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.
Roger Scruton is in the Maggie's Farm pantheon because he is a deep thinker. (Nice work if you can get it, but most of us are not capable of it, especially me. I count myself fortunate to be able to follow him.)
Just as there is an understanding of art, which forms the domain of criticism, and which is a rational exercise with its own standards of validity, so there is an understanding of people, which forms the domain of interpersonal relations, and which is a rational exercise obedient to norms of its own. And just as it is an error to think you can replace art criticism with the neuroscience that allegedly explains the experience of art, so too is it an error to think you can replace interpersonal understanding with the neuroscience that allegedly explains our behavior. This shift requires describing human behavior in terms that remove it from the context that gives it sense; it requires becoming a reductionist, someone who fails to see that the most important features of the human condition are emergent features, ones that inhabit the surface of the world and are invisible to those whose eyes are fixed on the depths.
At dinner with friends last weekend, a pal said to me "When it comes to important things like health and education, I'd rather have Washington make the decisions than my dopey neighbors."
I replied "But is that Washington's proper role, given our inheritance of supposedly limited central government? "
He said "All that really matters is what is effective."
I said "All that really matters is our dopey neighbors. In America, we're all somebody's dopey neighbor - and the dopiest end up in politics."
Anyway, I dropped the topic, but felt like I was not conversing with an American. I do like the guy otherwise. Yes, he is a Progressive.
Althouse's post on ticks reminded me of the Kit Cat clock I had on my wall as a kid. It was a Christmas present, as I recall. I wanted a clock in my room, and kids did not have watches in those ancient days. Did its tail and eyes move and did the eyes and numbers glow in some radioactive way, or am I remembering wrong?
That memory of my Kit Cat clock was like a Madeleine to the sentimental Proust in me. I see my room, the window overlooking my Mom's hosta garden, my bookshelf-turned-rock-and-fossil collection, the Revolutionary War prints on the wall, my little desk and chair with my chemistry set in one of the drawers, my first precious little transistor radio, the big aquarium set up with rocks and sand for my various lizards, and my bed that I hid my forbidden Mad Magazines beneath to read with a flashlight after lights-out.
And I remember Question Time as a young lad.
Every night, at lights-out time, my Dad would stand silhouetted in the doorway to invite one question. It would be things like "Why do snow crystals vary when quartz crystals don't?" or "What's this new Continental Drift idea?" or "How do birds navigate?" or "How do sails work?" (We sailed quite a bit.) Being a Harvard guy, an MD, and highly curious about everything in this world, he usually had an answer.
Oh, I also remember asking "Where do babies come from?" (My parents were constantly making annoying new babies, it seemed.) The answer, as I recall, sort of freaked me out but he always did - and still does - say it straight. Except when he doesn't want to. When he was young, he looked like Gary Cooper, was 6'3, never tolerated fools, had Commie politics, and was inner-directed to a fault. The latter three still apply to the laconic and enigmatic old Yankee guy, who would be still working today if his eyes and ears hadn't worn out.
But back to the clock. Remarkably, you can still buy them, but the new ones need batteries. The originals plugged in, which made much more sense because time marches on whether you can find any C batteries or not.
"Decades of demonizing failure have turned America
into a nation of cowards and outcasts. Risk-taking, successful or not,
is vital to a resilient society."
As we say here, you learn little from success but much from failures. I've had my share. In general, I won't blame anyone but myself for them. When a lad, when I was prone to blame failures on external circumstances, jerky teachers, annoying coaches, rejecting girls, unappreciative people in general, etc., my Yankee Mom would always say in her Yankee way "Cut out that talk, sonny boy, and look to what you mishandled."
This seems to have been culturally normative, at least for their class, and accepted by all. Did they need moral leadership?
Every person has such impulses of course, but it has often seemed to me that the wealthy and powerful often come to believe that the rules apply to the little people. That is true in America today.
We're getting into wedding season. Wedding season brings up the topic of engagement rings, which brings up the topic of manipulated prices - stocks, gold, diamonds, oil, etc.
Music. I like to immerse in it, as fully as my feeble senses are able. I want to appreciate the author's efforts, intents, and talent, and to be enlivened by it.
With serious, ambitious music (as opposed to catchy pop music like Verdi opera, and ZZ Top), I am best with no distractions, lying down with eyes closed. My lack of a musical brain and of musical talent has been a lifelong disappointment to me.
My music education (to become a more discerning and considerate listener) was limited to my Dad, to a college music history and appreciation course, lots of listening, info via Mrs. BD who had the benefit of a wonderful music education - and to the music courses from The Teaching Co, now Great Courses.
Isn't it the same way with everything? Art, music, littacher, woodworking, auto mechanics, tree-felling, masonry, gardening, shooting, and race-car driving? It's all called "eddication," but the best of it is not formal. We pursue it because it adds to being alive, "enriches" life as they say.
