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.
Greeks’ and theologians’ dour double disapproval of money has been the hideous inheritance of the West. Reinforced by aristocratic and would-be aristocratic disdain for work, hostility to wealth had, by the mid-19th century, torn free of its intellectual roots and become one of those ideas accepted without thought by a certain kind of intellectual, whatever his relationship to Greeks or theologians. Marx was heir to this prejudice, and the millions killed by Marx’s followers its victims. So pervasive was this idea that even 19th-century Utilitarianism, whose principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” should have made its followers leading advocates of economic liberty (as, indeed, they began), evolved over time a hostility to getting and spending; John Stuart Mill ended his life a socialist.
Nowadays, all it takes is one jackass to mess things up for everybody else. Why does one whining person have more power than hundreds of non-whining people? "I'm offended. Rearrange the world for me."
Given the statistical likelihood that there is at least one stupid, selfish or self-righteous jackass fault-finder in any group, it's guaranteed that somebody will bitch about something every time anything happens.
Do people attempt mass murder because they want better schools and better sewers? From Dalrymple's Sewer Thing:
...to return to the question of intellectuals and their appreciation of human motivation. On the one hand they seem to want to deny the deeper currents that underlie the most extraordinary behaviour such as suicide bombing; on the other, they want to deny the quite ordinary or commonplace motivation for genuinely prosaic behaviour, such as spending too much. This is odd.
Perhaps they want to preserve the notion that man is by nature fundamentally good. In the Guardian article with which I started we are introduced to the concept of the altruistic suicide bomber, a concept derived from the fact that those who survived their attempted bombings claimed to be in pursuit of some altruistic end, when asked afterwards. It is surely very naïve to take this at face value: anyone caught in the middle of committing, and prevented from continuing, genocide would presumably argue the same thing. What the intellectual does not want to admit is that there is a joy in rage, and a joy in expressing that rage by evil deeds. And this is because we are constituted as we are: original sin, if that is how you want to put it.
Similarly, lust for easy gain is common enough. It is a human universal, not in the sense that it has always existed in all places and everywhere, but in the sense that it exists as soon as there is the opportunity for it to manifest itself. That is to say, there will be no final victory over such greed, and I have very little doubt that at some time in the not distant future there will be yet another epidemic of it, if we are not indeed in the midst of one already.
Read the whole good thing (link above). We have always contended here at Maggie's that a flaw in Leftist visions of paradise is an unrealistic view, or I could say fantasy, about the true nature of fallen mankind.
My tailor grandfather taught me the difference between being a Jew and being honored.
When I was a little boy, holding my grandfather’s hand as we exited the synagogue, all the well-dressed people were walking around a disheveled, crying man at the bottom of the steps.My grandfather immediately went up to him and asked what was the matter. Years later, my grandfather told me that the man replied with sobs that he’d lost his job because of drinking, his wife had left him after he had an affair, and he was too ashamed of what had happened to his life to come into synagogue. My grandfather took him by the hand and in they went, me trailing behind.
Afterwards I asked my grandfather why he hadn’t also invited the man home with us for supper.My grandfather answered that as long as the man behaved, he should be welcome in synagogue, but due to how he had behaved toward his responsibilities he wasn’t welcome in his house. Any Jew who wants to join communal prayers can do so. Any Jew who dishonors his people doesn’t deserve to be honored.
Our universities used to be called temples of learning but most universities have relaxed their former standards, as have many Jews.
I am always amused by health advice because it so often turns out to be wrong, and because popular writing on health so consistently confuses correlation with causation. Nevertheless, I do take a daily Vit D as one of my compromises with magical thinking. Lipitor too, for the same reason.
A friend recommended a book, The Lords of Poverty (1998). A quote from an Amazon reviewer:
Hancock's writing style here may be a sustained rant, but it nevertheless provides a great deal of useful information and tears down many of the misconceptions most Americans or Europeans may have about the international aid industry. Particularly interesting is his criticism of the various UN agencies and, especially, the World Bank and the IMF - whose projects all too often do more harm than good (if they do any good at all). Perhaps the most disturbing aspect exposed in this book is still quite valid today: that taxpayers in the big donor countries like the U.S., Germany, Japan, the U.K. etc. are footing the bill for many disastrous projects worldwide that make the lives of impoverished populations even worse and often destroy in the environment in the process. "Lords of Poverty" may be dated, but it's still well worth the read.
Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, there arises a desire to preempt
its appeal, to smother it with scenes of destruction. Hence the many
works of contemporary art that rely on shocks administered to our
failing faith in human nature—such as the crucifix pickled in urine by
Andres Serrano. Hence the scenes of cannibalism, dismemberment, and
meaningless pain with which contemporary cinema abounds, with directors
like Quentin Tarantino having little else in their emotional
repertories. Hence the invasion of pop music by rap, whose words and
rhythms speak of unremitting violence, and which rejects melody,
harmony, and every other device that might make a bridge to the old
world of song. And hence the music video, which has become an art form
in itself and is often devoted to concentrating into the time span of a
pop song some startling new account of moral chaos. Those phenomena record a habit of desecration in which life is not
celebrated by art but targeted by it. Artists can now make their
reputations by constructing an original frame in which to display the
human face and throw dung at it.
When I was an adolescent, we thought that "beauty" was old-fashioned, for the old fogies, and that rough and ugly was hip. Little did I know then about how beauty can be so elusive, temporary, and precious.
The average contemporary human does not consider the sublime much. Life
is not seen as linear --with an end -- or even circular, with an eastern
repetition. In many people's mind they were never a baby and will never
be old. It's a botoxed cougar world, facing off against forty year old
men still dressing up like Star Wars characters.
I don't want to be sixty years old at a Coldplay concert with a
girlfriend on my shoulders, thanks. I don't think it will be fun to
eventually look at eternity and only have fifteen minutes of real adult
behavior in your CV. And I don't want to act as if children are just
short adults. I'm six-foot-two, there's plenty of short adults around
already. It's common for people to remark that they don't want to see
children out in public, and old people should find an ice floe before we
have to find one for you.
"Real adult behavior"? "Ice floe"? Ice floe in my glass of Scotch, thanks very much. Well, I happen to be into the sublime, wherever I can find it. Sipp links these charming short vids from one of the civilized youths of today.
A handful of pills and a few minutes of canned shrinkology is not enough to tend to a soul in turmoil and in pain. Take my word for it. People are complicated. For most people with troubles, sooner or later they have to face themselves, their flaws, and their self-defeating or destructive tendencies with honesty, and it is best done in the patient company of a decent soul who knows a thing or two about it all, and knows how to dig just deep enough to try to get to the heart of things; to gently drive a wedge through the devilish defenses to address the real "issues."
Some of us, or many of us, the Old Guard, are still here if you want to try to talk from the heart. Life itself is difficult enough, and having to struggle with one's own self just makes it harder for all.
The Photopic Sky Survey is an interactive 5000 megapixel photograph of the entire night sky stitched together from 37,000+ photos. A beautiful example of data aggregation, annotation, and exploration.
After fishing yesterday, Gwynnie and I took a drive through Lyme, CT, as charming and homey an antique town as I have ever seen in the US. It runs along the east bank of the lower Connecticut River, has wonderful riverside marshes for bird watching, fishing, and hunting, and has a fine cove with a marina - Hamburg Cove. "Quaint and charming" can be real things in our Yankeeland.
I even began looking at the For Sale signs (which was my first symptom of Lyme Disease), but there is no work for my profession there, I'm afraid. For jukebox maintenance and repair, one must go where there are jukeboxes...
Where I live, there are many highly-accomplished, scary-smart and mega-educated people, but "quaint and charming" does not jump to mind. ("Wonderful friends" does jump to mind.)
I took a few snaps, but Gwynnie declined to stop for my architectural photography. I don't blame him - if you stopped every time I wanted a pic, one would never arrive at one's destination. I can be a pest, that way. Also, in other ways (pedantic, insensitive, critical, intolerant, etc.).
For Fish a great sentence is like a great athletic performance. It is an example of something done supremely well, so well that it cannot be bettered. Other similar feats will come along, but only to stand alongside it. What exactly is done in such a performance? There is no single answer, indeed no finite answer since there is no limit to the things that can be done with words. But it is what Conrad called the “shape and ring” of sentences, the perfect adaptation of form to achievement, that Fish wants to share.
I can tell you that some certainly are, some could care less, and some find it an abomination.
Porn, recreational sex, prostitution, rape, illicit seduction, perversions, etc. have been going on since there have been humans. That's a fact. Humans are endowed with the wackiest sex drives and wackiest imaginations of all animals and, depending on conditions and circumstances, not always the most mature or honorable behavior.
But what about the ladies? A teen gal recently told me that somebody said to her, in the bathroom after a frat party, "I am so pissed that I didn't get any dick tonight." How times have changed. Or have they?
