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.
We mentioned that theme here yesterday. Compassion without discernment is generally moral vanity or spiritual-ish pride; often foolish, often counterproductive or destructive, and often humiliating to the recipient. It reminded me of this well-known speech by Ivan Illich (not Ivan Ilyich, who died) on the topic of paternalistic "help." The intro:
An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.
I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.
I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.
ObamaCare is designed to become a government-controlled Welfare program for all, with insurance companies as back offices, check-paying services for a one-size-fits-all government program. Leviathan is always hungry. Freedom and free choice is the cost.
Are there really tons of folks out there who want the federal government in charge of their own medical care? Who really wanted this, except for government? And government employees are exempt from it, which just goes to show...
The politicization of medical help has only just begun. It's a feature, not a bug.
As an aside, recall that the Church supported Obamacare. Compassion, of course. Compassion without discernment is just vanity and foolishness.
Groupon released their first earnings report, and to say the least, they underwhelmed. I had shared some of my thoughts about Groupon several months ago. But something new is afoot.
In the last week, we've seen Facebook file for an IPO. It's been talked about incessantly, and there are many interesting things within the filing which have caused people to begin sharing opinions about it. Since Facebook is in my industry, I find this discussion intriguing and certainly have my own point of view, particularly since I use Facebook.
Originally, I didn't want to join Facebook. Several friends emailed me invitations to join in 2007. I wouldn't accept. Finally, I joined just to stop the invitations. At first, what I found fascinated me. It's actually a terrific picture sharing facility. On the other hand, as Betty White famously said on Saturday Night Live about when she was younger, "We hadPHONEBOOK...seeing pictures of people's vacations was a punishment."
A few items from the Duncan Phyfe show at the Met. His workshop/factory in Manhattan copied, but simplified, the popular styles of the time. Not exactly my taste, but much in demand at the time:
"The core of Murray's book is that if you want to be happy, in the full sense of "eudaimonia" in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics --that is, full human flourishing over a lifetime doing the right things in the right way at the right time -- you need to check in on four basic qualities. You need satisfying work, you need to be married, you need to engage in civil society, and you need to attend church once a week. Look at a community without the Big Four, and you will likely find only 10 percent of people "very happy." Look at folks with all four, and you will find almost 80 percent of people reporting themselves "very happy." Call it the American project: family, vocation, faith, and community. Rush Limbaugh talks about it every day: American exceptionalism. Here is Murray's line on it, from page 305 of Coming Apart.
Upper-class Americans live that way. They work, they get married, they are involved in their communities. They just don't seem to think it matters if other people don't, so they have legislated this monster welfare state that pays people not to work and not to marry, and that harasses them if they join a club or run a church. Our elitists insist on lives with meaning for themselves, but for everyone else, they think life begins and ends with a check: a welfare check, an unemployment check, a severance check, or a Social Security check. And they call that compassion.
Historically, Americans have been different as a people, even peculiar, and everyone around the world has recognized it. I am thinking of qualities such as American industriousness and neighborliness discussed in earlier chapters, but also American optimism... our striking lack of class envy, and the assumption by most Americans that they are in control of their own destinies."
The wife of a friend of mine was recently made to feel uncomfortable while visiting her freshman daughter's dorm to see fellows walking around the halls with towels or undershorts with long-neck beers in their hands as if the dorm were some sort of downscale Roman orgy.
I commented that co-ed showers would be the next new thing. The idea of that is, indeed, titillating.
In my paleo view, co-education itself was a bad idea. It ignores the reality of adolescent sexual tension, the reality of distraction, and the distortion of behavior that can ensue. Speaking for myself, the idea of trying to study or sleep knowing that some leggy blonde was in the next room three feet away, alone and perhaps feeling lonely, would make studying Plato a difficult thing to do.
The greatest of storytellers, with an eye for vivid details of life and character types, and a tendency for unlikely dramatic plots.
He had no formal education after age 15, when he went to work. Sold his first book at 21, and fame and fortune ensued for this lad whose dad was in debtor's prison.
