Maggie's Farm

The other night I became distracted by reading the series on radio soap operas which James Thurber wrote for The New Yorker in 1948. "Soapland" is in Thurber's The Beast in Me and Other Animals.

I envy Thurber's clarity, simplicity, and directness of writing, whether he is doing humor or regular reporting. Liked him better than EB White, with whom Thurber collaborated in writing the spoof on self-help books, Is Sex Necessary?, in 1929.

If you have never read Thurber, you are missing a real delight. Start with The Thurber Carnival. I could not find any of his toons on line, but I didn't spend much time searching.

Here's a good summary of the history of the radio soaps. Thurber's piece on the topic is a masterpiece of straightforward New Yorker-style reportage; the kind that can make any random topic fascinating because it is so well-written.

Check out the stuff we posted over the weekend. Some fun stuff, I think.

Did a bit of driving around this weekend. Took some lousy photos. We did drive past a doctor's office in Norfolk, CT: Dr. Ralph Emerson. We all agreed we'd be glad to go to him. (In some areas the leaves were wonderful, and in some spots not so good, but we were not looking for leaves.) This is Canaan, CT:

 The Housatonic Valley, Route 7 in Western MA:

 More random road photos below the fold:

The pup who works in NYC is studying for her GMAT. It sounds like a rightly demanding and discriminating exam.

She says the grammar correction sections are extremely subtle aspects of complex sentences, and that the two-part interactive math problems only give you two minutes each if you want to finish them. If you get one right, the computer gives you a more challenging one. It ramps up fast, she says, to try to find your limits. That's a great idea, like an automated oral exam where they can push each line of questioning until you are totally stumped and crushed with humility. The two-part math questions involve something like Which of the following additional pieces of information do you need to solve this problem? A,B, Both, Neither.

Brain swirls. These sorts of logical challenges quickly separate the men from the boys.

There are two essays also. Sounds like good fun to me, but I like exams. No. I love exams, whether offered by schools, institutions or, most importantly, by real life every darn day.

The pup does too: she is busy re-memorizing her exponent and square root tables to save time on the exam. She has great fun doing it, and says "It will never hurt you in life to have 9 to the 5th on the tip of your tongue." She began with 1-12 to the third and is working her way up.

No calculators allowed for this exam. Good on them for that.

I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.

Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.

It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.

Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).

As a counterpoint to yesterday's Country-Pop You Belong With Me, here's Dylan's wonderful version of You Belong To Me, with some repetitive video of Bob with Sarah, his first wife, in what appears to be their bedroom in NYC - it doesn't look like their Woodstock, NY house.

Seeing all the Amish in Ohio last week got me to thinking about Rumspringa.

It seems to me that this is nothing unique about the Amish. A fair number of adolescent kids in any culture spend some time taking a vacation from their parents' values and way of life. Fortunately, most return to sanity sooner or later if they don't lose themselves or destroy themselves in the process.

All artists steal and borrow. Computer program proves Shakespeare didn't work alone, researchers claim.

"Proves"?

I like my kids to get out of the Northeast for at least some part of their education, and they all have done so. I am delighted to have a pup at Kenyon College. She loves it, and I am pleased and relieved about that because through secondary school she spent every free moment banging around NYC, going to theater, museums, concerts, street fairs, theater internships, pubs, etc. I had come to think of her as a city girl.

My overall impression of the Kenyon kids is clean-cut, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, cheerful, studious, not overly Maoist, and very engaged in all of the activities of the school. For one example, the pup tells me that she does not know one kid who is not involved in some musical activity, and that the intro Theater course is the most heavily subscribed, with four large sections.

Small liberal arts colleges in the countryside tend to feel like Prep Schools to me, and Kenyon does have that feeling. If a kid went to school in the relatively isolated countryside or to a place like Exeter, Andover, Hotchkiss, Choate or Deerfield, I don't think they would find Kenyon to be an exciting change of pace. (With around 1600 kids, Kenyon is half the size of the BD pup's high school.)

