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.
Judging only from this clip, what religion is Natalie Portman?
Bonus point question:
What nation was she born in?
If you didn't get it and don't mind lowering yourself to the level of dog drool by cheating and thus shredding any last vestige of self-respect, highlight the following line with the mouse for a clue:
Blacks had more political power in Chicago than ever before, yet that power had no impact on the tidal wave of dysfunction that was sweeping through the largest black community in the United States. Chicago had just elected Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor; the heads of Chicago’s school system and public housing were black, as were most of their employees; black power broker Emil Jones, Jr. represented the South Side in the Illinois State Senate; Jesse Jackson would launch his 1984 presidential campaign from Chicago. The notion that blacks were disenfranchised struck even some of Obama’s potential organizees as ludicrous. “Why we need to be protesting and carrying on at our own people?” a prominent South Side minister asked Obama soon after he arrived in Chicago. “Anybody sitting around this table got a direct line to City Hall.”
The article is deeply depressing. The concepts of planning and of delayed gratification seem to be lost. It's consistent with my theory that many or maybe most people will go feral unless raised to civilization. Lord of the Flies. Is this the product of government policy? I think so. Nobody lived this way before The Great Society, and now it has become its own multigenerational subculture.
It also seems clear to me that these teen mothers do not want husbands anyway. Why would they want to marry unreliable losers, drop-outs, or gang members? Or anybody? In my view, government can do nothing to fix what they have irretrievably broken in the name of compassion. Rich, poor, or in-between, big government programs lock people into things and inhibit change. Tragic. Another quote:
Some members of Chicago’s Left will argue against holding fathers or mothers responsible for their children. “To blame it on the family is totally unfair,” says Gwen Rice, a board member of the Developing Communities Project. “I’m tired of blaming the parents. The services for the poor are paltry; it boggles the mind. Historically, you can’t expect a parent who can’t get a job to do something that someone with resources can do. These problems have histories; there are policies that have mitigated against black progress. What needs to happen is a change in corporate greed and insensitivity.” Rice corrects my use of the term “illegitimacy”: “There are no illegitimate births,” she says.
Maybe we need laws to prevent Corporate Greed from impregnating innocent teens. And we need more government services. That would solve it all.
Insty points out that much of the financial "inequality" in the US is due to the marriage gap. Wonder of wonders, even the NYT is finally willing to discuss the forbidden topic: Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’. It's not news. Sen. Pat Moynihan famously warned about this decades ago, but the subject was judged to be politically incorrect.
Why is it a forbidden topic? I can think of at least two reasons. One is fear of the racial aspect, although no race has a monopoly on single motherhood. My second reason is the knee-jerk refusal to judge based on bourgeois life style choices, or some such Marxist baloney.
Even with government functioning as a modest trust fund for many, having kids outside marriage is not a recipe for a good, orderly life (from my petit bourgeois standpoint, of course). It's not mostly about income - it's about functionality, support, structure, partnership, responsibility, committment, teamwork. This is not a secret. The income part is just an extra side-effect if two people have jobs.
As best I can tell, it takes at least two people to raise kids properly. Ideally, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and close family friends around too. Nannies or babysitters if you can afford them. Tribally, in extended family and in community. Income doesn't really matter much. Kids thrive on Cheerios, Wonder Bread and baloney, macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, and Fluffernutter. I did. 6'2" and fairly strong.
They are dying, and not very slowly. We have often posted on this topic. The reason is obvious: these churches have been co-opted, captured by soft or firm Lefties who have replaced the search for Truth for political attitudes. People want God, but they are delivering pet funerals.
I suppose you could call that one aspect of "the long march through the institutions." Non-profits and other sorts of do-gooder organizations are vulnerable to being corrupted by that sort of activism because they often attract a certain sort of person.
My Protestant church is bursting at the seams with tons of young couples and tons of little kids. I know our pastors pretty well, but have no idea what they think about any political or otherwise controversial topic. Nor do I care, because they view their job as one of saving souls through Christ and that's what they do. Lots of people hunger for that.
There are many reasons people take two hours on Sunday morning to go to church, but politics and trendy silliness are not among them.
Today... the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that perhaps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.
Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.
From Akasie: What Ails the Episcopalians - Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful:
General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of the finest wines.
During the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote, along with a resolution to "dismantle the effects of the doctrine of discovery," in effect an apology to Native Americans for exposing them to Christianity.
Re the latter, so much for mission work, I guess. "Gee, I'm sorry we told you about Jesus"! My view of ministry is simple. Preach the Word to all, visit the sick, inspire the marrying and comfort the bereaved. Mostly, preach the Word of God. What people decide to do with the lessons should be no concern of churches.
