Monday, March 3. 2014
 Michelle Obama: America's Moms Are 'Confused and Bewildered,' 'Defeated' by Grocery Shopping
Lego Tops U.S. Toymaker Rivals as Full-Year Sales Jump 10%
Small-Time City in Vermont Has Big-Time Heroin Problem
Announcing a New Book! Heading Out On Your Own: 31 Basic Life Skills in 31 Days
How to Pick Your Life Partner
Bwahahaha 101 Week at College Insurrection
Can human nature be discussed on campus?
Dear America, you’re too smart to listen to Beyonce
Man sues McDonald´s for $1.5 million after being given only one napkin
Atheism’s radical new heroes: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and an evolving new moral view
The Insiders: Liberals are destroying the planet
Obama Administration to Distribute 13,000 Armored Mine-Resistant Vehicles to Police Units Around the US
Michigan Township To Put Cameras ‘In Every Neighborhood’
Why the Grahams sold the WaPo
‘We Need to Quit Acting So Freaking Defeated’: Dems Plot Blue Creep in Deep South
Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon
Ukraine: The Haze of Propaganda
The Upcoming Fifth Anniversary of Hillary’s Reset Button
Despite proven academic success of NYC’s charter schools, the mayor and unions have started a war on city’s charter kids
Pielke: John Holdren's Epic Fail
“As a journalist, you weigh how much you should criticize the president because he’s black.”
Dog-Killing Afghan Refugee to Swedes: “Throw Me Out and I’ll Kill 10 of You”
Germany’s Energiewende: A Path to Economic Self-Destruction
John Fund:
George W. Bush famously told Colin Powell, his secretary of state, that he thought the Russian leader was religious. “Powell, I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw his soul.” To which Powell replied: “Mr. President, I looked into President Putin’s eyes and I saw the KGB.”
Sunday, March 2. 2014
 Mrs. BD and I have liked Barbetta for many years. It's on the theater district's Restaurant Row, and it's been in the same townhouse, and owned by the same family, since 1906.
Food is mainly Piedmontese, no red sauces and only one pasta on the menu. I had the rabbit with a white wine sauce as secondi and so did the pupette, while she explained to us the basic architecture of successful playwriting from Aristotle to Beckett (it's always been the same because it works, even for screen writing - we had just seen a fairly OK production of Measure For Measure at The New Vic. She explained that Godot had perfect structure but no content - which was the point. For me, Godot sticks in my head but I don't really want or need it to).
Their pre- or post-theater prix-fixe menu is very reasonable if you pass on their amazing wine list. The upstairs dining is cozy, the downstairs is elegant but simple. The jewels that can be hidden inside simple old brownstones are always surprising to me. They also have a small garden.
Reservations absolutely required and appropriate adult attire is expected but the family which owns it has run a relaxed, highly-attentive, and cheerful, comfortable joint for over 100 years.
 I stumbled on these, and they sound good to me:
Lamb Shank Posole
African Chicken Peanut Stew
Matthew 17:1-9
17:1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves.
17:2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.
17:3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.
17:4 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
17:5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!"
17:6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.
17:7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, "Get up and do not be afraid."
17:8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.
17:9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, "Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead."
Saturday, March 1. 2014
Two signs seen in the bustling NYC theater district this afternoon:
To A Skylark
Hail to thee blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert -
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden light'ning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
Thou dost float and run,
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
Read the rest of this remarkable poem below:
Continue reading "Saturday Verse: Percy Bysshe Shelley "
Friday, February 28. 2014
Hiking to the backside of the mountain for the gnarly untouched off-trail runs. Windy up there.
Thursday, February 27. 2014
A reason to walk your dog: California couple finds $10 million in buried treasure while walking dog
Farrow, After Three Days on the Air, Receives Cronkite Award
Why are educated adults slim - Causation or selection?
Zero Tolerance Teaches Students Important Lessons About Authority: Don’t Share Information, Don’t Consent to Searches
Do Schools Need To Learn a Lesson about gender from... Facebook?
