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.
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.
Among others, outside of our families, who have left lasting positive impressions on us, some teachers and coaches stand out in all of our minds.
(I combine teachers with coaches because they serve the same relationship functions - guidance, pushing, criticizing, inspiring, and cheerleading of efforts that, in the end, only the person can do themselves within their own minds and bodies. For better or worse, we are not empty vessels into which things can be poured.)
For all of everybody's frustration with the government school monopoly, unions, the insane notion of universal higher education, and obsolete and stultifying educational methods which work best only for the most submissive, obedient, or motivated students, every reader of Maggie's has memories of teachers or coaches who made a big difference in their life.
I was fortunate to have had many of them. Interestingly, where I spent my most formative years, each teacher had to be a sports coach too. They were "Sir" in class, but you were allowed to call them "Coach" on the field, in the pool, or on the rinks.
Let's hear about them, in the comments. (I will put some of mine in there, too.)
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
The lawsuit against Mrs. Huffington cracks me up. For their own personal or career reasons, they offered to volunteer their efforts to her enterprise, unpaid, without any equity - and without taking any business risk at all. All they had to do was to mail it in, and their names would be in HuffPo lights. Instant fame! Their free choice. Now, they see dollar signs and want to change the deal and cash out.
That's the greedy, envy-driven Left for you. When Bird Dog sells the sinfully-profitable Maggie's Farm (which he created and for which he tries to ride herd on the willful and cranky volunteer posters) to Google for a trillion zillion dollars, he had better take me out for a good dinner at Hooters, with dessert, or I will never take him fishing again.
It would be decent and gracious for Mrs. HuffPo to show some appreciation and gratitude. At the very least, a big dinner at Hooters and a framed Certificate of Appreciation would be nice.
Each chapter is the story of one man, his dilemmas, his challenges, the deaths of those close to him, his defense of his family and land. These soldiers relate vivid and compelling accounts of their lives and their experiences, including attempts to maintain their sense of humanity in the face of inner and outer battles and stresses, while still becoming better soldiers at the same time.
Rules of Misbehavior - Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
The man is not Ann Landers. Holding sexual pleasures and adventure as the centerpiece of life, he seems to have come up with a simple ethic: Let them know what you are doing before you do it.
Our North Africa trip, with Egypt, plus Israel and a bit more of my beloved Turkey (southern coast) plan for September has been cancelled because Egypt, Tunisia, etc seem iffy right now. A shame. I wanted to get back on a ship. Readers know I love ships and boats, and I was in the mood for an exotic trip.
Mrs. BD also vetoed my alternative notion of a big house in Provence, to invite friends and family - and all of our Maggie's readers - to visit. She wants to give the kids time to get a bit more settled in their lives first.
She wants the land of the Umbri, with just grumpy Bird Dog and a rental car. Assisi, Orvieto (I do not like their wines), Perugia, Todi, Spoleto, etc. Etruscan walled cities and Hannibal's victories at Lake Trasimene, and Roman highway towns on the Via Flaminia. Maybe a day trip back up to Siena. OK by me. Love Italia, as my Brit cousins do - as long as there is no pasta or red sauce. And Mrs. BD has been working hard on her Italian. Dove cabineto?
Next year, God willing, either a south of France villa like this one, or the North Africa trip, but this seems not the year for that. Who makes the plans calls the shots.
I'll bring cameras of course, to bore our readers with my travel pics, but I'd be surprised if any of the old castle and rustic villa agritourismo inns Mrs. BD has picked out have Wifi. (When places say they have it, it's usually not working when you are there.)
Photo above is Assisi, a major tourist trap thanks to St. Francis' marketing skills.
An esterni view of one of the old inns where Mrs. BD informs me we'll be staying - Abbazia San Pietro in Valle :
Such places are good reasons to save one's pennies. It all looks good to me. I am always happy to be banging around Italy (except Rome), although I have already done a lot of it. Thanks, Mrs. BD, for taking the time to plan it so thoughtfully.
I am sorry we cannot meet up with my wife's late cousin, Archbishop Prata, on our Italian trips anymore. I think of him every time I head for Italy. He was full of vitality and full of the joy of the Spirit - and could make doors open like you would not believe with a flash of his ring. Besides Jesus, the Church, and the Mass, he loved opera, food, wine, his relatives, Limoncello, Hazelnut gelato, and Italian pastries. An intellectual sort, he had been a professor and university president before they brought him back to the Vatican. My lad and he used to chat in conversational Latin. Very cool for them. We all miss Gennaro.
Friend just surprised me with a gift in the mail - a first edition of Massachusetts author Louise Dickinson Rich's 1942 We Took To The Woods. Knew about it, never read it. I will.
Now I am older. I have met with poverty, flood, famine, hurricane, brutalizing labor, and illness, on extremely personal grounds. I have seen the sudden and tragic deaths of those nearest and dearest to me. I have had to shoulder responsibilities, for which I am ill fitted, and the much more difficult burden of sudden, if brief, fame. I have been hard pressed for money, as we say in Maine. I’m not whining. I’ve had a wonderful life, with the joys far outweighing the sorrows. But still, in all, there have been times when I was fair to middlin’ desperate.
