We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
This is one of our dwarf Cortlands today, ready to be picked but the fruit will remain good on the tree for a few weeks, at least. If we had bothered to fertilize, it would probably have doubled the fruit. I will fertilize them next year.
There is still so much good green forage in the woods and fields, and there are so many healthy wild apple trees out there, that the deer haven't bothered our domesticated apple trees a bit.
When love pushes you to fuck up your life and/or someone else’s, it’s your choice to either fight to stay in control or say, well, love is all you want, so whatever happens must be worthwhile:
I promised my wife I’d stop messing around, and I meant it, but last month I did it again and restarted an old fling. I love my wife and the last thing I want is to lose her and the kids’ respect; I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’m not some macho guy who goes cruising to pick up skanks in bars. My problem is that women have always been very attracted to me, I don’t know why, and the sex is very, very satisfying (for both of us), even when we don’t really have much of a relationship. I’m an asshole, and I can’t stop myself. What can I do?
How long does passion last before Mr. Reality enters in?
“Many people don’t realize that over geological time, we’re really in a CO2 famine now. Almost never has CO2 levels been as low as it has been in the Holocene (geologic epoch) – 280 (parts per million - ppm) – that’s unheard of. Most of the time [CO2 levels] have been at least 1000 (ppm) and it’s been quite higher than that.”
Warren, a highly respected lawyer and Harvard University professor, submitted financial disclosure reports with Congress from 2008-10 for her role at the TARP oversight panel.
She was paid more than $347,000 annually for her work at Harvard, plus another $53,428 in royalties, according to a disclosure report filed in May 2009. Warned earned more than $116,000 as a legal consultant, and other $25,000 doing research for the Consumers Union, a non-profit group in Yonkers, N.Y.
Lefties, always greedy parasites, never producing anything useful or beautiful
Most pols are sociopathic, to varying degrees. Everybody knows that. And everybody knows to ignore their lack of integrity if they like what they are doing.
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind's singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer In death's dream kingdom Let me also wear Such deliberate disguises Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves In a field Behaving as the wind behaves No nearer --
Not that final meeting In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land This is cactus land Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
That building is not a style I'd go out of my way to build or anything, but it's based on one of the coolest things in the history of the US: The Columbian Exposition in Chicago (aka the Chicago World's Fair) on the 400th anniversary of Cristobal Colon showing up. (he was Portuguese, you know; a man holding a knife to my chin told me that and I believed him, con gusto).
Victoria didn't die until 1901, and Britain didn't get the memo until 1940 or so, but the Columbian Exposition was the exact spot on the calendar that the United States became the most important thing in the world. And the pavilions were like a big contest to see who had the biggest architectural stones. All the heavyweights were there. Sullivan (Wright's boss) McKim, Olmstead, every damn person that matters worked there. Walt Disney's father worked there, and that's where Walt got the idea for Disneyland. The world's first ferris wheel! My old, dead neighbor in Mattapoisett, Frank Millet painted murals there. Mark Twain was the best man at his wedding. Pabst Blue Ribbon was introduced there! Tesla! Scott Joplin!
All the swells sent their artsy-fartsy children to the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paree, and they studied classical Roman and Greek stuff. The Columbian Exposition was an explosion of American Beaux-Arts/ Neoclassical architecture on the world. The idiot "Elvis's House" two-story columns on the big shack you took a picture of in Newport was born when they put up a replica of Mount Vernon at the exhibition and everyone got the idea from the back portico on George's house. Didn't matter it doesn't have anything much to do with classical Greek and Roman design. There was a lot of pastiche born out of the style.
That's what that house is. Neoclassical. It was really popular right up to the depression, when everyone got gloomy and started building things like Fenway Park.
Here's a pic of Machinery Hall at the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The grand buildings were all temporary structures in a temporary Olmsted landscape, and became an inspiration for things like Disneyland:
,,,the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearance, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
Abraham Lincoln was not normally a very self-revealing sort, especially on the subject of religion. But now, in what remains the most socially revolutionary document written by any American president, Lincoln threw aside his self-imposed restraint and proceeded to justify his proclamation and the freedom it bestowed on 3.9 million black slaves in terms of a private covenant he had made with God.
Yesterday's American architecture quiz was was too hard. I honestly had no idea how to categorize it. It was a highly pleasing pastiche, and thus an unfair question. Our expert tells us this:
That one was a bit of a mishmash, I imagine. Been changed a lot over the years. If I was a betting man, I'd say it was Italianate. Squarish, with a clerestory most call a cupola. The second story porch is officially called a "gallery," and I don't think it's original. I think the bottom floor bracketed porch is the original, and they maybe built the other one on top of its roof and added a door. That sort of arrangement is popular in places like Louisiana but not the Northeast much. I imagine the eaves of the main house had modillions or brackets like you see on the bottom floor's porch and they were removed. It may be the whole thing was much older and the Italianate style was overlaid on it. That was popular in the mid 1800s. I think the Adam style fanlight front door and flanking windows are more recent additions, too.