Good grief
NY Middle School Girls Forced to Ask Classmates for “Lesbian Kiss” Pretend Like They Are On a Date
Whole Foods, Junk Science, and the National Pseudo-Intelligentsia
Why Our Nutrition Facts Need an Overhaul
Dem Candidate Admits Immigration Reform A Cheap Labor Import
Obama's New Asylum Decree Favors Muslims Over Christians
“Cow Sex” Pervert Judge Orders YouTube to Remove “Innocence of Muslims” Trailer
The Period Of No Global Warming Will Soon Be Longer Than the Period of Actual Global Warming
An Open Letter to CNN’s Carol Costello on ‘Why are we still debating climate change?’
Could A Carbon Tax Have Prevented The 1815 Hurricane In Providence?
Increased domestic spending may be behind proposed military cuts, CBO report suggests
Obama Asks Court To Make NSA Database Even Bigger
Ed. by Podhoretz: The New War on Israel: And How to Fight Back
France's Reckoning: Rich, Young Flee Welfare State:
When France's richest man, Bernard Arnault, announced he was leaving over France's new 75 percent super tax on the rich, he got the journalistic equivalent of a kick out the door.
"The full headline in [the Leftist newspaper] Liberation was, 'Get lost, you rich b***d,'" Moutet recalled. "In this country the general attitude in the media, on television, etc., is that bosses are wrong, companies are wrong, and creating business is dubious at best and dishonest at worst."
France is being battered by both a brain drain and capital flight and risks becoming one of the poorer nations in Western Europe.
Big Sky seems like a popular place to ski these days, especially for very experienced skiiers. A friend sent me a pic of him skiing off-trail last week, explaining "I am the tiny blue dot in the photo."
Wednesday, February 26. 2014
Some insecurity goes a long way toward successful students
Dalrymple: Everybody is trying to collect my personal info
Mom and her kids visit an art gallery
Respecting husbands
Does the 1st Amendment apply to students?
Student Diversity Group at Dartmouth Threatens Physical Action if Demands Aren’t Met
Good grief
How is your state doing with its government pensions?
Long but good: What Killed Egyptian Democracy?
Extracted from our commenter Taquiya
Unbeknownst to you, I am surrounded by people who claim to identify with the tea party and/or go to the meetings. Most of my family , extended family, friends and associates for starters. When I ask them what they are willing to do to stop the runaway federal spending, they have nothing to offer. Well, they want their taxes reduced a bit. Maybe ease back a bit on defense spending, maybe. But not the veteran's benefits. Most of them resent the welfare queens and food stamp recipients and most of them won't say so out loud. Most are not thrilled with the bank bailouts. But, not one of them is willing to stop paying taxes. None of them would touch 95% of the federal budget. None of them would surrender any of their own federally funded benefits. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with the conclusion that the members of the tea party want their goodies and are willing to pay enough tax dollars to keep them. But they don't want to pay for some of the goodies other people get. It's just simple logic.
It may be that you don't quite grasp the extent of the gravy train. Or maybe you have so much money, it just doesn't matter? The federal spending train subsidizes nearly everything in this country. And I mean everything. Would you really put all those people out of work - at one stroke? If so, the anarchists would love to have you join their group.
Educated Mainstream: The Bastion
of Western anti-Semitism
Venezuela Violence and Latin America's Divide
Analysis: Venezuela’s violence, Cuba’s ‘farce,’ and Marco Rubio’s milestone speech
The Stakes in
Ukraine - Putin's "Eurasionist" dreams threaten us all
The story of a remarkable reporter: Political Hatred in Argentina - An Interview with Uki Goñi
Tuesday, February 25. 2014
Roughly as I predicted, our blackbirds arrived sometime last night - over a week late. They all made a racket at 5 am on my way to the gym. That's proof of global cooling.
