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.
You have to half-crazy to move to Rumford, Maine. Hardly anybody moves to Maine anymore, much less Rumford. Maybe Portland, for a summertime-only retirement (six months plus one day in Florida, and no state income taxes to pay - and estate tax advantages to when you get to that point).
Winter is a wonderful, lovely thing, but, unless you are a skiier, it goes on too long up there. (However, we were 26 degrees F this morning down here, thanks to the crisis of Global Cooling.) You cannot grow tomatoes in your garden up there unless you build a greenhouse but that's not too hard - you just throw a couple of layers of polyurethane over some old boards in the sun next to the back of the house. "Just put some bleachers out in the sun..."
The Northeast is full of dying old towns where the best jobs are government jobs and where industry has fled for friendlier climes with friendlier taxation. In my opinion, if you move to a place in the hinterlands with a 6,000 population, you had really better love your spouse - and your family.
Little old Rumford is fortunate, however, to have its own online newspaper, the Rumford Meteor. It's good for keeping up with the town's main forms of recreation, which appear to be DUI and marijuana. However, from the reports, towns like Rumford still have their cadres of good old reserved and private Yankee small town folk who go to church and whose kids will play football and go to wars and want to work. They will mostly leave town, for sure, but some won't.
When I think about it, I realize that maybe I have to be at least half-crazy to live where I live, too. But my friends are here - and my church and my work - and I can get to good olde NYC once in a while - so I guess I will stay put. Nothing is perfect.
For me, Maine means grouse hunting and Moose filet mignon and Bert and I. I've heard that Sugarloaf is great, but never tried it. Too long of a drive, and the delights of skiing are hassle enough.
I grew up on The New York Times. Delivered, every morning, even before they had a national edition. Read it every morning, through high school and college. An essential part of breakfast.
The second factor in the Times’s decline was the ascension of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. to the perch of publisher in 1992. Having come of age in the sixties counterculture, Sulzberger moved to shift the paper’s focus from its historical commitment of reporting the news “without fear or favor” to the more activist promise to “enhance society.” In particular, Sulzberger wanted the paper to promote “diversity” and to move beyond what he disparaged as the “predominantly white, straight, male version of events.” As the author of Coloring the News, a critical look at the politically correct mania for “diversity” and its damaging effect on the news media, McGowan writes as an authority on the Times’s transformation. The change was most obvious in the paper’s increasingly strident editorial pages, but the news content, which began taking its cues from editorial, suffered as well. Times veterans groused that the paper risked compromising its news coverage with a newly ideological agenda, but Sulzberger dismissed such concerns, declaring that he was “setting a moral standard.”
A newspaper's job to set a moral standard? Grandiose? How about just giving us the real facts with tough, skeptical, half-drunk cranky journalists instead of metrosexual twits, and we'll take care of the morality part ourselves. We're Americans, not illiterate ignoramuses who need to be taught how to think correctly by our superiors who filter and slant our information "for our own good." Propagandists, exploiting their historic franchise.
I quit The Times years ago because it would make me begin my day in an irritable mood. Irritated with them for quitting their job. Now, I catch up with Maggie's for breakfast, and so does She Who Must Be Obeyed. Imagine that!
- the attitude that society should be governed by an elite group of individuals
- 1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources. 2. (A) The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class. ...
- someone who believes in rule by an elite group
Well, if you perused my pedigree, resume, career, J. Press tweedy and conservative life style, and the respectable, intelligent, accomplished, well-educated, well-behaved and refined people with whom I tend to associate, some might consider me one of America's elite. Given the definitions I found, however, I am not: I have no interest in power or control over anybody, and despise anybody who thinks they deserve that position. I lack all desire to tell anybody how to live other than myself, and I am not even especially good at that. Beneath my superficial aspects beats the simple heart of my free, crusty and cantankerous independent Yankee farmer ancestors who had far more freedom than we have today.