Greatest rock band ever? Could be. Is Let It Bleed their best record? Highly debatable.
Funny to think that Keith Richards now lives a quiet, humble, ordinary suburban life in leafy, winding road Connecticut, same as Paul Simon and many rockers and movie stars. I think many sane stars yearn for the quiet and ordinary where they can try to be relatively anonymous and to be the ordinary people they are at heart.
I'll never forget the first time I heard the Let It Bleed record. The girlfriend too, in vivid detail. However, I could say that about quite a number of pop records.
People prone to collectivist fantasies seek to escape the struggles of their present life and transport themselves to a place where mankind has triumphed over the adversities of the “mundane” to frolic like gods amongst the stars.
Now, imagine you are one of these desperate men or women, and someone promises you in a rather convincing manner that their system of social structure and governance will bring that sterling-silver-gravity-defying-Star-Trek-future to you. What would you be willing to trade for even a glimpse into the next epoch? Some, sadly, are willing to trade everything, including their freedoms...
I have told you several times in the past about my local master gunsmith, Italy-trained in some of the finest hand-made gun shops in the world, who put up ads in our high school for seven years inviting applicants to apprentice with him. He never got a single reply, and gave up the effort.
When he died a few years ago, alas (when he was charging $175/hr for labor and had more work than he could handle), all of his skills in wood and in machining gun parts died with him. A damn shame. An expert shot with rifle and shotgun, too.
Mike Rowe claims that people look down on people who know how to do real things. Do they really? Most people seem to admire or envy people who can do real things. Nobody admires people because they can use Powerpoint. Anyway, this via Eratosthenes:
There are two sorts of Americans, the "What can I get?" Americans and the "What can I do?" Americans.
Some folks might wade through the Rio Grande for "What can I get?", but I think most of them, like the ones who immigrate from further afield, come because of "What can I do?" Nowadays, it's mostly smart, ambitious Asians who can write code but are also willing to do the night shifts at the minimarts (kind of crazy to see work-free Americans on welfare in the minimart lines while the Asian or Haitian keeps busy at the check-out counter practicing his or her English and studying some textbook between customers).
Land of Opportunity, and all that. Whining and whinging not allowed here. There is still more freedom here to pursue your life goals than anywhere on earth, and leisure is not a traditional American life goal. In fact, the original Americans considered leisure to be disreputable if not shameful except on Sunday, after church.
It was the banks that first felt the lash of Mr Hollande’s tongue when he declared that his “true adversary” was not Mr Sarkozy but “the world of finance”. The president, who has spent almost his entire career in the public sector or working for his party, once said: “I don’t like the rich."
If you hate the world of finance, don't borrow and don't invest. It's simple. Also strange, since Hollande has become very wealthy working all his life for government and in politics, and all of his friends and girlfriends are rich. He has the parasitic mind, and parasites hate their hosts because they are ashamed of their dependency.
I've been reading a bit about how western forest fires could be prevented, or reduced, by human intervention. I am opposed to that. Wildfire is a natural occurrence, and forest regeneration is a natural and necessary process and one upon which many species depend. It's well-known that fire-prevention eventuates in bigger fires.
If you want to live in the woods where fire is eventually expected, don't do it on my nickel. While I must admire the valiant forest-fire-fighters, I don't know why I am paying for them. There are dangers in the woods. Cougars, wolves, fires, bears, snakes, crazy rivers, etc. Nobody is forced to live there.
Same goes for federally-subsidized flood insurance. Seems like a no-brainer to me. Why should my tax dollars subsidize somebody to live where there is a predictable expectation of flooding? Or hurricanes or tornadoes?
Perhaps this sounds "insensitive," but adults are expected to calculate their risks in life and not come crying to me when the odds turn against them. I can be charitable when I choose to be, but I don't want to be forced by government to subsidize other peoples' adult choices.
An angry client today told me how pissed he was that the bank wouldn't swallow his $250,000 loss in the home he needs to sell now. I pointed out to him the obvious fact that he was implying that he would have been happy to keep any gain on the house, but not any loss. Then I pointed out that, if somebody wants to give up loss and to give up gain, then they should rent. When you rent, the landlord or the bank takes the risks.
In my long life experience, the more responsibility people take for their decisions and their consequences, the better and more careful decisions they make.