Also at my feeder today along with the usual (Cardinals, Song Sparrows, Titmice, W-T Sparrows, Blue Jays, and House Finches, and an occasional Carolina Wren) a handsome Fox Sparrow. Haven't seen one in quite a while. A pleasure to see the guy on his way to the far north.
Monday, February 24. 2014
The future of Windows: where will Microsoft take its OS next?
Maria von Trapp, last of famous singing siblings, dies at 99
Top Ten Pistols of The World (vid)
After 400 Years, Math Finds New Class of Shape
Angels Unawares: A Baby Box
The Woes of Wall Street: Why Young Bankers Are So Miserable
EPA Wood-stove Proposal Prompts Rural Backlash
But it's biofuel
There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn’t seem to like America very much — and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor
Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: An Industry of Lies
A lively place, full of criminals
McGill faces massive backlash after ‘ridiculous’ apology for microaggression over emailed joke Obama clip
Update: Homeland Security Says It’s Canceling the Plan to Track Our License Plates
Gee thanks, KGB. I blame Bush for creating this monstrosity.
Mandatory Government Training for Parents in People’s Republic of New York
NY State Steps Up Its Surveillance on… Little Kids
THE IRS SCANDAL: TIMELINE
Big Government and Tipping Points: Is America Doomed to Become a Failed European-Style Welfare State?
How a Fanatical Environmentalist Deliberately Caused UK Flooding
I blame global cooling
Democrats, FDA Going After Electronic Cigarettes
Why?
Progressive Insanity and the Global Warming Cult
Grim Times for Gun Grabbers
Sunday, February 23. 2014
From Bottum: The Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America - The new elite class of America is the old one: America’s mainline Protestant Christians in both the glory and the annoyingness of their moral confidence and spiritual certainty. They just stripped out the Christianity along the way.
He begins:
Beginning with the abolition of slavery, the bitter battles of American political life have often been fought over spiritual issues. It’s hard to know, for example, what else Prohibition was about. And yet the great moralizing and spiritualizing of American politics feels different these days, more complete, more all-encompassing. It’s as though our public life were not a political stadium in which spiritual footballs sometimes appear; rather the field itself has become religious. Our public life is now a supernatural game and our purely political concerns have been reduced to nothing more than footballs with which we happen to play that public game of spiritual redemption.
Our anxious age often seems a moment more tinged by its spiritual worries than anytime in America since perhaps the 1730s. The nation’s unconscious spirituality is splashed across our supposedly secular life.
Psalm 119:33-40
119:33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of your statutes, and I will observe it to the end.
119:34 Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart.
119:35 Lead me in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it.
119:36 Turn my heart to your decrees, and not to selfish gain.
119:37 Turn my eyes from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.
119:38 Confirm to your servant your promise, which is for those who fear you.
119:39 Turn away the disgrace that I dread, for your ordinances are good.
119:40 See, I have longed for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life.
Saturday, February 22. 2014
It was one year ago that my Mom died of complications from a hip replacement. Dad died four months later from the same thing, but he didn't really desire to live without her sparkling, upbeat, and charming company.
Editing this website has been a good distraction/outlet this past year. It's been a tough year for Bird Dog, with long-forgotten memories and regrets flooding in relentlessly. That's the way it's meant to be, I guess.
Pic is a newspaper shot of Mom at age 80 receiving some conservation award, and pic below is her car. (Indeed, she did weed all of her perennial gardens at home and at the farm in the Massachusetts hills, and found great pleasure in it. She liked to work hard and play hard, never knew the word "relax" - "too fancy" was her harshest epithet and she hated any form of pretension or luxury - and all of us kids inherited those New England Yankee traits from both Mom and Dad.)
Mom was active in her two (CT and MA) communities in more ways than I can count: socially, conservation, church, clubs, tennis groups, the Granges, government, etc. Involved, engaged, a real American citizen who took her citizenship seriously. The Farm, after all, was in her family before the Revolution but I think her ancestors were Tories. Politically-naive? My gosh yes. She wanted to believe that everybody was like her family: innocent, highly moral, God-fearing, scholarly, and with all the Yankee virtues, values, and manners. She had genteel refinement and insulated herself from the rough edges of life and from the rough people. A true subcultural WASP in the best sense. Television? No thanks. Books.