I like to take architectural pics when I go places. As Sipp says, people who make things are demigods, changing the world. Swords, guns, tables, plows, iPhones, or homes. This elegant and not ostentatious manse in Newport was built, no doubt, by a genius evil Capitalist as a summer cottage for his family and friends while he worked in NYC, and is more straightforward than the last one. (All substantial summer homes in Newport - and the seaside in New England in general - are called "summer cottages," as opposed to town houses.)
What Comes After 'Europe'? The riots of Athens will become those of Milan, Madrid and Marseilles. Border checkpoints will return. Currencies will be resurrected, then devalued.
...there’s one last thing that nice people don’t know. It is that hucksters aren’t confined by the same boundaries they assume everyone else is contained by. They are capable not only of sucker-punching you, but of exceeding limits you never thought could be transgressed. Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will. They will.
Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
Annual family income: $21,700 Money the family spent: $38,200 New debt on the credit card: $16,500 Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 Budget cuts: $385
Jimmy Stewart tries telling the whole story of the shooting of Liberty Valance to a young reporter, and revealing that his whole career has been built on another man’s deed, and the newspaper’s editor declines to print it. “When the legend becomes fact,” the editor says, “print the legend.”
There is no expiation in confession for Stewart. His life has been built upon a lie, and he supplanted a better man in his wife’s affections, and he knows it.
MoDo misunderstands most things, but humility and self-scrutiny are rare commodities at the NYT. Movie tells a great story with one heck of a cast.
Here's the tune (1963). Gene Pitney. Never forget Gene Pitney - or John Wayne.
Morrissey: Has Obama quit already? Judging by his plans for job creation and deficit reduction, the president has given up on policy accomplishments in favor of playing politics
Very wealthy people such a Mr. Buffett tend to earn their money in one of three ways: as investors, as entrepreneurs, or as executives in large enterprises. In each case, salary is a relatively small part of total compensation: Rather than getting a regular paycheck, investors, entrepreneurs, and top executives most often are rewarded with an ownership stake in their firms. As they work to increase the value of the business, they enrich themselves as well. This is a desirable arrangement to the extent that it aligns the financial interests of a company’s management with those of its shareholders.
Mikhail Bulgakov's 20th century classic, The Master and Margarita, was not his only book. Among other works, he wrote the little-known A Country Doctor's Notebook before he left medicine to become a full-time writer.
The former is a masterpiece, with Pontius Pilate playing a major role. The latter is plain wonderful.
Tyson’s behavior sullied boxing’s always precarious reputation, making the sport synonymous with freakishness. He would be the last in a long line of heavyweights to bear a symbolic connection to American social trends. For just as the blustery John L. Sullivan represented a growing nation coming into its strength, and the magnetic Dempsey the birth of mass-media celebrity and commercial culture, and the stoic Louis the hard years of depression and war, and the mercurial Ali the age of rebellion and change, so Tyson embodied the postmodern hoodlum—the gangsta from an urban landscape pulverized by fatherlessness and anomie. Remarkably, a middle-aged Tyson is now trying to remake his life, a feat that, given the obstacles, would outstrip anything that his illustrious predecessors achieved, in the ring or out.
Ice: This is bad news for the people of Greenland who would love to be rid of all that ice that covers valuable resources that Greenlanders could exploit.
Similar: Europe’s Moral Decadence Fuels Spread of Islamic Fundamentalism- The left has done its job well: Norwegian reporters, for fear of being accused of Islamophobia, are now actually loath to remind readers that there is such a thing as Islamic terrorism.
The Chinese government’s ‘vacuum cleaner’ approach to espionage is worrying foreign governments, companies and overseas dissidents. They’re right to be concerned.
I'm sure you've seen the endless drip of announcements and adulations. They give away Free cash money for free to put super-duper, earth transforming solar panels on you roof:
City, federal incentives make installing a solar panel a zero dollar investment
Does any of that make any rational sense? Or am I stupid?
Since the recession, we have had a government doing everything it can to suppress, leash, and stifle the animal spirits of American enterprise. Why are the predictable results always "unexpected"? Where would we be, now, without China's loans?
We miss Reagan's common sense. The Dems are blinded to reality by ideological sentiment. Money doesn't grow on trees.
Red Cross: Obese Now Outnumber Hungry
Belief in God 
Mikhail Bulgakov's 20th century classic, 
Paul Beston's 
Oktoberfest 
Regarding the jobless American economy, the esteemed 