For example, when it comes to politics, the only politicians I trust are the crooked ones. They don't seek power over me and have no plans to make my life "better" - they just want money, chicks, easy jobs without meaningful accountability, and maybe some support for their weak egos. Let them have that if that's what they need, just so long as they leave me, my life, and my hard-earned assets alone. I will not be an obedient and passive serf like some of my Brit ancestors doubtless were, sending most of their grain or wool to their superiors.
We are not an aristocracy here. Let the elites figure out how to run their own lives (in general, I am not impressed), instead of trying to run mine. A few relevant links:
A friend who recently moved to New England from Texas asked me for a few good long-weekend getaway spots (to get away from their kids for romance, with good food and good hiking, regardless of season). It's important to couples to get away from it all - daily life routine, internet, rug rats, dogs, - to refresh the relationship.
I don't really like to stay in an inn without a fireplace in the room, but off the top of my head, I offered these (with a range of luxuriousness), although I am sure readers have their own lists of favorites:
What is needed is a renewed humility. We are not the masters of the sources of happiness; they ever elude the appointments we make with them, springing up when we least expect them and fleeing when we would hold them close. The excessive ambition to expunge all that is weak or broken in body or mind, to control moods and states of soul, sadness, chagrin, moments of emptiness—all this runs up against our finitude, against the inertia of the human species, which we cannot manipulate like some raw material. We have the power to avoid or to heal certain evils, yes, but we cannot order happiness as if it were a meal in a restaurant.
The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.
Readers know that, much as I value whatever joy and contentment come my way, I find "happiness" difficult to define and, furthermore, do not view it as a particularly meaningful or important goal of life as if is often defined. For example, if performing painful or sacrificial duties is what is satisfying to you, then how can you construct a universal definition of "happiness" when the word may mean "ease and comfort" to another person?
Sometimes I think morality is purely culturally-defined, and sometimes I think there is "natural law." Most of the time I simply try to adhere to God via the Ten Commandments and Christ's teachings (Mark 12:28):
One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?" "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
If you are a Christian, those are the revealed word of God. If not, they are cultural. I know when I have done wrong because I feel guilt and shame. Sometimes I feel guilt and shame even when I haven't transgressed in any meaningful way. That's me, not God.
Sipp found this little ad for Whistler-Blackcomb, and I'm sure our kids and the friends we skiied with there will recognize the spots. Best skiing I've ever had, with fresh powder daily.
After a couple of days, we tended toward the Blackcomb side, but maybe partly because they had closed the very top of Whistler for dynamiting for avalanches. Cool. We did have fun skiing off a cliff and landing in powder over our heads. Sheesh. That was good for some giggles (later), trying to find one's poles and hats, etc.
Sipp correctly identified the video as "tilt-shift." That's new term to me.
My Lenten discipline this year focuses on gratitude.
I am disappointed by my tendency to get exasperated whenever something goes wrong in life, while taking for granted the 99.9% of things that go OK. For example, car goes 125,000 miles and provides a good service. Needs a new transmission? "Sh-t. Dammit. What a pain." Unexpected problems are always cropping up.
It's as if I carry some implicit expectation, hidden in the back of my mind, that life is or should be smooth and go right all the time. A sort of infantile utopian assumption probably partly engendered by growing up safe and comfortable in America in the 20th Century. It's a flaw, and I plan on going to war against it with gratitude for everything that goes well. For example, the fact that my heart continues to beat steadily and miraculously while I accept - and expect - that it cannot do so indefinitely.
Given time, some things will always go wrong or not work out well. When I am forced to be honest with myself, many of the things that go wrong are at least partly my own damn fault anyway, due to laziness, stubborness, poor judgement, boneheaded or wrong impulses, lack of planning, character defects, stupidity, ignorance, etc.
It's the opposite of the Wild Turkey phenomenon. People tell me that Turkey hunting must be easy, because they see Turkeys all the time. I remind them of all the times they don't see Turkeys - and tell them that's what most Turkey hunting is like.