I suppose that the voyeuristic TV show Hoarders has raised the visibility of hoarding. It's one of those OCD-type of things that fades from totally insane to fairly normal.
If what you like to hoard is money, then you're just thrifty or stingy. If you like to hoard "collectible" items, then you're a collector: Art, rocks, knives, rugs, guns, pinball machines, etc.
If you can't get rid of stuff you don't really need to the point that it interferes with life, it gets to be a problem. Come to think of it, hoarding money can have the same effect.
I cannot embed this bit. If interested, there are more of these on YouTube - like this one: We can't have people over to our house:
Are you and I machines? Are we analyzable without remainder into a collection of mechanisms whose operation can be fully explained by the causal operation of physical and chemical laws, starting from the parts and proceeding to the whole? It might seem so, judging from the insistent testimony of those whose work is to understand life.
There is little doubt about the biologist’s declared obsession with mechanisms of every sort — “genetic mechanisms,” “epigenetic mechanisms,” “regulatory mechanisms,” “signaling mechanisms,” “oncogenic mechanisms,” “immune mechanisms,” “circadian clock mechanisms,” “DNA repair mechanisms,” “RNA splicing mechanisms,” and even “molecular mechanisms of plasticity.” The single phrase “genetic mechanism” now yields over 25,000 hits in Google Scholar and the count seems to be rising by hundreds per month. But no cellular entity or process is exempt; everything has been or will be baptized a “mechanism.” In an informal analysis of technical papers I’ve collected, I found an average of 7.5 uses of mechanism per article, with the number in a single article varying from 1 to 32. This is not even counting cognate forms such as mechanistic and machine.
Using mechanical metaphors probably sounded advanced, and scientifically anti-vitalistic 100 years ago, but now it seems quaint. The metaphors we use are important, because they tend to be reified by people outside a given field of expertise.
We easily forget that vitalism was a metaphor, like phlogiston. Our next batch of metaphors for everything will be systems-oriented, until the next new thing comes along.
Teaching writing is a difficult task, if not a nearly impossible one. Eliminating standards and propagandizing is so much easier. So easy, any idiot can - and does - do it.
The thing is, you don't have to know a damn thing about the craft of writing to propagandize. This is truly appalling: Writing Teachers: Still Crazy After All These Years. Crazy, for sure, and utterly out of reality and out of usefulness.
You have to either laugh or cry.
It sounds like going to writing class today is like going to shop class and learning about the oppression of the worker instead of how to use a lathe. Might be useful if you want to become a Community Organizer, but not if you ever want to make anything.
I had to run home this afternoon to meet with my chimney guy. Actually, not my chimney guy, but my semi-local sheet-metal guy.
I never had a sheet-metal guy, but I'm glad to have one now. He can make whatever you need in his wood-heated shop in an old mill building in CT, and he will install what he makes, too. Cheerfully.
Our old farmhouse has three fireplaces. We needed some new flashing, new collars, caps, etc. to keep the rain and the animals out. That was a piece of cake for the good old guy. He promised me that his patch-up job would outlive me, which isn't saying much. In olde Yankeeland, everything is a patch-up job.
I chatted up his 20-something black assistant. He said "Man, we have a beautiful shop. We can make anything - copper, aluminum, stainless, plain steel - whatever you want. Ducts, flashing, roofs, gutters, whatever. Square ducting, round ducting, whatever you need. We have the technology. We built our own wood stove too."
"What do you do for wood?" I asked.
"Oh, our tree guy friends just dump it off for us. Saves them a dump fee. We cut and split it ourselves. We load the stove up at night, and it's as warm as toast when we come to work in the morning."
Because I love the environs where trout are found, which are invariably beautiful, and hate the environs where crowds of people are found, which are invariably ugly;
Because of all the television commercials, cocktail parties, and assorted social posturing I thus escape;
Because in a world where most men seem to spend their lives doing things they hate, my fishing is at once an endless source of delight and an act of small rebellion;
Because trout do not lie or cheat and cannot be bought or bribed or impressed by power, but respond only to quietude and humility and endless patience;
Because I suspect that men are going along this way for the last time, and I for one don't want to waste the trip;
Because mercifully there are no telephones on trout waters;
Because only in the woods can I find solitude without loneliness;
Because bourbon out of an old tin cup always tastes better out there;
Because maybe one day I will catch a mermaid;
And finally, not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important, but because I suspect that so many of the other concerns of men are equally unimportant - and not nearly so much fun.
Robert Traver
A mermaid, or a cougar in a tree? Cougar safely below the fold -
I'd do it in a minute, if I could take 22 days off work.
