Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public. 

Winston Churchill

Motherhood, Religion, Sex, and Money

Excerpts from "The Well-Connected Mother: The Centrality of Motherhood is not just an Idea" by Juli Wiley:

Motherhood starts with conception. Pope John Paul II said that the Annunciation, the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary, is a high point not only of the history of the human race but of the universe. At the Annunciation, the Word became flesh, became flesh in the body of a woman. This reminds me of how women’s bodies are different from men’s, and what this meant for Mary and what it means for us.

Men are often tempted to think that their bodies were made for their own use. To a great extent this is true for everyone: Your hands, sir, are yours, they are for your use, and mine are for my use. A man can indulge this illusion of autonomy even further by supposing that even his genitals are there for himself. They’re a source of at times almost compelling drives and intriguing sensations. Even his testes are useful for him, in that the hormones they produce provide certain secondary sexual characteristics he has an interest in maintaining.

But a woman’s body has all these nooks and crannies which are no use to us but evidently were put there for someone else. Don’t get me wrong: We women have our pleasure doodads and our own hormonal self-interest as well. But then, well, there’s the womb. That’s not there for me. I can do without it. It was obviously put there for someone else. The same is true of mature mammary glands, rich with branching ducts and reservoirs, as they are found in nursing mothers and as they are not found in childless females, however nubile and Partonesque they may be.

Our female bodies are connectors: Inter-connectedness is not just a concept, it’s built into us. This gives us the sense that we find in Mary’s Magnificat, of being, within our own bodies, the living link between past and future: “Behold, all generations will call me Blessed. . . . His mercy is on those who fear him, from generation to generation. . . . As he spoke to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his posterity forever.”

Read the whole thing at Touchstone.

Reward excellent failure - punish mediocre success.

In a Ruined Country: Samuels on Arafat and Palestine

David Brooks selected the above-named essay about how Arafat destroyed Palestine as one of the best of 2005. It is now briefly available here at The Atlantic online.

A couple of quotes:

"In a largely traditional society Arafat stood out because he was self-made, the symbolic incarnation of a people that owed its continued existence to him. Decades before he began to show his age in public, his lips trembling, his hands shaking, his belly distended—even then he was known as the Old Man. His speeches were laundry lists of slogans and exhortatory phrases such as "Ya jabal ma yahzak reeh" ("O mountain, the wind cannot shake you!") and "Li-l-Quds rayyihin, shuhada bi-l-malayyin" ("To Jerusalem we march, martyrs by the millions") interspersed with Koranic verses. The symbolic leader of the Palestinian nation spoke with a pronounced Egyptian accent. His lips flapped when he spoke. To some, the combination was irredeemably comic. He distinguished himself within the Palestinian national movement by his boundless energy for the cause, alqadhiya, which might also be translated as "the case," a term appropriate to a proceeding in a courtroom. One of the peculiarities of the nation that Arafat created was that it was founded on a festering grievance rather than any positive imagination of the future; the worse things were in the present, the stronger the Palestinian case became.

For the diplomats of the European Union, whose dream of creating a new kind of political organization that would rival the United States for global influence was burdened by the historical guilt of colonialism and the Holocaust, the image of the Jew as oppressor that Arafat offered the world was both novel and liberating; the State of Israel would become the Other of a utopian new world order that would be cleansed of destructive national, religious, and particularistic passions."

and:

"The amounts of money stolen from the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people through the corrupt practices of Arafat's inner circle are so staggeringly large that they may exceed one half of the total of $7 billion in foreign aid contributed to the Palestinian Authority. The biggest thief was Arafat himself. The International Monetary Fund has conservatively estimated that from 1995 to 2000 Arafat diverted $900 million from Palestinian Authority coffers, an amount that did not include the money that he and his family siphoned off through such secondary means as no-bid contracts, kickbacks, and rake-offs. A secret report prepared by an official Palestinian Authority committee headed by Arafat's cousin concluded that in 1996 alone, $326 million, or 43 percent of the state budget, had been embezzled, and that another $94 million, or 12.5 percent of the budget, went to the president's office, where it was spent at Arafat's personal discretion."

Indian Lore

 It was October and the Indians on a remote reservation asked their new Chief if the coming winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was a Chief in a modern society he had never been taught the old secrets.  When he looked at the sky he couldn't tell what the winter was going to be like.  Nevertheless, to be on the safe side he told his tribe that the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the village should collect firewood to be prepared.

But being a practical leader, after several days he got an idea.  He went to the phone booth, called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is the coming winter going to be cold?"