Many have already read George Will's fine essay, Pencils and Politics. It's a brief intro to Econ 101. A quote:
Producing this simple, mundane device is, Ruth says, "an achievement on the order of a jazz quartet improvising a tune when the band members are in separate cities." An unimpressed student says, "So a lot of people work on a pencil. What's the big deal?" Ruth responds: Who commands the millions of people involved in making a pencil? Who is in charge? Where is the pencil czar?
Her point is that markets allow order to emerge without anyone imposing it. The "poetry of the possible" is that things are organized without an organizer.
Yes, it's the miracle (or poetry, or spontaneous order) of markets and the free flow of goods and services. Read the whole thing. Another quote:
The spontaneous emergence of social cooperation the emergence of a system vastly more complex, responsive and efficient than any government could organize is not universally acknowledged or appreciated. It discomforts a certain political sensibility, the one that exaggerates the importance of government and the competence of the political class.
When I think of trade and markets, I think of the paleolithic (500,000 years ago) trade in amber (for jewelry) and flint (for tools). Scandinavian amber being found in Italy. Or obsidian from Idaho being found in Indian sites on Long Island.
But when I think of pencils, I think of the Thoreau Pencil which, in the 1830s, was the finest pencil made in America. Thoreau supported himself during most of his life by working at that Pencil Factory. There is no reason to think that he enjoyed a minute of that work, but everybody has to make money.
We have to give Henry David Thoreau credit for this, though: He was a practical Civil Engineer and inventor and not just a dreamy transcendentalist with a love for nature and a way with words.
"...my eye caught The Gospel of John. Now this was the film I meant to see in February 2004 when The Passion of the Christ came out, but I missed the brief window of opportunity for catching it here in Fresno. Slasher flicks play for weeks and weeks and weeks at the monsterplexes, but at the brave art theater, gospel films (without Mel's name attached), sad to say, don't."
While I do not believe that a parent owes a kid a free college education, I think it can be a heck of a nice present for a kid who is eager for it, and can use it. Those without an avid hunger to learn things in a formal format need not apply.
Nothing is more costly, or more over-priced, than education today. At the same time, knowledge has never been more available and accessible - few people remember more about Plato from college than they can read as a refresher on Wiki. (I always believed in reading an encyclopedia entry on a topic before studying it, to get oriented.)
With some gracious grand-parental assistance, we have paid for private college 2 1/2 times thus far - one half to go. Prep-schools too, but that's another story. (Like the Obamas and Clintons and most Dems, we are not huge fans of government schools when it comes to our own kids. It's an investment - we expect them to take care of us in our old age when we are broke or broken-down - and will be happy to do the same for our parents if and when they want it or need it.)
Because most colleges and universities today have relatively few standards about what a college-educated person ought to know, I had to do it myself. Re-inventing the wheel, you might say, because Socrates and Aristotle might have made a comparable list.
Here are Bird Dog's Basic, Minimum Requirements for payment for his kids' "higher" educations, whether in school or outside of formal schooling (high school AP counts, as does a serious approach to a Teaching Company course):
1. Calculus 2. A Shakespeare course 3. The Bible 4. Physics, Chem, and Bio. I would have liked to see some Organic and Biochem in there too, so they could understand what's in the newspapers. These are not "difficult," but require some simple discipline. 5. Western Civ, Hammurabi thru Plato through Nietzsche 6. Western Lit, The Book of the Dead and Gilgamesh thru Homer and Hesiod through Melville 7. Art history 8. Music history 9. English Lit, minimum of 2 courses 10. Econ, macro and micro 11. Intro Geology 12. Intro Philosophy 13. American history (not from Zinn or some Lefty nut, but the real deal) 14. European history 15. One classical language - Greek or Latin, plus one modern language 16. Basic Business and Accounting (unfortunately, most of my kids' schools are too elite to offer such mundane and practical courses, but they need to learn this somewhere.)