I blundered my way across a fairly interesting site a while back called Life's Little Mysteries. It struck a deep nerve because I realized it was answering the very questions that haunt all people of vast and superior intellect. Questions such as:
Having recently put two documentaries on the Japanese tsunami/Fukushima meltdown on my Special Vids page, I had an interest in Does Radioactive Tuna Mean Fukushima Was Worse than Expected? (I believe the answer to that last one would be 'yes', since the meltdown at Fukushima wasn't 'expected' at all)
It's a laff riot as Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, quizzes some Obama stooges officials on what constitutes a 'green' job:
But it's still guffaws galore as even Rep. Issa wasn't aware how all-encompassing the 'creative accounting' had gone:
Cahoon Hollow is a beach in Wellfleet, on good old unfancy lower (ie, upper, or outer) Cape Cod. It's their only ocean beach with a bar/restaurant - The Beachcomber - in an old life-saving station. They have bands. I believe Sippican played there in his dissipated youth.
The area is undeveloped thanks to JFK's Cape Cod National Seashore. Sometimes government does good things - but usually not. If you like warm water, the Cape Cod beaches are not for you. And unlike California beaches, at Cape Cod beaches people sit under beach umbrellas, sometimes have to wear wind-breakers in August, and tend to bury their heads in books while the cheerful sand fleas nip at their ankles.
These beaches attract some surfers, but the main water activity is body surfing: exhilarating fun, endlessly challenging, and the turbulence will pull down a gal's bikini top in an instant. Modest gals who like to body surf do not wear bikinis.
Lots of seals to swim with out there in August. The occasional Great White Shark, too. No fraidy cats allowed.
I used to think I could be important, and ordered my life accordingly. Now I realize I’m not and try my best to simply know, understand, and do my duty.
What I think what they mean is "Is being Conservative a mental ailment?" After all, people routinely change their political views with life experience. Anyway, in my view it's a stupid and pointless question.
This biological or psychic determinism -- the peculiar notion that fundamental political differences "don't really have anything in particular to do with politics" -- should explain liberals as well as conservatives. Most of its practitioners, however, seem to assume that liberal values such as fairness and compassion are, for lack of a better term, normal and that it is conservatives' beliefs and values that are different, even deviant, and thus in need of explanation... John Jost, a professor of psychology at NYU, sees conservative "aversion to ambiguity, a sense of threats, and disgust." Scott Eidelman, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas, says "conservatives generally crave closure, prefer to act quickly, choose instinctive solutions." Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State, thinks the effort to be fair and balanced is misguided. "I'm not personally convinced that there is an equal balance of bias," he says. "I believe that we see things like authoritarianism, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, to be distributed currently more on the right than on the left
What crimes have you been subject to in your lifetime? - Not including ordinary rip-offs, school-age or barroom fist-fights, or unpaid invoices.
I'll start it off. I had a car stolen in Hartford about 15 years ago, and we had five saddles stolen from the barn about 6 years ago while vacationing. That's all I can recall. Never anything with violence or threat of violence, thank God. Well, I did run from two would-be young muggers in Cambridge many years ago when I was fleet of foot. Got into my car on a dark street before they caught up with me. I have a CT carry permit now, but I never carry out of state. That's jail time.
I lay on the grass, counting tweety-birds, after falling off the top step of a 12-foot ladder while trimming a tree in the front yard, my 12-year old son’s concerned face looking down at me. My father, who could and did do anything he set his mind to, until the day he died in his eighties, also stared down at me. At 64, I had something important to live up to and pass on to my son, so I forced myself to get up, smile, and say, “let’s get back to work” (ibuprofen to secretly follow later).
“NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP reads a plaque behind Dole.” So ends a respectful interview, “Great American”, with 88-year old former Senator Bob Dole by an otherwise snarky toward Republicans young lady from GQ. The young lady can't let go of the diminished physical condition of the man before her, but can't hide the respect and awe at his life. From athelete to crippled veteran to candidate for President to helping today's war wounded, Bob Dole gave all of himself, which stands tall before her.
As it so happens, this morning brought home that message from several other accomplished old men interviewed by my local newspaper, stirring me to talk about other old men and women with whom I spoke or chat with now on the phone. Their politics vary but they all came from impoverished roots here or abroad, are self-made, involved themselves fully in our national life. From my youth to now they share their anecdotes with their younger friend, from my callow days to me now at 64, as I sat or now sit figuratively enthralled at their feet listening. In their twilight years, still, they never never never give up, regardless the challenge, price or risk.
It’s their sense of duty to things greater than themselves, their love of country, which has animated them from youth to old age, a sense of humility before the obligation to pass on a better, stronger, decent world in which the only limitations are those placed on self. From famous labor leaders and former communists or socialists to industrialists to globe-trotting journalists and diplomats to national political figures to best-selling artists, authors and academics, all of theireyes sparkle and inspire as their self-effacing words did and do inspire me.
