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.
The various academic fields of –ists and –ologists try to decipher why and how individuals and groups do things, and the effective ways to get them to do them better or differently or to do other things.
I’d suggest that the further they get from coercion, material or otherwise, the weaker their prescriptions.
With one exception, that is, persuasion. The field of persuasion is what I focused upon in my doctoral studies of organization and decision making, as offering the most direct and directly measurable avenue to offering improvements that are accepted and acted upon.
Reducing a complex subject, full of tautologies, persuasion is getting someone to do what they want to do. One does that by listening, observing and understanding the person’s wants and offering information with comfort that they find useful which will lead them to rearrange their priorities.
A corollary to that is understanding why individuals choose attitudes and behaviors that are less constructive to their own wants. This article by a leading social psychologist says that we form narratives of ourselves and the world that are often misleading.
Personally, I believe that we all are exposed to roughly equal proportions of good and bad things in our lives, although of differing dimensions, and we each choose which to focus upon. The happier among us tend to focus on the good things more than the bad.
None of this is to contradict deep psychoanalysis, discursive or medicinal, for very serious problems. However, for most of us, the functionally dysfunctional common to humanity, the more direct path is through understanding our and others’ narratives.
The academic –ists and –ologists tend to go well beyond that -- often based on controlled experiments with college students from which they overgeneralize -- into how to influence or control groups of people, adding such magnitudes of mathematical and knowable uncertainties that they blunder about in faith-healing based on catering to whatever their powers that be desire.
Once one gets too far away from eternal verities, from moral lessons that have been, in effect, empirically tested across hundreds and thousands of years by all people and peoples and found to point in the right direction, one enters into the experimentalists that have no more respect for us than rats and no more object than controlling the rats.
They haven’t been too successful, so they increasingly turn to coercion. The resistance of individual constructive independence and relationships eventually wins out, although after great costs along the way.
If one chooses to be conscious and resist ill temptations, to be in control of one’s own narrative, however, the “I” rules and saves oneself and the world from great pain.
Like everyone else in the audience, if I had been watching 'Britain's Got Talent' when Susan Boyle walked onto the stage, I would have figured this was going to be a total disaster. A more frumpy, frowzy, middle-aged Scottish woman would be hard to imagine. Then she starts cackling away and going through some goofy gyrations and you're starting to think that maybe it's going to be some kind of musical comedy skit. Either way, you know it's going to be just awful.
But then.
Hopefully, we all learned a little lesson about stereotypes and preconceived notions that day.
Out on DVD are the first two seasons of one of the most intriguing TV shows you will ever see, Lie To Me.
The Extra Good News:
It was cancelled halfway through season three.
Here's a scene from the beginning of the pilot which perfectly encapsulates the essence of the show, blending into a later scene when they recruit a new prospect for the team. The younger dude provides the show's comic relief as he practices his philosophy of 'radical honesty'.
Okay, so the young dude doesn't provide all of the show's comic relief.
"Have you ever had any specialized deception training?"
"I've dated a lot of men."
As you saw, there's a great interplay between the boss and his chief partner (he's studied the science for 20 years, she's a master psychologist) and the writers do an excellent job with the 'bright newcomer' to the team over the first two seasons as she goes from 'intuitive rookie jumping to wrong conclusions' to the 'seasoned veteran exercising restraint and impartiality'.
As I said, the first two seasons are highly recommended.
As for the third season, and why it was cancelled halfway through, it's a story too lurid for the front page of any family-friendly blog, so below the fold we must dip. There, I shall tell the sordid tale of how some liberal scumdog of a producer got his rightful and very deserved comeuppance.
In an otherwise excellent essay, a distinction that Mead fails to grasp is the difference between what I will call a “breadwinner” business and a service business.
A breadwinner business is a business activity that brings money into a community. It can be manufacturing, agriculture, mining, banking or even government (e.g. Washington D.C., which hauls in cash from every state). When the breadwinner business closes down (the mine plays out or the factory closes), you have a ghost town. Service businesses can provide jobs only in communities that have a thriving breadwinner business.
Small businesses in general are service businesses that are completely dependent on the health of breadwinner businesses.
American prosperity completely depends on the health of our breadwinner businesses, and policymakers should be focusing solely on policies that will help those businesses succeed. This is not an issue of big business vs. small business; it is an issue of winning in a severe competition in a hyper-competitive global marketplace.
It's an interesting distinction, but I am not sure how well it holds up. In the failing old towns that I have seen, the main breadwinner (ie importer of $) is via government in all of its redistributive efforts, such as Social Security, Medicare, welfare, government jobs, government job programs, etc.
It is real, and much better than riding horses. I will not tell you how I know this other than to mention the ancient themes of Will and Surrender. Why should such experiences be limited to the women of India?
I do not mean to imply that men are not essential components of a woman's life because, when properly trained, men do have many useful applications and I consider a manly, vigorous, and adventurous male to be an essential component of the modern household.