I put "higher" in quotes because this doesn't sound very higher, does it? My requirements leave plenty of room for a major in Underwater Basket-weaving or Female Studies. (When I was in college, we did our studies of females mostly on weekends with beer, and usually flunked the quizzes.)
My kids have mostly kept to this. In my view, if you don't know this basic stuff, you are not fully schoolin'-eddicatedand not fully and cushily prepared, as the cliche goes, "for a lifetime of self-education and informed citizenship." After all, this stuff is just foundational and all of it could be self-learned, but college makes it more likely to happen, and a good guide is always helpful.
When you think about it, a decent high school ought to be able to do most or all of it. After all, they take four years to do two full years' worth of hard work. Why else did they call it "high" school? (My theory is that they slow it all down to the pace of the stragglers and slackers.)
I also advise them that any random course with a great teacher who knows everything about everything is worth many courses with ordinary profs in subjects they think they are "interested in." How do you know whether you are "interested in" something until you dig into it? Everything is interesting, in my opinion.
Finally, I expect them to earn their spending money. Jobs during college. (My lad bussed tables at the B-school faculty dining room while being reporter, editor, then Editor in Chief of the newspaper and running a softball team. My middle pupette was a restaurant receptionist, then a part-time assistant at Merrill-Lynch - while playing Div. 1 Tennis and majoring in Econ and Math. I don't know how they did it all. I admire their energy and initiative. My little one would too, but there are no jobs in a tiny college out in the lovely woods and fields of central Ohio. She works hard in the summer, though.)
What do you require of your kids?
(Pic is an old one-room schoolhouse in Westport, CT. Those kids could learn more than our kids do, as witness Abe Lincoln, John Adams, Tom Jefferson, etc. Of course, exceptional individuals who were highly motivated.)
In the seventies, not to put too fine a point on it, everyone was still alive. Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille were no longer making great work, but they were vivid, high-profile totems. Antony Tudor had one more great ballet in him: 1974’s The Leaves Are Fading. Robert Joffrey and his Joffrey Ballet were going full speed ahead, an audience-friendly ballet troupe that toured the country like a young, hip, and sometimes hippie version of the old Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Alvin Ailey, Eliot Feld, and Arthur Mitchell had companies that brought different demographics to the theater, and Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor finally had national stature and repertoires that placed them in the pantheon. Twyla Tharp was coming into her own, bringing her melting-pot style and antagonistic syntax to the mainstream when she choreographed Push Comes to Shove in 1974 for ABT and Baryshnikov. Meanwhile, at NYCB, Jerome Robbins was experimenting with different forms of narrative (Watermill, Dybbuk), and Balanchine was deep into the late phase of his genius, putting on festivals—Stravinsky in 1972, Ravel in 1975—and tossing off blockbuster ballets like Union Jack in 1976 and Vienna Waltzes in 1977. Vienna Waltzes, according to Kirstein, would rank as the company’s “most successful” ballet. “For four seasons every performance scheduled was sold out,” he wrote. “It brought into the theater a new public, many of whom had certainly never been in the State Theater before.”
Couple all this creative energy with cheap rents—for no artistic discipline needs as much space, from class to rehearsal to performance, as dance does—and you had yet another reason for the dance boom.
It's about time somebody wrote this essay. Prof. Thomas Reeves at Mercator: What do professors want?. h/t, Mankiw. He is harsh about the academic life:
On the Left and Right money means power, and we "pointy heads" and "eggheads" are on the outside looking in. One thinks of Arthur Schlesinger Jr swooning over the Kennedys for the rest of his life because they gave him a title and a silent seat in some White House deliberations. Those making as much money as, say, an experienced furnace repairman account for little in this world, despite the PhD. How many academics even sit on the governing board that sets policies for their campus? It is all most humiliating. (To see how intelligently and objectively academics use the authority they have, examine the political correctness the suffocates the employment practices and intellectual lives of almost all American campuses. Aberlour's Fifth Law: "Political correctness is totalitarianism with a diploma.")
and...