"It looks like this winter is going to be quite cold," the meteorologist at the weather service responded.  So the Chief went back to his people and told them to collect even more firewood in order to be prepared.

A week later he called the National Weather Service again.
"Does it still look like it is going to be a very cold winter?"
"Yes," the man at National Weather Service again replied,
"It's going to be a very cold winter."  The Chief again went back to his people and ordered them to collect every scrap of firewood they could find.

Two weeks later the Chief called the National Weather Service again.  "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely," the man replied.  "It's looking more and more like it is going to be one of the coldest winters ever."

"How can you be so sure?" the Chief asked.

The weatherman replied,  "The Indians are collecting firewood like crazy."

Rousseau

"Nothing is more depressing than the general fate of men. And yet they feel in themselves a consuming desire to become happy, and it makes them feel at every moment that they were born to be happy. So why are they not?" Jean-Jacques Rousseau

From a review of a new book about Rousseau, by Dirda in the WaPo:

"Rousseau's contemporary, the arch-conservative Edmund Burke, labeled him "the Socrates of the National Assembly" (that is, of the hated French Revolution). Come the 20th century, this radical thinker had grown into the great beast of all who revere traditional institutions, worship in established churches and either fear or exploit the common man. Yet no one, of whatever political or philosophical persuasion, would deny how deeply Rousseau's sensibility pervades the past 250 years, from the poetry of the Romantics ("One impulse from a vernal wood/May teach you more of man . . . ") to the slogans, pop songs and lifestyles of the 1960s: Drop out, "Let it be," back to Nature, hippies, communes, self-realization. Yet Rousseauian ideals also lie behind our unabated, unassuaged longings to live more humanely in a bureaucratic, technological and often unjust world. Even the staunchest meritocrat or most self-satisfied scion of inherited wealth must find it hard to discount the truth of the discourse on inequality's final ringing lines: "It is manifestly against the Law of Nature . . . that a handful of men wallow in luxury, while the famished multitudes lack the necessities of life."

Such thrilling emotional language has always contributed to Rousseau's powerful appeal. Contrary to a widespread misconception, many philosophers have also been superb prose stylists -- just think of Plato, Hume or William James -- but this largely self-educated former valet may be the finest of all. Rousseau actually had to beg his readers to disregard his "beau style" and just pay attention to his ideas. But this is impossible. His sentences are musical and absolutely limpid, at once classically balanced yet intimate, oracular and confessional. One is simply swept along, no matter what the subject."

Read entire review.

Politics and the English Language

The above-named essay by Orwell made a big impression on me when I first read it in high school. I cannot say that I follow his rules, but I do aspire to.

In this piece in Appellate Advocate, Orwell's basic rules of writing are applied to legal briefs.

New Stuff for 2006!

We will have a Logical Fallacy of the Week (and a Dog of the Week during the Year of the Dog...just a photo, not much more, with special attention to the sporting breeds).

Recently added or adding to our Blogroll: Libertarian Leanings, John Leo's Blog, Barone Blog, Bird of Paradise, Brendan Nyhan, Dinocrat, Sensible Mom, Just One Minute, the Political Teen, YARGB, Synthstuff, Wizbang, WILLisms, Shrinkwrapped, and Daily Pundit. Surely more to come. So many fine blogs, so little time.

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

Ann Landers

Book-Based Travel

Travels with Homer. From an extraordinary essay by Halkin titled Sailing to Ithaca:

"I first set foot on the island of Ithaca by swimming ashore. This was not how it was done by Odysseus, who was carried from a ship in early dawn by the sailors conveying him on the final leg of his long journey home. “Then they stepped forth on the land,” Homer tells us, “and first they lifted Odysseus out of the hollow ship . . . and laid him down on the sand, still overpowered by sleep.”¹ He would have had to be sleeping quite soundly not to awake, for we have just been told that, in beaching, the ship “ran full half her length on the shore in her swift course, at such pace was she driven by the arms of the rowers.” That must have given her a powerful jolt.

One cannot beach a modern yacht, which has a keel to give it stability in the water. Ancient Greek ships lacked true keels and so—at least to judge from Homer—they often capsized in rough seas. Nor did ancient Greek harbors have docks or piers. The Greek coast is rugged and its mountains continue down to plunge beneath the water line, making the drop-off too steep to allow for the sinking of pilings in Homer’s time. And while one could always moor or anchor offshore, this made loading and unloading cumbersome. The best harbor was a protected spot with enough sand or gravel for oarsmen to put a ship on."

Read the entire wonderful essay. 