Kenyon was founded as an Episcopalian seminary and college by Dartmouth grad Philander Chase in 1824 when Ohio was pioneer country. It remains, technically anyway, an Episcopalian school.

Kenyon grad Paul Newman built them a wonderful new athletic center with pool, gyms and work-out rooms (which are shared with people in the town). He didn't need to build them a theater, because they already have three: a black box, a small theater, and a high tech large theater - plus a large music performance auditorium in Rosse Hall. That's enough for 1600 kids.

I took some snaps of the cozy campus, of course.

The pup's favorite classroom, in Ascension Hall:

Lots more snaps of the Kenyon campus below the fold - 

Plenty of Amish on the roads with their lively, quick-trotting rigs.

Lots more road snaps and scenic vistas below the fold, including cornfields by the mile (why no pheasants?) -

I had never spend any time in Ohio, except passing through to other places like most people do, but I just spent a few days banging around Knox and Holmes counties, and found it to be like a larger-scale New England - but the New England of three generations ago. This area is thoroughly agricultural; most of the places are very well-maintained and the farms are well-manicured and appear prosperous; it's hillier than I expected; the autumn foliage matches that of Vermont and New Hampshire, and the towns resemble New England towns minus the old mills.

But that figures: most of the settlers of Ohio came from back east for better farming land - and found it.

It's the kind of place that feels like the real heartland of America. We were there for Parent's Weekend at Kenyon College (about which more, later) in Gambier, which is a few miles outside the fine town of Mount Vernon, Ohio and a little more than an hour or so from Columbus, if you drive 80 mph on 71 - which everybody does.

Yes, this area is Amish Country to a degree. Plenty of them moved to central Ohio and up in Holmes County they do a lot of funiture business and wood-working, along with horse-breeding, farming, and the making of jams, preserves, baskets, etc.

Most of America is appealing in its own way, but the feel of central Ohio is strong for me in the comfortable, undramatic hominess of the towns and landscapes.

I will post lots more snapshots over the next few days, as I find the time.

From scholar Richard Rubenstein's The Religion of Sacrifice and Abraham, Isaac and Jesus:

Judaism never entirely rejected the idea that God demands the sacrifice of the first-born son. However we evaluate the existence of child sacrifice in ancient Judah, Israel, Canaan, and the colonies of Canaan-Phoenicia, it is evident that we are dealing with a God who demands the death of children. In reflecting on the issue of child sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity, Levenson comments, “…the mythic-ritual complex that I have been calling ‘child sacrifice’ was never eradicated; it was only transformed."

A prime example of that transformation is the pidyon ha-ben ritual in fulfillment of the commandment already noted: “You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.” (Exodus 34:20) In this ceremony, the father presents his first-born son to a cohen or hereditary priest on the thirtieth day after his birth whereupon the priest asks the father, "Which do you prefer, your son or your money?" The father declares that he prefers his son and presents the cohen with five silver dollars, the symbolic equivalent of five biblical shekels, in order to "redeem" his son. The priest accepts the coins with the ritual formula, "This (the coins) in place of that (the child). This in exchange for that."

Read the whole thing. We Christians often refer to Christ as "the lamb of God;" "Lamb" because a "spotless lamb" was one of the ritual Jewish sacrifices of the time, used as a symbolic substitute for human sacrifice like Abraham's ram in the thicket.

Christians view the sacrifice of Christ - God's "son" - as the final and essential sacrifice needed to redeem a fallen mankind. Thus the ancient themes of blood and human sacrifice endure and give deadly serious substance to our worship today.

My August photo of the stone urns in Carthage which contained the ashes of firstborns sacrificed to Baal:

More fun ads from the wonderful but dangerous 1950's at Doug Ross.

A friend asked me where the most beautiful women were on my summer trip.

I had to think hard about it. I'd say Lucca first, Mallorca second, and Barcelona third. Or maybe Barcelona second...or maybe Nice second...

It's a blessing and a curse for guys that this world is so full of charming, posed poised and graceful females. (I'll bet they wish we ordinary guys could make ourselves so appealing, but we can not and will not.)