One way to compensate for this bleak and futureless existence is to become involved in left-wing causes. They give us a sense of identity in a world seemingly owned and operated by Rotarians. And they provide us with hope. In big government we trust, for with the election of sufficiently enlightened officials, we might gain full medical coverage, employment for our children, and good pensions. These same leftist leaders might redistribute income "fairly," by taking wealth from the "greedy" and giving it to those of us who want more of everything. A "just" world might be created in which sociologists, political scientists, botanists, and romance language professors would achieve the greatness that should be theirs. It's all a matter of educating the public. And hurling anathemas at people of position and affluence we deeply envy.
I am sure Prof. Reeves has tenure, but he might need police protection too, after writing that honest piece.
My friend Mark Safranski's blogZenPundit is one of my favorites. Its focus is on foreign policy, and more specifically on military affairs. The breadth and eclecticism of its links and discussions, agree or not, are of the highest order and center on rational discussion of complex issues. Most of us value the rational discussions we have, unfortunately though not often enough, because all parties come away with new appreciations and better understandings.
I found this graphic there, a flowchart of whether you are having a rational discussion.
The day I met O'Reilly it was 32 below; The sparks were flying off me pick, I was up to me neck in snow. His footsteps shook the basement slab, I saw the sky go black As he roared out, "I'm your ganger now, so dig until you crack.''
He was bigger than a dumper truck with legs like concrete piles, His face was like a load of bricks, his teeth were six inch files. His eyes, they shone like danger lamps, his hands were tough as steel, But a man as small as that was never a match for Big McNeill.
When tea came round at dinner-time, he grabbed a gallon tin, But I said, "Better put that down, if you would save your skin. You may be called O'Reilly but I will to you reveal That the cup you've got your hands on, it belongs to Big McNeill.''
Well, he laughed at me and carried on as if I hadn't spoke. He said, ``A man from Dublin Town can always take a joke.'' But when he picked a shovel up, wee Jimmy gave a squeal "You'd better leave that teaspoon, it belongs to Big McNeill.''
Well, everything the ganger touched we said to leave alone, Or else McNeill would grind him up and make plaster of his bones. At last O'Reilly lost his head and said he'd make a meal Out of any labourer in the squad, especially Big McNeill.
We said McNeill was sick in bed and told him where to go. The boys all downed their tools and went along to watch the show, And when we got to Renfrew Street, wee Jimmy danced a reel, To see him thundering at the door to fight the Big McNeill.
When the ganger got inside he saw a monster on the bed, A mound as big as a stanchion base with a barrel size of head. He punched it and he thumped it and he hit about with zeal, 'Til the missus cried: "Don't hurt the child, or else I'll tell McNeill.''
He was bigger than a dumper truck With legs like concrete piles, His face was like a load of bricks, His teeth were six inch files, His eyes, they shone like danger lamps, His hands were tough as steel, But a man as small as that was never A match for Big McNeill.
...perhaps the most troubling aspect of this new federal intrusion in the higher education marketplace is its underlying assumptions about the best way to control college costs. Whether it has been efforts to increase Pell Grants, or now this student loan fix, President Obama and his allies in Congress, driven I believe by the best of intentions, have assumed that increasing federal aid will help students better afford college. And there is no doubt that college costs have skyrocketed recently, more than doubling the rate of inflation over the past twenty years. However, every time the federal government has increased aid to students, colleges have turned around and raised tuition and fees accordingly.
Aided by the government-encouraged extension of credit, education costs have skyrocketed. In fact, it is fair to describe today's higher education price tag as having been reduced to a formula - where tuition seems to equal all the money a student can pay plus all the money a student can conceivably borrow. And, this same access-for-all government policy has made loan-eligible middle- and lower-income students easy prey for aggressive higher education and student-loan marketing. The end result has been an unprecedented, debt-fueled wealth transfer from students of modest means to the increasingly affluent higher education industry and its student-loan lenders. Unfortunately, as this damage continues to reveal its depth, its consequences are likely to become more evident by the day.