Further thoughts from Auster on the Steyn Piece:

"We need to face the possibility that the left-liberal citizens of the West really do hate our civilization and really do desire that it come to an end. True, they may not be completely consistent (and certainly not consciously explicit) about this, since they still want their material comforts and familiar way of life to continue, for the time being. Nevertheless, civilizational surrender and suicide is the true end toward which Western liberals are moving.

That chilling thought came to me as I was reading over the last paragraph of my critique of Mark Steyn’s New Criterion article, in which he stated as a conclusive fact that much of the West is going to disappear and be taken over by Islam in our life times..."

It's remarkable to me that was the first time that the ever-thoughtful Auster entertained such an idea. Read entire here.

Our Brit blogger cousin Mr. Free Market posted this photo of his non-local non-fox hunt with non-horses and non-foxes in front of the non-local non-pub on non-New Year's Day. God Save the Queen. Good old civil disobedience, in the tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Bravo, Brits.

Charter Schools, Connecticut and Florida

With the sad news that Florida courts have struck down their system of charter schools, championed by Jeb Bush - as being unconstitutional, we will take a look at the state of affairs in CT, where Gov. Rell seems to be reluctant to take on the issue - which means the unions. Hey, Gov. Rell - you have some political capital, so use it for something worthwhile.

From the WSJ: 

The politics of education reform typically features Republicans
pushing for more choice and Democrats defending the status quo. But not always. In Connecticut, Democrats in the legislature are eager to expand the state's successful charter school model while GOP Governor Jodi Rell refuses to lift a finger to help.

Forty states and Washington, D.C., now have charter schools, which were devised 15 years ago as education laboratories. Charters are public schools -- a fact that opponents like to play down -- but they are not overly burdened by union rules and hence are free to try different pedagogical approaches. A charter might extend the school day, for instance, or pay teachers based on results rather than seniority.

As it happens, Connecticut boasts some of the finest charter schools in the country. In June, the Hartford Courant reported that at "New Haven's Amistad Academy, where 98 percent of students are African American or Hispanic, math and reading scores have risen to triple those of neighboring public schools and equal to scores in [wealthier and predominantly white] Greenwich."

Common Ground High School, a charter in New Haven that caters to
at-risk students, has lower drop-out rates and higher college
participation than regular New Haven high schools. And at Bridge
Academy in Bridgeport, where 96% of students are minority, every
graduate last year was accepted to college. The waiting list for a
charter school in Connecticut averages 200 students, a function of the fact that the state has only 14 charters in operation and caps
enrollment at 300 students per school.

Last year charter proponents urged Governor Rell to lift the
enrollment cap, increase per-pupil spending (charter students receive several thousand dollars less than what the state spends for
non-charter students), and make funding for facilities more equitable. Yet when Ms. Rell released her budget in February, there was no extra money for charters.

It was due only to the efforts of Democratic leaders in the
legislature that Connecticut's charters ultimately received a modest
increase in per-pupil spending and a pilot program for facilities
funding that would allow one charter school -- one! -- access to the same school construction bonding that other public schools receive. Last month, the state board of education -- headed by another reform-minded Democrat -- voted unanimously to expand the state's charter program by 10 schools and $18 million.

Nevertheless, when Ms. Rell presents her new budget next month, she's expected once again to ignore the education reformers. That's because she is running for re-election in November and is seeking the support of the teachers union -- the Connecticut Education Association -- which is dead set against charters and any other education reform that threatens its monopoly. With a job-approval rating that's remained well over 70% since she took office, Ms. Rell has the political capital to take on an entrenched interest that hurts poor kids. But she apparently lacks the political will.

According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational
Progress report, Connecticut has the country's largest achievement gap between rich and poor students in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. Given their successful track record, charters could help Connecticut close that embarrassing gap. Too bad its governor is missing in action.

The Smell of Cordite in the Morning

It is time for one of our occasional free plugs for a good place. Wild Goose Lodge on PEI has been a loyal donor to our local Ducks Unlimited Chapter for many years, and everyone that I have spoken with about their trip has had a great time with Canada Geese. I look forward to my chance to go, because there are few adrenaline rushes like those that come with a flock of these giant (and delicious) birds cupping their wings to come into your decoys.

Two Books

Just finished Freddy and Fredericka. As often with Helprin, it is an adult fairy tale but, as is rare with him, it is filled with slapstick humor and vaudeville-style routines. One of the best scenes: Freddy telling the psychiatrist in the mental hospital where he is sedated and in a straight jacket that he is the Prince of Wales, and that the Governor of California will shortly order him released. (He is, and the Gov. does.) May I say that it is the sort of tale that can keep you up reading far too late?