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
He wrote casually, effortlessly, humorously. You can learn all anybody needs to know about human nature from Dickens. He had been there and done that.
"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn't afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."
"Farewell to Penn Station," New York Times editorial, October 30, 1963
There was a fervor for tearing down old buildings in urban American during the 1960s and early 70s. Many historic, but dilapidated, downtowns were bulldozed, as were countless wonderful "Union Stations" - and anything else that seemed "old".
Today, we cherish towns like Savannah which were left untouched by the government scourge of "urban renewal."
19th century housing was replaced by "modern" Soviet-style planned and government-subsidized housing projects (which finally are beginning to be dynamited themselves, for good reason). And the buildings were replaced with parking lots and sterile semi-high rises, and malls - that horrible concept which turns its back on the town in an effort to create an unreal, soul-less consumer paradise for the masses.
When you drive through downtown Bridgeport, CT, Hartford, or Nashville, you will be hard put to find an old building. Lucky towns escaped this frenzy of "modernization," which I term "dehumanization." Nobody wants to be in those sorts of downtowns.
Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan - one of the masterpieces of the beaux-art movement -did not escape the epidemic of destruction. Grand Central Station escaped - but only barely. Just tell me - where would you rather wait 40 minutes for a train to meet your girlfriend or boyfriend - the new Penn Station, or Grand Central?
Photo below of the 1910 McKim, Mead and White Penn Station, from this site of NYC architectural images. Who would have the nerve to knock this thing down and replace it with the new (and truly terrible in every way) Madison Square Garden?
Truth be told, this whole commentary was just an excuse to post this photo:
Everyone enjoyed The Firesign Theater, but I have not seen any weed for more years than I can count. Never inhaled. Shoes for Industry! Papoon for President! One organism - one vote.
Bert and I did downbeat Down East humor. Guys who can do that schtick are not uncommon, especially as aging alcoholic cooks in Maine hunting camps. Man, have I heard some good ones, spellbinding for a 30 minute absurd story, provided you keep the guy's glass full.
Uncle Ed and I will never forget the shaggy dog story of the kid who grazed a buck in an orchard up the road, and rode it home on his bicycle draped over the handlebars until the deer came to, and began pedaling the bike himself and rode it into the center of town. These stories fade from reality into fantasy so that you do not quite know where you are. Bert and I made famous the Maine response to the city folk in their fancy car who asked for directions from the farmer: "You can't get there from here."
Bob Bryant and Marshall Dodge made records of this sort of good stuff. Try a couple of the short samples here. You can buy them here.
Why is Maine "down east"? You should know by now. I will not explain it again.
I must confess I always thought the Rascal's Groovin said "You and me and Lesley" - figured Lesley was either a dog, or a reference to a menage a trois, or his little sister. Neo's "Sugar fried honey butt" for "Sugar pie, honey bunch" (Four Tops) gave me a giggle. There is a website devoted to mondegreens: Kiss this guy.com. Also, "A girl with colitis walked by" was a pretty good one, too, Sippican: a good nose for them gastro-intestinal mondegreens.
My favorites from my own ears are "Lead us not into Penn Station, but deliver us from evil," and "Rain, rain, go away. Come again on Mother's Day."
And the Stones' "Hey, hey. You, you - get off of my cow."
It's about bubbles - things with form but lacking in substance.
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax.
The American Dream of home ownership is and has been a foolish ideal. However, it was an ideal which expert salesmen sold us since the 1950s. A sentimentality sales job, like cars. Chances are, you ain't buying no family estate that your grandkids would want to own.
Expert salesmen, again both in government and out, also sold us the college degree bubble. Once a meaningful social marker, it has become so diluted that it no longer means anything at all, or, I should say, can mean a lot or can mean nothing, depending on what was learned. I know, because I interview people for jobs. I have seen college grads who don't know what it means to graph a f(x), don't know the difference between RNA and DNA, and have never read Chaucer. Oh, I see. They have a BS in Business Administration. Is that "college"? Oh, somebody wrote a term paper about Virginia Woolf? Wow. I guess they can write a sentence. What is meaningful is a rigorous High School degree. From that, you have the foundation to learn anything you want to.