We are not going to participate in the Weiner roast (because what regular middle-aged guy hasn't sent pics of his trouser pup tent to young girls he doesn't know on Twitter now and then?), but lawyer Ace has a good related post on what lawyers term Bad Facts.
Dealing creatively with Bad Facts is one thing lawyers get paid the big bucks for. It is always a fun challenge. Life is simpler if we are careful to avoid Bad Facts in our own lives, but sometimes Bad Facts find us, and nobody is perfect.
Never try to be your own lawyer, because you do not know how the game is played.
Snap above is on the country road in the hilly Tiber Valley driving from Todi to Montefalco, with the charming town of Todi in the distance, on the hill. Italy is good about having a sharp distinction between town and country. Little-to-no sprawl. Except in the big cities, you go from urban density directly to vineyards, olive groves, or forests full of deer, cinghiale, eagles, even wolves and, best of all, the ferocious and dangerously-expensive Wild Black Truffle. People like to live in towns, where they can walk to work and shop, and can say bon giorno to their neighbors.
Bit of history
A quick history and geography of Umbria in central Italy, northeast of Rome, to put my forthcoming travel pics in context. It is generally similar to the history of the entire area we now term Italy.
Central Italy was the prehistoric land of the Etruscans (hence "Tuscany" - land of the Etruscans) and of the less-known Umbri. They were, relatively speaking, peaceful and prosperous farmers and traders. When Rome began its imperial expansion around 250 BC, Umbria up along the old trading route to the Adriatic (which the Romans later termed the Via Flaminia) seemed like an obvious target.
The Romans did their Roman thing there for 600 years until the empire began to unwind and Goths and Lombards moved into Tuscany and Umbria both by immigration and by arms in the 400s-500s. In many ways, these waves of invasion became sort of Romanized and Christianized, in time. The Byzantines were in the mix then, too.
Warring feudal duchys and kingdoms dominated the dark ages in this part of Italy, during a time when the declining Roman regions were also set upon by piratical Saracens (mainly seeking slaves for the Middle Eastern slave trade) and Normans (seeking adventure), until Papal power exerted itself and built an authoritarian, theocratic peace by the 1100s and 1200s. They were big on building castles with which to assert their powerful churchly presence, but from the days of the late empire people were building their own keeps and walls to defend themselves from foreigners and also from their neighboring towns. The Roman Legions had previously made walls and keeps unnecessary: the Roman armies had been the wall. The Pax Romana.
The Papal State pretty much controlled central Italy, perhaps to its detriment, until the Italian nation was invented 150 years ago. Roman Catholicism was pretty much corrupted by money and politics, during that era, including the Benedictines.
2011 is the 150th anniversary of that political event. Garibaldi, etc.
Geography
Geographically, southern Umbria divides itself into three regions: The north-south-running Tiber Valley where the Tiber flows south towards Rome, the fertile north-south running Valle Umbra which is like a mini version of California's Central Valley, and the eastern Valnerina which is the area in the majestic Appennines where the river Nera flows down to eventually join and magnify the Tiber.
We visited and stayed in incredible hotels in each of those three areas of Umbria. As in Roman times, rural and quaint Umbria is a popular Roman getaway place, full of bikers, motorcyclists, foodies, and hikers. It's only a 2 or 3 hour drive from Rome, and it is packed with "unspoiled gems."
Most of the towns were Umbrian first, Roman later, and then Medieval-Renaissance. Except for towns damaged by the war (like Terni) or by earthquakes (like Foligno), there is a lot of Renaissance, generally built on Medieval town footprints.
Except for Assisi with its bus-loads of pilgrims, we saw few non-Italian tourists and only one American couple - friendly folks from Montgomery, Alabama! Some Brits, Aussies, Austrians, and Dutch. We tend to meet people when we travel. That's part of the fun.
Todi, Amelia, Orvieto, Montefalco, and Perugia are on hills in the Tiber Valley. Towns in Umbria tended to be built on hills for defensive purposes, which is why exploring Italy is such a good physical workout. Assisi, Spoleto, Spello, and Terni are along the western edge of the Apennines where they rise from the plain. Norcia, and our monastery hotel, are in the mountains themselves near where the Nera emerges from the mountains.
Weather
Best times for Italy or any Mediterranean travel are Spring and Fall. May and October are perfect. Italy climate here.
I will have lots more fun travel pics soon - Pic below of the Valle Umbra, looking west from the Assisi hillside:
Pic below from the garden of our 6th C. Benedictine monastery hotel in the Valnerina in the Apennines, with a small hillside olive grove (doubling as parking area) below the wall. It is no wonder that people love to visit Italy: it has the food, the history, the scenery, the quaintness, the vino, the art and architecture, and the delightfully tough and fashionable Italian gals.