And just found this one: Ordinary Wolves. Looks like a tale about the Real Alaska by a real Alaskan. Very good Bookslut review here.

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it.

C. P. Snow

Blame Bush

Blame Bush! is one of our favorite satirical blogs, but, with increasing frequency, it is difficult to decide whether statements by the press and the Dems are satirical or genuine. Michelle pointed out this one today - an editorial today in the NYT on the mine accident, which could very well have been posted on Blame Bush. You see, Bush was too busy helping his pals in Big Coal get rich to care about the miners, when he knew darn well that this accident was coming.

The press is going to make the Blame Bush! blog obsolete, if it has not already done so. The next time an editorialist gets diarrhea, I will await its being blamed on Bush's relationship with Big Fiber.

A Mini-Cooper paint job

Steyn on the War, Population, Multiculturalism, Tolerance, and the Masochism of the West

 From It's the Demography, Stupid, in the WSJ:

"That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.

Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."

Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.

Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."

Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."

Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism."

Read entire. It's the kind of masterpiece essay that inspires deep humility in every blogger, and it's an excellent summary of Steyn's view of the world. Kinda makes ya wonder why FDR didn't visit a Japanese restaurant after Pearl Harbor.

The magnificent Snowy Owl
can be found almost
anywhere in the US during
the mid-winter when they tend to move south from their tundra home, and on some low-lemming years in considerable numbers. 1973/74 was remarkable for Snowies. I have a friend who had one using his roof as a perch in CT for a week.

These tundra birds are partial in general to tundra-like wind-swept areas in the winter: marshes, shores,  large fields, garbage landfills, etc., and hunt from a low perch or sit on the ground. They are daytime hunters and eat any small furry things but voles (meadow mice), rats, and the like are their main diet.

In the northeast, it isn't unusual to find them on eastern Long Island and Cape Cod.

Info on the Snowy here at CLO. Remarkable the way owls can turn their heads around, isn't it, as in this photo by Janice Laurencelle via Owl Pages.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Mark Twain

If you are new to Maggie's Farm, click the Aliyah Diary category to find out what this is about.

12-22-05 Persimmons and Shaheebs

    Yesterday was my Friday on Kibbutz.  Pruning -- Khoftzim -- the very
limbs from which we were picking  -- Koftzim -- persimmons in the last
few weeks.  A lonelier day in several ways: the Bedouins have packed
up, back to their Kfar, the limbs are shorn of their colors, although
the leaves cling to some green, the sky is a Chicago gray, threatening
or promising rain, it is colder.  I, late, hail a cab, then call
Moshek who brings me to joining the two
Thai regulars.  Later, Moshek gives me some quick demography of
foreign workers and their experiences, at least on kibbutz. My best
remembrance of numbers is some 200,000 workers: the Thais in fields;
the Phillipinos in the homes for elderly; the Chinese, in
construction.  The Chinese are well-regarded as efficient, hard
workers, with only occasional complaints. The Phillipinos, mostly
women, leave behind family, even children for one, two years, are
dedicated, quiet, shy. The Thais, well, I have told you a bit about
Shai.  Moshek describes trying to hire workers form former USSR, the
last wave of immigrants ('90's) many of whom (perhaps 40%) came with
questionable claims to Jewish paternity or maternity and came for
economic reasons; would prefer to be in the US, Canada, Europe.  Many
have built a life here (I think Moshek is being polite or kind at this
moment), but misery for the men in particular. The women snap up jobs
-- with the elderly, kitchens and such.  Hebrew is learned in these
settings.  The men, Moshek thinks, coming from a hierarchical setting
in which their word (and fist) ruled, dismiss such "demeaning" work.
They wave off the Ulpan crap, dismiss job offers they consider below
them, and if they do take a job and find it unsatisfactory, bolt.
Yes, since the last wave of "Russian" immigrants, more prostitution,
crime, violence and plenty of alcoholism.  The irony here, I learn at
the end of the day, is that Moshek's grandparents came here from
Russia in the '30's, helped build this kibbutz, this country. But a
bit more later.

Robust, synergistic and scalable solutions to overutilized language: Just think outside the box and you'll be good to go.

Here's a site for trite, cliched, and over-used words from the tech world. Here's a list of annoying words from 2003 - still annoying. Here are 18 nasties. Lake Superior State University has begun work on their 2006 List.

This is from an email making the rounds:

The London Blitz

Scroll down this page and check the "Bomb Damage" section, which they offer in three levels of map resolution. The preservation of St. Paul's is as remarkable as the extent of the devastation of the bombing and the V1 and V2 rockets.