Is a college degree job training, a few additional High School years, a social marker, an expensive prolonged adolescence, a merit badge, a haven for dedicated scholars, or what? Nobody knows anymore, but it is widely sold as a necessary qualification. Hence a piece like this in the NYT: Why go to college at all?
My theory used to be that a college education should prepare you to understand, in depth, every page of the Sunday New York Times. I don't buy their paper any more, which is their loss. Mine also, to some extent.
Support your local poet! A Berkshire neighbor, a poet, has come out with her first book, How Will They Find Me.
Here's a sample:
Croquet
A scarlet dusk, the lawn speckled with light. The players are my family. With mallets and colored balls they move about the field. The klock of mallets and balls, someone’s poison. A branch loosens the kite caught hours ago. It flutters and sinks to earth. A heron flies lazily over us, its feet tucked neatly beneath it. My sons tumble about in the grass. The day melts in my hands.
We are considering putting up one of these Country Carpenters pre-fab post and beam barn/garages up at the top of the driveway, perhaps with a small apartment upstairs.
I was told they can be put up in a week, or less, once the slab is laid down. Installing a septic field would be an additional expense that I am not sure I want to take on right now. I think we will also need a well.
Every American needs a barn. Were I running for President, that would be my promise.
They claim, and I suspect it is true, that this is the best show on the evolution of Renaissance portraiture that will be put together in our lifetimes. Is it a niche topic? Heck, everything in life is a niche topic, but I would say that this is a show for those with more than a passing interest in the history of art. The re-secularization of the arts in the European Renaissance was a big deal, but attributing to that period the "rediscovery of the individual" goes overboard.
High points for me were a couple of Botticelli portraits, and the death mask of Lorenzo di Medici. What a cool dude he was.
A few random pics of the East Side of Manhattan today. The East Side streets are never teeming with people like the colorful West Side or downtown neighborhoods where everybody is young and there are tons of people pushing strollers: Here, people mostly have their doorman fetch a cab.
Loreena McKennitt put the lyrics of this poem by the Spanish mystic monk, poet, and theologian John of the Cross (1541-1592) to music. Some of our readers will love what she did with it. The Youtube blurb on McKennitt's piece:
"Dark Night of the Soul," like much of John's poetry, is based on "Song of Songs" from the Biblical Old Testament, and also on much of the romantic poetry and lyrics of Spanish popular balladry of that time, i.e., 16th century. The "secret stair" has less to do with a staircase in a monastery, and more to do with the popular theme of lovers meeting for a late night romantic tryst. In order for this to be possible, the young maiden of the song or poem would have to sneak out of the house, by the "secret stair." John uses this as a metaphor for the soul in prayer who, by means of contemplation, steals away from the world unnoticed, to meet in loving relationship with God. The dark night refers to the soul's search for God, beyond the confines of the human definitions we have put upon God."
John also wrote a treatise on his poem, of the same title. As I understand it, the "dark night" also refers to the period between death and resurrection and union with God, or between death and heaven, and as a metaphor for the condition of being out of touch with God and His love, seeking it in the dark. However, John of the Cross makes a sexy love poem of it too, in the tradition of Song of Songs (Solomon, the old rascal, had 700 wives and 300 concubines to keep him from straying too far from the harem, and out of trouble.)
Here's one translation from: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991). (Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.)
1. One dark night, fired with love's urgent longings - ah, the sheer grace! - I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
2. In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised, - ah, the sheer grace! - in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.
3. On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart.
4. This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me - him I knew so well - there in a place where no one appeared.
5. O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover.
6. Upon my flowering breast which I kept wholly for him alone, there he lay sleeping, and I caressing him there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
7. When the breeze blew from the turret, as I parted his hair, it wounded my neck with its gentle hand, suspending all my senses.
8. I abandoned and forgot myself, laying my face on my Beloved; all things ceased; I went out from myself, leaving my cares
A friend of mine recently joined a 3-day prison ministry in which our church participates. He returned home shaken by the entire experience.