A generation of students has been reduced to the equivalent of the underwater homeowner: resigned to a fate where the amount owed to finance their schooling might be greater than the value of the education they received (and, therefore, beyond their capacity to repay it).
Government student loans and grants are little more than indirect handouts to the academic institutions in whose pockets they end up.
The BD family contains avid snorkelers, but only Mrs. BD is a skilled scuba diver. But even snorkeling, she can swim down 20 feet easily to inspect something. Loves it.
But about the peas. On good advice we bought a big bag of frozen peas at the Cabo WalMart, filled a plastic water bottle with them and then added water to the bottle. When you are diving or snorkeling near rocks or a reef, just squirt a few peas out of that bottle. You will be swarmed with tropical fish. Works like a dream. Like tossing bread to pigeons in a park. Fish were crashing into me, some over a foot long, and one bit Mrs. BD while trying to get to the pea bottle. Very cool thing to try. Wish I had had an underwater camera.
We had to go on a goofy party boat to get to a good snorkeling area, and they provided the equipment. Unlimited free drinks. It was jolly. On the way back, Mrs. BD danced the Macarena and YMCA without touching a drop of drink (not a photo of her). I didn't, and I did.
Met the pupette in NYC yesterday to take her to brunch and to take her to look at some Kandinsky at the Guggenheim. Clever of those Guggenheims to buy so many Kandinskys before he became too well-known, but you have to figger they got rich by being perceptive.
Readers know that I am a Kandinsky fan.
Mrs. BD wanted to get lunch first at the Viennese cafe, Cafe Sabarsky, in the Neue Gallery up the street. Having been in Vienna last summer, I can say that it sure feels like Vienna in there. Wonderful. Gallery worth visiting too.
Not that he needs one. There's a line waiting down the sidewalk for supper at Maro's, for his simple menu of grilled shrimp and lobster. And for his Bulldog cocktails. It's like a rustic Cape Cod seafood joint.
It's not our Yankee lobster - it's the lobster that grows down there. Yes, you order by the kilo.
The world of gender studies has never before had to confront anyone quite like this solitary rogue male professor of politics. Critics will rail against his excesses and feminists will be indignant and offended. But many women will be charmed by his effrontery, and grateful for the truth and wisdom in Mansfield's elegant treatise.
Every guy aspires to be a strong, gallant, valiant fellow. It's not easy to do.
Massachusetts passed a law in 1663 making the wasting of time a crime: “No person, householder or other shall spend his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict.” A century later, the Boston-born Benjamin Franklin (“time is money”) proposed a version of daylight saving time as a joke to stop slothful Parisians from sleeping in. But it was an English Puritan, Ralph Thoresby, who invented an early alarm clock.
"Unprofitably"? Maggie's Farm would have been in trouble in 1663.
Once the US was the New World of promise. After World War II, with optimism and skills, we successfully led the Free World. Since the surrender of Vietnam, and the power of a masochistic elite became entrenched in our media and academia, with a brief and fragile intermission for Morning In America, we've become the Lazy World. With the embattlement of our economy and the fecklessness of our current administration, we're the Retrenching World. What's next? Wayne's World or The New Beginning at keeping the promise?
As I mentioned earlier, we stayed at Pueblo Bonita Sunset Beach. Nice place. No obnoxious LA celebs, just regular folks but well beyond the also obnoxious college crowd. You can see why I gave it the nickname, because everything there looked like this. Toto, I don't think we're in Maine anymore.
Bruckner subtitles his essay in City Journal: 
My Lenten discipline this year focuses on gratitude. 
Many have already read George Will's fine essay, 
While I do not believe that a parent owes a kid a free college education, I think it can be a heck of a nice present for a kid who is eager for it, and can use it. Those without an avid hunger to learn things in a formal format need not apply.
O'Reilly and the Big McNeill (Donneil Kennedy)