Warren Buffet once said the the main advantage in life about being rich is private travel. We regular people easily forget that wealthy people worry as much, or more, about money than regular folks. They have more to worry about.
I rarely have a chance to travel by private jet, but have done so enough to say that it is very good. For my luxury, Mrs. BD just informed me that she rented an Alpha Romeo for me for our 10 days in Umbria. Only 100 E. more than the VW. Definitely worth it. Happy Bird Dog.
I'm delivering food and doing errands for my old folks this weekend. My Mom fell and cracked her patella while unloading groceries, cannot drive for 6 weeks, and can barely hobble around on her brace - and my Dad is half-blind, has Parkinson's, and is not allowed to drive anymore. His ornery self refuses to take the Parkinson's medicine but, thankfully, he finally agreed to get himself a hearing aid.
A neighbor is driving Mom to her best friend's funeral today at our family church on the hill.
I brought them Chinese take-out last night: Cold hot pepper cabbage, Scallion pancakes, and Scallops with Snow Peas. Then a plate of strawberries. Also left them some black bread and Nova Salmon for breakfast. Tomorrow, I'll bring them some take out Thai soups. They look too skinny, need feeding. They were never much into eating, unless it was especially good.
Somehow, we got on the topic of past family trips. I was laughing to remember the volumes of disposable diapers we travelled with - they were not available in Europe back then. With a family of 5 kids, there was usually at least one in diapers (and at least one in a bad mood). I remember trying to help tie them (the bags of diapers, not the younger brats, unfortunately) to the roof of the rental cars. My Dad always travelled with rope for that purpose, in the pre-bungee-cord era.
My Mom was remembering the large Raspberry plantings at the Roman Camp Hotel, where we all had stayed for a few days. Watching her litter grazing on Scotland's excellent raspberries, ripping them off the rows of canes. A wonderful place. My parents are picky about where they will stay - they can't stand glitz or "fancy," and they don't do tacky. They are the typical old Yankee WASPy breed that is only comfortable with understated refinement and genteel semi-shabby. No "luxury," please. They feel that "luxury" is vulgar (whereas I can learn to appreciate it when I can find it). Mom liked this place:
A few years after that trip, my folks did something unusual and selfishly left the kids behind and took a trip by themselves, and biked the length of Hadrian's Wall. Or, as my Dad corrects me, walls: there are two of them. They were finished with breeding. We had many good trips; lots of stories and tons of colorful memories. I can't remember them all: Somewhere in Europe every August, and Cape Cod too. Ocean liners - I remember each one of them. Two ski weeks each winter. Monhegan Island regularly. Very nice. Like those Bald Eagle parents with their rabbits and fish, I think they wanted to fill us with all of the experiences that they could, and the heck with the expense.
As much as I love my cozy home, going anywhere new, near or far, still ignites the adventurous spark in me, like a kid. I am lucky that I married an adventurous woman who will go anywhere, any time, and try anything. She back-packed down to Greece when she was in college. My kids are like that, too, thank God. They seem to view this world as a wonderful buffet of experiences, opportunities, and challenges.
I think my parents' travelling days are over, but they are fortunate to have 5 kids who want to pitch in, when needed. My favorite Thai place makes damn good noodle soups, and I am gonna fight the traffic and bring them some.
The scriptures say that one man owed his lord a huge debt that he could not pay, and ask that the debt be forgiven. His lord forgave him. Soon the man demanded that a small amount of money that he had loaned to a friend be repaid, and when the friend could not pay the loan on time, he was punished. His lord heard about the injustice, and brought charges against him. The moral is that we should do unto others as we would that they do to us—and that we must practice what we preach before we preach.
If you are dealing with a problem where some other person has hurt you be sure that you pray to God that you will approach it in a Christian manner and never ask more than you would be willing to give. Look at your face in a mirror and make very sure you do not see a “better than thou attitude”.
Especially in my later years, I worry that I will slip along life’s way and ask you to do for Christ something that I am failing to do. I pray that God will not permit me to make this mistake.
From Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:
...from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sinfor us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
We shall want to hold ourselves to the course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done us, real or fancied. We should avoid extreme judgments, both of ourselves and of others involved. We must not exaggerate our defects or theirs. A quiet, objective view will be our steadfast aim. In all these situations we need self-restraint, honest analysis of what is involved, a willingness to admit when the fault is ours, and an equal willingness to forgive when the fault is elsewhere....that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness ... It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
I suppose this is a companion piece to my post last week, 