I met Bob Dole in the early 1970s, at the height of his political power, as he took the time to encourage me. I met the others either at the height of their successes or after. They took time to talk with me, answer my ignorant questions with enlightenment, and kick me in the ass when I dithered or wandered. I could list their names and the lessons they shared with me, but that would fill another several thousand words to even be very brief.
After years of hectoring him to write down some of his encounters with the famous and formative people who he met as an international journalist from the last days of WWII to now, a friend and mentor is now doing so. I hope to help him get it published. He laughed at me for constantly needling him to set his anecdotes down, saying no one cares anymore. I find myself saying similar to younger friends who similarly needle me to write it down. Maybe I will...if I make it to my eighties. You probably had or have similar people in your life. They need to be reminded that someone cares and many more will care if you help their lessons to be remembered by passing it on.
I have been cursed throughout the years with perfect pitch.
And, amazingly, the Yankees don't want me.
I mean in the musical sense, of course. And, after a thorough, exhaustive 2-minute search through Wikipedia, it appears the precise nature of my affliction is known as 'relative pitch', or, in medical terms, relativepitchitis. That is, I can hear a note being just the teensiest bit off.
My first clue that I was crippled with this life's burden was when a group of us rowdy college students went up to Seattle and visited the World's Fair, which had taken place a few years earlier. Space Needle and all that. There was a machine that would issue a tone for a few seconds, then you tried to match it exactly using a variable dial. I was the only one of five who could do it, and did it three times in a row.
It's been pretty much downhill ever since.
When I walk into a night club with a live band, everyone else is thinking, "Hey, what a great lead guitarist!" Me, I'm thinking, "His high E-string is a little flat! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!"
Cursed, I tell you.
Which brings me to Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion and Sarah Brightman.
While putting together my Penn & Teller: Fool Us post, I couldn't help but notice how striking the background music was in the fourth clip. I eventually hunted it down and discovered it was the main theme song to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 remake of The Phantom of the Opera.
Since this is a musical, not a movie, there aren't any videos of the entire song being sung by the original performers, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, but they gave a live performance at the 1988 Tony Awards that featured the last verse of the song, merging into the musical's second-most popular tune, 'Music of the Night'.
Since we here at Maggie's Farm aim to be the best darn-tootin' blog site around, offering the Maggie's Valued Readers™ (that would be you slobs) something that no other site in town has to offer, I've employed the wonders of digital magic to combine the sound track of the first part of the song from a YouTube clip with the clip from the Tonys.
Maestro, take it away.
That crowd certainly got its money's worth.
The lyrics to the theme song are here. I have another clip below the fold.
Maggie's Farm readers are frequent guests of Bird Dog on his visits to the arts in Manhattan. I was shocked, really, actually shocked, when Bird Dog told me he'd never been to Brooklyn. By itself, Brooklyn is the 4th largest city in the United States. About 10% of Americans' families trace their families to originally being Brooklynites. Many of America's most famous celebrities hailed from Brooklyn, ranging from the early Dutch settlers who also bought Manhattan for trinkets and Thomas Paine, John Greeleaf Whittier and Walt Whitman, Mae West and W.C. Fields, George Gershwin and Aaron Copeland, John Steinbeck and Joseph Heller, Woody Allen and Barbara Streisand (my sister was at Erasmus Hall High School with her, Erasmus having the highest number of Westinghouse and National Merit Scholars in the nation), Lena Horne and W.E.B. DuBois, Gil Hodges and Sandy Koufax, to .........the list goes on and on. It contains top flight colleges. Prospect Park rivals Central Park. Its restaurants and arts are world class. There are far more beautiful brownstones than anywhere else. And, then, to top it off, its beaches have been New York's summer playgrounds and winter strolls for generations. One of those beach communities, next to Coney Island, is Brighton Beach. My grandmother and, later, my mother, in their old age lived in Brighton Beach highrises looking over the Atlantic and if you craned your neck you could see the Statue of Liberty. Here's a terrific photo homage to the Brooklyn that I grew up in. The video below is about Brighton Beach today, a thriving enclave for Russian emigres. They settled there because most were Jewish and the area was Jewish.
Bird Dog, doggit, you've got to get thee to Brooklyn, often. Manhattan midtown is where people not from New York City hang out, missing the real New York City.
I blundered my way across a fairly interesting site a while back called 
I considered asking readers what crimes they may have committed, but figured few would respond despite the fact that we all have made dumb mistakes. (See 