When I was growing up, Dad liked to take us all to the opera. The preparation for it included reading the story and the history and context of the opera, listening to it through at least a time or two, and going over the libretto. German, Italian, French - we'd muddle through it with the original and the translations, and after a while we'd sort of get the gist of these languages - the rhythms of them, the sounds, the flow, some of the grammar and lots of the vocab. (With his five kids, he approached opera, Shakespeare and Sophocles the same way. He did not want us to miss out on the glories. Thanks, Dad and Mom, for the cultural heritage and for opening so many doors. You could call it Home Schooling.)
I am slowly getting to the point of this meandering post, which is about Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96. aka "American Quartet." It's probably his most popular quartet piece, and it's a doozy. We heard it performed last month, and, despite my ADD, Restless Leg Syndrome, etc., I do my best to let myself sink into music as if into a pool of water. I did notice that the First Violin gal played the entire thing with her eyes closed, immersing herself physically and emotionally and letting the others follow her lead.
The Vivace is wonderful, but the whole thing is emotional.
My point is that I listened to it again on Youtube when I got home, and twice again in the early morning and a few more times since. Then I started to really get some idea and flow of the piece, and only now I am ready to hear it live again. I think I am now at the point where the serious listeners with good ears begin to hear this entertainment.
For people with shortcomings (now called " musical learning disabilities") like me, live concerts should just do one piece - three times. Then go out for supper. Give this three times if you are as musically-retarded as I am, and see what you think. It's a cool piece:
Bloom’s work is no mere exercise in horripilation. He provides a wonderful and hopeful corrective to the bottomless mendacity of the Left. Bloom explained that Marcuse was mistaken, dreadfully mistaken, because he had not understood another important German thinker, Max Weber. For Weber, like Nietzsche, had identified values to be key to any society. There must be a notion of right and wrong. Weber saw the rise of Capitalism, which filled Marx with such loathing, as the triumph of what he called the ‘protestant ethic.’ A particular group of Christians applying the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (each of which has a significant emotional component) had changed the face of the earth. Marcuse simply thought Weber was condemning religion, in the same (wrong) way Marxists thought Nietzsche had. But Weber was making a very profound point. Weber was referring to the ascendancy of spirit over matter. Man creates his culture. In every important respect, men and women are free. This is nothing less than a huge, devastating rebuttal of Marxism. More complete than the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which we now see had been merely the fall of bricks and mortar.
Ethics are the key to the de-marxification and de-toxification of our society.
Very gutsy group of Fifth Graders down in Hurst, TX. Props are due to them for their creativity and the willingness to do this. We showed this to our teens and got shrugs - a typical teen response. I'll hand it to these kids. Beats the hell out of the alternative. Reminded me of the classic SNL Martin Short/Harry Shearer skit. "I'm not...that strong a swimmer."
The Sheffield, MA Congregational Church, built 1760, getting a new paint job. Photo taken Friday. I suspect, but do not know for sure, that the front piece was added later. That was not unusual with the churches of this era - sometimes they added columns in front and called it a "porch." I am not sure whether the steeple was 1760 - doubt it but need to check. It looks like the front projection and the steeple were added on at the same time. The Congregationalists were (are) not into fancy. For example, find me a Congo Church with A/C, and I will go there. Just kidding - will go anyway. Especially if they have quit the UCC.
However, steeples were considered too fancy, too Anglican, too Catholic, for the early church architects. They built "meeting houses," not "churches." Boxes with windows. The bell steeples which were added later on often became structural nightmares, as in my home church. They begin to tip, over time. Frivolous, in my opinion, but now considered "traditional." Funny how what is traditional changes over time - I do not need to be pointed to where God is, and he ain't up in the sky. But steeples are fine, dramatic things, all the same. Sky is a good metaphor.
Sippican gets sentimental: It's Cold Again, And That's That. The video is...what? What word for that? Males hate to show sentimentality and tears, so we tend to mask it in irony or with whatever is at hand, but that video is moving as heck.
Sipp's post reminded me of Bob's amazing tune about his life:
Yikes! A friend of mine forwarded me this video. Not sure if it was a competition, but it seems to be given the spectators and the stunts. This not the kind of mountain biking I do, but I am impressed at the skill and guts. Can you smell the fear? Oh, that's me...
This week, we'll do the sorts of things which are tough to do, require exertion of some sort, self-discipline, and can be frustrating or exasperating, but in which the process itself contains gratification as well as a (hopefully) somewhat gratifying result. In other words, a mix of intrinsic and delayed gratification.
Here are a few (or maybe most) of mine:
- Practicing piano - Tennis - Painting a picture - Practicing my firearm skills - Working at my job - Complex travel planning - diving deep into prayer - cooking a perfect and loving meal - Sailboat racing - horse jumping - singing in the church choir - yard work, planting, pruning, garden design - reading fairly serious books - life is too short for fluff - fly fishing - it is fly-fishing week here at Maggie's - investing my money - taking a long run on a late April morning with the dog - raising kids
What are some of the things you find difficult, frustrating, or exertional, but take pleasure in the process too, not just in the completion or the result?
Roger Scruton is in the Maggie's Farm pantheon because he is a deep thinker. (Nice work if you can get it, but most of us are not capable of it, especially me. I count myself fortunate to be able to follow him.)
Althouse's 
A friend of mine loves these things: 
Our prolific friend has 
A few weeks ago, we did this: 