There was time when my husband and my year-old son and my mother-in-law and I had one meal a day. We ate baked potatoes and salt. It didn’t do us adults any harm, and my neighbor woman, Alice Miller, provided me with six oranges and six quarts of milk a week—she kept two cows—for the baby. She said her doctor’s book said that babies needed it.
Then there was the time in December. My husband and I were laughing together over a silly joke in the evening after dinner, relaxed in our slippers before the open fire. We’d spent the day snugging down the cabin for winter, and we felt good knowing that there were forty miles of lake and impossible road between us and the nearest settlement. We were having fun. “Louise, you gorgeous fool,” he said, and died.
Bruce linked about that this morning. I am more inclined to ask "What is music?" than "What is art?"
Impossible questions are usually the wrong questions. "What is art?" is the wrong question. Is this art?
That's an H&E- stained microscopic slide of the human Pituitary gland. A bit of the Anterior and the Posterior, with the margin. Absolutely beautiful. You could hang it on a wall, art or not. I call it "God's art."
Another pic of God's Art below the fold, which Gwynnie stumbled on while fishing his stream the other day -
Since posting my E. 4th St. pics yesterday, I've been looking at some NYC real estate - for fun, not to buy. The East Village is by no means a fancy area. I focused on E. 4th because that's where I took my pics on Sunday.
They are asking a mere $519,000 for this 600 sq foot 1 1/2 bedoom on the 5th floor of a walk-up. Great for your legs, those 5th-floors:
I could not find a single available rental on E. 4th, but maybe I didn't try enough. Still, demand is strong. I think many of the young folk are doubling and tripling up to make their rents with the average 2 BR walk-up running from $4000/month and up - and in elevator buildings up to $10,000/mo - in this funky old neighborhood which was considered a semi-slum some years back.
I remember it well - Mrs. BD attended Tisch (before she was Mrs. BD, and when it was known as NYU School of the Arts and was housed in a huge old industrial loft building with only a freight elevator, yet was still maybe second only to Juilliard for the performing arts). The Fillmore East was there too, and I have memories of that: Leon Russell, Allman Brothers, Dr. John, etc.
Looking at the listings makes me wonder who all these people are who want to pay, or are able to pay, $10,000/month rent for smallish apartments in the East Village (referring to east of Greenwich Village).
And looking at the listings reminds me that, if you live in Manhattan and do not have money to burn to spend on housing, you sleep in your apartment - you don't live in it. You live at your gym or club or pub or cafe or library or park or meetings or dinners or work or wherever. Otherwise, the claustrophobia can get pretty ugly for those who are not used to it. I think so many New Yorkers run and jog and bike just to get the heck out of their little boxes.
Funny, though, when I think that I probably spend 90% of my time at home within 10% of my home living space - but that is by choice.
I confess, Readers, that I still get a kick out of New York. Vital, colorful, messy, unpredictable, and jam-packed with talented people.
Pics from yesterday afternoon. The East Village (not to mention the Lower East Side) has become a wonderful, youthful neighborhood, and the old walk-up "tenements" seem just fine abodes for the youth who flock to NYC although they lack the doormen, gyms with pools, laundry rooms etc. that the new buildings offer. The rents, alas, are not cheap in these old places -
Very good essay on the fate of Detroit - and similar cities - by Wretchard: The Field of Dreams. A quote:
Mayor Bing’s plan to build developments recalls nothing so much as the South Seas cargo cults who believed all that was necessary to make the skies rain with goodies was to build a dirt airstrip and palm-leaf control tower to attract resupply flights from somewhere. “If you build it, they will come”.
Who “they” is remains unclear. But they are out there.
As Glenn Reynolds said (who he quotes):
The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.
Change rarely comes from the outside, in. Recall "urban renewal." Now, those brownstone "slums" that didn't get torn down go for millions in New York, while the "modern" and "dignified" public housing projects are nightmares, socio-cultural wastelands which even cops are reluctant to enter.
Sipp informed me that the historic landmark, The Hotel Harris, is for sale. It seems to be more of a boarding house, or SRO, or apartment house, than a hotel these days.
Downtown Rumford is half boarded-up, but the hotel houses Brian's Bistro, which I am told is quite good. Haddock cooked three ways on the menu.
Cafe Boeuf? Naw. Rumford isn't Lake Wobegon. Is it? We may hate Garrison Keillor's sanctimony and condescension when it comes to politics, but otherwise he can be darn perceptive and amusing in his fiction.
Why did Jesus have to die? 
Among others, outside of our families, who have left lasting positive impressions on us, some teachers and coaches stand out in all of our minds. 
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
It's about the lives of Israeli citizen-soldiers. 
Friend just surprised me with a gift in the mail - a first edition of Massachusetts author Louise Dickinson Rich's 1942 
Sipp informed me that the historic landmark,