Watched this movie on my flight from Paris to the USA earlier today (or yesterday?). Not a great boxing movie, but it does capture elements of the Irish (or could just as easily be Italian) blue-collar world of New England.
The movie is set in Lowell, MA, a rough working-class town outside of Boston. My olde New England contains a disappearing old Yankee breed, a disappearing semi-old multi-ethnic farming contingent (especially Poles from the later 1800s), and, in urban and semi-urban areas, large Irish and Italian-origin populations which stick to many of their old ways. Increasing numbers of Mexicans are appearing, too - some in the illegal drug biz and the better ones are masons or in the army of unskilled laborers.
You spray a little stuff on the stains, then throw it in the dryer with the special paper thing. She says it works well for her skirts, jackets, and sweaters.
Mrs. BD is good with flowers and other things. It always amused me that she thought she invented flat flower arrangements until a flower arrangement judge informed her that her multi-level blue-ribbon construction was pave (with accent aigu), but inventively layered to a 6' height. Pave, once a popular avant garde style, is commonplace nowadays. It's good because it does not block cross-table conversation.
Long Live the Industrial City - New York City’s garment district illustrates that manufacturing can still be vital to the innovation that cities foster.
A quote:
Fashion is an intensely iterative process in which time becomes an obstacle. “When you move into higher-end design, there is so much spontaneous creativity happening that you don’t want to wait a month to see your garments,” says Tina Schenk, owner of the pattern-making company Werkstett. “One design is based on another. You want to keep the process going, you want to continuously look at the things that you’ve been designing.” Andrew Rosen, a third-generation garmento who founded Theory, a fashion company that now grosses half a billion dollars a year, remarks, “Just from an efficiency point of view, I can make clothes faster here. Which is not to say we haven’t shortened the lead times in China—we have. But there’s a lot more logistics that need to happen from 12,000 miles away than from 12 blocks away.” As Edward Glaeser notes in his new book The Triumph of the City, one thing cities do well is eliminate the “curse of complex communication.”
And as any Project Runway viewer knows from those trips to Mood Designer Fabrics, the massive garment district emporium where the reality TV show’s contestants scout for chiffon and charmeuse, it’s important to have the raw materials of fashion within easy reach. Fabric needs to be touched. “It’s not a flat medium you’re working in,” says veteran designer Anna Sui. “When you gather a piece of fabric, sometimes because of the thickness of it or the loftiness or the bounceability of it, you never know how it’s going to react.”
I still miss the blocks of garment racks blocking all the sidewalks over there, and the hordes of rude and crude "garmentos."
All health care will be delivered by this method soon. Requests for chest X-rays will entail sending you an application to work at a Japanese power plant with a film shirt. Deafness will be treated by ordinances requiring that everyone yell at you -- not just the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Instead of glasses, those suffering from vision loss will be supplied with an even uglier spouse, because what difference will it make, anyway? At this point, with all our light fixtures filled with CFL bulbs, you can barely tell if you're living with a mammal, never mind a hottie. Good-looking spouses will be re-assigned to those with good eyesight, but who want Viagra, which doesn't grow on trees, you know.
Would you like to know more? Put in another quarter, and press pound. Your pound key generates all the electricity for your house, too, so press it a lot, really fast.
My seating companion at a very pleasant dinner last night engaged me in a conversation about the Moslems - the Moors - in Spain. My friends tend to be people with many interests and pursuits. Luckily for me, my aging brain remembered some of the history, but I wanted to quickly review it today. This was a good quick source: Muslim civilization in Spain (711-1492)
She knew all about it, and is taking a course in Ottoman art and design at Yale. We wondered what had happened to to Moslem civilization, and how and why it deteriorated to the point of its apparent current barbarianism. I speculated that perhaps it was not Islam, but the Ottoman Empire which had a civilization relatively independent of religion, as the Romans had, but I was just trying to maintain the level of the conversation.
Photo: One does not tend to associate the culture of the Alhambra with the current Middle-Eastern Islamicists who seem more focused on destruction than creation.
I may have posted a photo of what my buddy's tumble-down get-away place in the wilds of upstate New York looked like when he bought it a few years ago. Saplings in the yard. Busted windows. This place had no door, clapboards with all the paint worn off or broken, and holes in the roof. Fallen chimney, I think.
The old farmhouse, in deer- and turkey-hunting territory, looked like a lost cause to me. A "scraper," as they are called around here. The guy is handy with guns, but I had no idea he was so handy with house renovation. Looking really good now. Not only a good new roof, but a power line too! Power is good.
I think I may volunteer my landscaping services in exchange for some turkey hunting. For starters, this place needs some apple trees.
My seating companion at a very pleasant dinner last night engaged me in a conversation about the Moslems - the Moors - in Spain. My friends tend to be people with many interests and pursuits. Luckily for me, my aging brain remembered some of the history, but I wanted to quickly review it today. This was a good quick source: 