship a feeling to which we automatically tend, when given the freedom to exercise it.

Read Scruton's whole essay at American Conservative.

Asians and Westerners literally see the world differently. From a piece at Live Science:

Nisbett illustrated this with a test asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw.

The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish.

The Japanese gave 60 percent more information on the background and twice as much about the relationship between background and foreground objects as Americans, Nisbett said.

Our Aliyah Diary author Nathan forwarded this letter from Jerusalem about the NYT review of "Hot House" this week, and the pictured murderer of 15 at Sbarro.

Dear Friends,

Today's New York Times carries a review of a film called "Hot House " that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We're not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. 
 
The film is produced by HBO. So it's presumably HBO's publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.

That female is our child's murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates.

Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment's attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would  be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our  daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties -  Hamas saw to that.

Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people - far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course - can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures - some of the very few we have - of our murdered daughter.

They are at
http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm

And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison - the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times - said last year. "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison."

With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she's smiling.

With greetings from Jerusalem,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki