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.
Currier and Ives' Skating in Central Park (Lots more trees there than in the 1880s but it remains rus in urba, more or less, with some of the best birding in the East in migration time as a green oasis in a sea of urbanization along the Atlantic Flyway):
Newt is right, of course. The very poor need to learn work habits as early as possible, and perhaps more so than middle class kids, who tend to be surrounded by adults who have successful work and marital habits (Newt doesn't mention the marital habits, of course)
"America's growing IQ stratification, and the resulting class war that the clever are waging upon the clueless, is one of the great unmentionables." The subsequent subprime disaster exemplified this.
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the grifters, con men, and hustlers who should be behind bars rather than behind the Justice Department, the EPA, the National Labor Relations Board, or countless other useless, worthless agencies which serve no purpose and have long overstayed their usefulness.
Leading this pack of these charlatans is its leader, Barack Hussein Obama aka Barry Soetero. If Obama is not the killer of American greatness, he is most certainly its weapon of choice.
Ouch. I think plenty of Dems are beginning to realize this now.
If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees, if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades, Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
Dr. Williams, a college pal of Ezra Pound at Penn, practiced medicine in Rutherford, NJ until 1951 and delivered over 3000 babies. An optimistic and humane man and poet.
I know it's been said by many people many times, but I'll say it again: Sometimes, cameras do not record things - they create them. Reader reminded me of the Palliwood video below, which reminded me of OWS: would those people have been there without the nightly TV cameras, and all the attention from all the people walking by taking their pictures? I doubt it.
Thus the thousands of mostly cheerful people who swarmed into Macy's on Thanksgiving weekend to enjoy giving up their hard-earned money to evil corporations were not a meaningful meme, but thirty scruffy malcontents still at Zuccotti Park got their daily TV notoriety, maintaining the deeply meaning meme. The former activity does not require the presence of cameras, the latter does and therefore is Palliwood.
Greedy for visual content, those with the cameras create the news. Then they create the narrative to go along with it. Yes, we all know this already.
Given the temper of our time, perhaps Cook's recent brush with oblivion was to be expected. Cook's picturesque destinations -- Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Greece -- now offer torchlit barricades and street mobs spewing "off-with-their-heads" rhetoric. It is not exactly the stuff of tourist brochures.
Henninger: Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Rooms? The campaign-finance laws have made the presidential selection process a self-destructive mess. Eliminate the limits on individual donations.
The party elders used to select their candidates. Not any more.
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the United States' Capital this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason. They simply have not been able to find Three Wise Men in the Nation's Capitol.
A search for a virgin continues.
There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.
Readers know that we seasonally, and sometimes plain impulsively, change the image on our header. Some find those old images a little too cutesy and sentimental, but I think they are part of what we are. I love the details of 19th C life.
Of course, when Currier and Ives produced their images they were making contemporary illos and would never have dreamed of their ongoing appeal.
Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?
Mr Edsall notes that "demographic trends suggest the continued growth of pro- Democratic constituencies and the continued decline of core Republican voters, particularly married white Christians."
“I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth."
We can but repeat that this is a scare that has run its course. The ersatz scientists will never again hold the global community in its thrall to the same extent, on this subject.
Here at Maggie's, we don't understand why people do not pray for some global warming. The Medieval Warming, and the Roman-era warming - both now reversed by historic cooling - were excellent for civilization. Mostly, we worry about the effects of the next Ice Age on our property values. A mile-deep glacier on top of my house would have a negative effect, and another Ice Age is a certainty.
I’ve been hiring twenty-somethings for about twenty years now, and though they are getting more tech-savvy, their productivity keeps plummeting. I believe this is due to their snowballing sense of entitlement.
'The New Tammany Hall' - The historian of the American city on what Wall Street and the 'Occupy' movement have in common, and how government unions came to dominate state and local politics:
One can appreciate why the "we are the 99%" militants might resist Mr. Siegel's logic. He links the liberalism of the 1960s, not any excess of the free market, to today's crisis. The Great Society put the state on growth hormones. Less widely appreciated, the era gave birth to a powerful new political force, the public-sector union. For the first time in American history there was an interest dedicated wholly to lobbying for a larger government and the taxes and debt to pay for it.
Must be human nature to desire some sort of supernatural political salvation, but that is far from an American notion: it's the fantasy of a having a perfect Master or a child's fantasy of a perfect parent.
64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
64:4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
64:5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
64:7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
64:9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
I am grateful that Mrs. BD dragged me to see Einstein on the Beach on its world tour in 1992, at the BAM (for those of you in Yorba Linda, that's the Brooklyn Academy of Music).
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Childs, decided to call it an opera, but it really was a spectacle, and, with all of the repetition, choruses, and dancing, something like Greek theater with technology. I have grown to sort-of enjoy the Glass music in this, but it just drives some people crazy. It's a sound track, really.
The whole thing is hypnotically slow-moving (and it was over 5 hrs, no intermission, and people were welcome to come and go. We stayed, except for bathroom breaks - and they sold wine in the lobby.). There exist audio recordings, but, I believe, no video recordings of the whole thing. Video does not do justice to theatrical productions. You had to be there to be in the dream.
One snippet of video - you can search on YouTube it to hear more of Glass' music for the show:
Addendum, by complete coincidence I see that the Met is celebrating Glass' 75th birthday with “Satyagraha.” Wierd coincidences: I posted a Tagore poem this morning, mentioned Robert Wilson in a photo post yesterday, and stumbled on the news of that Philip Glass/Tagore opera today after preparing the above post.
The more you get out and about, the more fascinating life gets. Everybody needs to get out more, I guess. Possessions are expensive: cool life experiences are cheap by comparison.
Sometimes I think about things during my morning work-out. I try not to think and to go into a mindless, timeless state, but sometimes my brain wins. Often, I use my aerobic time to pray, and I hope God laughs about my multitasking.
Many things in life test our will-power and, in a sick kind of Yankee way, I tend to enjoy such tests of mental strength. Few things present conflicts with one's will-power like facing another ten minutes on the Elliptical, or one more set of squats.
Well, maybe paying bills and doing other paperwork almost compares. My personal attitude towards paperwork is infantile, defiant, and not admirable. I often fail these tests.
Does persisting with the things we find difficult, and seek excuses to avoid, build character? We say Yes. The Maggie's heart says "Easy stuff first, hard stuff later." The Maggie's conscience and the Maggie's tradition says "Hard stuff first, easier stuff after."
Spandex? All the women in my gym wear Spandex (or Yoga pants), and I'd say it's 50% women there early in the morning. Guys on the machines alternate their gaze from CNBC or FOX to the bouncing youthful Spandexed behind in front of them with the bouncing blond pony-tail, then back to CNBC.
Being pure of heart and mind, I stay glued to the FOX. Don't you?
That's interesting, because I recently read a piece about tax policy which referred to taxpayers as "tax units." I guess that's how bureaucrats think. Are you an income unit, an expense unit, or neither?
On the Seashore, by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl- fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea- beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
All that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity. Fair enough, CS, but being in requited love with a young lady comes close, given our human limits.
Bustling downtown Gambier. I like the way my camera captured the Robert Wilson-like light which he used to amazingly enchanting effect in Einstein On The Beach at the BAM:
Danse Russe
What will make her happier: a new Hoover vacuum or this: 
Old-timey 
Anchoress is 
Global Warming Bubble is Popping
A 
Sometimes I think about things during my morning work-out. I try not to think and to go into a mindless, timeless state, but sometimes my brain wins. Often, I use my aerobic time to pray, and I hope God laughs about my multitasking.
So soon? Advent begins tomorrow.