Anyway, the Ukraine girls really knock me out.

via Theo:

Between online stuff, books, magazines and journals, I probably do as much non-work-related reading each day as anybody does who also has a day job. I am a rapid reader, except when something forces me to ponder or imagine - or to look something up.

I appreciate a good information-conveyor, whether the info is news, opinions, deep-thinking, alcohol-inspired insights, personal musings and experiences, or plain information of all sorts, including the profoundly-informed and most widely-knowledgeable.

The websites which I frequent are all quite competent - or extremely good - at doing this. There is a definite craft to the pithy, linking, mini-essay (or mini-rant) whether the style is graceful, ironic, lyrical, obsessive, humorous, sly, academic, somber, crude, or whatever. We do not claim to have mastered the craft, but we aspire to do so.

However, real writing is a much rarer, God-given talent to which we would not even presume to aspire. Off the top of my head, I can only think of three website folks I read regularly who are true writers: Sippican (an explorer of mysteries and the creator of the felicitous term "intertubes"), Vanderleun (the often world-weary blogger and poet manque), and Iowahawk, the diabolical mimic, satirist and one-time Presidential candidate who skims the surface of reality before rising above it like a swallow chasing bugs over a lake.

This from Iowahawk's recent treatment of Andrew Sullivan, Dial "M" for Maternity:

I let the Ruger down slowly and put on the safety. Ma Palin was a Northside moll who had worked her way to the top of the Christianist syndicate. She was too violent and stupid for the Ivy League, but she was an expert at the two things that got you made in her gang -- shooting guns and making babies. I had long suspected some of those babies were fakes. If I could prove it, it would spark an internal war among the Christianists -- and bring down their iron-fisted control of the marriage rackets.

"I'm all ears... what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't."

"Suit yourself. Now let's hear that nursery story."

Well, whatever kind of writing one produces, every post needs a hook of some sort because the Hook brings you back. Here's my Hook for this post:

It doesnt matter what I say
So long as I sing with inflection
That makes you feel that Ill convey
Some inner truth of vast reflection
But Ive said nothing so far
And I can keep it up for as long as it takes
And it dont matter who you are
If Im doing my job then its your resolve that breaks

Because the hook brings you back
I aint tellin you no lie
The hook brings you back
On that you can rely

Mrs. BD had to make a quick trip to Cleveland this weekend. She was amused by this tourism video:

I know that we have a few readers who are interested in urban design and architecture from the comments we have had about Jane Jacobs in the past. Even insofar as many of us are suburbanites or exurbanites, we are fans of the liveable, lively city.

I was made aware of Leon Krier last night by a pal who has been reading his The Architecture of Community. Andres Duany says of this book:

"This is the compendium of common sense that has flowed from Leo''s pen for over forty years. From first to last, none of it has aged; and none of it will age. It is the one indispensable book on urbanism." (Andres Duany, co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism)

Here's the Amazon list of Krier's books.

Wiki notes: "...Krier sees the modern planner as a tyrannical figure.^"

"People sleep peaceably in their bed at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

- writer unknown, but often attributed to George Orwell

Our friends' son and his Navy Seal team have returned home after their second six-month posting in Wherrizitstan. Their well-being has been in our prayers every day.

My daily thoughts about these good, tough men is part of what finally motivated me to get my flag up.

Seeing it hanging or flapping there each morning when I step out (yes, it is illuminated at night) is a good reminder to me of many important things. I recommend doing it for that reason.

(Buddy comments that they returned minus one of their team. It's hard to know what to say.)

Related to the post below, the Obama administration's agenda, at Powerline.

I have never doubted that this was the essence of hopey-changey, which is why I did not vote for him. These people do not like their country. I do.

My sister sent me her snap of the peak of Mount Madison, NH, last weekend, with her hiking buddies (and hubbie) up ahead. They are in good shape. Snow and ice up there already -

From a NY Review of Books look at three new books on Warhol, one of my favorite art critics, Arthur Danto,

...called him "the nearest thing to a philosophical genius the history of art has produced."

Rembrandt had an art factory too. Interesting article.