6 million Americans sit in prisons today. I am certain that many of them are dangerous sociopaths who we would not want living next door, but many are non-violent (eg drug crimes, white collar crimes, etc) for which better penalties (eg fines) could be concocted. After all, it costs the taxpayer more per year than a year at Harvard to incarerate somebody.
America does have high rates of emprisonment. China doesn't, because they use the death penalty so liberally that they have medical vans on routes to stop by and harvest your fresh organs. In places like Saudi, they just cut your hand off if you steal. I suppose my feeling is that prison is ok for violent offenders, but not for the non-violent.
More on Charles Murray on Fishtown and Belmont, from Kay Hymowitz:
Most disastrous for Fishtown residents has been the collapse of the family, which Murray believes is now “approaching a point of no return.” For a while after the 1960s, the working class hung on to its traditional ways. That changed dramatically by the 1990s. Today, under 50 percent of Fishtown 30- to 49-year-olds are married; in Belmont, the number is 84 percent. About a third of Fishtowners of that age are divorced, compared with 10 percent of Belmonters. Murray estimates that 45 percent of Fishtown babies are born to unmarried mothers, versus 6 to 8 percent of those in Belmont.
And so it follows: Fishtown kids are far less likely to be living with their two biological parents. One survey of mothers who turned 40 in the late nineties and early 2000s suggests the number to be only about 30 percent in Fishtown. In Belmont? Ninety percent—yes, ninety—were living with both mother and father. Many experts would define the cause as a dearth of “marriageable” men (see above). The causation goes the other way as well. Men who don’t marry don’t work—or at least, they work less hard. Severed from family life, they don’t attach themselves to community organizations, including churches, and in greatly disproportionate numbers they engage in antisocial, even criminal, behavior.
For all their degrees, the upper class in Belmont is pretty ignorant about what’s happening in places like Fishtown.
I respect Murray a great deal, but I think he juxtaposes two extremes. America is filled with middle-class towns and middle-class neighborhoods which are neither Fishtowns nor Belmonts but which are having a tough time in the current economy. While the welfare state has enabled much of the deterioration of civilized culture in Fishtown, the lack of unskilled jobs (largely taken by new immigrants who are grateful for any work at any pay) and semi-skilled jobs (overseas) probably plays a role in that too. It takes a lot of initiative to take charge of one's life nowadays, regardless of one's advantages or lack thereof.
Where are the jobs for a guy who is happy to run a lathe or machine tool all day at a steady job, then go home to his cozy family? Those jobs no longer exist in Pittsfield or Bridgeport, and nothing will bring them back. It is a tragedy, I think, of the changes.
The "post" road meant a mail road. It now has different names as it travels through different towns, but locals call it "the Boston Post Road" or "the Post Road" still. Its original name was The King's Highway. That old road, based on an Indian trail. has been part of my life, on and off, forever. In fact, when I was a kid, the old trolley tracks still stuck through the asphalt creating a bike challenge.
Image of the Boston Post Rd in the late 1600s in Pelham, NY, from this site.
I would highly recommend it for students before they take any neuoscience-related courses in school. Our learning theory here is that it's best to learn all you can about a topic before you take a course in it. That way, you will at least be oriented. Sometimes, the whole expensive course might end up being redundant.
Do you ever play Mexican Train Dominoes? A good game, quite absorbing. We learned to play it in Mexico last year. More fun than watching TV. Uncle's Games sells Mexican Train Domino sets.
This game is said to be the most popular Domino game these days. Rules here (which sound more complicated than it is to play). It's a good alternative to Chess and Scrabble when you don't feel like over-taxing your brain, and 4 or 5 can play.
The wife of a friend of mine was recently made to feel uncomfortable while visiting her freshman daughter's dorm to see fellows walking around the halls with towels or undershorts with long-neck beers in their hands as if the dorm were some sort of downscale Roman orgy.
The greatest of storytellers, with an eye for vivid details of life and character types, and a tendency for unlikely dramatic plots.
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax. 
Croquet
Loreena McKennitt