I learned at her funeral, from one of my sisters, that she had been writing a weekly gardening column for two newspapers for 25 years. Had she been younger, she might have had a gardening website.
A little snobby and discriminating, perhaps, but she had good taste and she had good pals from every walk of life, and lots of them. She had a talent for connecting with people, so home always had friends and neighbors stopping by unannounced for tea or cocktails. You would never know who might stop in but it was always fun and interesting. As a kid, all sorts of people came by: old farmers, Leonard Bernstein and his "Mrs.", Robert Penn Warren, neighbors, bankers, the local Pediatrician, retired yard guys, lonely widows, the Pastor looking for a glass of Scotch and a jolly chat. Relatives looking for a warm chair by the fire and a hot toddy. Robert Frost and his family stopped by too, but I was hardly conscious then. Mom was pals with his daughter, I think, or his niece. Their two homes - town and country - were open houses, and everybody knew it. Their kitchen (with fireplace and comfy chairs) was rarely empty of people.
Ol' Rodney stopped by too, at least twice a week for a morning coffee. The autistic son of a local farmer who had died, farm sold out to developers, he rode his bike year-round all around town. Mom would let ol' Rodney do some yard work, but he would not accept payment. He just wanted connection and to be useful. Rodney was a true old-style New Englanda' with the old accent, and he never missed Sunday at church.
Mom loved her old reliable CRV and, old-time Yankee that she was, she was a cheapskate and hated to spend money on anything except her yacht club and beach club, the Metropolitan Opera, her favorite charities - and on international travel. Dad, a Yale Prof, a cranky intellectual, and a tough and intolerant SOB with a rapier wit who served in two wars and had some off-the-chart IQ and graduated from Harvard at age 17, was devoted to her happiness, and rightly so: she had spunky vitality and could fly airplanes, ski Killington, win horse-jumping championships, garden-club awards, and sailboat races. A life-long literary amateur scholar too, who could write the world's most gracious Thank-You notes. What's not to like about her except her Yankee moral and cultural sensibilities which could be rather harsh and judgemental? Ouch. Produced 5 fairly average kids, too. In their prime, my parents were pretty cool and embraced life and people in every way that they could.
A beautiful life, well-lived with lots of energy and a commitment to community. We would all like to have that said of ourselves, would we not?
"One could do worse than to be a swinger of birches." My wish is that my kids will absorb all of this family tradition.
A Lady at her Mirror (Translated by Len Krisak)
As spices blend into her sleeping-drink,
She softly melts those features loosed to sleep
Inside her mirror’s fluency, and deep
Down in it, lets her smile subside and sink.
And then she waits to watch clear liquid rise
From it, and pours the hair that she’s let down
Into the mirror. From her evening gown,
She lifts one wondrous shoulder, as her eyes
Drink from her image quietly. She takes
In what a reeling lover would who’d face
That glass filled with mistrust, and then she makes
The gesture for her maid, but not before
She finds a candle at the mirror’s base,
An armoire, and the dregs of this late hour.
Krisak's translations often appear in The New English Review, with this: Len Krisak has published in The London Magazine, The Oxonian Review, PN Review, Standpoint, Agni, The Antioch Review, The Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, The Dark Horse, Agenda, The Hopkins Review, Commonweal, Literary Imagination, The Oxford Book of Poems on Classical Mythology, and others. His latest book is Virgil’s Eclogues, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Forthcoming: The Carmina of Catullus, Carcanet Press, 2015, Afterimage, Measure Press, 2014, Rilke: New Poems, Boydell & Brewer, 2015 and Ovid: The Amores and The Ars Amatoria, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.
|
You Thought You Were Educated
Wild beavers 
My pic is a cocoa bean pod (aka Cacao), growing in a jungle area which was once a plantation